america is the only country in the world

First of all don't patronize me. I know that our military has a strategy for everything stupid it does. And if we want a war with China, which some people in Washington do, then we will have a war with China, and we can even make it look like it was their fault. And even if we lose, our government will still pretend as if we have won.

Second, I didn't say we would "invade" China, I said that in the future (probably not distant) we will be in a war with China. Our government is stupid at times, but they are not stupid enough to actually invade China, especially for no reason (yeah we can get away with Iraq for no reason, but definitely not China). It is going to be a slow starting passive war. If China does try to take back Taiwan, which they are planning to do as soon as they state their independance (Because China doesn't want to fall apart and have other areas follow the same suit, and Taiwan stating independacne would trigger that. China already has missiles pointing at Taiwan, do you think they are playing a friendly game of Battleship here?), then the US will intervene whether China is a trading partner or not. We've already stated so. And if we backed down at that point they could and would keep pushing us as far as we let them. And we all know how countries like to show how big their cocks are. So when China threatens us, you bet your bottom dollar we are going to war. All I can do is post some links that supprot what I am suggesting, I don't have time to do the in depth research for you though, but I'm sure you can handle it on your own if you really want to find out. http://washingtontimes.com/specialreport/20050626-122138-1088r.htm
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/3515/1/188/
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/05/americas_new_china_war_plan.html
So, I'm not the only nutjob out there who thinks that it is likely for us to go to war with China. If it weren't possible, or even probable I doubt our government would waste such time and money on trying to prevent it or protect us when it does happen.

And you are right, they would have a lot more people to go to war with, but I don't know if that is how they would do it or not. At this point they are building up their military, I don't imagine it is for no reason. But again, I don't think it will be that sort of war. They aren't all of a sudden going to be marching down our streets, nor would we theirs. Its going to go tit for tat back and forth for a long time. Until someone launches a big one.

And why do you make it sound like China and the US are best friends? We trade together, that is it. We aren't best friends, it is called business. And the only reason we do business with China is because they have sweat shops and they can produce the goods cheaper than we can. Pretty soon, we won't have anything left that anyone wants anyway. I mean what exactly do we produce? No one wants our crappy cars anymore as you can see from simple sales, and we are outsourcing everything to everywhere else. And what is everyone else doing? Eating up our technology. Don't put it past others to steal our ideas, they have before. If our parts for everything are being made elsewhere, wouldn't that really put our balls in a vice? And our government could stop it if we weren't letting corporations run this country, but that is getting a little off topic here.

Anyway, you can believe what you want, I really don't care if anyone agrees with me or not, I wasn't really coming here to argue or prove any points to anyone. But don't be so quick to rule everything out. We aren't on top it just appears that way from this angle.

 

I wasn't patronising, you didn't clarify. I was just stating that invasion china wouldn't happen.

A proxy war for China is possible for Chinese control of Taiwan as I said. It's an arms buildup. That doesn't mean it's imminent.

We have a very different and complex relationship with China then simply they make our stuff. We have a very large Chinese population and the Chinese, despite the fact that they'd go to war with the US, have a fairly good opinion of the US.

China's military modernization is certainly a major concern, But as of right now, they still can't extend their military beyond their border very far very well.

And a promise made to not let the PRC invade a state is different from being gung ho for a war. Of course we'd have a war if the PRC invaded Taipei.

 

Mmmmk Lodui, well you believe what you would like to, and I'll believe what I would like. Did you even do any research on the topic, or are you just basing your notions on gut instinct? Like I said I'm not the only one who has drawn this conclusion. Why else would our government be making plans? Because they have nothing better to do?

And I'm well aware that our relationship with China is complex, and I am also very much aware of our large Chinese population here in America and how they feel about Americans. But we aren't best friends with them as you would like to make it seem. Like I said business is business. And it is the business of our government to prove how large its cock is so to speak. That is why it has nothing to do with a promise to defend Taiwan, but rather because if we don't defend Taiwan and we back down, they will not stop at Taiwan, because they know we won't do anything about it. They will push and see how far they can get. That is the entire point of trying to become a powerful nation. You simply bully other nations. And I don't picture America being bullied any time soon. And I wasn't trying to trivialize our relationship to "they make our stuff". My point was, the more and more we outsource everything to everywhere else, the less control we have on things. And what they lack in technology they are quickly learning by putting together and manufacturing our parts that we happily give them to do simply because it is cheap labor. And the government continues to let the corporations rule the world.

And I disagree with your opinion on how far their military can extend. Sure, army wise, it might not be going far yet, but they do have a lot of people which means a lot of potential. And they are practicing shooting at moving objects in the ocean (ie naval ships). It is simply my opinion that you don't practice every day for a year, suit up and then not play the game. They are preparing for something. And our government is preparing to defend against it. That is why I think it will happen.

But like I said I'm not here to convince anyone, because people have to draw their own conclusions. I was just stating what I think is going to happen in the future.

 

Explain that to the U.S. Army:

It's getting harder to find members of the scientific community who are not taking it seriously...

 

Why Biofuels are not the answer:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html

Biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Biofuels are all grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit.



In addition, there is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering

 

Why Nuclear energy is not an answer:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html

 

Lets not forget:

 

Well I wasn't going to boast deadbear, but I'm studying political science with a focus on Asian relations, I've taken 2 classes about Chinese politics and US Chinese relations. I've started learning Mandarin as I'm taking foreign language as a co-major. I'm very familiary with the ROC's relationship with the mainland.

And you're right, you can have an opinion. I could care less.

 

Ugh, I should have just left it alone.

I'mma go out for a while, and I'll talk about this more tommorow. But all energy has a negative deficit. That's what entropy is all about. But it doesn't matter if it takes more energy to get energy, because we have a near limitless supply of energy, the sun, wind, oil, coal, uranium, deuterium. We don't need to worry about wasting energy, what we need to worry about is sufficient ways of getting ordered energy. Whenever you make energy more refined, you discard a lot of energy.

Of course our energy infrastructure isn't ready to completly get rid of oil, fortunatly we don't have to.

I'll post more later.

 

That's absolutely retarded.

The sun and wind i'll agree with (though solar and wind power have their own problems). But unlimited supply of coal, uranium? where are getting that from?

Coal: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-7/p47.html

"If demand remains frozen at the current rate of
consumption, the coal reserve will indeed last roughly 250
years. That prediction assumes equal use of all grades of
coal, from anthracite to lignite. Population growth alone
reduces the calculated lifetime to some 90−120 years. Any
new uses of coal would further reduce the supply. . . .The
use of coal for conversion to other fuels would quickly
reduce the lifetime of the US coal base to less than a human
lifespan."


Uranium: http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/petch/2005/0703.html

"Figure 2 (shown in original article) illustrates the different

projections of uranium depletion, pending an increase in​

annual consumption rates of 3%, 5% or 8%. Currently,​

uranium production falls incredibly short of the demand. As​

oil resources become scarce, uranium will have more​

pressure put upon it as a resource. All three different​

scenarios have a similar course until around 2013, where​

they part trails. By 2020, there is a serious uranium​

shortage.​

​

Let's assume a Pollyanna position and assume that uranium​

deposits can be doubled up in the coming decade. Figure 3​

illustrates the 3 different scenarios, depending on the net​

increase in consumption per year. Rather than 2013 being a​

focal year, it is stretched out by 3 years to 2016."​

And deuterium? I can't believe your actually going to bring up something like fusion. We're lightyears away from putting this technology to practical use.

deuterium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Methods_to_produce_fusion

"Pyroelectric fusion was reported in April 2005 by a team at UCLA. The scientists used a pyroelectric crystal heated from −34 to 7°C (−30 to 45°F), combined with a tungsten needle to produce an electric field of about 25 gigavolts per meter to ionize and accelerate deuterium nuclei into an erbium deuteride target. Though the energy of the deuterium ions generated by the crystal has not been directly measured, the authors used 100 keV (a temperature of about 109 K) as an estimate in their modeling.[3] At these energy levels, two deuterium nuclei can fuse together to produce a helium-3 nucleus, a 2.45 MeV neutron and bremsstrahlung. Although it makes a useful neutron generator, the apparatus is not intended for power generation since it requires far more energy than it produces. [4][5][6][7] "


In other words: it's not even close to being put to practical application, much like a large scale biofuel....

UUUmmmm...

A basic physics lesson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI

"In physics and energy economics, EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) is the ratio between the amount of energy expended to obtain a resource, compared with the amount of energy obtained from that resource. When the EROEI of a resource becomes equal to or lower than 1, that energy source becomes an energy sink and can no longer be used as a primary source of energy."

In other words: If if it consumes energy than it produces, it's a dud as a power source.

Which is where Peak Oil comes in at, when more energy is used to reach, mine, and process the oil than can be derived from that oil.....

Tipping point...

 

Solar, Wind, Water, Geothermal: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html

I. Lack of Energy Density/Inability to Scale

II. Energy Intermittency
III. Inappropriateness as Transportation Fuels​

IV. Painfully Low Starting Point​

 

As viable as alien invasions or a nuke war?

Here's a clue:

Oil is finite.
Gold is finite.
Copper is finite.

And once we've hit the halfway mark, all bets are off...

 

Let me give you a more basic one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

The US consumes about 100 quads (quadrillion BTU’s) a year. 95% of that is lost in refinement. Harvesting energy is a losing game.

If harvesting an energy source costs more energy then it produces it is still worthwhile if you’re using a lower demanded energy, which we have many, such as electricity, which is produced using very little oil.

Cross energy solutions can be very beneficial even if there is an energy sink. We’ve always dumped more plentiful easily harvested resources, such as wood, in favor of more compact energy which costs more to refine.


Losing energy isn’t necessarily a problem because we’ll never run out of energy. Energy isn’t even what we’re looking for, we can have lots of energy by burning lumber. But we switched to coal because it has double the energy per pound that wood does. We don’t need ‘energy’ we need structured energy.

The reason we lose 95% of energy isn’t because of bad engineering.

The point I was getting at, was a near limitless supply of base energies. Why we lose so much energy, is not because we want raw energy, it’s because we need highly refined energy. Our main use of energy will always be to purify energy.

From Richard Feynman Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! PG 297

The whole ‘peak energy’ thing is based on a dubious understanding of energy. The most common use for energy we have is to turn excessive raw energy into pure energy.

We’re destined to lose eventually though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

 

How does this all tie back in to the peak oil problem? There are a couple things to take away.

A: We’re going to lose all our oil. Although it’s no where near as imminent as you’d point out.

http://www.reason.com/0605/fe.rb.peak.shtml

B. Alternatives using more energy then they produce isn’t essentially a problem, because it’s impossible to run out of energy. Why do you think you hear the misrepresented figure of how much energy it takes to yield a barrel of oil?


Do you think an understanding of oil engineering by reading a few pamphlets on “Life after the crash.’ is better then the scientific and engineering teams paid to come up with oil policy?

No energy company is planning on jumping the ship because of dwindling oil supplies.

The reason ethanol is a bit costly now is simply because the infrastructure hasn’t been invested to refine it well because there has been no need so far.

Recent supply problems caused by inflation and contract disputes have pushed the price of oil above $50 a barrel, there will be more of a drive to invest in the means to refine ethanol more efficiently.

We already know how to make it more efficient, we just haven’t invested in it.

There’s another matter too, the fact that over the next 20 years, the transportation sector will be transformed. Through the advent of digital technology replacing drive shafts, silicon controlled electric cooling, electro hydraulic brakes, and eventually the transmissions themselves will all be digital. This means automotive efficiency will rapidly increase in the future.

This probably doesn’t mean we’ll consume any less energy at the pump, we’ll probably consume more. Simply less of it will be in terms of oil.

Much of the rest will be in terms of ethanol which will become much more efficient once we invest in the conversion, and energy which we really don’t have to worry about.

We have much more coal in the earth then your link suggests. The link you posted looks at existing supplies in the US. The reason that this is an unreasonable is because our it measures what we are currently able to harvest using present technology.

http://www.condition.org/sm4602.htm

The price of new technology to harvest energy is what we’ve always paid at the pump and on the electric bill. We’ll continue to scrap old technology for new refining equipment, and although this will be expensive, considering how much of our economy depends on electricity, well over half of the US 12 trillion dollar economy, the price of this equipment will be manageable.

The amount of coal we know about, is over 130,000 quads. That’s more then 600 years of global consumption. The global energy demand will double by 2050, and most of this growth will by in terms of electricity.

http://ruby.colorado.edu/~smyth/G1010-22.html

“Estimated coal reserves are about 135,000 quads.”

Once we start digging for oil shale and deep sea gas, we will have more then 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. That’s more oil then we’ve used yet. We have more proven reserves of oil in 2006 then we did in 1980.

This trend will not continue forever, so we do have to find new ways of producing energy, but it’s not the crisis LifeAfterTheCrash makes it seem.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/0383(2006).pdf

However in the more places we look, the more shale we find.

http://www.geotimes.org/june03/NN_gulf.html

We have more then enough energy to spend the next half of this century converting from a fossil fuel economy to a more diversified energy infrastructure.

Moreover you’re look into nuclear power is completely off base. You assume that U-235, which makes up less then 1% of the worlds supply of Uranium can only be used for nuclear power. While the relatively abundant U-238, while not directly of use for nuclear power, can be converted to plutonium using breeders. This technology is available and is already starting to see use. We have more somewhere between 10,000 to 5 million years of energy available through U-238. The large digression is we have no idea of mining technology or electric consumption will be 5,000 years in the future.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf08.htm


And light years away isn’t true for fusion by any means. The first fusion reactor will be completed by 2016.

http://www.iter.org/

While it’s true that ITER is not going to be used for commercial electrical generation, we already know it will work. Fusion will be viable within the next generation, and as long as theirs still water on earth, we will have abundant energy. There is more deuterium in the oceans then we could use before the sun engulfs the planet.

We have many energy concerns, harvesting all this potential energy will be a great challenge, and like the past a greater cost then using the resources themselves. Keeping up with the growing energy demands will be a great challenge, although if our ingenuity keeps up with our energy lust as it has for the past century, we’ll be able to keep up with our demand.

We will always need energy, and our demand for it will always grow. But if we’re wise about our consumption, and this doesn’t mean restricting use, we will be able to assure the energy consumption which has led to such high standards of living in the west to the world.

The supply of energy is almost limitless, what we need is to keep up the ability to harvest it. In the past and present, that’s always been the driving force behind our energy economy.

 

There is no proof that oil is finite. There are more and more geologists supporting the abiotic oil theory, which is that oil is an INFINITE substance and that most oil is produced deep within the earth from the combination of rocks and pressure. Not from fossils as we have been misled to believe. There is a lot of nonsense being pushed that we are running out of oil, which I frankly believe to be a bunch of bullshit. Most of this propaganda is being put out by the oil companies themselves, who stand everything to gain from raping the American people with outrageous prices at the pump. Meanwhile, we have record reserves and record oil company profits. Who really stands to gain from the promoting of the peak oil myth?

Don't believe all the hype. We are not running out of oil. This does not mean I support the unrestrained consumption of oil, because it is polluting our atmosphere and makes the air very unhealthy to breathe. However, it needs to be understood that all REAL alternative energy sources (ie: free energy technology) have been, and continue to be, suppressed by the government. But this is what they want, because the peak oil myth can be used by the Elite in a way beneficial to them, by promoting a false and manufactured crisis in which they can step in and declare themselves as our saviors. Typical problem-reaction-solution scenario.

 

Lodui:


It's too late and im too tired to reply tonight, i will this week though.

one quick point though: I didnt say we were running out of energy sources, just the cheap abundunt kind we've been used to for the past 75years or so. Point being we'll not be able to continue to support the lifestyle that we've grown used to...

 

And rat:

abiotic oil
seriously, you buy into that crap?

 

Seems fair, I didn't respond to yours till Sunday.

And although I agree our immediate supply of fossil fuels is limited, it has always been this way. Even in the 1880's it was the opinion of many geologists that easily accesible oil was going to be out of our reach soon.

And it was true, now much of the oil we dig for is miles deep. Energy is not cheap, abundent, or plentiful now. Aside from the huge economic burdens of new equipment, there are environmental and geopolitical problems.

Energy will always be ellusive, but if our ingunity for recovering it maintains with our lust, it can be fulfilled.

An ideal economy will be a nuclear economy, combined with hybrid/fuel cell transportation. We'll be able to string along on fossil fuels for the 50-80 years it takes for us to get on a green/nuclear economy.

 

America could not possibly think that as there is no such country
The USA believes its partners in Europe should have them, obviously,
since it supplies half of them but puts the button in the hands
of the country it supplies - so your argument lacks a little
I rest my case

 

We could both post supprting links till doomsday (in my opinion quite literally ).

Here is what i know and why i can't put Peak Oil in the same catagory as Alien Invasion.

The U.S. Dept of Energy is taking this issue seriously.
The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is taking this seriously.
Investment groups are taking this seriously (Goldman-Sachs for example).
And so are more and more of the western Nations (France for instance).

They are not just talking about hostile nations disrupting supply or hoarding resources, they are talking about the point at which the energy expended in extracting the oil exceeds the energy obtained.

Don't trust lifeaftertheoilcrash.net?

Fine.

How about the U.S. Department of Energy:
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=11748

copy of the actual report:
http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/the_hirsch_report.pdf

Not nearly as rosey as the picture you've painted...


Best case scenario:

We haven't hit peak yet and will not until about 2030.

I don't know about you but 24 YEARS as the BEST CASE SCENARIO is not making me feel warm and cozy inside.

As far as nuclear war, that might happen when the resource wars really start heating up...

but back to what i was saying:

Your optimism relys on a lot of assumption.

Including an outstanding increase in interest and financing into other fuel sources before the peak.