Oil's pretty close to an ideal energy form. It's very energy dense, it's easily transportable, and at least the stuff we've been burning for the last century, is very easy to get at and refine. Saudi and Iraqi light has an energy ratio of about 30:1, and costs about $6 or $7 a barrel to pump out of the ground. Cheap. Very cheap.
But the good stuff is coming to an end, and depending on how you want to calculate the numbers there are about 3.5 to 4 billion people who never got a Western standard of living, or even close to it.
And there are, currently, no good substitutes for cheap oil. There is nothing that has as good an energy ratio; there is nothing that is as cheap to pump out of the ground. Technology will let us use a lot less to get things done, but even if we could reduce consumption per capita by half it still wouldn't make there be enough cheap oil to even cover people who are already fully in the oil economy.
Continued here...
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
It is safe to say that, in the 1950s, Marion King Hubbert and Jay Wright Forrester didn't know of each other's existence. Yet, working independently, they were setting the basis for a new science. They were not the first to study the limits of the world's resources. But they were the first to do that using mathematical models that could be extrapolated into the future.
ABC Williams says we have been lying to ourselves about the economy
... skip ...
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams made his humble appearance yesterday at Convention where he was greeted with standing, but polite applause from the House of Bishops. He sat at the back of the room next to the Bishop of Tanzania. Later, at a lecture where he basically bashed capitalism to an overflow audience, the archbishop said we've been lying to ourselves, and described the threefold crisis of truthfulness that he believes lies at the heart of current financial worries. "There has been a "drastic erosion" in the ordinary values of truthfulness and relationship building, said Williams."Our word," he said, "has not been our bond." Secondly, we've lied to ourselves about our place in creation, pretending that our limited world will support limitless growth and that profit is risk free." Thirdly, the Archbishop stated that our nature as essentially communal beings hasn't been truthfully engaged economically and that we've ignored the social impact of profit making. With this critique in mind, our task isn't simply to restore finances to "normal" but to rebuild and reform a system that has proven itself dysfunctional."
... snip ...
Ferretlover wrote:There goes *his* chance of Popeship!
<-Thanks Old Hank for making me look like a "Senstive New age Guy"Ludi wrote:Ferretlover wrote:There goes *his* chance of Popeship!
Henry VIII took care of that awhile ago.
Ferretlover wrote:There goes *his* chance of Popeship!
Wonder if the catholic church will bring back the Inquistition? "Are you a Doomer?? Then, it's the rack for you!"
Jotapay wrote:Club of Rome is generally considered tin foil, unless you actually read the document and see that it really exists. It explains a lot of the UN policies since then. It's quite illuminating to connect the dots.
mos6507 wrote:Jotapay wrote:Club of Rome is generally considered tin foil, unless you actually read the document and see that it really exists. It explains a lot of the UN policies since then. It's quite illuminating to connect the dots.
Considering Club of Rome to be tinfoil is what's tinfoil. Constructing NWO conspiracy theories in order to deny limits to growth is self-serving tinfoil.
Matthew Simmons wrote:Over the past few years, I have heard various energy economists lambast this "erroneous" work done. Often the book has been portrayed as the literal "poster child" of misinformed "Malthusian" type thinking that misled so many people into believing the world faced a short mania 30 years ago. Obviously, there were no "The Limits To Growth". The worry that shortages would rule the day as we neared the end of the 20th Century became a bad joke. Instead of shortages, the last two decades of the 20th Century were marked by glut. The world ended up enjoying significant declines in almost all commodity prices. Technology and efficiency won. The Club of Rome and its "nay-saying" disciples clearly lost!
After reading The Limits to Growth, I was amazed. Nowhere in the book was there any mention about running out of anything by 2000. Instead, the book's concern was entirely focused on what the world might look like 100 years later. There was not one sentence or even a single word written about an oil shortage, or limit to any specific resource, by the year 2000.
The members of the "Club or Rome" were also not a mysterious, sinister, anonymous group of doomsayers. Rather, they were a group of 30 thoughtful, public spirited-intellects from ten different countries. The group included scientists, economists, educators, and industrialists. They met at the instigation of Dr. Aurelia Peccei, an Italian industrialist affiliated with Fiat and Olivetti.
MonteQuest wrote:So, if you are counting on the stock market or real estate values to recover, you may wish to reconsider your short-term, short-sighted, selfish wishes. We must learn how to effectively deal with our immediate problems in a way that is consistent with long-term sustainability, not with an endless growth paradigm that has no future. But, herein lies our collective dilemma: As the number of the people living on this planet increases with every passing second, there must be growth to support these new comers with new job opportunities, more food, more clothing, more housing, etc…or we must come to accept, and learn to cope and adapt to the fact, that our share of the pie is going to grow ever smaller for the foreseeable future. For we are going to have to learn to share.
Carlhole wrote: If your too much of a chicken to buy or sell a few shares, you can at least check the stock now and then, but it encompasses the Cornucopian/Doomer argument very nicely, don't you think?
Return to Peak oil studies, reports & models
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 55 guests