I thought it was a pretty decent analysis. Answer to your question: the very deception achilles28 is pointing out. The Government, which after all is in this and all other republics an indirect result of our elected preferences, is being bamboozled. We are all led to think energy is scarce, when it is in fact so abundant that only politics stands in the way of our using it to make ourselves prosperous beyond the dreams of avarice. Find a way to burn the coal of Wyoming cleanly - without generating more CO2 than can be processed by the green plants on our planet, that is - and you and your descendants will be rich forever. The quantity of coal available there is mind-boggling.
I was discussing conventional oil scarcity. It's a fact. People that look at raw numbers without doing the complete math don't get it. Yes we have abundant coal. But coal liquefaction, what you describe, has a very low EROEI. That means energy returned on energy invested. You need to first dig up the stuff, transport it, then process it and "cook" it using another fuel cource - natural gas - to create synthetic crude. It's expensive and consumes other sources of energy. Whereas conventional oil has an EROEI of about 1:18, coal liquefaction has an eroei of only 1:.5 to 1:8 It's not an efficient process. Germany during WWII used this process, believe me, they would have preferred to have oil. That's why they invaded Azerbijian to get near the Baku oil fields, and faced the Soviets at the battle of Stalingrad. So I'm still not buying it. There are too many other countries that would love to get in on this abundant energy. The competition would be tremendous. Yet they don't. Look at Japan and Germany, and what they have to do for energy. The tinfoil view that energy is made to appear scarce is bullshit. Energy is too strategic, and tied too closely to economies for it to be restricted by every government in the world. You think Ghadaffi was able to have the Lockerbie bomber released because oil is not scarce? You think Chavez would still be in power because oil is not scarce? Forget the tinfoil crap. All the peak oil denialists should look up oil production charts for every country in the world. You think Indonesia wanted to drop out of OPEC? You think Mexico can afford to watch their largest single oil source, Cantarell, to basically collapse?
I'm not anywhere near an expert on this subject, but any ROI calc is subject to the cost of the raw supply. The cost of Wyoming coal has got to be astonishingly low, as the stuff is very near the surface and available in quantities that are just nutty. So while the EROEI may be low, the monetary ROI is what counts, and if someone can find a way - note, neither in this nor my previous did I say it currently existed - to convert this to clean-enough with a good monetary ROI, well, that person will be, quite literally, in business. Given the current incentive, which consists of the risk of deepwater drilling combined with the political incentive of finding a global warming solution, I'd say it's pretty much inevitable that someone will come up with something. The incentives are getting as nutty as the ease of mining that coal. Peak oil is tin hat foil stuff, in my opinion. Just because BP is reckless doesn't mean the stuff ain't there or extractable without endangering the world's oceans.
Big Oil isn't the only lobbyist in town. Try the Defense Industry, AIPAC, and Wallstreet. They really like war, too. And I'm not saying Big Oil has no part in steering the nation towards war. They do. But these aren't resource wars, imo. If the market had priced in peak oil, we'd be at 300$ a barrel. Instead, we're still floundering around at a relatively cheap 75$, much of which, is largely inflationary relative to gold.
$75 during a global recession is expensive as hell when you look back at the late 1990s and see it was $20 a barrel during the boom times. Big oil, what used to be called the "Seven Sisters," are nothing compared to what they used to be. Today, they only account for 10-15% of the global oil market. Since the 1970s, oil has become nationalized by many countries. These sovereign producers: Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, Pemex, etc... reflect the countries that own them. Other then OPEC, most of these producers would like to produce as much as they can. Only OPEC has the luxury of controlling the flow of the taps when the price is right. And right now, the price is right. But even OPEC is meeting limits. Right now, the US banking system would prefer cheaper oil, despite their current positions, as it would boost the economy and help people pay down their debts. Debts rely on cheap energy. No one makes a 30 yr mortgage thinking that 10 years from now oil could go $200 a barrel. That would kill the debt based system we have. Our monetary system requires cheap energy because it is debt based. Debt based means future earnings. And how are those future earnings accomplished? By the use of stable energy in the productive economy. If energy gets too expensive, we lose productivity and future earnings suffer.... and so too does the debt based system. No one wants that.
Capitalism means LABOR will soon be outdated. As Chinese Wages Rise, Machines Replace Migrant Workers - Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...an-and-foxconn-as-chinese-wages-increase.html