Sustainability 105
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Sustainability Quiz 2 Answers
Now that finals are over and
you finally graduated. It’s about
time! Here it was. Time for another quiz. You are beginning to slack off. You need to be reenergized with a quiz that
you can’t possibly flunk.
1. How much verified reserve oil
is currently in the Unites States?
Answer 1. Just about any number will do, provided that
you’re happy with it. Only you can
decide whether it’s important to strive for hard data or accept what the hype
from advertisers and politicians say is true.
Here is a hint. What advertisers
and politicians say is frequently true, but their words are often cloaked in
such a way as to hide their real impact.
ü If you get your number from an
internet report, what is the date of the report.
ü If you invent a silly guess
number just to see where this might be going, invent a date.
ü Watch out for lookup number
scales: M means thousands on a Latin scale; MM means millions on a Latin scale;
I use SI units where M (Mega) means millions, G (Giga) means billions, and T
(Terra) means trillions. Most reports
use Latin scales: tricky devils aren’t they?
If you get confused as an engineering, math, or science major. Shoot for a number in barrels (bbl), and Oh,
btw, barrel size isn’t standardized worldwide. Aren’t you glad this isn’t a real test?
ü Here is a hint. I found 26.8 G-bbl of oil in a 2012
report. What did you find? Did you get a better date or number? What might have caused that?
2. How much undiscovered oil
is currently in the Unites States?
Answer 2. Same as Answer 1.
ü No, I’m not a fruit cake, there
really is such a thing. It was
discovered by seismic echos, compared to know production formations, and given
a probability of success from the comparrison.
Slick, huh? These oil men are
sneaky.
ü The same rules apply. Invent a number if you want too. Watch out for scale sizes. Get help if you need it.
ü Here is a hint. The biggest number I could find was 134.0
G-bbl of oil in a 2012 report. That is a
serious lot of oil folks.
3. How much oil is currently
in production in the Unites States?
Answer 3. Same as Answers 1 and 2.
ü I found 7 M-bbl per day. Here is where it gets really tricky. The lookup number was 7 MMbbl (millions,
remember, Latin?). My M means Mega,
that’s millions too (SI). But it’s per
day, so we have to multiply by 365.25 days in the average year. Who wants to do this stuff in days? What did you come up with? I came up with 2,557 M-bbl per day, give or
take. That’s the same as 2.557 G-bbl per
day, close enough.
ü If you got a seriously bigger
number, what might cause that? Take a
stab at it.
4. Now divide the answer for
question 1 by the answer for question 3.
What did you get?
Answer 4. Check your calculator or computer.
ü I got 10 years. Make sure your units are the same size when
you divide.
ü This is the minimum number of
years for oil to last. Scary ain’t it?
ü But wait! My report was made in 2012, this is
2014. I’ve got to subtract the two years
that are already gone. That’s 8 years
left. What did you get?
5. Look at question 2
again. What do you think the odds are
for finding all that undiscovered oil?
Multiply that number by the answer for question 2.
Answer 5. Same as Answer 4.
ü I’m an optimist. I used 100%.
Gee, I wish that were really true.
Don’t you wish that every well drilled came in like the Mary Sudik, that
blew oil all the way from OKC’s south side to Norman. Oh well, back to reality.
ü Still 134.0 G-bbl of oil at 100%.
6. Now divide the answer for
question 5 by the answer for question 3.
What did you get?
Answer 6. Same as Answers 4 and 5.
ü I got 53 years.
ü Add that to the final answer in
question 4. Hmm… 8 + 53 = 61 years.
ü This is the maximum number of
years for oil to last. As Porky Pig used
to say at the end of the kids cartoons, “Yuk.
Yuk. That’s all there is folks.”
ü I don’t care if you got 80 and
5,300. This is science folks, not advertising
or politics. It would be nice if one of
us got the right answer though. Then we
could come up with a plan.
7. Here is a hardball
question. How long will that oil last if
we speed up production and become the world’s largest producer of oil?
Answer 7. Here is the equation you need to make the
calculation.
T = 1 / ln(b) * ln[ln(b) *
R / y0 + 1]
The number b is a business or
political descision. If you decide to
grow any industry at 5% per year, b = 1.05 and ln(b) ≈ .05. For 2%
growth, b = 1.02 and ln (b) ≈ .02. R/y0 are the
results we calculated in Questions 4 and 6: namely 8 and 61 years,
respectively. Eight years is so short it
doesn’t change much: 2% growth reduces to 7.4 years, while 5% growth reduces to
6.7 years. The undiscovered oil allows
more working room, provided that we find it.
Sixty-one years is cut to 40 years at 2% and 28 years at 5%. When our government plans a 5% annual growth
in the economy, they are planning to destroy our nation. You do the math.
8. Want another one? What would we have to do to make that oil
last forever?
Answer 8. This is the theory of Sustained Availability,
which is the use of exponential equations to make a substance last forever
(theoretically).
k = 1/A, and
t = ln(2) / k ≈ 0.693 / k,
So using the results for Questions
4 or 6: 1/8 = .125 or 12.5% and 1/61 = .016 or 1.6%. These numbers mean that if we have 8 years
worth of oil left, we can make it last forever by reducing consumption/production
by 12.5% per year, every year for eternity; or if we have 61 years worth of oil
left, we can make it last forever by reducing consumption/production by 1.6%
per year. As a practicality this cannot
be made to work forever.
The second equation suggests
that a half life for 8 years worth of oil with consumption reduced at 12.5% per
year will be over 5.5 years and with continued careful conservation of this
precious resource we can make it last almost 28 years. Careful conservation can stretch a 61 year
supply of oil to over 211 years.
A 12.5% reduction for at
least 5 years is pretty hard to achieve.
Reducing consumption by 1.6% per year for 5 years should be a piece of
cake. It should be obvious that greater
reductions for longer periods will extend the life of the resource even more.
9. Last question. It’s your move. What is your move?
Additional bonus questions
10. Repeat questions 1-9 for
natural gas.
11. Repeat questions 1-9 for
natural gas liquids (NGL).
12. Repeat questions 1-9 for
coal.
13. Repeat questions 1-9 for forests.
14. Repeat questions 1-9 for any
other resource of interest to you.
Final Grade
As far as this quiz is
concerned you got an A++, 105%, better than Ivory soap. Your real grade will be determined by your
performance in life and by history.
