those are rough estimates but I surely couldn't come up with better ones. And because I read too much doomer porn I actually think those estimates look very encouraging

"higher prices, demand destruction" are the same thing yes?

25% demand destruction in the US means economic chaos.

But involuntary 25% "demand destruction" (read "poverty") in other places around the world won't mean just economic pain... it will mean war. (As if this were not happening already)



Trade Off eh?

We are talking about people's food here... starving people for transport fuel!

Nice trade... reminds me of the LA Purchase.

Want to see illegal immigration skyrocket?

Make corn unaffordable to poor Mexicans. They will have no other choice... USA or bust.

I personally welcome our new impoverished Mexican Overlords.

By voicing my opinion on where we are headed based on current trends, or by, for example, the US attempting to produce 60 billion gallons of ethanol from corn I am in fact not guilty of actually causing those things to happen nor do I endorse them. I wish I were so omni-potent!

As I have said before, the switch from draught power to the internal combustion engine freed-up approximately 25-percent of the arable land at the time for animal feed and crop for human consumption production. A reversal of that trend, that is burning bio-mass to produce fuel as opposed to growing crops for animal feed or human consumption, will reverse those efficiency gains. Lower efficiency, lower standards of living. Again, I am not making these things come true. They are the trade-offs made collectively by others.

I thought the whole point of post peak oil depletion was forecasting higher prices, demand destruction and lower standards of living, which I assume means paying more for tortillas? If not, what are we talking about?

One reason Mexicans might come north in response to higher food prices in Mexico might be other socio-economic problems south of the border that are in fact not peak oil related. Like a disfunctioning economy due to 100 years of poor governance, bureaucracy, incompetence and corruption. Once again, I did not cause those things to happen either.

In Jarrod Diamond's 'life-raft' scenario he predicts no country will be able to prosper while others suffer economic collapse and die-off. He is probably right. However, I guess Norway will probably last a little longer than most? ; - )

I was really quibbling about "demand destruction & ethanol meeting 50% demand" statement & got carried away...

No worries. Many of us would argue that we need to cut down on discretionary driving, and that the world does not indeed need more RV dealerships. But there would be a big difference between demand destruction that resulted in sky rocketing unemployment, and, for example, diverting economic resources to pay for building public transport networks.

Personally, I would sooner see $10 billion blown a year in ethanol R&D subsidies, if it came to better technology and a higher energy yield, than burning $10 billion in jet kerosene to enforce the peace in the ME. The Chinese are financing it anyway! ; - )

But again, no one is asking me?

I'd like to see a source for that as well.

And I think it's just another "business opportunity" & little else.

No matter how good we get at ethanol production it still amounts to food for fuel.

And it's the Chinese who will all but guarantee that no matter how much corn we shuck, all we will accomplish is stripping the flesh from impoverished people with these "green" bio-solutions.

Add all the switch-grass or whatever you like to the mix... American farmers will still be selling their corn to the highest bidder... & that bidder will be Shell... not [s]Archer Daniels[/s] Safeway.

No amount of "drive less" can realistically touch demand growth from China & India alone, much less the whole world.

And when you argue demand will be destroyed lowering Chinese & Indian demand... it's 1938 all over again.

(Didn't mean to hold you personally responsible)

Once you subtract this subsidy, what's left is nothing but the false security of political promises & profit-taking by investors.

Same thing with Canada's Tar Sands projects. The subsidies are so heavy, it distorts the reality of this poor substitute.

The reality is simple & intuitive & requires no special education to understand.

Richard Smalley explained it to me personally.

The oil is there in all these marginal sources... it's just a whole lot harder to get to it & make stuff out of it, than conventional oil.

Orders of magnitude harder.

So much so that it renders any "advances" in bio-fuel tech irrelevant for the foreseeable future.

I have little doubt that we will burn everything combustible before we are done.

And that I think is an inescapable consequence at this point.

But that don't make it right...

From the Business Week article over at Energy Bulletin:

"The spike in the price of corn that's hurting Boerboom and other pork producers isn't caused by any big dip in the overall supply. In the U.S., last year's harvest was 10.5 billion bushels, the third-largest crop ever. But instead of going into the maws of pigs or cattle or people, an increasing slice of that supply is being transformed into fuel for cars. The roughly 5 billion gallons of ethanol made in 2006 by 112 U.S. plants consumed nearly one-fifth of the corn crop. If all the scores of factories under construction or planned go into operation, fuel will gobble up no less than half of the entire corn harvest by 2008."

I'm really thinking about sticking with raising grass-fed cattle. Corn takes a lot of work and energy imputs, and you always have those unknown unknowables, like late frost, hail and too much rain during harvest season. Farming is a Las Vegas gamble ...

Raising cattle on solar grass is so much easier, as long as you can raise your own hay for the winter.

Have you guys seen what the price of hay is now? My God ...

can't wait to pay more for meat, don't eat much of it as it is...

Aaron wrote:



Hmm, a lost decade followed by almost 70-years of uninterupted growth and prosperity? ; - ))

Not lost... at least not to me.

Resource wars in the future may well compare to WWII, as crack compares to Sanka.

And I am as yet unconvinced of the public merits the blessings of technology have visited on mankind.

In any category you can name, modern "advances" have not only failed to deliver on the promises made, but many have spectacularly failed making us wonder if the technologies themselves may have contributed to the failure.

Advances in modern medicine, education, human rights, agriculture etc... have not saved our species from disease, ignorance, cruelty or hunger... in fact all of these things are at never before seen heights.

More people die from treatable disease, starve, are oppressed, & ignorant, than at any other point in human history.

It's difficult to argue the merits of such a system without recognizing it's obvious failure to meet it's goals.

So 70-years of uninterrupted growth and prosperity for 10% of the population, seems more accurate to me.

That's what I wrote. Half of the corn crop will be used for ethanol by next year.

I'm a philosopher farmer. I don't like the idea of using food for fuel. But most farmers are interested in the bottom line, and ethanol is a potential gold mine. Ethanol plants are going up everywhere.

Actually, according to the ADM webste, they are the largest producer of fuel ethanol in the US.

I deserve that...