Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 10:44 pm Post subject: Re: The Laws of Thermodynamics - Chatting after the lecture.
keehah wrote:
Quote:
It's "Jevons Paradox" and it's the darling of the doomers. It's become their one hope in totally bumming themselves out.
But I don't think it holds. It makes an assumption of no decrease in the commodity in question. Simply says that if devices become more efficient then people will use those devices more.
Add in the decreasing supply of petroleum and Jevons falls on his butt.
Yes the problem of Jevons Paradox regarding energy use with increased efficiency can be ignored because of the disaster of Peak Oil.
What you're missing here (unless I'm missing something) is that Jevons Paradox is a rather simplified model which considers only use/conservation and price. Or at least assumes no other price determiners except supply and demand where supply is available at a constant cost of production.
One can't simply cry "Jevons Paradox!" and keep driving their gas guzzler when there is an additional factor in the mix.
Oil is getting more expensive and will most likely get even more expensive in the not too distant future.
What this is likely to mean is that people will began to conserve as much as they comfortably can in order to keep their expenditures for fuel relatively constant. They will try to stretch their "travel" dollars.
That conservation will reduce the amount of fuel consumed but is not likely to increase consumption as additional units of fuel would be obtainable at an elevated price. Unless we cut back an extreme amount the price of oil is going to remain high and continue to increase.
They just ain't making much of that stuff anymore.
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 10:53 pm Post subject: Re: The Laws of Thermodynamics - Chatting after the lecture.
Iaato wrote:
Pops wrote:
I have come to view those who shoot down any news or arguments of partial solutions like Bob here is presenting the same as I see those who maintain the status will be at least quo, if not better, simply because that is what we have always experienced. Especially when those same folks don’t seem to be doing anything but typing.
I will use Pops' comment as an opening to apologize to Bob for being a bit pissy in my confrontational opening statements in this thread. It is not my typical style; I truly believed that this might be the aforesaid "friend" who is extremely buttheaded about the topic of peak oil, to the point of maybe not being a friend anymore. You are much more aware, Bob, and are clearly doing a bunch of cool things about it. Lo siento, senor.
I didn't take offense at your earlier remarks. But I will thank you for the apology. It's nice to see someone take responsibility for their behavior on the web. Way to many jerks being jerks, in general.
--
As for "partial solutions", that (IMHO) is where the answers to our problems lie. There's no silver bullet.
Our energy does not come from one source now. Nor is it wasted in only a single utilization.
We're going to have to chip away at these problems in a myriad of different ways.
Aside for the fact that we're likely to move too slowly to keep some people from being badly hurt it's likely to be a very interesting time. A time of great opportunity for those who aren't afraid of a bit of hard work and creative thinking.
If I were starting out in the work world I'd be looking for a way to pick up some specialized skills, a basic business/finance education, and I'd be looking for a need to be met. There's going to be a lot of opportunities opening up during the next few years.
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 11:02 pm Post subject: Re: The Laws of Thermodynamics - Chatting after the lecture.
davep wrote:
BobWallace wrote:
"Lack of fertilizer due to peak oi..."
"Several factors mitigate the threat peak oil poses to fertilizer production. The first is simply that the relevant peak is not oil, but natural gas. Natural gas production will also peak, but the peak is generally thought to come about 10 years after the oil peak (see e.g., here which buys us some time. Second, hydrogen does not have to come from reformed fossil fuels at all. Hydrogen can be made by electrolyzing water, using electricity from the greenest of sources, like wind or solar."
"Most potassium (K) is recovered from underground deposits of soluble minerals, in combination with either the chloride or sulphate ion."
We've got a problem with rock phosphate supplies dwindling, but that's aside from PO. We may have to look to other sources, oil or not.
Bone meal is a good source of phosphate for agriculture but we would have to change the way we process waste bones. At the moment we're "cooking" them to get out the maximum amount of usable material. We might have to divert some of the stuff from the pet food route and into our soil.
(Enough bone meal available? Don't know. Rock potassium is yet another peak substance problem that is looking us in the eye._
The best source for both of these is the bedrock and the soil. After all, that's where it came from before industrial ag took over.
The process would be long without the use of dynamic accumulators (plants that do the equivalent for other minerals that legumes do for nitrogen). Composting and or mulching with these (generally) taprooted plants enables you to get the minerals where they're needed without having to rely on external sources.
It just takes a few years to improve degraded soils. So get moving...
I do wish people would stop blathering on about peak resources for ag. There are sustainable intensive techniques that can deal with it, not all of them being labour intensive to maintain.
I've been an organic gardener for close to 30 years. I grew up on the edge of my grandfather's farm. He was organic without ever hearing the word. And while I was growing up I watch (and helped a little bit) my father garden as he transitioned from organic to chemical.
I've got no doubts about organic on a small scale. And I am aware that (at least some) crops can be grown organically on a large scale. With the same or better yield while using approximately 30% less energy.
But I'm not sure if we can push to 100% organic and still feed the world. We may have to continue to use some 'artificial'. I'd be very happy to find that not so, but....
The point of my post was that we can produce chemical fertilizers without oil. Just trying to snuff that misconception. Whether we can leave chemical fertilizer behind is a second, but interesting, consideration.
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