The Oil Drum

44 comments on Geopolitical Feedback Loops in Resource and Oil Depletion

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Boomy on October 30, 2007 - 3:45pm

It is a good metaphor and made me think of the lakes in the BC Coastal Mountains compared to Eastern Canada where lakes tend to freeze over and then it snows on top of the ice. One steps on the snow and bottoms out when ones feet hit the ice. Higher up in the BC Coastal Mts, the snow amounts on average are about 5 times higher. So when it snows on the these lakes, 1-3feet at a time, the weight of the snow pushes the ice down below the water level. Walking on fresh snow on these lakes can be very disconcerting, when your foot prints start filling with water. Depending on the amount of new snow and its weight sometimes you can sink up to your waste in slush and then bottom out on the ice below. No I have never heard of anyone drowning or dieing from hypothermia in this situation. But one could easily panic and die of a fear induced heart attack.

It just goes to show that when you are experiencing something new, one can only speculate based on past experience and of course, don't panic. Again, a great metaphor!

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memmel on October 30, 2007 - 7:08pm

Nice extension it shows how the situation can appear quite complex. And in your example its not even clear where the ice level is.
But at the end of the day the issue is when is the ice going to break.

Since we are talking about ice you can see that the same concept applies to the melting in the arctic. The models assumed a gradual strain/stress relationship with steady melting. The system in reality had fracture points.

It seems to make more sense to instead assume that the system has stress/strain fracture points then figure out when they would be triggered. For melting ice it makes sense given the currents etc that ice less than a meter thick would fragment so the models should have gone non-linear at that point.

Another example is the melting of the Greenland ice cap. It makes sense to assume once say enough meltwater is available to lift 10% of the cap the system is susceptible to collapse although to my knowledge no model include this mechanical collapse situation even though we have seen it in action.

Looking at oil supply the system its obvious that now that supplies are tight the system is strained and breakdown events become increasingly probable.

And of course any "event" will lead to a lot of other feedback loops getting triggered.

I used to work on something called schocastic resonance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance

Cracking under strain is probably a stochastic resonance condition.
What this means is that strained systems are really undergoing vibrations which drive any resonators in the system. This driven coupling leads to feedback then highly non-linear ( explosive) behavior.

Thus stressed complex systems are full of both vibration modes and oscillators that are driven by the vibrations and subject to feedback.

DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN BALL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Fun_Ball