Today's TED talk

frankd2689 · Post by **frankd2689** » 19 Mar 2012, 16:24

T Boone Pickens gives a talk on TED about how natural gas is the way forward for the USA. I haven't watched it yet, but I've seen the transcript.

Why does he seem to not understand about peak gas?

Using it as a bridge fuel is one thing, but using it as a bridge fuel to enable us to support 9 billion people by 2050, by a means not yet known, seems insane.

Cheers

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 19 Mar 2012, 17:15

All fossil fuels are 'bridge' fuels. Shale gas, polar oil, coal bed gasification, oil, whatever, all of 'em.

As they said about a certain east Yorkshire construction, it's a bridge from nowhere to nowhere.

JavaScriptDonkey · Post by **JavaScriptDonkey** » 19 Mar 2012, 20:36

Setting aside fantasies about powering the US with wind turbines, the only realistic alternative to coal in the US is natural gas.

Paul Roberts looks at it (from a US perspective) fairly comprehensively in The End of Oil.

Sure the long term solution includes many other sources but the next step can only really be gas if the US wants to maintain its economy.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 19 Mar 2012, 20:54

JavaScriptDonkey wrote:Setting aside fantasies about powering the US with wind turbines, the only realistic alternative to coal in the US is natural gas.

Paul Roberts looks at it (from a US perspective) fairly comprehensively in The End of Oil.

Sure the long term solution includes many other sources but the next step can only really be gas if the US wants to maintain its economy.

Testing one two three.
Having a bit of trouble posting so I'll be surprised if this gets through.
I hear a lot about the US having a hundred year supply of Natural gas but of course that is at the present rate of consumption. Has anyone done the math to compute the supply if we continue all present uses of NG plus replace ten million barrels equivalent per day of crude oil with NG. Much less then a hundred years but how much less. And after we have used it all up what next?

JavaScriptDonkey · Post by **JavaScriptDonkey** » 19 Mar 2012, 21:37

vtsnowedin wrote: I hear a lot about the US having a hundred year supply of Natural gas but of course that is at the present rate of consumption. Has anyone done the math to compute the supply if we continue all present uses of NG plus replace ten million barrels equivalent per day of crude oil with NG. Much less then a hundred years but how much less. And after we have used it all up what next?

Roberts looks at it. He doesn't suggest that you can be self sufficient just that you can probably get enough gas to do it and, more importantly, you can probably get the money to invest in gas power stations.

His figures are a few years old now but he has (IIRC) 75% of all US electricity as coal-fired. He also notes that the economic break-even point on a gas fired power station can be a short as 5 years making the investment worthwhile in uncertain times.