Some related threads:
Are we at war with Islam?
Electric motor development
Globalization
Asian and Middle Eastern area studies
Thought provoking words by the Team Sergeant:
"I predict that once the western world makes the leap to “alternative” fuels and the price of fossil fuel will no longer support their economy we will have a showdown of biblical proportions."
I think NDD is likely right, although I am not sure that the result will be according to his conclusion. What he says is closely related to energy dependancy.
NDD on nation states:
"What I think we are seeing is the beginning of the waning of the nation state as the principle structure in the world. I don't think it will end for the next 100 years or so and I think the US will probably be the last, along with China, but I see it changing, slowly and surely.
The borders drawn by the victors of the WWs are being erased. Due in no small part to immigration, legal and illegal, concepts such as the EU, NAFTA, MERCOSUR, etc., economics, globalization, technology, and lastly security requirements.
My opinion is that we are turning to the era of the security community, smaller geographic areas and segregation."
Seebach: Shell's ingenious approach to oil shale is pretty slick
September 3, 2005
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...051709,00.html
Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. [...]
On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. "Product" - about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude - began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.
While we were trying to do the math, O'Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.
[...]
They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.
[...]
Shell has been deliberately low-key about their R&D, wanting to avoid the hype, and the disappointment, that surrounded the last oil-shale boom. But O'Connor said the results have been sufficiently encouraging they are gradually getting more open. Starting next week, they will be holding public hearings in northwest Colorado.
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I am not saying that this is the definite ending of Middle Eastern oil dependancy, but we are moving in that direction. When alternative fuels, energy sources and electric storage capability improves, the implications can be enormous. Both good and bad.
Martin
Linear Mode
