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Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

nytimes.com

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Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#441

Post by prepend »

pm90 wrote: post #285
prepend wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember listening to a Michael Moore book in 00s where he talked about peak oil and had a funny story about a grandparent telling kids what it was like to have petroleum products like plastic and whatnot. He listed all the things made with oil that would disappear. I thought that was a bit crazy so did some research on the topic and realized that he was either full of horse apples, or stupid, or being deceitful, o…

I don't think that's fair. Our methods of determining oil reserves and our technology to extract oil from previously un-economic raw materials (shale oil, tar sands, heavy crude) have improved dramatically, which is the main reason for the glut of oil that we see today.

Good point. I think the challenge is trying to figure out what is BS put out by the oil companies (that never showed peak oil) vs BS put out by other people (that I guess inaccurately failed to include technology improvements in their forecasts).

I think the part that is fair is the belief that we would run out of oil to the point that we wouldn’t be able to make plastics. That’s just me not taking into account of the supply demand curve where plastics would be able to use oil even if we were not able to affordable fuel cars.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#442

Post by bryanlarsen »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #375
nostrademons wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, electric motors have flat torque curves, while ICEs need to get up to a certain RPM before you start getting decent torque. That means you get maximum acceleration and hauling power from the get-go. https://www.carthrottle.com/post/how-do-electric-vehicles-pr... (This incidentally is part of why Tesla started with the Roadster - the flat torque curve of an electric motor can give some great acceleration numbers…

Gah. I agree that electric vehicles are cool, but there is no need for parroting "facts" about ICEs that were true in the 1970s. If you look at the torque curve of a modern pickup truck engine, it's either completely flat or it's actually decreasing as you go from low to high RPMs. E.g. the GM Duramax 6.6 maxes out at 1200 Nm at 1600 RPM, then decreases to 900 as you go higher in revs. For comparison, the Model X P10…

> Nurburgring

Where Tesla just put down a 7:13

> torque curve

What's the Duramax's torque at 0 RPM?

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#443

Post by nradov »

perl4ever wrote: post #384
nradov wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion of crude oil becoming a stranded asset seems a little silly. It will be many decades before the transportation infrastructure transitions off fossil fuels. And even then there will be demand for oil as a feed stock for chemical manufacturing (plastics, fertilizers, etc). (I'm not claiming that this is a good thing, it's just the economic reality.)

I don't understand why people say oil is useful for plastics and such as though that was fundamentally different from its use as fuel. In either case, the reason we use it is because it is a pre-existing store of energy. If you have an energy source, then you can make oil, plastics, and whatever else you want. I have, or had, a mug from a former employer that was made out of plant-based plastic. It appeared no differ…

Sure synthetic hydrocarbons will eventually take over for those purposes. But we don't have anywhere near enough renewable energy to make it economically viable today. It will take decades to build the necessary infrastructure.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#445

Post by corodra »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #212
corodra wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want my honest answer? No fucking clue. I'm focused on cement. I've given up on tech, IT and programming and went into the cement industry to work towards a smaller CO2 footprint in cement production. It's the second largest CO2 producer on the planet behind fossil fuels. I found making apps and backend software to be a waste of time in my own desires. There's a shit ton of science in cement and infrastructure to…

That's awesome! Can you share more about how you got into the cement industry? Did you need to go back to school? What was the transition like? Where did you start looking? etc?

Really, nothing special in the whole thing or to write about. First off, to be clear, I'm no saint. I figured I'd align both making money and doing my part to lower CO2. I told my business partner to be on the look out for a cement/concrete manufacturing opportunity, year later we found one (who you know situation). I'm learning the industry first hand and researching how to lower emissions (really no good solutions out there for very good reasons). I never went to school to begin with. I don't feel like sucking up to academics for permission to do anything in my life. It's another business, so there's no real transition for me. Except I get to be outside more often and get dirty. I grew up poor and did a lot manual labor as a kid. So, it's nice not being glued to a computer or chair anymore. Way easier to stay in shape now.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#446

Post by sullyj3 »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #421
ars wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Corporation do what their customers want. So you, as a customer, have control of them.

looks at missing esc key on my 2019 mbp yea sure, "I'm in control"

well, you bought it.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#447

Post by rossdavidh »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #160
rossdavidh wrote: post #97

So, interesting and all, but not even mentioning what is happening to coal the last few years seems like an odd omission. Coal is essentially disappearing from the world's energy mix. As big as coal was, it takes a while to go away completely, but the trend does not seem to be slowing down. By some estimates, there are a lot of cases now where it is more expensive to keep running an existing coal-fired power plant, t…

Globally, coal has not dropped much in relative or absolute terms. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-by-source?stackMode=a...

Good chart! It does seem to show that coal+oil is roughly flat the last couple years, though. This is exactly the sort of context that would have been interesting to see in the article. Thanks!

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#448

Post by rossdavidh »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #131
rossdavidh wrote: post #97

So, interesting and all, but not even mentioning what is happening to coal the last few years seems like an odd omission. Coal is essentially disappearing from the world's energy mix. As big as coal was, it takes a while to go away completely, but the trend does not seem to be slowing down. By some estimates, there are a lot of cases now where it is more expensive to keep running an existing coal-fired power plant, t…

Coal is down-trending in the USA, but it still makes up 30% of the electricity in the USA. In other countries, especially China and India, coal is expected to be burned in massive quantities for the next couple of decades. Granted, they use much more efficient coal than the US does, but let's not act like coal is disappearing overnight. It's been over 30% of the mix for decades and it will continue to be so, in a glo…

Well, what I'm reading is that coal is still increasing in China in absolute terms, but declining as a percentage of the mix. If oil drops in price in the way the article is suggesting, I would have to think that it would displace a good chunk of that? At the very least, if there's some reason we think it would not, the article should have explained why that is.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#449

Post by acidburnNSA »

greglindahl wrote: post #422
acidburnNSA wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. We're closer to the 5% level today. I just see a lot of people seeing good renewable performance at a subsystems level and thinking it will continue unfettered up to the point that matters for climate change mitigation. Meanwhile we're actually building massive amounts of fracked natural gas generators, we're shutting down low-carbon nuclear plants, oil use in Asia is going gangbusters, NIMBYism around wind…

No one is saying we should stop being alarmed. Sheesh.

A lot of people in my circles are saying that the problem is already solved and carrying on with high-carbon lifestyles without worrying about it a all.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#450

Post by OnlineGladiator »

sliken wrote: post #437
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked at some numbers and you're right, it does seem like I exaggerated. If you choose the lower weight range for the 3 series though the difference ends up being 14% heavier, and obviously you can choose difference cars to compare. But you are right, 1/3 seems too high. Maybe half that would be more accurate.

I looked at the lighter weight BMW model 3 series. They were either smaller engines (not fair since the model 3 AWD is already faster), or RWD (again not fair to compare to an AWD electric). Seems like 8% is about right to me.

If you look at the Model S which starts at 4800 pounds and Model X which starts at 5000 pounds the math works out very differently.
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