Peter Zeihan

Void · 2016-08-06 23:00:41

I picked this up on another board (Canadian) that I haunt some times.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=pe … ORM=VRDGAR

I am just sharing my toys.

If you wish, you can query for his name, and get slightly different videos, but his presentations are pretty much the same.

I do think he may mostly know what he is talking about. It suggests, that in a world that is going to have troubles due to population demographics, the USA will likely be the biggest honey pot to get financing for space projects, so at least that may be of interest to you.

The topics which are perhaps most significant are:
Planetary Demographics
Shale Oil
Why he thinks we are a superpower (Farmland/Navigable Rivers)
His prediction of the breakdown of the world wide trade system which he believes will come
Tar Sands

For the Canadians and Europeans, I say that I don't have a bias as to how the future unfolds, therefore, hope you won't get upset with me.

But maybe a bit of entertainment.

Last edited by Void (2016-08-06 23:07:55)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-07 01:37:51

He mentions 40% of all natural gas produced in the US is burned off as "flair". But as anyone who studied Mars technology knows, an iron based catalyst will convert light hydrocarbons to heavy ones. So you can convert natural gas to gasoline or naphtha. As stated in the talk, naphtha is liquid at room temperature, and the raw material used to make plastic.

RobertDyck · 2016-08-07 01:54:02

Still trying to understand what he said about shale oil. Everything I read said oil shale is solid, has to be mined. Wikipedia: Oil Shale

Oil shale, also known as kerogen shale, is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil (not to be confused with tight oil—crude oil occurring naturally in shales) can be produced.
...
Most exploitation of oil shale involves mining followed by shipping elsewhere, after which one can burn the shale directly to generate electricity, or undertake further processing. The most common methods of surface mining involve open pit mining and strip mining.
...
the chemical process of pyrolysis converts the kerogen in the oil shale to shale oil (synthetic crude oil) and oil shale gas. Most conversion technologies involve heating shale in the absence of oxygen to a temperature at which kerogen decomposes (pyrolyses) into gas, condensable oil, and a solid residue. This usually takes place between 450 °C (842 °F) and 500 °C (932 °F). The process of decomposition begins at relatively low temperatures (300 °C or 572 °F), but proceeds more rapidly and more completely at higher temperatures.
...
Shale oil serves best for producing middle-distillates such as kerosene, jet fuel, and diesel fuel. Worldwide demand for these middle distillates, particularly for diesel fuels, increased rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s. However, appropriate refining processes equivalent to hydrocracking can transform shale oil into a lighter-range hydrocarbon (gasoline).

What Peter Zeihan said in his presentation is radically different. He talked about drilling, and also mentioned fracking. I thought fracking was to produce natural gas, not oil with natural gas as a byproduct. Fracking can also be used to extract conventional crude oil from deposits that are otherwise depleted. But the speaker showed images of drilling rigs while talking about shale oil; that's contradictory.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-08-07 02:00:00)

GW Johnson · 2016-08-07 09:26:04

I always thought of the hydrocarbon in shale as a tar-like solid. I was surprised to learn that this is not always so. There is a small fraction of the shale hydrocarbons that are liquids of varying viscosity, and of course there is a fair quantity of gas. There is also migration of shale hydrocarbons into other adjacent rock types over geologic time.

It is my understanding that in the Wyoming vicinity of the Bakken and related formations that there is a great deal of gas in the shale, but that most of the liquids are actually coming from a layer of dolomite down amongst the layers of shale. It seems to be derived from lighter fractions that migrated slowly up from adjacent shale layers beneath.

The greater porosity and permeability of the dolomite allows fracking recovery of this resource, which resembles diesel fuel in physical properties and volatility. That volatility dissimilar to most drilled crudes is why wrecks of train cars carrying this stuff lead to explosions instead of small fires and simple spills. It's the wrong kind of tank cars carrying this stuff.

Here in Texas the Barnett shales in north Texas are a good natural gas resource, but little else. But, down in south Texas, there is another shale that is yielding liquids by fracking similar to the volatiles coming from Wyoming. Clearly, not all shale is the same.

In Texas, virtually all the problems associated with fracking take the form of induced earthquakes caused by high rates of deep well disposal of waste fracking water. It's even worse in Oklahoma. The rock strata are relatively unfractured by mountain-building, so we generally do not experience gas-surfacing-through-groundwater problems, unless somebody cheated by building a crummy well casing.

That's not true in the Appalachians or to some extent in the Rockies, where exploding water taps have been documented. The gas (once released) surfaces through the fracture paths in the rocks instead of the well. From that I conclude that fracking in contorted, fractured strata is a bad idea, but few others have yet said the same thing.

There is a serious disposal problem and a serious shortage problem associated with fracking. These could be fixed if frack water were recycled. Which means using strong brines instead of fresh water as the starting material, inherently hazardous materials, and contaminated by radioactivity and heavy metals, too boot. But it could and should be done. I don't see much progress toward that, however.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-08-07 09:33:07)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-07 11:26:52

Canada: Peter Zeihan's claim that Alberta will succeed is exaggerated. This comes up every time Quebec talks about succeeding, Alberta says "me too, me too!" But it never happens.

Political power has shifted, one political reporter talked about the "Laurentian Consensus". When Canada was founded in 1867, the founding provinces were Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Upper Canada became Ontario, but in 1867 it was just the part along the St. Laurence river and Great Lakes. Lower Canada was originally called Quebec, and has gone back to that name. But in 1867 Quebec was also just the part along the St. Laurence river. The two maritime provinces had small populations so the St. Laurence river dominated. Still to this day the majority of the population of those provinces is along the St. Laurence river. For a long time they dominated politics in Canada. BC and Alberta have grown, especially Alberta. The federal election of 2006 saw the Conservative Party of Canada become the federal government. That political party was the merger of the former Progressive Conservative party with the Reform party, the power base was in Alberta. From January 2006 through October 2015, that party was our federal government, and most cabinet ministers came from Alberta. So the "Laurentian Consensus" no longer rules. The rest of Canada now matters.

The United States saw a change in power like this. The Deep South had major economy based on cotton and a few other commodities. But the north-east developed major industry, growing in population and wealth. An American federal election saw a northern president (Lincoln) and Congress was dominated by the north for the first time. The north decided to take revenge for decades of domination by the south by taxing industries that were the basis of the southern economy. This was the real reason for the attempt by the south to succeed from the Union, not slavery.

Because of these parallels, Peter Zeilhan thinks Alberta could succeed. Sorry, not gonna happen. Canada is too polite, too entrenched in the status-quo. And breaking Canada apart would be too damaging to all of Canada. As for Alberta joining America, every few years America demonstrates why we shouldn't do that: George W. Bush and now Donald Trump.

Yea, there are people afraid that the "Laurentian" will try to fund their pensions by taxing Alberta to death. No, not gonna happen. Taxing to such an extent that the currently strongest economy in the country succeeds? They'll do whatever it takes to ensure that doesn't happen. If that means dropping taxes, they'll drop taxes. Lower taxes are better than no taxes.

By the way, technically Canada is not a Federation, technically Canada is a Confederacy. So we don't say "The Union" we say "Confederation". Let the guys from the Deep South chew on that!

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-08-07 17:30:44)

Void · 2016-08-07 19:49:00

Robert Dyke,

I think that in later videos, Peter Zeihan has a more negative notion of the future of the tar sands, and so I presume he does not think that Canada will deal with an Alberta problem.

GW Johnson,

I was very confused on the issue at first, but with my obsessive curiosity, I found out that their is;

1) Shale Oil: Tight oil that did not migrate, and therefore is not contaminated by Sulfur, or toxic metals.
Estimate of supply is 30 years at least for oil, 70 for Natural gas. It is the highest quality oil.

2) Oil Shale: Hydrocarbon which did not process even as much as Shale Oil.
An Estimated 6 Trillion barrels of oil exists, but most of it will be hard to access. An Estonian firm is starting up a pilot project in Utah at this time, on private land. The Estonians have been working with it for about 100 years I think.

Two different things.

3) Another topic of interest is Oil E.O.R. (EOR) Various schemes exist, where old fields still likely have as much oil to extract as was originally taken from them. Typically utilizing CO2 injection, or from the Russians, a method to use sound waves to reopen the pores in the rock.

While I appreciate the environmentalist movements efforts to keep the industry honest, I stop that support when their behaviors approach the level of psychotic fetish, or when they are being used as a fifth column.

Of course it could occur that I was deceived, but I think that most of the negative press on Shale Oil is Fifth column actions.
The parties who could be involved would be;
Coal industry
Persian Gulf countries, & other such parties. In other words, the competition.
Big Oil importers in this country.

As for the use of fresh water, apparently, that has mostly stopped, since, they have found a layer of brine water they can tap from their drilling. As for the fracking chemicals, they are now relatively biologically non-toxic. You apparently could actually drink the stuff, but of course probably not a good idea to do more than once.

As for contamination of the water table, I understand that in the worst case, their is 1/2 mile of rock between the fracking fluids, and the bottom of the water table. This supposedly makes it very unlikely to contaminate the ground water supply.

As for the news you might read about water tables being contaminated, this is very likely where their might have been a spill of fluid on the surface, through negligence, or I suppose pipelines do break, but so do oil pipelines sometimes.

Two things I am not sure of are the earthquakes, and possibly the contamination of well water with Methane out east. I am just not sure about that.

However about the quakes, when I was in school, I lived near iron mines, and every once in a while they would get their blasting wrong, and the school would shake. So, I guess it depends on how severe those disturbances are as to if it is worth it. Those iron mines gave us pay, and subsidized our taxes, and schools. I guess you could argue that agriculture is a severe disturbance of the environment, as a reference for what trade-offs are worth it. I don't know how severe those quakes are. If they are bad (Damage to property, injuries), then indeed perhaps that particular fracking should not occur.

It seems that for Shale Oil the cost of production is going down every year, maybe I am correct to say it may be approaching $35.00/barrel now. Some think the production costs will go down to $15.00/$20.00 which is directly competitive with the highest quality Persian Gulf oil I believe. (Maybe).

As for flared gas, I believe that Peter Zeihan says they are only allowed to do it for one year, otherwise the are financially penalized heavily.
By waste gas, I believe he is primarily referring to them selling the gas at a loss, so that they can get the oil, which is were their profits are.

In addition, the USA has been gearing up to sell liquid Natural Gas, but the Russians are working hard to keep them out of the European markets.

The USA is now selling very large amounts of Natural Gas to Mexico, as he said, but I think also now to Eastern Canada.

I don't know exactly why Keystone was so feverishly blocked, but if it were me running it, I would have wanted to import the stuff, on the condition that a technology could be invented where Hydrogen from our Natural Gas could be used to turn the Tar Sands oil into light crude ideally using thermal solar energy in my opinion.

The Carbon Dioxide extracted from that process could then be used to conduct EOR on the old oil fields, to extract high quality oil from them.

The intention then would be to generate a very light liquid oil which could be sold to East Asia and Europe, which would accomplish two thing favorable to us, paying down our national debts, and being of use to our allies (And so keeping them allies).

This could have very large cost savings on the process of natural security/military spending, also helping to pay down our national debts.

Now as for the environment, it is not good that the Europeans and perhaps Asians are tilting towards higher Carbon fuels, if you believe in global warming, when in fact we might supply them with lower Carbon fuels instead, and pay down our national debts.

I wish!

Last edited by Void (2016-08-07 20:29:11)

Void · 2016-08-07 20:35:22

Oh, another thing, as Columbo might have said:

There is experimentation going on with using Super Critical CO2 in fracking instead of a water solution. Apparently the water solution builds up electrical charges in the fracking, and this impedes the extraction of the oil. Using Super Critical CO2, they thing they can get much more oil out of the wells. And they speculate that the CO2 can be disposed of that way. It is believed that CO2 can be stored for at least 100 years this way, which would allow us to have our cake and eat it too perhaps.

However the jury is out on the economics of this.

I am not a Russia phobic person however, I do believe we want to leave them part of the market. Probably they will keep much of the markets anyway, as they have adopted fracking to increase their oil output 15% on their normal oil wells already.

RobertDyck · 2016-08-08 02:55:31

Void wrote:

Robert Dyke,
...

My name is spelled "Robert Dyck". My last last name is spelled with a "y" but pronounced "Dick". It's a Canadian thing. I've heard people complain that American's can't pronounce foreign names. Mine has to be the easiest foreign name possible. Yes, that does mean my name really is "Mr. Dyck". The ladies are happy.

I heard an old wives tale that a man with a long dick will conceive more sons, because the distance sperm have to swim is shorter. My farther was one of 11 children: 9 men and 2 women. And one child died at age 3 months, so my grandmother gave birth 12 times, another boy. What does that say about my grandfather? I heard my mother gush about this, she really did love my father...until she divorced him. In reality it doesn't work that way. If conception occurs late in a woman's menstrual cycle the ovum is lower in the Fallopian tube so sperm have to swim a shorter distance. That has far more effect on sex of the child.

Too much information? Are you still going to get my name wrong? I'm a "Dick", not a "Dyke".

RobertDyck · 2016-08-08 03:16:32

Peter Zeihan goes on about how global climate change won't affect the US much. He says America's agricultural area is a big circle, climate change may move it a bit up/down/left/right but it'll still be there. Some farmers may grow corn instead of wheat or vice-versa, but it won't affect America much. He goes on how climate change could adversely affect other countries, with devastating results.

What he doesn't say is how good climate change is to Canada. Agriculture in western Canada is a triangle: southern Manitoba, south and central Saskatchewan, and all but the most northern bit of Alberta. Climate change will push arable land further north. So Manitoba will have more arable land. Southern Manitoba will be able to grow crops that didn't used to grow here, like corn.

clark · 2016-08-09 19:46:25

Rising sea levels create more beachfront property. Dosen't take a dick to find a silver lining.

Last edited by clark (2016-08-09 19:47:09)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-09 20:01:18

Void · 2016-08-09 22:43:12

And this whole thing could have been prevented if Robert knew how to spell it right!

Last edited by Void (2016-08-09 22:48:40)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-10 01:47:37

Void wrote:

And this whole thing could have been prevented if Robert knew how to spell it right!

Actually, my great grandfather changed the spelling of his last name to the Canadian standard when he immigrated as a child in the early 1880s. So he complied with Canadian standards, it is spelled right.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-08-10 02:20:18)

GW Johnson · 2016-08-10 10:16:24

Hi Robert and Void:

I went and looked at the entire presentation. Very interesting, some good insights there. I think he underestimates the impacts of climate change and sea level rise, even on North America.

While the agricultural zone just moves, something we can withstand with only some disruption (and I include Canada with the US in this), we’re going to lose a lot of major cities on 3 coasts. A 6-10 m sea wall is not a feasible thing to do. The city would be an ”island” surrounded by water, cut off from land travel except by bridges vulnerable to storms.

The list of sea level rise sources (excluding simple thermal expansion) is: mountain glaciers 1 m potential with most of that occurring within a few decades, Greenland 6 m with about half that occurring within several decades, West Antarctica 6 or 7 m potential with about half that occurring within a century, and East Antarctica about 60 m potential, with only a small percentage occurring within a century or so. This is just ice volumes above current sea level and observations of breakup and instability.

So in a few decades, at least 1-3 m rise, and a fair chance it could be 6-10 m in only several decades. On the east coast: New York, Boston, DC, Baltimore, Charleston, etc. Gulf coast: Houston, Mobile, New Orleans, etc. West coast: San Diego, LA, SF, Seattle, etc. A real disaster brewing there, not just building a couple of tall sea walls.

90+% of humanity lives within 3 m of current sea level. We are no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers, these folks live in cities (including all the infrastructure) that will be drowned. They will be on the march across international borders looking for new homes, right where the other folks live, and right in the middle of a food production disruption. You are looking at war and famine, with probably a 90-99% depopulation event, and civilization collapsing entirely, leaving the survivors nearly back in the stone age (how many have ever really produced bronze or wrought iron for themselves?).

I tend toward pessimism, because I think we are already about half a century past the tipping point for this to actually occur. Even if we are not past it, I see no one planning for how to cope. I see only arguments over whether to even attempt ward it off, and no one at all worrying whether it’s already too late. Stupid is as stupid does.

Be that as it may, my point is: he far-underestimates the dangers we face from climate change. There won’t be any economic winners and losers, because there won’t be any economies left at all. Trying to cope after it happens is too late.

As for fracking, what I see on the roads around me are frack water trucks, bringing in fresh water and taking out used water for disposal. I see little or no recycling yet. I see no efforts at all to use anything besides water. The waste is about 5-10 times as saline as sea water, and it carries heavy metals and a little radioactivity. I do not know why they cannot reuse it, but I see nothing that indicates they do.

It’s not the fracking, it’s the deep well injection of used waste frack water that causes quakes. When disposal rates are higher, quakes are stronger, the science is pretty clear on that now. Oklahoma has seen magnitude 5.6, and 7.2 cannot be ruled out. Texas has seen 4 or maybe 4.5. 5-and-up causes significant damage.

The polluted well water and kitchen taps exploding in flames trace to gas surfacing by routes other than the gas well. Some of this is cheapskates building bad well casings. But most of it is geology: where the rock strata are already broken and contorted, the faults are paths for the gas to surface. Release it by fracking, and it surfaces, and not always up your well. That’s why we see these problems in the Appalachians and the Rockies, but not in Texas, with fracked shale gas. Different geology: central and eastern Texas is mostly flat-lying sea bottom, those other places are mountain-building zones.

As for the fracking additives, these are mainly the right type of sand (sometimes glass beads), plus diesel fuel and various soaps to create the surface tension and viscosity to carry along the sand. You would not want to drink this stuff! They hide the identity of the diesel fuel as “proprietary formulas” so that they can stay unregulated by the EPA (since injecting hydrocarbon products into the ground is already illegal).

It works by water pressure in the horizontal drill path forcing the shale around it to fracture, with the sand left behind in the cracks holding them open after the pressure is removed. The cracks become the surfacing path for the natural gas and any low-viscosity liquids there might be. You get about 2-3% recovery of what is actually in the rock, maybe just a tad more these days.

Most of the liquids in the rocks are brines, so the backwash to be disposed of is your frack water plus a lot bigger volume of brine from the rocks. As I said, these are factor 5 to 10 more saline than sea water, and heavily contaminated. This stuff is a really hazardous waste. Also true of conventional drilling.

Although, I still think if you had a soap that functioned in very concentrated brine, you could use it and your diesel to carry along the sand. That way you just reuse the waste backwash water as frack water. They already handle it mostly OK now, just to ship it for disposal.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-08-10 10:18:12)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-10 10:49:46

Void wrote:

The USA is now selling very large amounts of Natural Gas to Mexico, as he said, but I think also now to Eastern Canada.

That may explain the "Energy East" project, which would convert one of three natural gas pipelines through Ontario to carry oil. Currently there is no pipeline to carry Alberta oil farther east than Winnipeg.

The pipeline called "Line 9" was built in the early 1980s to carry Alberta oil to Ontario and Quebec. It actually runs from outside Chicago where it connects to the previous pipeline from Edmonton, then to north of Detroit where it crosses into Canada. It was shut down in 1984 for partisan political reasons. The company that owns the pipeline re-purposed it, built an extension from Montreal to Portland Maine; it's used to transport Middle East oil to the Detroit/Chicago area. I suggested reversing the flow back again, to deliver Alberta oil to Ontario and Quebec. The extension connects to refineries in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, so this would deliver Alberta oil to all 4 provinces. The ocean port that current receives Middle East oil could export Alberta oil. The catch is the pipeline was built before technology was developed to extract bitumen from tar sands, so it could only transport normal crude oil (there are some wells in Alberta and Saskatchewan), or synthetic crude. An upgrader can convert bitumen to synthetic crude. That's effectively the same as light sweet crude, so a more valuable product.

Void wrote:

I don't know exactly why Keystone was so feverishly blocked, but if it were me running it, I would have wanted to import the stuff, on the condition that a technology could be invented where Hydrogen from our Natural Gas could be used to turn the Tar Sands oil into light crude ideally using thermal solar energy in my opinion.

There was concern over an aquifer. The argument is people in the area depend on that aquifer for water, if oil got into it the oil could never be cleaned out. That would ruin their source of drinking water. So there was a proposal to redirect the pipeline around the aquifer. I don't know why they still opposed it after the redirection.

Another issue, though, what the Keystone pipeline was for. It would transport diluted bitumen to refineries in Texas, which would upgrade it to synthetic crude, then export the synthetic crude by ship to the world. Why do that? Why not upgrade in Alberta, so Alberta gets the profit instead of Texas?

RobertDyck · 2016-08-10 12:17:01

GW: I'm skeptical about climate change. It does exist, but the "climate warriors" exaggerate. Many of them argue to keep all fossil fuels in the ground, and actively campaign to halt all new pipeline projects in Canada. A town in Quebec called Lac-Mégantic had a major accident in 2013. A train transporting oil derailed, the oil burned causing massive damage. Pipelines are much safer.

Climate change includes global cooling from the beginning of the industrial revolution to 1970. There were spikes of global warming during the two world wars, but otherwise that's 115 years of global cooling due to human activity. In 1994 the global temperature equalled what it was before the industrial revolution, but that doesn't take into account global warming that would have occurred due to nature. When you look at reconstructed temperature data from Vostok ice cores, from 1550 to 1855 there was slow steady global warming. That was due to nature, the planet warming out of the last ice age. Year 2000 saw the planet's temperature equal what it would have been if warming continued at that rate. So all the global warming of the last three decades of the 20th century simply un-did the global cooling caused by human activity from the previous 115 years. This also means global warming in the last 6 years of the 20th century equalled what nature would have done over 145 years. That's one reason why the environmentalists are panicking. But didn't stay at that rate. Global warming substantially slowed. Notice the "plateau" in global warming began once the planet's temperature equalled what it would have been if humans hadn't messed with it. I believe that's not a coincidence. One reason for rapid global warming in the last three decades of the 20th century was human activity and nature were pushing in the same direction. Once the temperature equalled what it would have been without human intervention, nature no longer pushed for rapid global warming. That's anthropomorphising. In the early and mid-20th century industry built smoke stacks to "get rid of" the smoke, they built the smoke stacks to create an up-draft. That carried smoke and soot into the lower stratosphere. The stratosphere and troposphere do not mix well, once you get soot into the stratosphere it takes decades to settle out. Most of it has now settled out. However, temperature measurements show the lower stratosphere is cooling, even as the surface is warming. When two volcanoes erupted it caused the stratosphere to warm, but it cooled soon after. It cooled lower than it would have if the volcano didn't erupt. This tells me the volcanic ash flushed out soot from the stratosphere. This is mother nature cleaning up our mess. And there is also the deep ocean current, which takes about 1,000 years for a single cycle. That deep ocean current acts as an "anchor" bringing climate change back to the schedule that mother nature set.

GW, you talked about sea level change. That is an issue. However, I'm skeptical of how much that will be too. NASA measured the volume of ice in the Antarctic. With entire ice shelves breaking off and melting, Antarctic ice is a concern. Floating ice is not really a problem, all the floating ice the world could melt and it wouldn't raise ocean levels by a millimetre. But melting ice on land will. Melting ice shelves are an indication something is going on. Using radar satellites, NASA measured the volume of ice, and found Antarctic ice volume is actually increasing. They didn't expect that! Even as ice shelves are melting, ice on land is increasing. Ok, this is good. It means ocean levels are not going to rise as fast as some people fear.

GW Johnson · 2016-08-10 14:17:53

Robert:

I don't trust temperature measurements, they depend too much on where and how you measure it, and there are too many proxies before about 150 years ago. I look at ice. It varies from place to place, too. But the net aggregate effect is in the wrong direction: it warns of sea level rise.

I know the Antarctic sea ice was unexpectedly found to be increasing in area (volume is harder to measure remotely). The big land ice sheets seem more or less stable down there, at least in East Antarctica. There are some very troubling signs of instability on the peninsula, and some troubling indications in West Antarctica. It appears that a small deglaciation event is just getting started on the peninsula, and maybe some parts of West Antarctica.

The Arctic is very clear: sea ice area is dropping quickly in the last decade or so, toward essentially ice free summers, which we might live to see. Certainly our kids will see it. This is not only an area change, it is a volume change: when I was 10 years old, nuclear subs had to hunt for a lead in the ice to surface near the pole, because the ice averaged 50 feet thick, excluding pressure ridges. That doesn't affect sea level, but Greenland does. There are some very ominous signs of instability in its ice sheet. Last time this happened in the geologic record, something like half its ice melted, and it appears to have done so very fast: about a human lifetime or less.

Today the nuclear subs surface anywhere they want any time they want, because Arctic sea ice pack is never more than about 5-10 feet thick (again excluding pressure ridges). A huge volume of floating ice is now missing, year round, compared to only 56 years ago. To melt that ice requires a lot of heat, which had to come from somewhere. That somewhere is climate change. Doesn't matter who or what might be causing it, the effect is real, and very pronounced over the course of one human lifetime (mine).

The very best model we have for the last 3-4 million years of climate history is Milankovitch orbital cycles. It's not perfect, but it's quite good. It is a correlation, not a cause-and-effect explanation. It does not explain the shift from 100,000 year cycles to 26,000 year cycles during the last ice age, but it does correlate very well once you accept the unexplained change. That model says we should already see the giant glaciers beginning to re-form in Canada, and it has said that since I was in grade school science classes over half a century ago. I remember them saying it.

The fact that we are warming instead of cooling says that something is different this time around, so that the prehistoric correlation no longer holds. The most obvious suspect is us: starting with farming 10 millennia ago, and then extensive fossil fuel burning 3 centuries ago. Both release increased amounts of CO2 and methane, and the fossil fuel use releases long-buried carbon, unlike agriculture.

You cannot possibly argue that human activities are too insignificant to have had an effect, because they already have (although I know some people who still maintain this fiction even today, and some of them are lawmakers, unfortunately): ozone hole, air pollution / acid rain, and urban heat island effects diverting thunderstorms, to name a few effects.

When I was in high school, global CO2 was 230 ppm. Now it has reached 400 ppm. See the Keeling curve since 1959. We know this has to have at least some effect, because of the classic bell jar/thermometer/atmosphere gas experiment. Maybe it's a small effect, maybe not. But it's in the wrong direction for worries about ice melt and sea level rise.

I'm no "climate warrior". I know that we cannot give up all fossil fuel use at once. But it makes sense to add as many alternatives to the mix as fast as we can, because it makes simple common sense to do less of those things we already know act in the wrong direction. For this reason I think natural gas is better than coal for making electricity, because MW-hr for MW-hr, it produces less CO2 than coal (not to mention the other nasty air pollution we get from coal). In that sense, fracking is good for more than just profit alone.

GW

Void · 2016-08-10 14:27:11

It's the pest again. I agree, that most likely the planet is warming, and most likely humans are helping to cause it to.

Some people think that that could also cause a new ice age eventually, due to increased precipitation at the poles, or the shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation.

So, I see fracking as a standby method to warm the planet if necessary. Ideally CO2 would be stored in the wells, and hopefully would never be needed to be released, but in the eventuality of an unexpected onset of an Ice Age, a tool would be available to try to do something about it. Similarly, until it is exhausted Methane would be on standby for that purpose as well.

We cannot stop other nations from burning Carbon heavy fuels, so unless we can offer them a substitute better fuel at a reasonable price, we are along for the ride, whatever that will be.

But I also favor alternative energy. Hopefully it will eventually strongly reduce the use of Carbon heavy fuels.

Last edited by Void (2016-08-10 14:28:24)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-10 14:36:07

NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses

Oct. 30, 2015
A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.
“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”

RobertDyck · 2016-08-10 14:44:27

I'm not saying humans don't cause climate change. I'm saying humans caused more climate change than most people realize. Humans caused global cooling from 1855 to 1970, and all the man-made global warming from 1970 to year 2000 simply un-did the man-made global cooling. As of year 2000 we're back to nature. And the rate of global warming dramatically slowed once that happened. The rate was so close to nature that it was good enough, if it stayed at that pace then we would be good! Problem solved! Unfortunately it didn't. The plateau in global climate change lasted 2000 to 2014. It's too early to say for sure, but data for 2015 indicate slightly more global warming, and data so far this year hint that the rate is back to what it was in the 1990s.

So we have to do something. I'm just saying we don't have to panic. No, we don't have to leave all fossil fuels in the ground. No, we don't have to cancel all oil pipelines. Yes, climate activists are demanding that. I could list more reasonable actions, but let me start by telling those climate warriors to stick it!

RobertDyck · 2016-08-10 15:22:33

I too heard in school that the interglacial period was only 12,000 years long, and that we were due for another ice age. Scientists throughout the 1960s and '70s looked at global cooling data and were worried we were seeing the onset of the next ice age. They seriously recommended dropping big thermonuclear bombs on the poles to melt them, to stop the next ice age. Then one scientists in 1979 published a paper about global warming. Scientists at the time said "Are you nuts? We just spent two decades talking about global cooling, and you claim global warming? Get with the program!" But science is not a democracy, it's all about the numbers. They checked his numbers, and double checked, and triple checked, and checked again, and again. He was right, there has been global warming since 1970. They collected more data in case previous data was flawed, but it just confirmed the fact.

Let me show you global temperatures over the last 450,000 years, across several ice ages and interglacial cycles:

A couple observations. First, the peak temperature of the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago was 6°C above the pre-industrial temperature. So when politicians debated in Paris whether to limit global warming to 1.5° or 2°C above the pre-industrial temperature, I had to laugh. However, if we follow the same pattern as the last interglacial period, that peak is not supposed to arrive for another 2,000 years. I'm saying the goal is not to stop global warming, but to slow it to the natural rate.

Another observation is the length of interglacial periods. It isn't just 12,000 years, it's longer. It's more like 20,000 years.

Also the last 3 interglacial cycles rose to a sharp peak in temperature, then rapidly cooled. But the cycle before that 400,000 years ago there was a large round temperature profile, and the interglacial period lasted 30,000 years. So far this time we're not seeing the rapid rise to the sharp peak, so perhaps it'll be more like 400,000 years ago. That also means a peak temperature of 3°C above the pre-industrial temperature, not 6°C. And since it's been 11,000 years since the end of the last minor ice age (glacial period), that means we're not due for another ice age. In fact, we may not be half way yet.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-08-10 15:38:59)

Antius · 2016-08-11 05:02:59

RobertDyck wrote:

Still trying to understand what he said about shale oil. Everything I read said oil shale is solid, has to be mined. Wikipedia: Oil Shale
Oil shale, also known as kerogen shale, is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil (not to be confused with tight oil—crude oil occurring naturally in shales) can be produced.
...
Most exploitation of oil shale involves mining followed by shipping elsewhere, after which one can burn the shale directly to generate electricity, or undertake further processing. The most common methods of surface mining involve open pit mining and strip mining.
...
the chemical process of pyrolysis converts the kerogen in the oil shale to shale oil (synthetic crude oil) and oil shale gas. Most conversion technologies involve heating shale in the absence of oxygen to a temperature at which kerogen decomposes (pyrolyses) into gas, condensable oil, and a solid residue. This usually takes place between 450 °C (842 °F) and 500 °C (932 °F). The process of decomposition begins at relatively low temperatures (300 °C or 572 °F), but proceeds more rapidly and more completely at higher temperatures.
...
Shale oil serves best for producing middle-distillates such as kerosene, jet fuel, and diesel fuel. Worldwide demand for these middle distillates, particularly for diesel fuels, increased rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s. However, appropriate refining processes equivalent to hydrocracking can transform shale oil into a lighter-range hydrocarbon (gasoline).
What Peter Zeihan said in his presentation is radically different. He talked about drilling, and also mentioned fracking. I thought fracking was to produce natural gas, not oil with natural gas as a byproduct. Fracking can also be used to extract conventional crude oil from deposits that are otherwise depleted. But the speaker showed images of drilling rigs while talking about shale oil; that's contradictory.

Oil shale, not to be confused with (fractured) shale oil. Two completely different things, similar names. The first is a kerogen rich source rock and is not unlike lignite coal. The second is more like conventional crude, but distributed in pores within a weakly porous rock, which must be fractured to release for extraction.

It would be more practical to grind up and burn kerogen (oil shale) in a coal burning power plant than attempt to convert it into oil. Shale oil on the other hand, is more expensive to extract than conventional crude and most of the US oil majors sank huge amounts of money into the technology during the oil price surge of the 2000's. As a result there has been a dramatic surge in US oil production, but it was achieved at a huge financial cost, using borrowed money at a time when nobody could foresee a drop in oil price to $40/barrel. This is part of the reason why oil prices have not sunk back down to their 1990s levels in spite of weak demand, much of the world production outside of OPEC requires considerably more than $40/barrel to break even. Unfortunately, most economies are now so loaded with debt that we may never see a strong recovery in oil demand that pushes the price back above the break-even point for most producers.

This is how peak oil is working out. Potentially lots of oil that will never be produced because no one can afford it. The infrastructure we have spent a century building up was profitable so long as energy prices remain at a low level. Add more expensive energy and suddenly you have to borrow money to do all of the things that you didn't need to borrow money for when energy was cheap.

Last edited by Antius (2016-08-11 05:11:20)

Void · 2016-08-11 13:00:03

Ok, still posting, hope to quit soon.

OIL SHALE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale

Oil shale, also known as kerogen shale, is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil (not to be confused with tight oil—crude oil occurring naturally in shales) can be produced. Shale oil is a substitute for conventional crude oil; however, extracting shale oil from oil shale is more costly than the production of conventional crude oil both financially and in terms of its environmental impact.[1] Deposits of oil shale occur around the world, including major deposits in the United States. Estimates of global deposits range from 4.8 to 5 trillion barrels (760×109 to 790×109 m3) of oil in place.[2][3]
Heating oil shale to a sufficiently high temperature causes the chemical process of pyrolysis to yield a vapor. Upon cooling the vapor, the liquid shale oil—an unconventional oil—is separated from combustible oil-shale gas (the term shale gas can also refer to gas occurring naturally in shales). Oil shale can also be burned directly in furnaces as a low-grade fuel for power generation and district heating or used as a raw material in chemical and construction-materials processing.[4]
Oil shale gains attention as a potential abundant source of oil whenever the price of crude oil rises.[5][6] At the same time, oil-shale mining and processing raise a number of environmental concerns, such as land use, waste disposal, water use, waste-water management, greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollution.[7][8] Estonia and China have well-established oil shale industries, and Brazil, Germany, and Russia also utilize oil shale.[9]
General composition of oil shales constitutes inorganic matrix, bitumens, and kerogen. Oil shales differ from oil-bearing shales, shale deposits that contain petroleum (tight oil) that is sometimes produced from drilled wells. Examples of oil-bearing shales are the Bakken Formation, Pierre Shale, Niobrara Formation, and Eagle Ford Formation.

From my point of view, I would like to see an experiment in facking it like with shale oil, but using supercritical CO2 at high temperatures.
The high temperatures being generated by a solar power tower, I would hope. The location where our Oil Shale oil is has good solar energy I believe, and a lack of water, so using supercritical CO2 seems like something to try. Plus with horizontal drilling and fracking, it seems to me that you would be able to access Oil Shale which is very deep. To help protect the environment, perhaps leaving a layer of rock untouched above it would be helpful.

Cleaning contaminants, and also adding Hydrogen would be helpful.

If Peter Zeihan is correct, then the price of oil long term will be low in North America, but is likely to rise high again elsewhere.

The North American public is likely to want a cut of the benefits from Oil Shale, Shale Oil, and Shale Gas. I don't know how that would work out politically or economically, but I am going suggest that there is no reason to not sell oil and gas cheep here in the local markets, and then to sell it for a higher price in the international market, if in fact Peter Zeihan's thinking turns out to be correct. Technically the government owns most of the Oil Shale, and in theory, so the American public owns it, but of course we are often more treated as if we are property these days, but I guess politically, it might be reasonable to deviate from a pure free market method, and impose a two market strategy, where local oil is less costly than international oil (If the international market allows it). Then of course the companies allowed to access the oil would have to make a reasonable profit, or it could not happen at all.

So, it is not necessarily so that Oil Shale could not be marketed for a profit.

As a byproduct of adding Hydrogen to Oil Shale from Natural Gas, to upgrade it to a higher quality oil, CO2 would be produced, but that is a product which would be useful in Supercritical fracking of both Oil Shale and Shale oil, and it would be useful to rejuvenate oil traditional oil fields.

But in the end economics will rule, with some local interference from political concerns.

The Oil sources which are currently taken off market are deep water projects, and Venezuela, Nigeria and the like.

Again, while some persons do not like producing any CO2, if other countries burn coal because they cannot get high grade oil or natural gas at a price, then they may and do very well resort to coal, and high Carbon oils. So from a global perspective, and global warming if it is real is such a perspective, producing large quantities of lower Carbon oil is a service to the global situation. (And it might help North Americans have many economic benefits). Perhaps a win win thing.

I know that many want to go to alternative energy, and that's fine with me, as it becomes real. But you still have to make plastics and so on.

Oh, and when you are done fracking, you might have an excellent underground solar storage facility, where high heat can be stored in the rocks, to produce a "Hydrothermal" energy generating process.

And this whole thing goes hand in hand with storing CO2 underground.

.....

And another thing. Are members aware that due to the elevated amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, plants around the globe do not have to open their stomata as much as before to get the Carbon they want? This then causes them to require less water, because they do not have to sacrifice as much water through their stomata in order to get Carbon.

Not everything about elevated CO2 is bad.

Now I will stop posting for a while, I hope.

Last edited by Void (2016-08-11 13:31:36)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-11 14:34:14

Void wrote:

Ok, still posting, hope to quit soon.

Why? We're here to talk, chat, discuss, debate. Just because I don't agree with everything you post doesn't mean I don't appreciate your participation. You post a lot of good things. Don't quit.

Void wrote:

If Peter Zeihan is correct, then the price of oil long term will be low in North America, but is likely to rise high again elsewhere.

I doubt that. Corporations want maximum profit, so will want to sell at world prices. Politicians in Canada in the 1970s tried to separate oil prices from world prices. Oil corporations panicked. That's when talk of Alberta succeeding from Confederation began. The other major political party in Canada was elected in 1984, the whole initiative was killed. "Dead, dead, dead, D-E-D dead." (Guess the movie that quote is from.)

I'm surprised Peter Zeihan missed the obvious geopolitical forces a play. The US is still recovering from the 2008 financial melt-down. The federal government encouraged and support the oil industry to expand because it meant jobs. Not sure how the supported the oil industry, but they did remove regulatory barriers; who knows what else. The US used to be a major oil exporter, so greatly expanding oil production helped the economic recovery. Sending billions of dollars to the Middle East for oil just gets spent on weapons, which creates more trouble. We don't need more trouble in the Middle East, so disconnecting American interests from the Middle East is a good thing, and cutting off money for weapons is a good thing. So that means more domestic oil production. And Russia has become a major oil exporter, primarily to Europe. So crashing oil prices hurts Russia. With current tensions with Russia, that's viewed as a good thing. Corporate executives would like oil prices to recover, but those playing geopolitical games do not.

Void wrote:

Technically the government owns most of the Oil Shale, and in theory, so the American public owns it

A lot of people would argue against that. Owners of the land are the owners of the oil beneath. The catch is when operations affect people not on that land, such as earth quakes and contaminated ground water.

Void wrote:

I know that many want to go to alternative energy, and that's fine with me, as it becomes real. But you still have to make plastics and so on.

Have you heard of thermal decomposition? Similar to pyrolysis, but lower temperature and doesn't completely decompose material. It converts plastic into oil and natural gas. That oil and natural gas can be used to make new plastic. About 85% of the mass of plastic becomes oil and natural gas. The other 15% becomes water and CO2, that's the energy that drives the process. Currently plastic bottles contain only 10% of recycled plastic. That's because of polymer degradation. Polymer scission and cross-bonding turns the plastic yellow, hard, and brittle. Breaking it down into oil and natural gas then reforming plastic means you literally have new plastic. Furthermore, thermal decomposition works with wood and paper products; the thermal decomposition furnace has to be "tuned" for different input products, different temperature and pressure, but still same oil and natural gas output. But I don't think we need to do this with wood or paper. Oil won't completely go away. Recycling old plastic into new plastic will reduce the demand for oil, not completely replace it.

Void · 2016-08-11 17:56:31

I will reply to this, although, I should be taking care of other things.

Just my notions, not enforceable in any way.

http://dailyreckoning.com/oil-shale-reserves/

America’s oil shale reserves are enormous, totaling at least 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. That’s five times the
reserves of Saudi Arabia! And yet, no one is producing commercial quantities of oil from these vast deposits. All that oil is still sitting right where God left it, buried under the vast landscapes of Colorado and Wyoming.

Oil Shale Reserves: A Congressional Legacy
Most of the nation’s oil shale reserves rest under the control of the U.S. government – a legacy of a 95-year old Congressional Act. In 1910, Congress passed the Pickett Act, which authorized President Taft to set aside oil- bearing land in California and Wyoming as potential sources of fuel for the U.S. Navy. Taft did so right away. The Navy was in the process of switching from coal burning ships to oil burning ships. And the U.S. military, conscious of the expanding role of America in the world, needed a dependable supply of fuel in case of a national emergency.
From 1910 to 1925 the Navy developed the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves Program. The program became official in 1927 and President Roosevelt even expanded the scope of the program in 1942 as the U.S. geared up for war with Japan and Germany.
Several of the oil fields set aside for the nation’s first strategic reserve, particularly Elk Hills in California,
would go on to produce oil for the U.S. government. Elk Hills was eventually sold off to Occidental Petroleum for $3.65 billion in 1998 in the largest privatization in U.S. history. The shale reserves, however, still remain, locked 1,000 feet underground in the Colorado desert.

If American culture were to remain static, I would agree with you that when and if this reserve becomes viable as a resource, most likely it would be gifted out to the powerful, with very little return to the public.

However I am a baby boomer. Our psychology is to be spiritual, and not as concerned about material goods, since we grew up in a an era of relative plenty. This was the legacy of the Hero generation which they set up. They were on the winning end of WWII. Their psychology did not tolerate cheaters, fanaglers, thieves and such. They required each person to walk on two paws only. They were very materialistic and not that spiritual.

Generation X followed the baby boomers, they are the equivalent of Nomads. They are survivors, and very clever at it, having gown up in the aftermath of what the Artists and Babyboomers have left as a residual. They probably tolerate jungle behaviors, but I don't think they like it.

Generation Y is the new Hero generation, if I don't have this screwed up. They again will be materialistic, and not very spiritual, and they will hunt down cheaters like a pack of wolfs and without much mercy. But they will walk on two paws. At least this is my expectation from reading "The 4th turning".

Probably the reason that our monsters at the top are running wild just now, is that the old "Hero's" are mostly out of power by now.

The Hero's were the ones who set up labor unions, SSI, and Medicare, I believe.

As for the Oil Shale, if it ever is tapped, there are many ways to distribute that including taxes, and jobs, and business profits, so I would not expect a nationalized process. (That would be just stupid).

You could be right about business interests making our social order remove all bans on exporting oil, but as I have said, the "Y's" are materialistic, and they will want a cut of the action, in terms of real wealth, as suggested in the following article.

http://www.cfr.org/oil/case-allowing-us … rts/p31005

But they will be labor oriented, and I expect they will want the advantage of cheaper oil and natural gas, to further encourage "Reshoring" in the North American economic sphere, and especially in the USA. They are likely to howl and bite, if their energy costs are lifted up to fill the pockets of the few.

I myself remember am a baby boomer. I've had my chances, and I seem to have enough, and as you get older other than medical costs, your wants go down, and cost you less. So, I will watch from a distance, if I watch at all.

If somehow my biological clock gets set back to 24 by very advanced medicine, perhaps I will get a job again, but not a stressful job. My needs would be small. I'd be looking for easy, but useful.

As for recycling plastics, I suppose that would be the good way to go. Then, indeed as it eventually will Oil will see a gradual sunset. That does not trouble me at all. But for now, I do believe that there is a whole world out there that wants it, and they also want similar to what we have. So, for now, Oil and Natural Gas are big still.

And by the way, the old "Hero's" were the ones who put us on the Moon. Therefore I have high hopes for generation "Y" to have the right values. This should be very interesting to anyone on this board, I would think.

"Y" won't really start getting significant power, perhaps not for 15 years.

What you see in the power circles in the USA now are the dinosaurs, waiting for an asteroid to hit, and it is on it's way.
And they can't stop it, although they will try.

Hence Bernie and Trump. (Not picking a favorite). Clinton may be it this time, but you can be sure that what follows will not be like her.

Last edited by Void (2016-08-11 18:39:04)

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