sweetblago wrote:Wow great amount of response here, wasn't expecting it! Thanks all.
I am just trying to get more involved. Additional viewpoints in various areas always helps.
You are quite correct, additional viewpoints always help. Except under certain circumstances, those circumstances being that you have already made up your mind on some topic or another, and are just looking for more information with which to rationalize your position.
An example...lets say you are a doomer, someone who believes the human race is doomed. You have already decided this, and are just looking for an excuse to build a bunker, or architectural designs on how to build a bunker, or need to convince your significant other that you need to build a bunker. In this case you need do no investigating or thinking or seeking out new viewpoints, you just need the rationalization, or excuse, to begin building or explaining why you are building this bunker, to yourself, your friends, or your significant other.
In this case, you only need to know a few key phrases, EROEI, Hubbert, bell shaped curve, half is gone, and you'll have all the information you need to succeed in your quest.
But if you are here to LEARN, well, that is something else altogether. Then you have a substantial task before you.
But rest assured, in either case, you'll find folks on both sides of the equation. The main suggestion I would venture, in either case, is look for those who pull their conclusions from news articles, as opposed to scientific publications, bloggers rather than peer reviewed science, always check the previous claims of any given source, and then investigate the contrary position, and the qualifications of the people making those claims as well.
Approached as an intellectual exercise, and with even a basic understanding of math and the sciences and perhaps a dash of economics, you'll sort things out for yourself quick enough I imagine.
sweetblago wrote: My primary business involves helping companies convert their transportation from trucking to rail shipping, and a big a big motivator is the sustainability and environmental benefits it provides.
Another big motivator, possibly the biggest, is cost savings. Do you have any work that might help educate us regular posters on how you have calculated the actual cost savings of converting from trucking to rail? Or is the goal of your exercise to provide same/same costs, and sell the idea on sustainability (whatever that might mean in an inherently unsustainable system) and environmental benefits instead? Or does sustainability and environment benefit cost more, and you have a high hurdle indeed to sell to the companies you represent?
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"