Hey everyone!
Mr. Petty suggested that a blog be created to continue the discussion of the seminar topics. I know that many of us are eager to ask questions, but some of them get unanswered due to time constraints.
Dr. Michael Economides and Dr. Maria Barrufet both gave greater insight into the world of energy and its correlation with the environment. From discussing non-renewable (coal, oil, natural gas) and renewable (hydroelectric, biomass, nuclear, wind, solar) energy resources to talking about how countries around the world are dealing with their energy demands, I thought that it was a very mind-provoking session.
I personally took a course (ENGR 101) taught by Dr. Christine Ehlig-Economides during my freshman year of college. I highly recommend everyone to take this course (especially for non-engineering majors) because the material that you learn in the class is applicable to daily life. Also you get a chance to possibly see Dr. Michael Economides present again (the PowerPoint he showed tonight was very similar to the one he presented two years ago in my class).
Anyways, enough of me rambling...
Do you guys have any thoughts or questions on tonight's seminar?
I thought it was really intriguing to hear both sides of the story.
ReplyDeleteI felt that I wanted to hear more of Dr. Economides arguments about the strong stands he takes. Like one thing I have been thinking about is what would actually happen if we run out of hydrocarbon, So when Hassan asked him about that , I wished if Dr. Economides shared more of his insite of why he believes running out of hydrocarbons will not be an issue in the future.
One more thing, I wish if they shared with us who eventually got the $10,000 from the bet !
Thank you, Allan, for setting up the AFIL Blog. I hope this will be useful for ongoing conversations related to the AFIL seminar presentations. Post your comments, questions, reactions, etc. to generate further discussion.
ReplyDeleteAmal, I suggest you email Dr. Economides about the bet!!
Haha Amal let us know if you do find out who eventually won the bet! You bring up an interesting point. Dr. Economides was pretty confident that we wouldn't run out of hydrocarbons. Have you looked into the shale discoveries? It's pretty interesting. We talked about it briefly in my Geography of the Middle East course with Dr. Tchakerian and it seems like a resource we might start tapping into. I had a lot of questions about Cyprus and it's possible alignment with Israel given the Palestine-Israel conflict [from the reading]. I mentioned it in my reflection, but in my opinion, this could prove to be a huge problem and could increase hostilities in the Middle East. What do you think? And what did you think about Dr. Economides views on Iraq?
ReplyDeleteAgain, thank you Allan for creating the blog.
ReplyDeleteI think Dr. Economides demonstrates strong characteristics of leadership. He is very resolute on his convictions about the domination of oil and natural gas over other energy sources. I like the fact that he has statistics to back it up. He really convinces me that as of now, the price of oil is high because of politics factors ( like a lot of things nowadays), not because we are running out of oil. He also challenges the green initiatives ( this one I disagree with him because being a Bio major, I go through 4 years learning/making several presentations-with facts and statistics- on global warming, green house gases, species extinctions,etc..). He also did not explain why he didn't believe in global warming. Over all, I like Dr. Economides spontaneous personality ( bringing his students, jokes). On the other hand, I kind of understand Dr. Barrufet's presentation better because she presents both views of the arguments more in depth. ( I hope Dr. Barrufet won the $10 000 because Dr. Economides seems to make a lot of $$$...lol)
I must say that going into the presentation, I kind of had my doubts about how much I would be able to agree with Dr. Economides. From his readings and journal entries, it seemed like he put up a very one sided perspective and appeared to be concerned only with the financial aspect of oil and how much all countries rely on it. After listening to him explain his reasoning for why oil is so important to our global society, I have come to respect his perspective a lot more and I can see and accept the validity in a lot of points that he made. I would have liked to see him address Hassan's question a bit more in depth as well. I would have really liked to have him give an honest estimate of how much more oil (and how long it will last) that is available right now for use. I still believe in global warming and I believe in a more progressive approach towards moving to renewable energy by way of natural gas. I found this seminar to be most interesting as a window to look into the world of geosciences and chemical and petroleum engineering while still keeping one foot in the door of the business and political world that I am so accustomed to dealing with.
ReplyDeleteThis is excellent discussion! Where are the others of you? Get your views/opinions heard.
ReplyDeleteB. Petty
The point he was making about not running out of Oil (As I understood it) is that we wont run out because as it gets more scarce the economic factor will kick in. There are a lot of oil fields that we know about, but that aren't profitable to extract yet. So if Oil rises to $200 a barrel then those fields will possibly be profitable and be drilled. (Also, additional technology may make new fields viable, as we've seen with HydroFracking and U.S. Shale) Additionally, when oil prices start to rise due to the increased expense of extraction, people will start to look more seriously for alternatives.
ReplyDeleteThe point is, we aren't going to wake up one day and suddenly not have any gas. It'll be a slower process where gas becomes more expensive.
I don't think the use of petroleum will ever go away. It'll fade out of common use slowly, but in particular I think military and high-performance machines will continue to use gasoline. Its very energy dense, and easily refuelable. I don't want to wait 8+ hours for my tank to recharge.
Its important to note that our petroleum use is by no means limited to transportation. The majority of plastics are derived from petroleum products.