[extropy-chat] Should You be Freaking About Oil Peaking?

[kevinfreels.com]

I'm curious. Does anyone know of anythign that couldn;t be modified to run
on ethanol? What about pure ethanol? I know that currently ethanol is
basically poisoned so people can't get drunk off of it and gasoline is part
of the poison mixture, but is the gasoline itself necessary? Can aviation
fuel and be made of ethanol? Or more correctly, can sufficient aviation
engines be built for use with ethanol? Has anyone tested an ethanol jet
engine or does ethanol just not carry enough energy?

I really don;t know a lot about ethanol, but it seems to me that if we are
subsidizing farmers to not grow corn, and at the same time oil is getting
too expensive, maybe we should be putting a lot more emphasis on ethanol
production. There's no need to shrink the automobile to a point where people
hate using them. It may work in europe, but Americans love their cars.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey at yahoo.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 11:34 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Should You be Freaking About Oil Peaking?


>
> --- Hal Finney <hal at finney.org> wrote:
> >
> > Of course, "today's high prices" are actually down quite a bit in the
> > past few weeks.  Oil hit $58/bbl and is now at $48.  There seems to
> > be a general sentiment that $40 will be the new floor, but there are
> > no guarantees about that.  A year ago it was at $25 and nobody would
> > have predicted a doubling.  These new players in the Canadian oil
> > fields are hoping and praying that the price holds up.
>
> If oil floors out at $40, there is no peak oil... $25.00/bbl, which I
> predicted would be the price a month after the start of the Iraq war
> (as it happened) was followed with a 40% int'l market devaluation of
> the dollar as many national governments delinked their currencies from
> the dollar, shifting to the euro, so $25 then is $35.00 now on
> international markets.
>
> This means that at a $40.00 price floor, oil prices have risen in
> reality $5.00 in two years. This is in reality 5-6% annual inflation in
> energy prices. Significantly above average, but nothing to write home
> about. With current $48 prices, that means a real rise in oil prices of
> $8.00 (you need to devaluate the actual price rise by 40% as well to
> get a good comparison to then-year dollars.)
>
> Assuming China, Korea, and Japan don't individually or together dump
> the dollar en masse (Korea has already made motions and China is
> already selling off dollars in a 'basket diversification' move), we
> shouldn't see prices rise higher than that. Of course, I wouldn't put
> it past them. The faster they (China) price us out of the middle
> eastern oil market, and leave us working on our domestic supplies, the
> sooner they get an advantage in the eventual face-off over Taiwan.
>
> Mike Lorrey
> Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
> "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
> It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
>                                       -William Pitt (1759-1806)
> Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com
>
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