"Greening" Forces for Victory

kovona

New Member
How about we ditch the Humvees, M1s, and Black Hawks...

And have Toyota come up with an all-in-one fighting vehicle with the same gas mileage as their Camry.
 

Scratch

Captain
Digging out another old threat here to add really interesting issues that came up lately (in a wider sense than the original topi, though.

The issue is Peak Oil. That is the point when the oil output from all the resources reaches it's maximum and then starts declining again. Potentially putting a strain on world wide energy supply with a lot of challanges.

Lately, there are reports of government agencies having produced papers with troubling outlooks that are not published for fear the could show how much more concerned governments are about oil peak.

There was one report by the Guardian lately that the british government holds back one such paper, and der Spiegel had a story about a similar paper produced by a Bundeswehr think tank, wich was leaked.
(See links / references further down)

It appears peak oil might actually happen in 2010 or slightly thereafter. With implications felt some 15 - 30 yrs later. At the current rate, it doesn't look like industrial nations will be able to move to altern. sources as fast as oil production is going to decrease over time, esp. with a lot of developing countries aggresively looking for a share in world wide oil reserves.
That leads to several problems in the future.

Militarily, mobility of forces / operations will feel an adverse effect. Eps. far and big scale deployments will fall under much more scrutiny regarding the possible benefits compared to the rising costs.

But then, there's economic problems. World trade and with it basicly the global economic circumstances largely depent on fossil fuels. Ever increasing transport costs may make the known workload share in todays world less profitable. So everbody starts producing everyhing at home again. Or simply has to disclaim things that have to be imported. Wich can be annoying if it's luxury goods, or devastating if it's food.

Wich then leads to the next point, the ever increasing potential for conflict. Partly, as those who have oil, can aggressively push for concessions from net importers. This might very well lead to a competition among import aspirants who might have to comfort dubious regional regimes in order to get what they need to keep their economy going. Since a grinding economy at home might very well lead to discontent in society.
So we get to a point where everybody is fighting to get his resources from somewhere. Potentially annuling the market for oil to some extent.

Recap on the important topics. (for further explanation see the spiegel link further down)

- Oil will determine power
- Increasing importance of oil exporters
- Politics in place of the market
- Market failures
- Global chain reaction
- Crisis of political legitimacy


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For generell info

The british part of the story starts here:
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Peak oil is the villain governments need

Using the threat of a high oil prices is a sell the public will buy into – unlike intangible arguments over climate change

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 August 2010 10.00 BST

Could peak oil lever politicians out from between the rock of the electorate and the hard place that is climate change mitigation? As Daniel Gros wrote in the Guardian: "the climate-change bill, for which President Barack Obama had pushed so hard, will not even be presented to the US Senate, because it stands no chance of passage". His analysis ends with a fatalistic statement: "Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction, but a reality that people feel … A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it." ...


and the main part here:
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Peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks

Behind government dismissals of 'alarmist' fears there is growing concern over critical future energy supplies

The Observer, Sunday 22 August 2010

Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fuelled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil". ...


And there's the german part of the story:
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'Peak Oil' and the German Government
Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis

By Stefan Schultz - 09/01/2010

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis. ...

And yet another article on the subject:
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Oil Price Ignores Long-Term Supply Worries

September 1, 2010, 1:38 PM GMT - By Angus Mcdowall

You could be excused for seeing a grim metaphor for the death of the oil age in the scenes of destruction visited on the U.S. Gulf coast this summer.

However, production from the ocean floor is growing more quickly than from any other type of reserve and is supposed to allay concerns about ‘peak oil’, the idea that the amount of crude the world can produce might suddenly decline. ...
 
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bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
I don't think the World is anywhere near "peak oil". If the US would ever allow drilling off shore in mass there's enough know deposits of crude waiting for our use for years and years to come.

And I'm sure there are many other deposits of undiscovered crude the World over.
 

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Does anyone know of a substitute for jetfuel besides biofuel (used in a 50/50 mixture for the "Green" super hornet)? Will we go back to using rocket engines once petroleum is depleted?
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I don't think the World is anywhere near "peak oil". If the US would ever allow drilling off shore in mass there's enough know deposits of crude waiting for our use for years and years to come.

And I'm sure there are many other deposits of undiscovered crude the World over.

Beware the day others come invading America for its oil. :p

On a more serious note, I remember reading about a EATER robot in development by the US military that is supposed to be able to go and forage autonomously for plant matter to process into biofuels for its own use as well as possibly generating a surplus of other vehicles. Might be the shape of things to come.
 

noname

Banned Idiot
I don't think the World is anywhere near "peak oil". If the US would ever allow drilling off shore in mass there's enough know deposits of crude waiting for our use for years and years to come.

And I'm sure there are many other deposits of undiscovered crude the World over.

Was wondering if there was any truth to this. Sounds a little over the top.

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe
Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign
oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion
barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel,
we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5..3 trillion.

"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see
their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana
Legislature's financial analyst.

"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found
in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a
formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the
'Bakken.' It stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and
into Canada .. For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead
end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells
decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up
the Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500
billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels
will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years
straight. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one
should - because it's from 2006!

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World

Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the
largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION
barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In
three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this
motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders,
than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia

- 18-times as much oil as Iraq

- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait

- 22-times as much oil as Iran

- 500-times as much oil as Yemen

- and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the
environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America
become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of
people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in
this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION
barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in
the world today, reports The Denver Post

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I do know for a fact that USA has large reserves of coal and shale that can be converted to oil if it becomes economical feasible.
 

Finn McCool

Captain
Registered Member
I'm a bit skeptical about claims that the US has huge oil deposits. The oil companies would certainly vastly exaggerate claims to get at even a small amount of profitable oil without any regard for environmental damage, and as we've seen in the Gulf, the government isn't very good at keeping an eye on oil companies.
 

Scratch

Captain
Well, I guess the US for itself may be able to provide enough oil from it's own resources to overcome any decline in oil production.
I don't think, however, it can offset the decline for the rest of the world. Since esp. in S-E Asia economies are developing at an astonishing rate, the demand for oil will increase over many years anyway.
And then, there's always those allegations the US is holding back with domestic oil drilling to use up international reserves as long as they are profitable and then revert o it's own cheap ones when the others are too expensive.
 

ABC78

Junior Member
I think the US gets most of it's oil from Canada and Latin America with something like maybe 10-15% from the Mid-east.

On the matter of alternative Eco friendly fuels. Dr Robert Zubrin formerly of NASA came out with a book a couple of years ago about moving off oil in order to financial cripple Muslim extremist that are secretly funded by mid-east oil barons. I found his proposal interesting the technical and economic requirements sound achievable. The stuff about defeating Muslim extremist I'm kind of on the fence.

Enjoy

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