OT. Fossil fuel reserves.

[harryagain]

[John Williamson]

And what make you think the scare is any more valid this time than it has been every previous time someone needed to fill a newspaper column?

One major problem we have now is that the prices of oil and oil products have very little connection with the cost of production.

I remember reading in the 1960s that we only had 3 decades of oil left, and I was expecting to be either cycling or using a horse and carriage by now. I read the same in the 1970s, the '80s....

And my dad used to tell me he was reading the same in the 1950s.

[newshound]

The figure I remember from the late 60's was that oil would run out in the 1980s, although the UK had coal for 300 years. One of the main "facts" that persuaded me into nuclear power generation, on the grounds that electric cars would be ideal for soaking up night-time capacity, reducing the need to load follow.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Because eventually, the s**te will really hit the fan and all the fuckwads who are cruising along will wonder what hit them.

[The Natural Philosopher]

They might be if we had any suitable batteries

Conventional oil did more or less run out in the late 80s, and the price has sextupled since.

[Lobster]

On 30 Mar 2014, John Williamson grunted:

All probably true, if considered in terms of the extraction technology and economics of the day.

Only yesterday I read about the possibility of accessing massive coal reserves *under* the North Sea, which 30 years ago would have been regarded as a joke:

[Nightjar]

What a surprise. The founder and chairman of the UK's largest independent solar electric company telling us that we can't rely upon other forms of energy.

Colin Bignell

[Nightjar]

That is, of course, the basic flaw in the peak oil hypothesis; it was devised in the 1950s, when oil prices had, in real terms, been declining for many decades and nobody was looking seriously at new exploration or extraction techniques. As a result, it assumed that proven reserves would remain static, whereas we now know that they depend upon what it is economic to extract.

That would appear to be an ideal case for underground gasification.

Colin BIgnell

[bert]

In message , harryagain writes

Different day - same sh*t