Odograph.com

Someone out at the San Antonio Express-News has written a nice article on fuel-efficient used cars:

The high prices are prompting many consumers to look more closely at the fuel economy ratings of the cars they buy, and there has been a surge in purchases of economical used cars that has corresponded with a decline in sales of large gas-guzzling vehicles such as full-size sport utilities.

Some budget-conscious consumers are even choosing inexpensive used cars, trucks or SUVs with good EPA fuel economy ratings for daily use, reserving their bigger vehicles for weekends, vacations or special occasions.

If you can force yourself to make the transition from a giant fuel-glugging SUV to a compact gas-sipping car for your daily commute, you might find this a great way to save money and do your bit to reduce runaway oil consumption.

- more here

The US Department of Energy has commissioned at least one study of Peak Oil, it’s consequences, and possible mitigation. The Hirsch Report is available here and there on-line, but is also being hosted by a site called “Project Censored.” It doesn’t look like the DOE is actively working to suppress the report, but for whatever reason, they don’t seem to like it enough to host it or promote it on their web pages.

Oil optimists say the event won’t occur for twenty years or more, and that market forces will result in an imperceptible transition to alternative forms of energy. “The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stones,” say the optimists, “and the Petroleum Age won’t end because we run out of oil”-but because we find something better and cheaper with which to fuel our society.

Pessimists point out that global oil discoveries have been plummeting for decades and that supply and demand are now closely matched (hence the run-up in oil prices over the past few months); moreover, there simply isn’t an alternative energy source available that can take oil’s place in the near term. They say we may be at peak now, and that the consequences will be staggering. In short, oil pessimists spin out end-of-civilization scenarios while optimists insist that there is nothing to worry about.

Evidently the US Department of Energy is interested enough in the Peak-Oil debate to commission a report on the subject. Released in February this year by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and titled “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management,” the report examines the likely consequences of the impending global peak. It was authored principally by Robert L. Hirsch (bio: www.d-n-i.net/fcs/hirsch_bio.htm), and is as remarkable for its subsequent reception as for its content.

and

Yet, half a year after its release, the Hirsch report is nowhere to be found. For several months it was archived, in PDF format, on a high school web site (www.hilltoplancers.org, Hilltop High School in Chula Vista, Calif.). On July 7 the report disappeared from that site. The Atlantic Council (www.acus.org) is considering publishing the Hirsch report; however there is no projected date of release. When contacted, Dr. Hirsch replied that the document is “a public report, paid for and released by DOE NETL, and that it therefore could be reposted at will.”

Make of it what you will, but I think the report is at least as interesting as the story surrounding it.

This is one of the articles that spurred the “Peak Oil Awareness” post below. It’s kind of amusing that they have a “gas price to unemployment” equation, but I suppose if there has been good correlation in the past (has there?) it could be done:

If oil hit $80 a barrel and gas was $2.86 a gallon, consumers would shun big sport utilities in such large numbers that about 297,000 American automotive jobs would be jeopardized.

Should gas reach $3.37 a gallon (presuming oil at $100 a barrel), about 465,000 jobs would be in danger.

- more here

U.S. oil companies are estimated to make a combined $230 billion this year. Exxon Mobil, by itself, made $25.3 billion in profits last year. And these are just the oil companies, not even the entire energy sector. After all that, Congress has just agreed upon on an energy bill that will give the energy industry an additional $14.5 billion in tax credits and subsidies. It makes me want to scream out like Nancy Kerrigan after Tonya Harding’s thugs slugged her in the knee, “Why?! Why?!”

Why are you taking my money and giving it to an already gluttonous industry drowning in a sea of oil profits? That’s $51.78 out of the pockets of every man, woman and child in the United States and in to the pockets of Exxon Mobil and Chevron. That’s insanity.

- more here

Half of all sea fish species have disappeared from the major fishing grounds of the world, according to a study that shows how ocean life has declined rapidly in the past 50 years.

The dramatic fall in the diversity of fish is blamed on overfishing rather than pollution or climate change, the scientists behind the study said yesterday.

The study, which examined fishing logbooks dating back to the 1950s, also found that the size of ocean ‘hot spots’, which were traditionally rich in a diverse array of fish species, had shrunk significantly over the same period.

- more here

I guess this is my Saturday morning ramble …

I’ve been surfing again, looking at how blogs and the major media are reacting to gas prices. In some areas we are still sitting at record highs.

Having been immersed in Peak Oil sites for a couple months it is easy to see gas prices as rising in the context of tightening supplies. It is easy to see today’s prices as one step in a 5 or 10 year trend.

Probably the most interesting thing about the surfing is that most people don’t seem to see it that way. They (quite understandably) look at price history and see that gas is sometimes high, sometimes low, and that it’s high right now. The normal expectation (if you don’t think of the game changing) is that prices will “return” to a low level. The $10 phrase for that is “regression to the mean” and it is a good default assumption, without any change in fundamentals.

If we look at the recently passed Energy Bill, I think we see some tacit recognition of a change in fundamentals. I don’t think we’d spend as many billions on ethanol and biodiesel if there was not recognition that oil will continue to get tight. If oil drilling in new places was enough to “solve” the gas price problem, I’m sure that is all we’d do.

So even with some self-doubt (that I don’t have the Peak Oil thing all figured out), I’m going to say that there is a little bit of a disconnect in the public mind:

We launch long term plans for gasoline replacement, but we only look at gas prices month-to-month.

Really, if we have national plans to replace gasoline, it must be because we expect gasoline to get (much?) more expensive over time.

I wonder if this could be anything other than wishful thinking?

[...] Sherrie Childers Arb, director of environment and energy communications for GM, said it’s wrong to assume higher oil prices.

“Our indicators show that oil will go down, not up,” she said, pointing to information she gets from the federal Energy Information Agency, which is part of the Department of Energy.

By 2010, the agency expects a barrel of oil to fall to $26, she said.

- more here

That’s the story here.

It will be interesting to see how many countries make similar responses to increasing oil prices.

I have nothing to say, I just think the title is funny.

Being an open-minded skeptic, I’ve allowed myself to be buoyed (slightly) by a recent stream of 10-year estimates for the arrival of hydrogen cars. It turns out we are (still) decades away:

Several automakers have produced test models of hydrogen-powered vehicles, at a cost of about $1 million each. The director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s automotive research laboratory, John Haywood, says it could be decades before hydrogen fuel cells become cost-effective as a viable alternative to today’s gasoline-powered engines.

“In ten, 15 years there will be trial fleets – prototypes of what these technologies could be,” he said. “But the costs will still be substantially above what conventional vehicle costs are. Our own estimates are that to look at when hydrogen and fuel cells could have a noticeable impact on transportation energy consumption, we judge that to be at least 40, 50 years away.”

- more here

It’s really sad. Much policy (and hope) is based on those 10-year estimates … but they (still) sound like pipe-dreams.