[TUHS] Why you should not be wasting electricity powering old computers

[Kenneth Stailey]

--- Kenneth Stailey <kstailey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://kimaura.com/peakoil/peakoil-56k.ram

Good Old 7-bit ASCII transcript of the dialog in that streaming video.

Doesn't have any of the charts so there are places you will find you can't
follow it since Roscoe is just point to a chart.

Excerpts from the US Congressional Record follow:

OIL PRODUCTION -- (House of Representatives - March 14, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, in just a few minutes, the gentleman from Maryland
(Mr. Bartlett) will address the House for some period of time talking about
energy sources, oil in particular, and the fact that many experts say that oil
production, especially in the United States, but actually throughout the world,
oil production of conventional oil under current patterns is expected to grow
at a rate much faster, that means the use of oil by the world community is
supposed to grow much faster than oil discovery production.

[Time: 19:45]

What is clear, because we are not sure exactly when that peak will come in oil
production, some say it is peaking right now, some say it will peak in 10
years, the amount of oil we get out of the ground will exceed the demand; but
what is clear is that at some point in this century, world oil production will
peak and then begin to decline. There is uncertainty about the date because
many countries that produce oil do not provide credible data on how big their
reserves are.

But more uncertainty calls for more caution, not less; and caution in this case
means working to develop alternatives. When production of conventional oil
peaks, we can expect a large increase in the price up to the price of the
substitutes, whether so-called unconventional oil or renewable fuels. Although
increasing domestic production may ease oil dependence slightly, the United
States is only 3 percent of the world's estimated oil reserves and uses 25
percent of the world's oil.

I want to explain just from the perspective of the United States the huge
increase in energy demand in the last century. I am going to use the word
``quadrillion.'' Quadrillion is a number. If I put 1 followed by 15 zeroes, I
have the number quadrillion. To measure energy use in a country, we use BTUs,
British thermal units. A new furnace, whether oil or natural gas, you see the
BTU to determine how much energy it is going to use. When you use BTUs to
determine how much energy a country uses, you use a short term for quadrillion
called ``quads.''

In 1910, the United States used 7 quads of BTUs. That is 7 quadrillion BTUs. In
1950, the United States used 35 quadrillion BTUs. In 2005, the United States
uses 100 quadrillion BTUs, and we are accelerating that. We are increasing
demand for oil for our energy needs. The world right now, 2005, uses 345
quadrillion BTUs, an enormous amount of energy.

We know today that our appliances, whether a washing machine, a refrigerator or
dishwasher, we know they are much more efficient than they ever were, certainly
20, 30, 40 years ago; and yet we are using more electricity, not less. We know
that automobiles and trucks and our transportation is much more efficient than
it was 20 years ago, and yet the demand is increasing. We burn more coal, more
natural gas. Each home, as efficient as each home is today, burns much more oil
and electricity because of the demand on energy needs. We are not decreasing by
getting efficient. Because our demand is greater, we are using more and more.

The question is if we are increasing demand and production is going to peak now
or in the next decade or two and our production goes down while the demand goes
up, especially with oil reserves, are we at the early stages of the twilight
for oil as an energy source? And if we are, what do we do?

Well, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) will speak on a number of
aspects of oil production decline. We will talk much further about the details
of the solution to the problems of

[Page: H1409]

our energy decline, but I want to close with two last things: How do we harness
a new alternative energy source and make it replace what we have been using for
more than 2 centuries? How do we do that? We do it with initiative, ingenuity,
intellect, vision, and leadership. 

[portions deleted]

OIL DEMAND -- (House of Representatives - March 14, 2005)

MR. ROSCOE BARTLETT

A couple of Congresses ago, I was privileged to chair the Energy Subcommittee
on Science. One of the first things I wanted to do was to determine the
dimensions of the problem. We held a couple of hearings and had the world
experts in. Surprisingly from the most pessimistic to the most optimistic,
there was not much deviation in what the estimate is as to what the known
reserves are out there. It is about 1,000 gigabarrels. That sounds like an
awful lot of oil. But when you divide into that the amount of oil which we use,

[Page: H1410]

about 20 million barrels a day, and the amount of oil the rest of the world
uses, about 60 million barrels a day, as a matter of fact, the total now is a
bit over the 80 million that those two add up to. About 83 1/2 , I think. If
you divide that into the 1,000 gigabarrels, you come out at about 40 years of
oil remaining in the world. That is pretty good. Because up until the Carter
years, during the Carter years, in every decade we used as much oil as had been
used in all of previous history. Let me repeat that, because that is startling.
In every decade, we used as much oil as had been used in all of previous
history. The reason for that, of course, was that we were on the upward side of
this bell curve. The bell curve for usage, only part of it is shown on this
chart. That is the green one down here, the bell curve for usage. Notice that
we are out here now about 2005. Where is it going? The Energy Information
Agency says that we are going to keep on using more oil. This green line just
going up and up and up is a projection of the Energy Information Agency. But
that cannot be true. That cannot be true for a couple of reasons. We peaked in
our discovery of oil way back here in the late sixties, about 1970. In our
country it peaked much earlier than that, by the way. But the world is
following several years behind us. And the area under this red curve must be
the same as the area under the green curve. You cannot pump any more oil than
you have found, quite obviously. If you have not found it, you cannot pump it.
If you were to extend this on out where they have extended their green line,
even if it turned down right there at the end of that green line, the area
under the green curve is going to be very much larger than the area under the
red curve. That just cannot be. We will see in some subsequent charts that we
probably have reached peak oil.

Let me mention that M. King Hubbert looked at the world situation. He was
joined by another scientist, Colin Campbell, who is still alive, an American
citizen who lives in Scotland. Using M. King Hubbert's predictive techniques,
oil was predicted to reach a maximum in about 1995, without perturbations. But
there were some perturbations. One of the perturbations was 1973, the Arab oil
embargo. Other perturbations were the oil price shocks and a worldwide
recession that reduced the demand for oil. And so the peak that might have
occurred in 1995 will occur later. How much later? That is what we are looking
at this evening. There is a lot of evidence that suggests that if not now, then
very quickly we should see world production of oil peak.

[portions deleted]

What now? Where do we go now? One observer, Matt Savinar, who has thoroughly
researched the options, and this is not the most optimistic assessment, by the
way, but may be somewhat realistic, he starts out by saying, Dear Readers,
civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. I hope not. This is not
the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse Bible sect or conspiracy
theory society. Rather, it is a scientific conclusion of the best-paid, most
widely respected geologists, physicists and investment bankers in the world.
These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely
terrified by the phenomenon known as global peak oil.

[portions deleted]