When will gasoline be replaced?

Simple, honest reality. How sweet it is to hear!

If Adam Smith was alive right now he would buy you a beer. As it is I might have to.

Hi, Anonymous Hero!

"I am not a subscriber to all the conspiracy theories that go around and around. Most are based on half-truths and when you research them you find that they won't hold water.

In the end it all comes down to supply and demand. When supply becomes short and prices get high enough, solutions will surface. Even when they do, the cost will not be a panacea of relief. The whole thing is not as simple as it seems nor as simple as some people would like others to believe."

When you actually do the research on current oil reserves, drilled and capped wells as yet unused, and new oil finds, you will discover that there is more unrefined oil in the world now than has ever been known in the past. Do the work, then make the claim about where water will not hold.

When you check on the price of a barrel of oil, note who sets the base price (OPEC), and upon what criteria that price is made (what the market will bear). Then note who is setting the current price (commodities exchanges), and note upon what basis those prices are set (investment profit). Not rocket science to see where the prices come from.

When you check the news regarding "gas shortages" due to trucking strikes and supposed refinery breakdowns, you will discover that they are artificial means to raise the price of gas. Who negotiates with the truckers long enough to provide local oil shortages (refinery companies)? If there are reserves in the oil refinery tanks, why don't they stretch to cover the few days it takes to fix a refinery "glitch" (and we have to take the word of the oil companies that the glitch actually was meaningful enough to hold back the supply of local gasoline without trucking it in from somewhere else...because refineries are not usually situated at great distances from each other).

Let me tell you what are conspiracy theories and half truths. Conspiracy theories are a term that means you shouldn't pay attention to them, so you can ignore proper investigation by fobbing off the topic as "conspiracy theory". (And, admittedly, a lot of them are pure bunk. But the term has obviously prevented you from doing your homework.) And half-truths (actually complete bunk!) are when bank economists and stock market pundits predict oil shortages so the traders will jack up the cost of a barrel of crude. Who profits when the price of oil goes up? (Yeeessss....the banks and the brokers. Amazing deduction!)

I personally don't think your blog rates a GA.

Denmark has more capped wells off the coast of Iceland than you can imagine (somewhere between 50 and 100 distinct wells). New North African oil finds rival the Saudi's original supply in size. New finds in Russia and Alaska are enormous. The Alberta oil sands has several as-yet untapped fields. Recently drilled finds in the North Sea and off Newfoundland have boosted the traditional sources in the USA, South America, and the middle east (to say nothing of the hundreds of minor oil supply locations still being pumped all over the world) to the point where there is no shortage even before you figure in the above new reserves. Do the work.

The price of gas can only be reduced if the cost of a barrel of crude is reduced at the stock market. Removing dependency on gasoline and oil can only occur when alternative motive power developers can move their engines into vehicles in the mainstream. As engineers we are aware of plenty of alternative motive sources to fossil-fuel-driven ic's.

To get the world off a dependence on oil can only begin to happen when the price of oil is no longer prized by commodities investors. Grumbling and Pain have not to date, and really can't do anything about oil prices. The only thing that can is lowering the cost of a barrel of crude in the markets until investors lose interest in it as a future stock.

Anyone who could accomplish that would be assassinated instantly by any of a slew of vested interests all the way along the chain of sale.

Mark

OPEC does not set the price of oil, they are a small player. More oil is traded on the free market everyday than OPEC produces in a week.

Hi, Guest!

Interesting, but probably your "information" has been gleaned from popular opinion. The facts?

1. OPEC's decision about raw oil production is the single greatest determinant about the price of oil.

Who is OPEC?

The OPEC countries hold meetings at OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria, where they decide issues and make announcements that influence world oil markets and prices. Quota decisions apply to all OPEC countries excluding Iraq (the OPEC 10), which has been excluded from all quota decisions in recent years.

2. What is their latest affect on the price of oil (the annual OPEC meeting results)

Reuters
Oil spike to last through 2008: OPEC president
Monday March 10, 4:47 am ET

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Oil prices will stay at current high levels for the rest of this year due to speculation and geopolitical tensions, Algerian state media on Monday reported OPEC President Chakib Khelil as saying. ...The world economy could get some help with the arrival of a new U.S. president, and possibly a new economic policy, "and with this new situation it is very probable that the dollar will start to recover and thus permit a readjustment of the (oil) market," El Moudjahid quoted him as saying.

OPEC members meeting in Vienna last week decided to hold production flat, insisting markets were well supplied and blaming record prices on factors outside the group's control, including speculators and what Khelil called the "mismanagement" of the U.S. economy.

...Khelil said OPEC had left output unchanged because it wanted to assist global economic growth, El Moudjahid and APS reported.

The group made its decision in the knowledge that demand was expected to dip by 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in the second quarter of the year and that stocks in consuming countries were at comfortable levels, Khelil said.

"If we had increased our production given all these factors, you wouldn't have been able to miss the impact on prices," he said, suggesting prices would have slid.

"We left our output unchanged so as not to disturb the market further and to help the world economy resume its momentum of growth," El Moudhajid quoted him as saying.

3. What does Raymond James (investment brokers and self-proclaimed pundits...like me ) have to say about OPEC's influence?

Within the past month or so, Ecuador, Angola and Sudan have all signaled their interest in joining OPEC. But would they substantially boost the cartel's power in world energy markets?

The combined production of these potential members equates to about 8% of OPEC's total output as of October 2006, or about 3% of global production, says J. Marshall Adkins, director of energy equity research for Raymond James & Associates in Houston.

"Put another way, the three countries bring 2.44 million barrels per day of new oil output under OPEC's sphere of influence--a volume roughly equal to the daily production of Kuwait."

In terms of oil reserves, the tally of what Ecuador, Angola and Sudan bring to the OPEC table is even less than their production. All in, the proved reserves of the three countries amount to 20.5 billion barrels, or only 2.3% of the cartel's current proved oil inventory.

"Thus, in aggregate, their contribution to OPEC would be slight, and individually, it would be negligible," contends Adkins. "In sum, the effect of these countries joining the cartel is a non-event."

While this may be true--in terms of what Ecuador, Angola and Sudan are able to contribute in the way of production and reserves--the consequence of their prospective integration into the cartel could well be, on the other hand, a widening of the geopolitical-risk premium already embedded in world oil prices.

"OPEC already includes some of the least-stable major oil producers in the world, such as Venezuela, Iraq and Iran," Adkins notes. "So if anything, the addition of these new members would further magnify the overall risk profile of the cartel's oil production."

Sudan has just emerged from a two-decade-long civil war, and the Darfur crisis shows no signs of calming down, he notes. Meanwhile, Ecuador continues to suffer from endemic political instability. And, although Angola is now experiencing relative calm, it has also had its share of historical instability, in terms of civil war and humanitarian crisis.

Adkins believes the most relevant near-term event for crude oil and energy stocks is whether OPEC decides on another production cut for its members, and whether those members--given that they rely heavily on oil revenues for their national budgets--abide by that decision.

The bottom line? "Watch the actual production numbers from Saudi Arabia--the swing producer within OPEC and the only member with meaningful excess capacity--along with those of Kuwait and the UAE to see if the oil market will balance during the next couple of quarters."

4. You must realize, that although OPEC controls the quantity of oil production and hence (through withholding or glutting the market with supply) eventually the price of oil that may be marketed by the producers that reside within their borders, the producers themselves have a great deal to say about the price of oil, just due to their financial influence within those countries.

Shell Oil, like its sister oil companies, explores for, produces, and markets oil, natural gas, and chemicals. The company's Shell Exploration & Production unit focuses its exploration on the deep-water plays in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell partners with Saudi Aramco in a US refining and marketing venture (Motiva), and owns Motiva's sister company Shell Oil Products US (formerly Equilon). Shell also produces petrochemicals (Shell Chemical) and liquefied natural gas (Shell US Gas & Power), and markets natural gas and electricity. Shell's parent, Royal Dutch Shell (a publicly owned company and no longer the exclusive domain of the Dutch Royal family, although they retain some shares in it), is the world's #2 petroleum company (behind Exxon Mobil).

I could go on, but you get the idea... The most truthful answer to the Rikki's original question was contained in my previous response post #24 "Gasoline will be replaced when the price of oil futures..." and #28 above, which details some of the extent of the difficulty in making that happen.

Mark

It's not so much a conspiracy as simple inertia.

Just pause and conside the huge infrastructure which is in place to deal with the processing of oil/gasoline.
Be patient ..it is changing...make haste slowly grasshopper....

I agree - to a point - the same argument was made by the whaling industry after Prof. Drake dug his shovel into the ground in Pennsylvania.. "What, burn that stuff that's seeping out of the ground? What's wrong with perfectly good whale oil? And what about all the whalers, and shipbuilders - you're going to throw them right out of business...." If one considers the whole picture, one could say that John D. Rockefeller should be the patron saint of Greenpeace - he did more to halt the extermination of whales than any other person in history.

Try electricity, steam, and hydrogen for starters.

I have an idea, we take a large portion of our desert Southwest, set up a reactor, run a pipe to the Sea of Cortez, truck in huge amounts of manure, use the power plant to desalinize the water, and to power all those trucks, plant sugar beets, distill into a usable fuel. There, I just solved another of the worlds problems.

Ah, but what to do with all that waste salt?

Although...maybe you could make Margaritas with the beet liquor? Then you could put the salt on the glass rim.

Mmmmm. Beet Margarita.

What do they use the Great Salt Lake bed for?

Mostly for the Great Salt Lake. And if you're thinking about messing up Bonneville Flats, forget it! It would be better for the human race to go extinct than to lose land speed racing.

Yes you deserve Noble Prize.

Today on Charlie Rose (PBS) I watched a really good interview with John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil. Some of the typical blah blah of big energy co., but also some very insightful thinking given the position and power that the man has.

One interesting figure he had though, regarding U.S. consumption. The U.S. consumes 10,000 gallons of gasoline per second. This figure was not the oil consumption, diesel, jet fuel, other stuff, etc. just gasoline.

With this kind of usage...and the average American mentality of "it's the other guy's problem"... it is a difficult situation to solve.

Believe it or not, the salt lake area is used partially by MORTON salt co to create salt ponds which are then dried up and the salt scraped off and processed into what you use on your kitchen table. Amazing! They then refill the ponds and repeat it.

Sad fact, on the side of the Great salt lake , they have pumped sewage into for 40 years (according to knowledgeable locals who point to the odorous 'stink' on that side of the lake near antelope island) .

I think that is not true. The salt in that area has too many alkaline impurities to be used as table salt. Utah salt goes into such non-food things as water softeners. A lot of table salt comes from deep beneath Cleveland.

I recall seeing MORTON salt factories (pools of salt water they let dry and then scoop out the salt and filter it ? ) Maybe morton doesn't do table salt from utah?

June 17, 2035.

at 6:07 a.m.

CRAP! I was going to say that!

Gasoline will last as long as it takes americans to get over thier fear of nuclear power. Any other source of energy such as hydrogen or ethanol is just a dog and pony show that will ultimately cause more problems then they will fix.

Avery Montembeault

When it makes economic sense to do so. An earlier poster mentioned supply and demand as the primary reason for the current oil / gasoline pricing. At least in the U.S., current pricing has little to do with oil and gasoline inventories (supply); which are presently at the highest levels since 1993, so the real reason for setting the present high gasoline and diesel prices at the pumps is simply because they can.

There is no competition at the retail level and I suspect the same is true among the major oil companies (all of whom announce record profits each quarter).

The U.S. economy and the falling U.S. dollar are probably partially at fault for the current oil prices as futures traders look for more stable commodities and obviously, the demands in China, India and other emerging countries are major influences.

It will be interesting to see whether the demand for gasoline is elastic, inelastic, or some combination, at the higher prices. One positive aspect of higher prices is they make alternatives more attractive and competitive.

As always, just follow the money.

we are all waiting for the tipping point on this one, no one seems to think that there won't be replacement let alone an alternative; maybe there is one but not on the same scale. the real alternative will be the changes to lifestyles.

a good short term strategy might be to look at 100% ethanol vehicles - thinking Brazil -

Jim

Brazil has the good fortune of being (1) extremely fertile, (2) having a nearly year round growing season, (3) cheap land, and (4) low population density. Therefore growing their own fuel in the form of sugar beets works for them, but will not work for the US, Europe, or Asia, since they don't have the essentials to do it right.

Gasoline shall be really replaced at the moment when a real and sensable problems affecting directly our life related with the great danger of CO₂.

It already has been. In WW II Germany made synthetic fuel from coal. SASOL is making it now, There is a rumor that the US military will guarantee the purchase of as much as can be made by any US sources.

The environuts are opposed to it because it uses a fossil fuel, but then they are opposed to every large source of power. If you take all of them together, their ideal world is the Stone Age and with very few people, so as not to impact on the environment.

Take off your tinfoil hat. I doubt that much is or can be suppressed by industry or government. The main problem is the amount of energy needed to produce an alternative fuel versus its energy output. Can you make ethanol using only the ethanol you make to power the whole system? Some say yes, some no and it depends on how far into left field they chase for costs.

Hi Rikki!

First, welcome to CR4. Nice to see you in here, and I hope you will continue to enjoy your membership. This is a great blog-set. Thanks for starting it.

Gasoline will be replaced when the price of oil futures falls below the investment level-of-interest of stock market purchasers. This will be some time in the distant future unless a concerted effort is made worldwide to devalue it. Since there are already gasoline substitutes and means of producing motive power using other kinds of engines, there will be little to no difficulty in making the changeover to other things when that happens.

Until then, the cost of oil and low production of gasoline remains artificially buoyed up by fake low-reserves estimates, fake refinery breakdowns, fake delivery difficulties, fake OPEC production withholding measures, and resulting quite real high prices at the gas pumps.

Mark

The simple answer is "Not in my lifetime". As stated before the usage of gasoline is far too high for it to be replaced with any one fuel source. Ethanol is the leading contender as an alternative, but it will only augment the supply of gasoline, not replace it. Even if the cellulose to Ethanol problem is solved, there is not enough biomass available to completely replace gasoline as a fuel.

I suppose the real question is, "When will cars be replaced". When the use of cars becomes obsolete, then gasoline will be replaced. I just don't see that happening in my lifetime.

The use of gasoline or oil-based fuels probably will not end soon, but other alternatives will replace it gradually. You are right about biomass, so there will be a mix of differently powered vehicles. an interesting idea is the steam-electric auto, e-mail - beesidemeusa@yahoo.co.uk and ask about it. It could reduce vehicular fuel use by nearly 80%.

When? Not before they have sold the last drop of crude.

GOTO Www.TRIPLEBATTERYLIFE.com The circuit gets double the miles (or work) out of ordinary batteries of all types (triple comes from the triple running TIME ) . The electric golf cart works so well that its an easy jump to full size electric vehicles . END OF GAS ! WHEN? When those in power decide to let small inventors IN to the market !

Oil co's and auto co's frantically suppressed the EV1 in the late 90's , since then they have systematically gotten all of congress and even the presidents to help the ignore and suppress alternative vehicles such as Electric Vehichles (EV's) . Goto www.PeaceNikInternational.com to see the video of the EV1 they feverishly exterminated (except for this one working model). GM maintains it didn't work well enough, but the users of it raved about how good it was! Texaco bought control of the patent for the super battery Ni-mh from GM and was later bought out by CHEVRON! You might also google "who killed the electric car" .

Latest info says the PRIUS has an electric use only switch on european models but not on the american sold PRIUS! ? ! Yep! Also information from 2 different sources say that since London allow free parking for EV's that some whole suburbs almost completely use them to commute to london (at least as a 2nd car). BUT not in america!!?! Why? Again Big OIL controls senators!!

I agree with most of what MarkTheHandyman states in his response to the forum question; When will gasoline be replaced?

1. I agree in that if you do your own home work, it will paint a more accurate picture than the general media portrays.

2. Supply demand theory works – as long as it is a free market. Good intervention is acceptable. But too much or forced intervention is another – that is usually bad.

3. He is accurate in that the problems that we see (i.e. price stability) are not based on the fact we are running out of under ground oil reserves, the problems are the effect of not meeting demand by pinching the refining / distribution flow of available crude oil.

4. The US uses about 10 million barrels of oil per day. The Big Sky Country reserve below parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contains an estimated more than 2 Trillion barrels of oil. Saudi Arabia's total reserves are estimated at 261.8 billion barrels (ref. IBD or WSJ Dec. 2007 article "Oil – Shale Oil Reserves"). Thus the US has eight times the reserves in comparison. To place it in perspective; that is 548 YEARS of supply at our current rate of consumption, 10 million barrels per day of demand. Keep in mind that is only one shale oil reserve.

5. The US has not constructed a new oil refinery since the 1970s. Back then there was a much larger over capacity than today. That over capacity was available to fill in for large but short term increases of oil demand without disrupting price stability.

6. The gas crunch of the late 1970s early 1980s was caused by a reduction in supply by the OPEC nations. The resultant market forces caused instability in oil price. When Nixon intervened and added price controls – the result was shortages. This is exactly what would be expected if one understands market theory.

7. Today the demand is nearing what the international supply chain can provide. The effects are very similar today as to those that were experienced during the 1970s, but for very different reasons. But the effects will be the same.

8. In the US, currently there are are no pending legislation or existing regulations concerning shale oil exploration that will protect investments in shale oil recovery or other non-sweet crude oil reserves. Before the oil companies invest any money, they want insurances that they will not loose that investment. Until then that shale oil reserve is valueless to the US, the oil companies or to us consumers at the gas pumps. This is not unreasonable.

9. The Green movement in conjunction with the average person that does not want a mine or refinery near our homes is a big part of this supply "intervention" problem. The US has choices, pump our own oil to cover our demand or pay the going rate for other countries to pump and refine our oil for us. Until there is a unified movement to push for pumping our own oil, what you see is what we will continue to get.

10. There currently is no replacement for oil powered equipment. All other alternatives are either very inefficent (cost is high or environmentally unfriendly) or high in cost (driven by lack of mature designs or foolish designs that ignore the basic laws of physics or chemistry). If you do not like the high gas prices now, just wait and see what you pay for less than mature technology - nobody seems to be talking about that.

Questions;

The key question is; Do we replace oil like Rikki is asking as the current forum question; or do we remove the external interventions that keep market forces from doing what is needed to be done to supply enough oil to meet current and future demand? This depends on why Rikki is asking that question. I am will assume gas prices is his reason.

My choice is to remove those interventions. That begs new questions;

a. Was our current state we are in planned our allowed? If so by whom?

b. Is there an international strategy that is in play, and if so is what we see to our advantage or our disadvantage in the long run?

c. If there is an international strategy, whose is it, the US's or another country or counties?

d. Is our 4 year presidential election cycles an influence to implementing long term strategic visions?

e. Is our lobbyists' as individual groups looking out for them selves, or are they considering what is best for the nation?

Hi, cometkid!

A great big WELCOME to CR4. Your considered approach to this subject bodes well for future blogs by you, and I am certainly looking forward to reading more from you in the future. Thanks, and it's great to have you here!

Here are my own views in response to your questions. I'll put my case in basic terms because there are others reading this who may not understand the market forces at work:

(a)The current state --limited production, high prices at the pump, economic inflation-- we are in with respect to oil stems from the advent of free markets protected by law in every country in which those markets pertain (and that's most countries in the world). Thus, we allowed the current state we are in, and it has been very carefully planned. However, oil prices are a result of this state of affairs, not of any kind of plan in and of itself that oil companies or governments have drummed up.

Nobody in his right mind, we hope, wants to curb the idea of free markets for most things. However, sometimes the concept of free market gets in the way of common sense.

For example, there has always been more than enough food produced by farmers to feed everybody in the world a healthy, sufficient diet. Yet, people have been dying of starvation for centuries. This is, on a commonsense basis, completely horrid, intolerable, and senseless. But the system is set up such that farmers everywhere in the world deserve to be compensated for their industry, and because there is no compensation to be had for surplus, it goes almost completely unused. So relief organizations are left to do what they can by way of finding and delivering food and seed and encourging their beneficiaries to grow their own wherever that is allowed.

More than that, the free market system is bolstered by common law. Corporations cannot run themselves because they are --in the last analysis-- only pieces of paper; and so their best interests must be looked after by caregivers, called executives, of varying kinds.

The corporations' prime responsibility is to provide good returns on an investment of money by shareholders, who want to get ahead financially and so are willing to take a gamble with a small amount of their money and invest it in the corporations.

The net result is that the corporations are imbued with a certain amount of trust by their shareholders, called "fiduciary trust", or trust with somebody else's money. This trust extends to making certain that the company runs well and produces what it is supposed to produce, which includes a [anywhere from tiny to (in rare instances) a very fat] profit for the shareholders.

When the company does not run well, and loses money, the government who issued the company a corporate status (and is in business itself partly to protect its citizenry) becomes very interested in why it did not. An auditing investigation ensues, and if the executives are found to be in breach of fiduciary trust for any reason extending all the way from gross incompetence to embezzlement, they can go to jail.

(b)There is in the case of oil, a vested fiduciary trust exactly the same as in every other corporate venture. OPEC nations feel rightly responsible to some of their largest corporte citizens, and their limits of production reflect what kinds of profits affect the bottom line of their citizenry. They consider local jobs, Gross National Product, quality of life, and maintaining international good relations with both other oil producers and the rest of the world to whom they are tied in ventures of international trade.

But, because of their governmental responsibilities, they suffer from the tunnel vision of apparent self-interest (healthy corporate employers) and fall into the trap of missed, important other self-interests (healthy purchasers).

Somehow they miss the implications that when oil prices go up in a transportation-dependent species such as ours, every other conceivable commodity also must rise in price. Unfortunately, returns on those commodities take a while to realize because of the resulting higher cost of doing business, and wages cannot rise rapidly enough to offset the rapid price rises, so people can't sometimes afford to buy what they need and sometimes have to relinquish what they already have, such as investments, savings, property etc., just to stay afloat while prices rise to reflect the cost of using oil at current prices. When prices rise higher than people can afford in order to maintain their standard of living, the result is called inflation. In inflationary times, people stop spending their money, and the net result is economic collapse.

Similarly, as oil commodites prices continue to rise, oil producing corporations smugly consider that they are doing a great job (because they are!); and although the individuals in those corporations feel the negative weight of their actions and attempt to compensate by fiercely instituting methods and projects to give back to the community, they understand that prices must continue to rise if the bottom line is to be kept attractive to investors.

When the investors are enthusiastic, they buy futures of oil production at a lower price and sell for a higher price, and the price of a barrel of crude rises accordingly. The refineries have to pay more for their crude oil supply and thus have to charge more for the products they produce, including gasoline.

Its to our advantage in the long run to keep the free market healthy, and to our disadvantage in the long run to have oil futures remain quite so attractive to investors.

Making oil as an investment less attractive means only one of two things: prices that refineries are willing to pay have to come down, or producers have to have the right of production and price decision taken away from them. The first implies that somehow, sales of finished products are not happening, and so owning the materials for making those products is not attractive any more. The second implies nationalizing the producers and pegging prices to reduce over time to be encouraging to the economy from the perspective of the purchasers rather than the producers.

(c)The only countries who may employ an international strategy must be oil producers. Some folks smell conspiracy theory and personal vested interests of various rulers of countries in this (including in the USA), and certainly, blind greed of big investors and shareholders must play a part; but the more important consideration is fortunately (or perhaps not so fortunately) the bottom line. Persons employing strategies include those exercised by Joe Nobody, investor. Cause strategies for the oil cost crisis are entrenched in society. Remedial strategies are also possible, but unorganized at this point in time and thus extremely unlikely to occur.

(d)This question is difficult to directly equate with any crises in oil production or availability. The short answer to formulating long term strategic plans is simply to formulate them. Good long term plans are always open to change; and with a plan in place, the entire thing rarely gets scrapped unless it's not working. I suspect that you are thinking about the mid-east series of crises; and I'd like to remind you that they exist because no long term planning was ever put in place, not because of administration changes at the elections level.

(e) I know this is a rhetorical question, since it's obviously self-answering. But I'd like to come to the aid of the lobbyists who are being placed in a poor light by it. Lobbyists are not supposed to consider what is best for the nation. The nation does not pay them to work for it. We pay elected decision-makers for that. We pretty well agree that lobbyists are an important part of running a democracy, though. They always represent groups with direct interests in issues being considered by government.

I'd also like to criticize lobbyists for trying to financially influence the outcome of legislative work by threatening fewer voters and shortened campaign funds. They are using these forcing methods to go away beyond the realm of petitioning and arguing the facts of pending legisaton in order to influence the vote.

I know these are points that smooth over vast complexities of issues. I do think, however, that they look at the bases for our current economic difficulties which, I believe, largely stem from the cost of oil.

I disagree with you re the availability of alternative energy sources for producing a motive force for engines and the engines to be driven by them. Facts prove otherwise. There are plenty of both. All very real, practical, and easy to implement.

Mark

I normaly do not read long comments in forum. Normaly we engineers are supposed to be breif and come to the point logicaly. So I would request all our expert friends to kindly be short in writting their views so everyone would read their views.

Hi, suresh sharma!

My first impulse was to reply with a very brief (and engineer-y?) "OK".

But I changed my mind, because your premise of being 'brief' in order to come to the point logically does not equate with being 'short', as being 'short' can come up short of fairly addressing the stated concerns expressed in these discussions.

I am sometimes verbose (and sometimes not) and freely admit it. But I don't run on pointlessly. Each of my responses is carefully crafted (several drafts and revisions) before it is posted to make certain that all the points are not only addressed, but done so with the respect or irony of response that serves --in my view-- my respondent's concerns the best way I may.

Mark

Hi Mark, after reading your reply I decided to read your earlier post eventhough it was long. I think you have taken lot brain stroming on this volotile subject of Oil crisis. My views are, the fossil fuels, rescources like coal, iron ore etc. are going to be scare in coming days with population explosion. We have to dig out alternatives or situation may go out of control. Iraq war is example of this situation. Future trading in oil is like gambling which has resulted in steep increase in price of oil. Price can be controlled by decreasing the demand which only we consumers can do it.So if we find a alternative source for oil and consume oil as less as possible and finaly get the price reduced.

Hi suresh sharma!

Exactly!

Mark

Hello Suresh Sharma and MarkTheHandyman, let me start by saying the following;

• I believe we should all be good stewards of the land we live in.
• I believe we could run out of our some of our natural resources in due time.
• I believe in the resilience of mankind once faced with immanent and significant danger. But until that point, we as a race can be lethargic.
• I believe in long term priorities taking precedent over short term priorities.

I also believe in the following;

• Each of us can do more as stewards of our land with little cost of effort.
• The earth is a sphere; as such we do not have an infinite amount of resources.
• As described in my prior post #34, the US has just in one reserve over 500 years of oil. There is no rush to do anything – we do not have immanent or significant danger looming in our life time.
• There is a larger risk for mankind to rush to judgment. We need to understand the problems we face with great detail. The stakes are too high. And we do not today. The two problems relevant to this message string is oil as a resource and to a lesser degree – does oil impact our climate?
• Hypothetically, if the human race were to rush to judgment 100 years ago thinking we were running out of oil back then, we may today be mired in a technology fix based on 100 year old technology. It takes much more money and political capital to make large changes once a direction is taken and a plan is in motion. Or what would have happened if we back in the 1980s built a weather machine to turn up the heat (i.e. many scientists and media people back then thought we were going into the next ice age).
• I am an engineer in the automotive industry. As a new engineer in the 1970s, I listened to my colleagues working on turbine and electric cars tell me the pros and cons of that alternative technology. Today, many years later very little has changed at the technical level.
• MarkTheHandyman; When I stated "10. There currently is no replacement for oil powered equipment." it was in absolute terms. Not superficial ones. Think in terms of absolute efficiencies at the emission level and energy consumed level. With this understanding, I will say once again oil as an energy source and the internal combustion engine will be very hard to beat.

Sorry about the delay in response, I was out of town for awhile.

Just my thoughts – the world according to "cometkid".

Hi, Rikki!

New developments seem to be taking place in the consciousness of those folks who run the commodities markets:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/business/31cftc.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Mark