KAEP, there are moments of brilliance in your writing amongst volumes of turgid nonsense.

Volcanic soils contribute to Italy's fertility, but your arguments are all non sequiteurs. Peak oil does NOT mean that petroleum will run out, just that extraction will decline henceforth. Fossil-fuel inputs to ambient energy collection are small, and viable substitutes already exist (biogas for gas, vegetable and synthetic oils for petroleum and biomass for coal), so fossil fuels don't limit renewable energy.

Nuclear fission can displace much coal combustion, and no doubt will boom (especially given the urgency of greenhouse emissions reduction), but it is not currently dissimilar enough in its economics or its environmental costs from fossil fuels for it to be preferable to renewables, which will soon enough become cheaper to deploy than nukes. Wind already beats nuclear on lifetime price-per-kilowatt-hour, and more versatile renewables will follow.

I hope nuclear research does proceed to the point when truly-clean "gen-V" reactors can start cleaning up the mess left by their predecessors, but until that point I can't advocate nuclear technology in its own right.

The Hubbert peak -- decline in production of a fossil energy resource symmetrically matching its rise in a "bell curve" over time -- is something that has historically happened in the presence of comparable energy sources competing on price. It doesn't represent a geologically-determined limit. As an old resource becomes more expensive to exploit than a new one, custom shifts rapidly to the new resource.

Peak Oil cannot occur until the alternatives compete on price. I believe some alternatives are already competitive, but that biofuel production cannot follow quite as rapid a growth curve as the typical oil field has done, so its ramp-up and oil's ramp-down will not follow the expected bell curves. Bowser prices for liquid fuels will continue to soar, but more slowly than you expect, and the petroleum peak will come long before real prices reach tenfold present levels. At that point consumers (those who can still afford food) will be confident in the viability of the various petroleum substitutes, and the oil age can retire gracefully.

Scratch that -- my claim that "Peak Oil cannot occur until the alternatives compete on price" refers only to the kind of peak that has determined the shape of the curve in the past.

Petroleum production can of course decline without replacement by competing energy sources, if demand falls faster than the gradual increase in extraction costs. Energy demand is generally considered to have limited price elasticity, so three things can cause such a reduction in demand: large-scale economic contraction, voluntary changes in behaviour, and improved technical consumption efficiency.

Together, all three could conspire to slow demand growth and prevent prices soaring enough to keep production growing with rising costs. Indeed the 'nicer' choices of improved technical consumption efficiency and behavioural change were assumed in my argument, but I did not take into account the effect on production levels of declining total demand.

I suppose my optimism is grounded in a hope that biofuels will prove abundant enough, soon enough, both to give the economy time to significantly improve fuel efficiency, and to prevent fuel costs soaring so quickly that they cause sudden economic collapse.

I concede the possibility that biofuels will fail to meet this challenge, and that the oil peak will be connected with a major depression.

A more pertinent graph than peak petroleum *production* would be a graph of the total services obtained from petroleum energy. This could continue to rise for some years beyond peak production volume, as increasing prices result in more frugal consumption. That would be a very good thing -- if the peaks coincide, that would mean production collapse due to depression, not substitution or improved efficiency.

The fact that biofuels are already substituting for a respectable fraction of petroleum consumption in many countries, and that fuel efficiency is at least starting to attract attention in the wealthy countries responsible for the majority of consumption today, gives me grounds for optimism.

How many cows have been required to feel A-380 on Melbourne-Darwin rout?

Perhaps, Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Minister knows an exact answer.

Chris Shaw,

I am still puzzling about your posting of an abridged version of Tennyson's "The Lotos Eaters".

Can you connect the dots for me, between nuclear electricity and this venerable classic?

Thanks

Giant wind farm proposed for outback NSW 8/10/07 ABC

"Wind farm proposal ... The developers fear uncertainty over state and federal laws will stall the project. (Epuron)

"Wind farms plan for outback NSW (AM) Map: Silverton 2880
Renewable energy company Epuron is seeking approval to build Australia's largest wind farm in the New South Wales outback and generate enough energy to power up to 400,000 homes.

"The subsidiary of German group Conergy AG wants to place 500 turbines on up to five private properties at Silverton, near Broken Hill, in the state's far west.

"Epuron says the wind farm could produce more than half the renewable energy target proposed for NSW and meet almost 4.5 per cent of the state's power needs.

"Executive director Martin Poole says the company has found the far west of NSW to be surprisingly windy.

"There is already a very high-voltage power line to Broken Hill which is capable of carrying a lot of energy [and] that would connect this wind farm into the strong south-eastern Australian grid," he said."

We need to keep an eye on this one to ensure Atomic John and the pro-nukes don't sabotage this terrific proposal!

"That is, can nuclear plant reach a stage of sophistication where natural fuel is fed in, and fissile-free waste comes out? Of the six Generation IV technologies preselected in 2002 (and reaffirmed in 2006) by the Generation IV International Consortium, only one - the Molten Salt Reactor - has this potential."

Well said...the molten-salt reactor has tremendous potential for safe efficient nuclear operation as well as the ability to unlock the potential of thorium. The thorium-fueled, fluoride-salt version of the molten-salt reactor is particularly interesting. Please feel free to learn more at:

http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/

and

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/forum/

as well as to review documents related to this reactor at:

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/