Re: [cdn-nucl-l] "oil supplies will peak as soon as 2010, and gas soon after"

["Englishes" <english@webhart.net>]

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
I recall the doomsday prophets of the mid-seventies' saying that we would
run out of oil and gas by 1982......  It seems that five to seven years is
far enough away that we can predict anything, and if it doesn't work out,
well. who cares????
Why aren't we building nuclear power plants?  The CNA has some
advertisements on TV, but they are really lame.  Why don't we have an ad
agency to give the people some real ads with teeth?  Are we serious about
nuclear?  We're preaching to the converted here.......

Cheers to all,
Andy




----- Original Message -----
From: "Jaro" <jaro-10kbq@sympatico.ca>
To: "multiple cdn" <cdn-nucl-l@informer2.cis.McMaster.CA>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 12:40 PM
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] "oil supplies will peak as soon as 2010, and gas soon
after"


> ....interesting quote from the article below.
>
> At 40 to 60 years plant life, nukes appear set to outlive the huge number
of
> natural gas generators built in recent years, whose fuel supplies are said
> to peak in about a decade and dwindle thereafter.... by this account,
> utilities and investors will soon be stuck with an awful lot of useless
> hardware, including billion-dollar pipelines.
> No doubt Energy Probe will provide a lot of hot air to run the gas
> turbines....
>
>  Jaro
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994216
> 'Too little' oil for global warming
> 10:00 05 October 03
>
> Oil and gas will run out too fast for doomsday global warming scenarios to
> materialise, according to a controversial analysis presented this week at
> the University of Uppsala in Sweden. The authors warn that all the fuel
will
> be burnt before there is enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to
realise
> predictions of melting ice caps and searing temperatures.
>
> Defending their predictions, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel
on
> Climate Change say they considered a range of estimates of oil and gas
> reserves, and point out that coal-burning could easily make up the
> shortfall. But all agree that burning coal would be even worse for the
> planet.
>
> The IPCC's predictions of global meltdown provided the impetus for the
1997
> Kyoto Protocol, an agreement obliging signatory nations to cut CO2
> emissions. The IPCC considered a range of future scenarios, from
profligate
> burning of fossil-fuels to a fast transition towards greener energy
sources.
>
>
>  Energy discrepancy
> But geologists Anders Sivertsson, Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell of
> Uppsala University say there is not enough oil and gas left for even the
> most conservative of the 40 IPCC scenarios to come to pass (see graphic).
>
> Billions of barrels
>
> Although estimates of oil and gas reserves vary widely, the researchers
are
> part of a growing group of experts who believe that oil supplies will peak
> as soon as 2010, and gas soon after (New Scientist print edition, 2 August
> 2003).
>
> Their analysis suggests that oil and gas reserves combined amount to the
> equivalent of about 3500 billion barrels of oil  considerably less than
the
> 5000 billion barrels estimated in the most optimistic model envisaged by
the
> IPCC.
>
> The worst-case scenario sees 18,000 billion barrels of oil and gas being
> burnt  five times the amount the researchers believe is left. "That's
> completely unrealistic," says Aleklett. Even the average forecast of about
> 8000 billion barrels is more than twice the Swedish estimate of the
world's
> remaining reserves.
>
> Nebojsa Nakicenovic, an energy economist at the University of Vienna,
> Austria who headed the 80-strong IPCC team that produced the forecasts,
says
> the panel's work still stands. He says they factored in a much broader and
> internationally accepted range of oil and gas estimates than the
> "conservative" Swedes.
>
> Even if oil and gas run out, "there's a huge amount of coal underground
that
> could be exploited", he says. Aleklett agrees that burning coal could make
> the IPCC scenarios come true, but points out that such a switch would be
> disastrous.
> Coal is dirtier than oil or gas and produces more CO2 for each unit of
> energy, as well as releasing large amounts of particulates. He says the
> latest analysis is a "shot across the bows" for policy makers.
>
> Andy Coghlan
>
>