GroundHog Day  

RealClimate notes that as the world warms, Punksutawney Phil may soon be on the dole queue.

Living in central Pennsylvania, it would seem remiss of me not to comment on Groundhog Day today. For those not familiar with the event, Groundhog Day, which takes place on February 2 every year, is the modern American version of an age-old tradition originating in Europe centuries ago. The modern Groundhog Day is celebrated in the United States in Punksutawney Pennsylvania (about 100 miles west of Penn State University, where I teach). According to legend, if the groundhog--who is named Punxsutawney Phil--sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather. If he does not see his shadow, there will be an early spring. After Phil emerges from his burrow on February 2, he speaks to an event official in "Groundhogese", and his prediction is then translated for the awaiting public. The event was popularized in the 1993 movie of the same name, starring Bill Murray.

Sadly, it appears that global warming may soon add Phil to the ranks of the unemployed. With the warming of 4-8ºC (7-14ºF) predicted over North America by the end of this century if we continue to increase greenhouse gas concentrations at current rates, the answer will become simple. Spring will come early every year. While this may seem like a pleasant outcome of climate change, it could in fact lead to serious problems for plants, animals, and entire ecosystems. Living things have adapted to the timing of the seasons over many thousands of years. Here, we are changing the timing of the seasons on timescales of decades. Plants and animals just don't adapt well to changes on such short timescales.

TidePool has an article by Democratic Representative Tom Udall called "What Peak Oil Means to Every American - Declaring energy independence", which outlines the basics of peak oil.

In 1970, oil production within the United States peaked -- reached its maximum production rate -- at not much more than 10 million barrels of oil per day. That means since 1970, oil production in this country has been declining, and we now import 58 percent of the oil we use. The sheer scale of the American appetite for petroleum is difficult to grasp: Per capita, each of us consumes about 20 pounds of petroleum products each day.

With demand rising and production that we can control falling, our dependence on imported oil has become an economic, diplomatic and security nightmare. We now send $25 million an hour abroad to pay for foreign oil, and some of that money is diverted to the same jihadi terrorists we are spending additional billions to fight. For these and other reasons, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and I founded the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus in October 2005.

A crisis looms if we do not begin preparing for the day when world oil production peaks. And that day is coming, most likely within four to eight years. Peak oil is a fact, not a theory, and the logic is simple. World oil production has been increasing for more than 140 years. But you have to discover oil before you can produce it. Global discoveries peaked 40 years ago, so the production peak will necessarily follow. Oil production in 33 of the 48 largest oil-producing nations in the world has already peaked.

The world now consumes 84 million barrels of oil per day, and it is true that there will be enough oil produced this year and the next to meet global demand. But thereafter, depletion is likely to gain the upper hand as global production flattens and begins to decline.

Peak oil does not mean we are running out of oil. Indeed, at peak, society will recover and refine more oil than ever before. But once oil production begins to decline, prices are likely to rise sharply, with some mainstream experts predicting a doubling or tripling by 2015. What we are running out of is cheap oil -- the $20 per barrel oil around which we have designed our automobiles, our subdivisions, the American way of life.

The Financial Review had an article last Friday about BHP looking to sell its coal seam methane assets, which seems a bit surprising, given that I'd expect coal seam methane to be increasingly important to supply east coast natural gas in the coming years (even allowing for the impact of the PNG pipeline).

I quite enjoyed MonkeyGrinder's description of George Bush's trumping of the peak oil blogistan in terms of raising awareness of our precarious energy predicament.

I try and run a relevant blog here; I must say that for as much as I feel the United States President to be an illegitimate ignoramus blunderhead, he has managed to raise the exposure of energy more in one hour than all the peak blogs did in the last year.

So, dundering kudos to POTUS and his everything but the kitchen sink energy proposals, followed by the belated admission by his Press Weasel that he is a fat old liar.

While many of the projects outlined by the Prez King are ridiculous, an atmosphere where it is OK to start thinking about alternative energy is a huge positive in the United States.

The speech is particuarly helpful in a fascist society, such as the United States. It is hard to be the dissenting ant, the layabout grass eater in a nest fire ants. Now, French fries will have their day.

MG also notes that OPEC are not happy about Bush's (since weaseled away from) statement that he wants to reduce US dependence on middle east oil. No worries about that - it will happen over time anyway, thanks to geology...

The Daily Reckoning has an article on US oil shale reserves. As always, the description of how shale is turned into oil demonstrates just how unlikely this is to result in large quantities of oil being produced.

The two trickiest aspects of oil shale development, as the geologists and engineers explained, are heating the shale to extreme temperatures, while simultaneously surrounding the heated area with a subterranean ice wall. Shell doesn't know, or isn't saying, which part of the project will be the most challenging. If you were about to change the world by making it economic to tap into as much as 2 trillion barrels of oil under the Colorado plateau, you'd be pretty careful about showing your competitors how you were going to do it.

First, anything that heats up rock around it to around 600 or 700 degrees Fahrenheit has to conduct electrically generated heat well. The most conductive metals on the Periodic Table of Elements are, in order, silver, copper, and gold. Naturally, the number of heaters you put in a place affects the amount of time it takes to turn the shale goo into API 34 crude. The more heaters, the more cost, though.

And given the fact that Shell does not know yet if the heaters will be recoverable, you can see that sticking silver, copper, or gold heaters 2000 meters underground and then leaving them there once the kerogen has been pumped has a serious effect on the economics of your operation.

At the moment, Shell is not sure what the optimal size of production zones ought to be. The big issue here is how big can a freeze-wall be to be effective and freezing the groundwater surrounding a shale deposit? The test projects, as you can see, were quite small. Shell doesn't know, or isn't saying, what the optimum size is for a each "pod" or "cell". That's what they'll have to figure out at the next stage...and the picture with the dirt is a football field sized project....where rather than creating the freeze-wall at 50 meters down...they will do it at 1,000 ft. down.... with 2,000 being the desired and necessary depth for commercial viability. I'm not sure anyone has ever created a freeze-wall at that depth....neither is shell. But we'll find out. The oil itself that comes from the process looks like...oil. No heavy refining needed.

Adam Porter has an article at Resource Investor about the CEO of Shell answering some peak oil related questions.

“It struck me that if this is how well the majors do when the market is just ‘tight’ what would happen if there was ever a real shortage of oil,” said Strahan. “So I put this to Mr. van der Veer and asked him what would happen in a real peak of global production and how much money would Shell make?”

Strahan also asked what van der Veer thought of the idea of peak oil and whether or not Shell had looked at the situation itself.

“I asked whether Shell had done any detailed modelling on this question,” said Strahan. “Mr. van der Veer replied that his argument basically was that the world will not [arrive at a peak oil situation]. He said that peak oil is correct as applied to regional areas of production like the North Sea, Texas or the Lower 48, but does not apply to the world as a whole.”

Van der Veer’s actual reply to Strahan on Shell’s webcast was “That is a great question it is much more complex than many people think. That (peak oil) is not how we will go. Because peak oil theory itself is correct, if one takes easy oil close to the markets. If you look at West Texas the oil has gone, or even the North Sea…but if you look at oil sands you don’t know where the peak will come…if you think about coal…there are huge reserves. If you assume we can develop clean coal technologies, [then] there will not be one peak.”

“So there is no one peak. There will be many peaks [for different fields, regions and fuels] and they will be in many different time frames and how that will develop, we don’t know.

WorldChanging has a post on "Coal Fires and Climate Change" that looks at the vast amount of carbon dioxide emitted by underground coal fires (we even have ome of these in New South Wales).

Here's a problem I didn't know existed. Coal fires are underground fires that burn in coal mines and seams. In China alone, they may spew as much CO2 into the atmosphere as all the cars in the US.

These fires are exceedingly difficult to put out. Indeed, some well-known ones have been burning for decades.

Finding a way to put out coal fires and prevent new ones would seem to me to be an area where some worldchanging innovation could yield profound benefits for everyone. A brief online search turned up some interesting projects -- Remote sensing GIS tools to support fire fighters, an ambitious-looking Sino-German project, some new coal fire-fighting techniques -- but I'm not at all confident that these are the best (or even good) ideas.

Past Peak has an interesting post (Write A Book, Get Banned From Flying) that alarmingly reports that the author of "Bush's Brain" is on the US "no fly" list. Seems vaguely remiscent of Soviet controls on internal movements of dissidents.

James Moore, bestselling author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential discovers he's now on the No Fly list:

I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000.

Nixon's enemies list was small potatoes. These people have way too much power, and they're way too eager to misuse it. It's maddening to think that if you get on the list you've got no recourse. Kafka meets Orwell.