From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 8:48 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Climate models
On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Chris de Morsella <[email protected]>
wrote:
> A prescription of full speed ahead, burn it all up, as fast as we possibly
can is a 100% guarantee of complete disastrous sudden onset collapse
So now you're claiming that even though computer climate models made
terrible 17 year predictions we know with complete certainty that those same
models make 100% absolutely perfect 100 year predictions. I have to ask, how
do you know this? Did that revelation come to you in a dream?
You seem to have trouble with reading comprehension John. I am not even
speaking to the issue of climate change, as you allege. Instead I am
referring to the certainty that at the current global rates of consumption
of fossil energy supplies that we as a global civilization are going to run
into the wall of depleting reserves just as the growth in demand is peaking
(China, India, the other mid income countries demand is growing very
rapidly). Perhaps if you could improve your reading comprehension you would
not go put your foot in your mouth as you just have managed to do.
> you live in a pretend world of make believe eternally available reserves
of fossil energy.
Nothing is eternal including the sun, but there is enough Thorium just in
the Earth's crust to supply us with energy for about as long as the sun
shines.
There is something around fifty million tons of pure gold dissolved in the
world's oceans. doesn't mean it is recoverable. Most of the Thorium in the
earth's crust is not recoverable.. And yet you speak of it as if it were.
Why John? Isn't that dishonest.
But sure there do seem to be large Thorium bearing ores - often found along
with rare earth elements. And we have gone over this before. Of all the
breeder types I favor the LFTR - so there is at least one thing in the
universe we agree on.
But how does one build out an entirely new - green field because nothing is
there for LFTR - energy infrastructure amidst rapidly falling supplies (as
the world will soon face) The struggle over who gets what out of a
diminishing available quantity of vital fossil energy (especially liquids)
is going to become intense.
Solar and wind and all other replacement energy systems face this same
conundrum. so it is not just a problem for LFTR; however it is also true
that -- unlike for the case of LFTR -- both wind & solar (both CSP & PV)
have achieved efficiencies of scale and have well developed supply chains,
large scale production facilities and so forth.
LFTR - has at best some old blueprints and data from the old Oak Ridge
experimental reactor. And that is it. Don't get me wrong I am not opposed to
LFTR and think that it definitely has a role (as a supplier of a component
of the base load) - just trying to put it in perspective.
Global liquid petroleum has peaked and is in decline
> when these fossil energy reserves enter into inexorable decline - as in
fact they are or will soon be.
So we're already in the era of inexorable fossil fuel production decline,
and yet oddly oil production in the USA is the highest it's been in 24 years
and because it uses more advanced technology it now produces more oil than
Saudi Arabia. And given this inexorable decline it's also a bit odd that in
2012 oil production increased in the USA by 760,000 barrels a day, the
largest yearly increase since records about oil production started in 1859.
And it's even stranger that natural gas production in 2012 was THE LARGEST
IT HAS EVER BEEN. If that's inexorable decline I'm all for it.
That is what happens when you throw a trillion dollars of capital squeezing
oil out of rock. This little boomlet is already plaid out John and depletion
is setting in and it is very rapid - don't believe me look at the depletion
rates for the Eagle-Ford shale formation in Texas, which has the longest
history and hence most complete data picture for the long term behavior of
fracked shale formations. You really should stop getting your "facts" from
the press releases of the Oil&Gas sector.
Some facts that directly contradict what you are saying. Right now US
natural gas reserves are far below the five year moving average for reserves
at this time of year -- 926 Bcf below the 5-yr moving average to be exact
[Source for facts: http://ir.eia.gov/ngs/ngs.html The natural gas supply
situation in the US is in fact very tight right now - our national reserve
supply is only half of what it was last year for example. So where is all
that gas you are talking about?
According to this article in Bloomberg
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-20/wildcatters-rush-spindletop-in-ret
urn-to-east-texas-oil.html) Wildcatters are packing up and leaving the
Bakken heading for East Texas. If this is true, and considering the very
rapid collapse in capital investment into unconventional oil - read below-
it certainly seems plausible, then one must ask why? The Bakken formation
in SD was supposed to be the massive formation that was going to turn the US
into the Saudi Arabia of shale.
" Chesapeake Energy, the second largest U.S. based oil and gas company,
filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell off its oilfield
services unit which does the majority of the company's oil and gas
exploration, hydraulic fracking and drilling. Stung with high costs and
mired in more than $20 billion in debt on its U.S. shale operations, the
company continues to sell off billions in its assets base as it struggles to
right itself. Its actions follow a developing trend of cutbacks, spin- offs,
divestures and write downs for oil and gas majors operating in U.S. shale
formations. In the last 10 days, British Petroleum, Chevron, ExxonMobil and
Royal Dutch Shell have all announced they will be spending less on oil and
gas exploration in the U.S. Allen Brooks, Managing Director of Parks Paton
Hoepfl & Brown, an independent Houston, Texas based investment banking firm,
stated yesterday, "Chevron is the latest major oil company to implicitly
declare that the oil industry has entered a new era - one marked by higher
costs and more disciplined capital investment programs,".
[further down in the article]
"In 2011 Shell earned roughly $28 billion in its upstream and downstream
operations only to see this fall to below $20 billion in 2013. New Shell Oil
CEO Ben Van Beurden recently told shareholders it was bad policy to spend an
estimated $80 billion in capital on its North American portfolio and still
lose money. Chevron has been cutting back on its level of drilling in the
Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale while lowering its 2014 annual corporate
production forecast by 6.1%. Early this month, British Petroleum CEO Bob
Dudley announced all of BP's U.S. operations would be formed into a separate
business entity which, among other things, opens up the possibility of the
sale of the new shale gas unit in the future. ExxonMobil spent $25 billion
in 2010 to acquire XTO Energy Inc. forming it's U.S shale gas operations.
However industry analysts continue to report ExxonMobil's XTO investment
diluted its profits and isn't making up for the company's problems in
increasing oil-and-gas production."
As you will clearly see John - assuming you even read the paragraphs above -
the oil majors are pulling back in a very big way from the shale play -
after losing huge sums of money on it.
As they say money talks bull shit walks - and the money is talking big time
John - the supposed gas boom is going bust - the smart money is trying to
get out as fast as it can. Why? Doesn't it make you curious why the oil
majors have seen their profit margins collapse and are almost in unison
trying to divest, sell off and otherwise get rid of these liabilities.
> Fortunately wiser people than yourself are advocating that we begin to
transition away from these fossil supplies
These wiser people (environmentalists) are indeed in favor of a transition
away from fossil fuel and nuclear energy, but they are also strongly against
a transition TOWARD anything to replace it. Anything with the capacity to
replace these missing energy sources would of necessity have to be large,
and they could not remain theoretical but would actually have to be built.
And renewable or non-renewable these "wiser people" are rabidly against any
energy source that is larger than a tiny pilot plant, and some think even
that is too big and all future energy sources should remain strictly on
paper till the end of time.
Wrong. Again your poor reading comprehension is showing itself. The future
will be a mix of energy supplies with fossil energy largely being phased out
over time - driven by economics and energy scarcity. It will be replaced
increasingly by other sources - solar PV, CSP, wind etc.
That is if we manage to not follow the idiotic advice of folks such as
yourself who advocate unrestrained energy and resource consumption for as
long as we can get away with it and for as fast as we can possibly ramp up
the rates of extraction.. Only to run straight into the resource depletion
wall with nothing in place to mitigate the collapse.
> Those, who continue to delude themselves, with this absurd notion that
fossil energy will always be available (or at least will be available for a
very long period of time - more than a hundred years say) are deluded fools
In a time of fast technological advancement such as ours making great
sacrifices now to solve problems that you think might become serious more
than about 15 years in the future is just dumb; it would be like demanding
that the Wright brothers solve the problem of airport congestion before they
finished construction of their first airplane.
Ah yes the magical thinking continues. I have heard the same sorry song &
dance over and over --- the no worries someone will invent something show.
Maybe, but then maybe not. You are proposing betting the future of our earth
on a maybe/maybe not proposition. Not something I find all that an
intelligent course of action.
>I am calling the "brilliant" John Clark. a (pompous) fool. a self-deluded
idiot, living in a mind infected by magical thinking.
It doesn't matter if John Clark is a pompous self deluded infected idiot
(and a fool too!) if what John Clark said in the above is true. And it is.
What have you said here that is "true" John. You have put out opinions and
vague unreferenced "facts" of dubious provenance. Perhaps in your world of
magical thinking this amounts to truth.. so I can understand how you would
think the way you do.
Yours Truly
Chris de Morsella
Yours truly,
John K Clark
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