Re: Peak oil is an balloon, let's break it.

From: Mitchell Jones (mjones_at_jump.net)
Date: 02/23/05 

Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 06:57:59 GMT

In article <AOSdnTn3_Zc6d4TfRVn-og@comcast.com>,
 "tadchem" <tadchemNOSPAM@comcast.net> wrote:

> "Mitchell Jones" <mjones@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:mjones-8438B5.21315520022005@chiapp18.algx.net...
>
> <snip repost>
>
> > ***{What was calculated was the amount of carbon that was released in
> > order to free up the O2 that is presently in the atmosphere. At the
> > present rate of usage, that carbon would take over 100,000 years to
> > consume. All of that carbon was released from the primordial
> > CO2/carbonate reservoir.
>
> The assumption that *ALL* O2 in the atmosphere was released from a
> "primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir" is unjustifiable and erroneous. It
> disregards the action of sulfate-reducing bacteria (which releases O2 from
> sulfate, not carbonate)

***{Of course sulfates exist, and of course anaerobic sulfate-reducing
bacteria exist. The assumption that a significant portion of the oxygen
presently in the atmosphere came from such a source, however, does not
work. The reason: sulfate reducing bacteria do not release oxygen into
the environment. What they do is strip away the four oxygen atoms out of
the sulfate radical, and then use them to change carbon containing
compounds (e.g., methane, crude oil, compost, etc.) into carbon dioxide
plus water. In other words, they burn carbon compounds as fuel,
producing CO2 and H2O as waste. To do that, they need oxygen. Since free
oxygen isn't available in anaerobic environments (by definition), they
pull the oxygen they need off of any sulfates that happen to be
available. The fact that they don't release free oxygen into the
environment is not surprising, for two reasons:

(1) Investing the energy to pull the oxygen out of the sulfate would
make no sense, if they immediately turned around and released the oxygen
into the environment.

(2) Since sulface reducing bacteria flourish in anaerobic environments,
they would be disadvantaged if they were to bring about aerobic
conditions by releasing free oxygen. (Hey, that would encourage the
competition! :-)

The implication is straightforward: sulfate-reducing bacteria exist, but
they release CO2 and H2O into the environment, not O2, and thus their
presence does not affect in the slightest the calculation of the amount
of carbon that was freed up when the O2 in the atmosphere was produced.
You don't have to subtract the portion of atmospheric oxygen which
sulfate-reducing bacteria produced, because they didn't produce any of
it.

--Mitchell Jones}***

 and ignores the fact that carbonates are produced by
> the reaction of atmospheric CO2 with alkaline solutions. Carbonates are
> thermally unstable and would not have been present at all on the primordial
> earth.

***{Irrelevant. The slash between CO2 and carbonate in the expression
"CO2/carbonate reservoir" means that either or both may be present. I
lumped CO2 and the carbonates together into a single reservoir because
the carbonates are produced from CO2, and the carbonates, once formed,
are eventually subducted back into the Earth's interior, where the CO2
is again released. (This is the source of the massive amounts of CO2
that emanate from volcanos.) That means it doesn't matter whether
carbonates were present "at all" on the primitive Earth, because there
was plenty of CO2 available at that time, and that is sufficient to
establish the existence of the primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir.
--MJ}***

> The pre-biotic earth was acidic due to the abundant amounts of sulfate.
> Methane (the source of most pre-biotic carbon) is neutral, and does not
> participate in acid-base chemistry.

***{Irrelevant. What matters is that while sulfate-reducing bacteria use
oxygen, they do not release it. What they release is carbon dioxide.
Result: all of the oxygen in the present atmosphere, as a practical
matter, came from the primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir. Result: the
calculation of the amount of carbon freed up when that atmospheric
oxygen was produced, given previously, is a good working approximation
to the truth. --MJ}***

> > In addition to the CO2/carbonate reservoir, of course, there was a a
> > primordial methane reservoir. While the size of that methane reservoir
> > is not known, it was surely very large, and was probably larger than the
> > CO2/carbonate reservoir.
>
> OK. Something (the primordial methane reservoir) is more than nothing (the
> 'primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir').

***{The primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir is something, not nothing.
What is nothing is the argument by which you attempted to dismiss the
significance of that reservoir. That argument, which depended on the
false premise that sulfur-reducing bacteria release oxygen, is obviously
in ruins. --MJ}***

> > That fact, however, does not undercut the
> > implications of the earlier calculation, because when the carbon in the
> > primordial methane reservoir is added to that which has been freed up
> > from the primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir, the total of available
> > carbon goes up, not down. That means we have in excess of 100,000 years
> > at the present rate of consumption based on carbon freed up from the
> > CO2/carbonate reservoir, and an unknown and probably even greater number
> > of years based on future supplies coming from the methane reservoir. In
> > all likelihood, the total from the two sources would permit in excess of
> > 200,000 years of usage at current rates of consumption.
>
> How much of your hypothetical deep reservoir of primordial methane/petroleum
> is accessible - i.e. within about 5 km of the surface? While we have been
> able to drill as deep as 12 km, these are 'special' test holes and the
> technology for drilling to such depth is different from that of drilling a
> productive oil/gas well.
>
> Previous posts have indicates that the 'primordial methane' lies at depths
> up to 200 km. How are we supposed to *get* to it?

***{We will get to it incrementally. As new technology comes online
which allows profitable extraction of some portion of it, we will
extract that portion. Then, later, when other new technology comes
online that allows profitable extraction of another portion, we will
extract it. And so on. The process will continue until we no longer need
those materials, or until more easily exploitable new reserves--e.g., on
Titan--become accessible. --MJ}***

 If the conditions
> (temperatures & pressures) in the literature cited are necessary to produce
> the methane/petroleum, then it will remain forever inaccessible as
> affordable drilling equipment will never be able to withstand those
> conditions.

***{It is futile, from the perspective of presently known technology, to
attempt to identify the technology of the future. What matters is that,
if men are free to create, invent, and discover, they will continue to
be able to provide for their energy needs; and if they are not, they
will not. All the calculation proves, in short, is that the energy is
there and that our advancement as a species will not be stopped by "peak
oil" or by any other external limitation. If we are stopped, it will be
because we submitted to the will of parasites, and for no other reason.
--MJ}***

> Until those problems are solved and the mere existence of your speculated
> reserves has been demonstrated

***{The calculation of the amount of carbon freed up when the oxygen
presently in the atmosphere was released gives us in excess of 100,000
years of reserves, at present rates of consumption. Nothing in that
calculation is speculative. You may not like it, but the demonstration
has already been made. --MJ}***

, it is foolish and misleading to claim 'in
> excess of 200,000 years of usage at current rates of consumption.'
>
> Only an utter fool would believe that consumption would remain constant for
> 200,000 years.

***{Do you believe that? If so, why? It does seem like a rather foolish
notion, now that you mention it.

My view, which you can review in the material quoted above, is that "in
all likelihood, the total from the two sources would permit in excess of
200,000 years of usage at current rates of consumption." As you can
plainly see, I placed a qualifier at the end of the sentence--to wit:
"at current rates of consumption." Given that qualifier, any technically
competent person can easly determine that, if average consumption is
higher, the duration of allowable usage will be less. If, for example,
average consumption in the future is twice the current rate, then we
will have in excess of 100,000 year of usage. And so on.

I'm sorry if the numbers seemed scary to you. It's really pretty simple
arithmetic, once you focus your mind on it. :-)

--Mitchell Jones}***

> Your extrapolation is absolute stupidity.

***{Coming from a fellow who believes anaerobic bacteria release O2 into
the atmosphere, I'll take that as a complement. --MJ}***

> > ***{Incorrect. The analysis estimated the amount of carbon freed up from
> > the CO2/carbonate reservoir to produce the O2 which is known to be in
> > the atmosphere. The fact that the entire CO2/carbonate reservoir was not
> > exhausted when the oxygen was freed up merely means there is still more
> > carbon available from that source--i.e., more carbon in excess of the
> > amount already calculated. While that type of carbon cannot be used as
> > an energy source, it can be used for other purposes. --MJ}***
>
> 1) Geological mapping is currently far from complete. The size of the
> 'carbonate reservoir' is unknown.

***{Irrelevant. What matters is that any carbon in it today is carbon
*in excess* of that freed up when atmospheric O2 was released. --MJ}***

> 2) There is a difference between 'carbon' and 'available carbon.' Carbon in
> CO2 or carbonate must be reduced (a technical term from chemistry - the
> *oxidation state* of such carbon is formally +4, and it needs to be reduced
> to neutral as in methane CH4 or hydrocarbons CnH(2n+2)) before it can be
> used as a fuel in an oxygen atmosphere. CO2 doesn't burn!!!

***{I already said that. (Quote: "that type of carbon cannot be used as
an energy source." See above.) --MJ}***

> 3) The CO2/carbonates were formed originally from oxygen that had been
> previously produced by plants in combination with carbon from methane.

***{Incorrect. Earth's primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir originally
consisted almost entirely of CO2. That material was originally part of
the primordial disc from which the solar system formed. In solar system
formation, what basically happens is that the primordial disc coalesces
into a cloud of comets, and, the bashing together of comets produces
larger bodies, some of which become planets. Eventually, one of the
planets becomes large enough to support fusion, and turns into a star.
As soon as the first star lights up, a solar wind appears, and
temperatures near to the star become high enough to support the loss of
volatiles from orbiting bodies. There is then a sorting process, based
upon the size of the various bodies and their proximity to the stellar
mass (or, in some cases, the stellar masses). The details of that
process are irrelevant here, but the point of interest is this: pristine
cometary material is the original primordial material from which the
solar system formed, and it includes a number of ices, prominent among
which is CO2. Hence Earth's primordial CO2/carbonate reservoir preceded
the emergence of life on Earth, and, indeed, preceded even the lighting
up of the sun. Your statement that it came from oxygen that had been
previously produced by plants is palpably wrong. (If you doubt this, do
a web search on the keywords "comet" and "composition," and read some of
the articles that you find.) --MJ}***

> > ***{What is usable today, given the current level of technology and the
> > ongoing regulatory insanity, is quite different than what would be
> > usable in the future, given that the insanity ends--i.e., given a
> > restoration of laissez faire economics and hence a continuation of
> > technological progress.
>
> Technology cannot progress indefinitely.

***{It depends on the political system. Under capitalism, just about
everyone can reasonably expect that his property rights will not be
violated, because government has been sufficiently restrained that
virtually all criminality comes from private sources. Since criminality
unassisted by government is a feeble thing and easily dealt with, it
ceases to be a factor impeding social progress. As a practical matter,
under capitalism each person is the owner of that which he creates,
invents, discovers, or obtains through voluntary exchange. Such rights
are a powerful incentive, and the result is an orgy of creation,
invention, and discovery which continues until such time as the
political system, capitalism, has been abandoned, and the store of
capital accumulated under its auspices has been consumed. The
consumption phase, in most cases, takes place in the context of fascism.
Under fascism, the government reserves unto itself the privilege of
violating property rights in what it deems to be "the public interest."
Since the "interests" in question are always those of would-be social
parasites, fascism is inherently unstable. It always leads to an orgy of
state-sponsored criminality, and if it is allowed to endure until the
previously accumulated capital has been consumed, it results in economic
and social collapse, followed by poverty and authoritarian slavery. The
implication: if we can somehow manage to restore, and then retain, the
capitalistic system, technology can, and will, progress indefinitely. As
to whether we can do that, only time will tell. (I must say, though,
that in my judgment the game is already thoroughly lost.) --MJ}***

> There are some physical limits.

***{The limits are political, not physical. --MJ}***

> No structured object will ever be able to land on the sun, for example. No
> material known or imaginable could maintain the rigidity, hardness, and
> tensile/compression strength required of rock drilling equipment under the
> pressure/temperature found at 200 km depth. Even rock *flows* under those
> conditions!

***{Irrelevant. Technological progress is based on innovations that take
the laws of nature into account, rather than violate them. --MJ}***

> > If the insanity does *not* end, of course, then
> > it's back to the stone age. But if that happens, it will be caused by
> > the enviro-Nazis and their anticapitalist fellow travelers, not by "peak
> > oil." --MJ}***
>
> "Insanity" is an addictive luxury of affluent civilizations. Those who have
> it cannot give it up. The nature of addictions is such that, once you have
> one, nothing else matters. The insanity will fade only when those who have
> it are all dead, and those who don't have it cannot afford it.

***{Well said, and probably correct. --MJ}***

> > ***{The CO2/carbonate reservoir is not depleted by losses into space.
>
> I never said they were.
>
> > The losses to which you refer are from the methane reservoir, and are
> > guaranteed to be a trivial portion of the original size of that
> > reservoir.
>
> How trivial? Do you have a number?

***{If it were an important point, I would try to come up with one, but
it isn't. Remember the issue: I spoke in support of Hanson's
calculation, which supported the conclusion that merely freeing up the
oxygen presently in the atmosphere left behind enough carbon for more
than 100,000 years of usage at current rates of consumption, and you
denied that conclusion. The premise of the calculation was that
substantially all of that oxygen came from the primordial CO2/carbonate
reservoir, and unless you can budge that premise--which you haven't--you
are toast. That means the magnitude of the primordial methane reservoir
is irrelevant to the issue. If one molecule of methane from that source
remains on Earth, it is a molecule added to the already gigantic carbon
stockpile which supports Hanson's calculation. Hence focusing our
discussion on that would amount to chasing a red herring, and, while
that might please you, I ain't gonna do it. --MJ}***

[snip]

> > , how much carbon
> > > is present in the mantle as carbide minerals, or how much carbon is
> > > dissolved in the molten iron of the earth's core (carbon readily
> dissolves
> > > in molten iron as any steel worker knows).
> >
> > ***{These reservoirs, like the remaining portion of the
>
> ...*imaginary*...

***{You deem it "imaginary" because you believe that sulfate-reducing
anaerobic bacteria release oxygen into their environs, thereby
encouraging aerobic competition. That belief, however, is erroneous.
When anaerobic bacteria need oxygen, they can't simply grab an O2,
because there aren't any around. (That's what "anaerobic" means.) Thus
they invest energy to rip an oxygen loose from something else--a gypsum
molecule, say--and incorporate the oxygen into whatever organic molecule
they are building. That means the oxygen goes into a carbon based
molecule, and, when that molecule is eventually used as fuel, the oxygen
goes off as either CO2 or H2O, not as O2. --MJ}***

> > primordial
> > CO2/carbonate reservoir, cannot be used as an energy source. However,
> > given the required technological improvements,
>
> i.e. reducing the temperature, pressure, and distance to these materials to
> something workable, which would require literally fragmenting the planet...

***{As noted previously, technological improvement is an incremental
process. The "easy" problems are solved first, creating a new
technological context, from which a new set of "easy" problems emerges
and is solved, which in turn creates another new context from which yet
another set of "easy" problems is solved, and so on. No human can
reliably predict where such an iterative chain will lead, any more than
any billiards player can reliably predict where three and four ball
combination shots will lead. All we can do is create the
conditions--respect for property rights--which encourage such
improvements, and wait until hindsight tells us where things were
headed. If we do that, we are all absolutely guaranteed to be surprised
by the result, but that is not what matters. What matters is that the
surprises will be pleasant, meaning that our lives will improve because
we had the courage to let it all happen. --MJ}***

> > they might be used as a
> > source of materials at some future date. In any case, their presence
> > does *not* reduce the total of carbon freed from the CO2/carbonate
> > reservoir plus that which comes down to us from the primordial methane
> > reservoir, both of which, given continued advancements in extraction
> > technology, can be utilized as a future source of energy--energy which,
> > as noted above, should be available to us for the next 200,000 years or
> > more, if needed. --MJ}***
>
> Carbon 'freed from the CO2/carbonate reservoir' is atmospheric CO2.

***{Oh, please, let's not get silly. When I referred to "carbon freed
from the CO2/carbonate reservoir," I had in mind "carbon freed from the
CO2/carbonate reservoir by the extraction of O2," and this far down into
the discussion you ought to be perfectly aware of that fact. And,
obviously, if the O2 is extracted from CO2, "atmospheric CO2" is not
what remains. What remains, instead, is carbon, in the form of organic
compounds created by the plants that extracted and released the
O2--e.g., complex sugars to start with, followed by lipids, wood, etc.,
and, over geological time, crude oil, lignite, coal, etc. Now let's get
serious here, OK? --MJ}***

  It is
> useless as a fuel.

***{Wood, sugars, vegetable oils, lignite, coal, and crude oil are
useless as fuels? News to me. --MJ}***

 It needs to be converted into something useable as a
> fuel. Historically this has always been done by photosynthesis - by plants.
> We are on the verge of developing artificial photosynthesis. It will be a
> while before it is commercial.

***{Artificial photosynthesis is not needed to make use of hydrocarbons
accumulated over the aeons by natural means--i.e., by green plants using
photosynthesis to convert solar energy to chemical energy. The O2 was
extracted from the CO2 and released into the air. The carbon that
remained was assembled, first, into molecular forms which we call
sugars, thereby storing the incident solar energy in chemical form. An
example reaction is 6CO2 + 6H2O + solar energy --> C6H12O6 + 6O2, with
the O2's being released into the air. From there, using the energy
stored in the sugar, other complex organic molecules were fashioned such
as those mentioned earlier, which eventually led to storage of the
energy over geological time spans in the form of crude oil, lignite,
coal, etc. --MJ}***

> > ***{The key point is that when they are considered, the available
> > supplies go up, not down. --MJ}***
>
> An auto wrecking yard contains cars, which contain fuses, which contain
> low-melting metal, which contains traces of platinum, gold, and silver.
> That is a long way from recycling a Toyota into a wedding band.
> Theoretically, you *could* do it, but what would it cost? Would it be worth
> it?
>
> The point is that CO2, carbonates, and carbon buried 200 km down in the
> ground are not *available* fuel supplies. To be "available" a carbon-based
> fuel must be readily accessible and usable in the readily accessed form.

***{As technology advances, that which is "readily accessible"
incrementally improves. Obviously, you don't begin 200 km down. You
start near the surface and work your way lower as technology improves--
and that's what, in fact, has been taking place. --MJ}***

> If it isn't available, one must *do* something to make it available, and
> that 'something' will cost money, time, and resources, increasing the cost.
> When will it cost more than the benefit it provides? *THAT* is the
> _economic_ bottom line.

***{It's not static, Tom. The fact that a particular natural resource
cannot be profitably extracted today does not mean it cannot be
profitably extracted in the future. Extraction technology advances by
finding cost-effective new techniques that yield profits. As long as all
of the known techniques yield losses, the resource remains undeveloped,
awaiting the needed improvements. That's the way natural resource
development has always worked, in market economies. How could you not
know that? --MJ}***

> > > You need a bigger envelope.
> >
> > ***{You planned that one-liner in advance, didn't you Tom? (At the
> > beginning, you said "snip back-of-envelope calculations," so that here,
> > you could say "You need a bigger envelope," right? :-)
>
> No planning required. I simply reread what I had previously written (I edit
> my own writing) and the closing presented itself. There is a well-known
> character in fantasy (Minsc, from the Forgotten Realms series) who has a tag
> line he uses when he misses a combat attack on an opponent: "I need a bigger
> sword!"
>
> CO2 doesn't burn.

***{I repeat: "the material freed from the CO2/carbonate reservoir" is a
reference to material that remains after the extraction of oxygen. When
the oxygen is extracted from a CO2 molecule, a CO2 molecule does not
remain. What remains is a carbon atom, and that carbon atom is
immediately utilized, via the metabolism of the plant which has hold of
it, to add to the structure of an organic molecule. Thus the fact that
CO2 doesn't burn is irrelevant. The organic molecule that remains after
the O2 has been extracted does burn, because the energy invested to pull
off the oxygen will be given back if, at some point in the future, the
reaction is reversed. --MJ}***

> You can't burn methane you don't *have.*

***{You can, however, burn it after you obtain it, and if technology is
free to advance, cost-effective ways to access the Earth's massive
remaining stores of sequestered hydrocarbons, including methane, will be
incrementally developed and implemented, just as they have been in the
past. The limits on human ingenuity, and hence on human progress, are
political, not technological. --MJ}***

> Tom Davidson
> Richmond, VA

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