Robert Hirsch article in WSJ

[mheslep]

WSJ article on four energy experts, includes an updated bio on Robert Hirsch, fusor co-creator. I wonder if he still has a fusor on his desk as reported years ago.

"Mr. Hirsch's career has covered the spectrum from head of fusion research at what was then known as the Atomic Energy Commission to a senior post in the exploration and production department at oil company ARCO, which is now a part of BP PLC."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121432276099000211.html
"Cries in the Dark
By NEIL KING JR.
June 30, 2008; Page R15"

"""
Canary in the Mine

For a man with a disturbing message, Robert Hirsch couldn't be milder. Crisp, perfectly combed, monotone in delivery, the former nuclear engineer reminds one of a retired MIT professor kicking back on his Cape Cod porch.
[Image]
Robert Hirsch

But Mr. Hirsch has become a prophet of sorts for the country's growing legions of peak-oil converts who know him mainly as the lead author of the 2005 Hirsch Report. The actual title of the 91-page tome, ordered up but then shunted aside by the Energy Department, he says, was "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management."

Jim Slutz, acting deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy, says the study was never meant to represent the views of the DOE and was taken out of context by peak-oil adherents.

The report, the first of its kind commissioned by the federal government, didn't mince words: The U.S. had to move quickly to prepare for an inevitable long-term supply crimp as world oil output begins to slump. "Without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented," the report concluded. "Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."

Mr. Hirsch says he has learned a few things since the report came out.

For one, he has revamped his view that the world would hit a sharp peak in production, followed by rapid output declines. Instead, like many in the industry itself, he says world-wide oil production will stick to a sustained plateau -- driving up prices as demand continues to rise. "We have already been on a plateau for sometime," he says.

He also learned that the Bush administration wasn't very keen to hear his gloomy message on long-term oil supplies. "The message came from DOE headquarters that we could work on ramification issues but not on peak oil itself," he said. There are now signs -- among them the bracing views of Mr. Karsner at the DOE -- that the administration is leaning toward a less rosy view of the world's energy outlook.

Mr. Hirsch's career has covered the spectrum from head of fusion research at what was then known as the Atomic Energy Commission to a senior post in the exploration and production department at oil company ARCO, which is now a part of BP PLC.

But he considers his current work as a private consultant equally important. As he pounds on doors around Washington and across the country, he finds that more and more of them are swinging open. He lectured a large group of intelligence officers from around the world this spring. He has traveled several times to New York to sit down with investment-fund managers. He briefed the energy teams of Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

"There is no question that serious concern is germinating," he says. "It just hasn't taken root yet and begun to grow."
"""

[Richard Hull]

The 2005, 90 plus page report mentioned in the article, got Hirsch booted out of his job at Rand corp. He was supposed to write what they wanted to hear but instead stood up and said the emporer had no clothes. DOE hired Rand to do the report and they chose Hirsch due to his connectivity with the oil and nuclear energy biz. Boy, did they regret that decision!

Hirsch and I both noted in our extended discussions that Coal would have to be the near term solution and he felt that, as currently practiced, fusion would not function as a power source in any sort of timely manner.

Hirsch and I are on the same wavelength, but he is closer to the heartbeat of it all with his background. Peak oil has been here and is just hanging around until the right straw breaks the camel's back. As if the infrastructure and technology involved in billion gallon a day consumption rates wasn't fragile enough, we now have a separate economic crisis brewing.

The whole business is a house of cards built on a razor's edge just now and with no real new energy in sight, but lots of feel good patches and pontifications aplenty.

Our want of will and refusal to bull head into real quad unit energy solutions with an 'environmentalists be-damned' attitude shall yet cast us into a fresh and ever deepening abyss. As we sink into the quagmire, we can say we tried to make everyone happy and do what seemed like the right things that were politically and ecologically correct, when all the governement did was what made the people happy and attempt to keep them satiated.

As I constantly note, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Richard Hull

[Frank Sanns]

It looks like I may be meeting Mr. Hirsh this fall. He and I and I believe three others have been asked to speak at an energy conference sponsered by the University of PIttsburgh. I should be getting a firm date and time if anybody in the area would like to hear him live.

Frank S.