Posted on 12/17/2013 5:11:54 AM PST by thackney
Exxon Mobil says the drive for higher living standards around the world will keep demand for electricity and transportation fuels growing even as economies get more efficient and governments put a price on pollution.
The company's annual long-term energy outlook, released Thursday, predicts world energy demand will grow 35 percent by 2040 as electricity and modern fuels are brought to some of the billions of people in the developing world who currently live without power or burn wood or other biomass for cooking and heating. Those growing needs will be somewhat offset by a slow decline in consumption in the far more energy-hungry economies of the developed world.
"People want a warm home, a refrigerator, a TV, someday a car, and a cellphone," said William Colton, Exxon's vice president for corporate strategic planning, in an interview.
There are ample supplies of fuel to meet the world's demands, according to the report, and Colton concludes that average annual growth of 1 percent per year is manageable for the world's energy companies.
Exxon's outlook, which forecasts world energy demand through 2040, is noted by investors and policymakers, and used by Exxon to shape its investments. "The last thing we want to do is delude ourselves about the future," Colton said. "We make billion-dollar decisions on this."
The report's conclusions largely agree with those reached in other long-term energy forecasts, including a recent report by the International Energy Agency.
The outlook predicts demand for oil and natural gas — Exxon's main products — will grow steadily because shippers and truckers will need more diesel to move more goods and utilities will need additional natural gas to make electricity for more people.
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Feds say US oil boom end in sight.
Just figures, when we get good news, the feds and oil companies are right there to pour water on it. Its all a game folks. How many decades are we going to believe this crap that oil is a finite resource?
If you honestly believe the earth produces oil at any rate we consume it, you need to go back to your math classes.
If the earth produced oil at our current rate, for the last 400 million years, that quantity would equal the entire surface would be covered with it 6 miles thick.
I didn’t say that. I just said finite in that it never stops producing it. Rate is another issue and where they are finding it is yet another. I just don’t subscribe to the sky is falling mentality because one day someone will solve the perpetual motion mystery along with many other means of producing energy at the least as economic as oil. If they already haven’t. I honestly don’t believe the government and the oil companies want to see that day, which is understandable to a point, but to paint is a chicken little is disingenuous at best.
Producing at a rate several orders of magnitude less than the consumption rate is essentially the same net result.
You really believe in magic energy?
There is no perpetual motion mystery. There’s a perpetual motion impossibility. Thermodynamics proves that clearly.
However this is not to say that people will not find other economically feasible energy sources in the future.
While it is a clearly evident statement that there is no unlimited supply of oil, there is also the simple truth that there is no shortage of human ingenuity with which to replace oil as a fuel source.
The problem with doomsayers in general is that they assume static (or dwindling) resources and methods while also positing no changes in technology or ability to find/exploit resources.
Julian Simon was the master of pointing out such fallacies. Here’s a good article about him:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
and one day it was impossible to imagine man walking on the moon too. It is a shame most people’s boxes they live in are perceived to have the top taped shut. That is a myth too.
Sorta makes us ethanol fanatics appear sober by comparison, doesn’t it?
We have it. NUKES! From nukes, if someone wanted to make hydrogen "fuel" (really just an energy storage medium like a battery), then we can do that, too.
Oil should be relegated to lubrication and plastics. Even then, we should find an alternative for plastics.
LOL!
There’s a pretty substantial difference between thinking outside the box and not even realizing what a box is.
Why do people even limit themselves to a box? Just because someone says you have to be there? I am making rhetorical statements not to substantiate theory into fact, but only to ask the question to begin theory.
Ask the question and find the answers for yourself and not to be led by those who claim to have all the answers. That is what true inventive drive is all about. Queen Isabella made a gambling bet never realizing it would pay off and I’m sure she was stunned when it did. I would wager she just gave Ole Chris what she did just to get rid of him.
You want to battle reality? Go for it. I understand the laws of nature, physics and thermodymanics, and I won’t mess with them. You want to screw around? GO FOR IT! Have at it, have all the fun you want.
I tend to agree with this. They do need better energy storage methods though to fully realize the potential of nukes for things like personal transportation. Hydrogen in fuel cell cars does show some potential, but it still has fairly lousy energy density (compared to gasoline). I’m holding out for very high temperature superconductors as the real panacea.
As to plastics, they are a very small drop in the bucket when it comes to petroleum usage, so if we stopped burning the stuff, I really don’t think we would need to cut the use for making plastics.
Even if you did have zero friction (no possible, even space is not a perfect vacuum and there will be drag albeit very minimal) who cares? It’s not an energy source.
Yeah, I do rather wish those reactors would get more traction.
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