DrumBeat: July 13, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 13, 2006 - 9:25am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Oil hits new high as Mideast violence escalates
LONDON - Oil prices hit a new intraday high near $76 a barrel Thursday in a market agitated by escalating violence in the Middle East and news of explosions on Nigerian pipelines.[Update by Leanan on 07/13/06 at 11:35 AM EDT]...“Geopolitics, the markets, Iran and Iraq and Lebanon, all that turmoil is in the front of people’s minds and the tension in the region gets the most attention,” said Kevin Norrish, energy analyst for Barclays Capital in London.
“But, it’s also due to the spare capacity in the region, and we’ve known about this for a while now. It’s difficult to replace lost output right now,” Norrish said.
It's officially Daniel Yergin Day.
[Update by Leanan on 07/13/06 at 3:48 PM EDT]
YENAGOA, Nigeria - Twin explosions hit oil installations belonging to an Italian oil company in Nigeria's volatile southeastern delta region, officials said Thursday.Leaders gather in Turkey to inaugurate strategic BTC pipelineOfficials suspected sabotage in the explosions Wednesday along two Agip pipelines in Baleysa state.
One of the blasts blew apart an 18-inch oil pipeline at the Clough Creek Tepidapa flow station, and heavy spillage was reported, said Dikivie Ekiogha, an oil industry adviser to the local state governor. A second blast hit a 10-inch riverside pipeline the same day in Lagoagbene.
The four-billion-dollar (3.145-billion-euro) conduit will carry oil from the Caspian Sea fields, the world's third largest reserve, to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.The route bypasses Russia's energy web, as well as US foe Iran, and is seen as easing Western reliance on Middle East crude supplies.
Business Week's version of the Citgo story has this interesting bit:
The impact on affected Citgo-branded stations will depend a lot on local market conditions, said John Eichberger, director of motor fuels at the National Association of Convenience Stores, a trade group that represents independently owned gas stations.Station owners in competitive markets shouldn't have any problem finding a new supplier who offers them comparable contract terms and may even cover the costs of installing new signs and canopies, Eichberger said. But those selling gasoline in more remote areas will presumably have fewer good options.
One alternative is to shun the major gasoline brands altogether and purchase fuel from an independent distributor. "Unbranded stations typically get a better price at wholesale," Eichberger said. "But the inherent risk is you lose your spot in the pecking order in getting product if there's a shortage."
Meanwhile, Venezuela's Oil Sales to U.S. Drop as Chavez Sends More to Asia
From Tom Whipple: Independence Day 2006 – America's last fling?
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
By what name will future generations know our time?Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth’s capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet’s resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?
It’s Corn vs. Soybeans in a Biofuels Debate
The hack-a-hybrid kit: For 'hybrid hackers' selling plug-in kits for the Prius, high gas prices add up to a big opportunity.
Be green - everybody's doing it. Politicians, big business, moms and pops - the national conversation is picking up steam.
A hundred thousand points of light
The rooftop wind turbine has become a must-have accessory for David Cameron, for energy minister Malcolm Wicks, and for a queue of celebrities eager to mount a very public display of their green credentials. It’s a welcome symbol of a rapidly growing interest in small-scale, sustainable energy.But while rooftop gestures gather pace, politicians are still failing to ignite the genuinely transformative potential of an energy system based on small-scale, distributed power. Far removed from our present, antiquated grid system, we could call such a system Grid 2.0.
[Update by Leanan on 07/13/06 at 9:51 AM EDT]
Why coal-rich US is seeing record imports. Apparently, because we have lots of coal, but not lots of clean coal.
Petrobras has discovered oil. No word yet on the size of the new discovery.
Antarctica at risk over oil, says Bakhtiari.
'Global fear' over energy plans
G8 call for more oil output won't help poor: report
In Canada, conservation is not enough. Study: Energy efficiency won't curb soaring electricity demand
In the U.K., The cul-de-sac comes to a dead end, because "cul-de-sacs often cause people to make long detours to reach shops and schools, encouraging them to travel by car."
One size does not fit all. Below is a ranking of transit solutions ranked by density. What is the most economic solution for a given transportation corridor ?
I prefer to use "tennysons" in ranking. This is the total number of pax past any given point in a day or week, averaged over every point on the line.
There is overlap and "grey" areas for all below, but this ranking is a consensus.
This is something we will probably eventually get on First and Second Avenues, once the city DOT gets moving...
The best two subway corridors left in the US without subways are NYC 2nd Avenue and LA's Wilshire. Wilshire, in theory, could possibly support 4 track subway. But they got "BRT". Orange colored buses (instead of red) that skip ~2/3rds of the bus stops but otherwise just grind through heavy traffic.
OTOH, the southwest terminus of Miami MetroRail (built on an old RR ROW) dumps pax onto a private 2 lane busway (only public vehicles can use it, no private cars allowed) built further SW on the same old RR ROW.
Both are BRT according to the feds. And both serve too high a traffic density for buses IMO.
IMO, any transit corridor with enough traffic to justify BRT can also jusrify electric trolley buses (with or without hybrid or auxilary diesels).
That is why I did not put down BRT as a seperate option. I see it as a subset of electric trolley buses in an ideal world.
Which city are you refering with with 1st & 2nd Avenue ? NYC ?
NYC Manhatten 1st & 2nd Avenue would be better served with multiple unit streetcars on the surface (exception to overhead wire ban) and a subway underneath. I would put the streetcars in street but on a rough surface that "induces" cars to pick another, smoother lane. Thus some, but less traffic in streetcar lane.
People don't like the idea of wires ruining their views or streetscapes...remember all our electrical wires are underground here.
So BRT is really our best option to start with. At least it establishes a ROW for mass transit on city streets which will hopefully calm the rest of the automobile traffic. Later this ROW could be easily electrified when popular support builds...
Trolley wire can be done in a way that is quite nice, even beautiful, but that will be later. One first step might be Roosevelt Island. Up & down the island with a connector to Queens. A bit too small a population but Ok for a demo.
As for "calming Manhatten streets", GOOD LUCK !!
what do you know of rail systems in the Springfield, MO area? I see on google maps they have several tracks but I have no clue what they're used for.
This is one of the locations I'm thinking of relocating to.
Kind Regards,
-C.
I really know very little of that city, sorry.
Springfield is well-served by BNSF. There are main lines through there, not likely to be abandoned. Good choice! (I consulted my husband, who is a railhead)
I think we're leaning towards Sprinfield, MO. We're all excited to be moving away from here (Houston, TX area). I grew up in the Ozarks...what a beautiful place it is :)
-C.
You must really enjoy the humidity.
Speaking of humidity.....
Here in the Asphalt Wonderland of the Valley of the Sun: the heat island effect plus global warming is making Phx very hot and dry this year. This low relative humidity [currently 14% and dewpoint at 50 degrees, projected high today of 113 F] makes for an effective and long swamp cooling season.
Yet most Phx businesses and homeowners are not willing to convert over to swamp-cooling to take advantage of the tremendous energy savings [a fraction of A/C costs]. This makes absolutely no sense to me. If Phoenicians were legislatively compelled to have both cooling sytems on their buildings, we could dramatically reduce electrical usage and GHGs, partially reduce our summer smog warning days, and then profitably sell this excess energy over the national grid to the high-humidity Southern areas.
When I take trips down into Mexico, many people do not even have swamp-cooling, much less A/C, yet they are perfectly acclimated to this lifestyle. They will work in the sun and much higher humidity than Phx all day for $6/day, then go home to an uncooled house. Wiping the sweat off one's brow and drinking lots of water is entirely doable, and has been done for uncounted years before the advent of the industrial age.
This is the appropriate future model for Phx, yet I see no effort by our local leaders to gradually shift us to this lifestyle, starting with mandatory swamp-cooling. My emails to the city council go ignored, yet presenting an early, but modest lifestyle shift is the best way to prepare Phoenicians for the postPeak future. Additionally, many wealthy locals would choose to relocate elsewhere, freeing up much land that could be converted over to humanure and permaculture farming.
Most of the time, I feel like an Easter Islander warning people not to cut down that last stand of trees. Unless the American mindset changes soon, I really believe most Americans will gladly ship off their children to die on foreign shores so that they can misguidedly mourn in thermally controlled comfort. Time will tell if we are so greedy that not only will we wreck their future habitats, but we will also prevent their chance to live in the mess.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
did you take into account the extra electricity needed to help manufacture those swamp coolers from raw resources( for example all the way to extracting the iron ore or boxite from the ground and not starting at the point of manufacture of the unit which some alt energy 'solutions' start their calculations) to installation and maintenance?
also did you account for the extra watter usage the swamp coolers will add to the city?
your original plan of just abandoning the city to the desert sounds better.
Thxs for responding. If everyone in Phx switched to swamp, the water evaporated to cool the inside of the buildings would be much less than our current usage on our numerous golf courses or our incredibly plentiful carwashes.
A swampcooler takes a fraction of the energy to manufacture compared to an A/C unit, and is a similar fraction of the cost, and many people in Phx already upgrade their A/C units to a higher SEER when the economics makes it worthwhile. So, the financial outlay required for a swamp is a no-brainer.
A properly tuned swamp will only require a water bleedoff of a few gallons a day to help reduce hard water buildup and prevent water stagnation--most people waste much more water than this by stupidly running the bathroom tap while they brush their teeth. This water can be routed to outside landscaping or a garden versus the standard practice of most A/C units routing their condensation to the sewer.
Maintenance can be easily done by the homeowner, it basically requires periodically changing the pads--no more difficult than changing an A/C air filter except you must go up on the roof. My swamp is an advanced design and I only replace the pads about every five years when the hard water buildup becomes excessive. I yearly oil the motor and the squirrel cage bearings, check the v-belt and small water pump, turn on the water flow, remove the insulated cutoff panel and upduct panels, then I am good to go.
When winter comes, I re-insert the panels, shutoff the water, drain the resevoir, and flip off the thermostatic control in the house. Piece of cake.
Compare this with the specialized hi-voltage training, knowledge of electronic and mechanicals controls, and all the fancy tools required to be a licensed, certified A/C technician. When a Phx homeowner's air conditioning unit breaks down here during the summer--they really get hot under the collar when presented with a legitmate bill!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I try to live in places where you don't use AC.
It will be a heavy, heavy lift politically, but even the major business groups are realizing that we have to change the paradigm when it comes to cars and trucks. The present situation is not really functional in many areas and curbed economic activity. The bomb waiting to drop is congestion pricing. Popular opinion is somewhat against it as a stand alone proposal, but I think that if it is integrated with an array of alternative transit options like subways, bike lanes, BRT and maybe residential parking or something, it could gain broader support. But it will take leadership from the top and pressure from the bottom!
I do think eventually the BRTs will transform into electric rail or electric buses.
The report I have made for my master degree is picking up attention here from local official. It helps that I keep talking to them about it!
What I wanted to tell you is that I have made a systemic solution diagram for the systemic problem that will occur (or is occuring) regarding to Peak oil.
For the transportation segment, I have put thow things :
1. Biodiesel from algea
2. Train, electric light rail for people and goods
Because my planing is made on the assumption that whatever goes on, it will be profitable, it is really picking up interest.
In a nearby town, there was a plan called "Agenda 21" that miserably failled to bring a new vision in the way we live. I was asked to change a wee bit my solution diagram in order to bring that new vision for the whole county.
I will meet the mayor of that town next week and there is a good opportunity for me to work full time on bringing the change needed.
The local development center has even given me some funds to print about 50 copies of my report on oil economics decline (french) to give to some official and leaders.
Regarding food production, we have started a community organic garden, with the land and some working freely given by the city. Roberval's city council is understanding very well the problem and helpful. Funding for starting will be obtained from local social economy funds. The garden will be a project under the Not for profit organisation called "Hymnuniterre" a pun meaning lots of good things. Anyway, this project will start this autumn and a biointensive gardening course will be given by the adult school.
As for funding and money exchange, I have started a plan for implementing a local (county) currency based on the Salt Spring Dollar. I have already gained backing from local credit union and one bank, others will follow.
The only thing I havent had the time to start is the website. I plan to do it in french with an english part. Right now, I teach my secretary to start the web site.
We will let you all informed on future developments
Pascal
I just want to let you know that I personally appreciate all you do to promote mass transit. As a regular rail rider here in New Jersey, I am fully cognizant, as you are, of the absolute necessity to expand rail transit whereever we can, especially as the age of cheap oil comes to an end. Please continue your fine work - I always look forward to your contributions here in TOD.
Erwin
Headline: Gas giveaway fuels frenzy in Milwaukee
The Associated Press
MILWAUKEE (Jul 13, 2006)
There were two car crashes and four people arrested in excitement over a gasoline giveaway yesterday to reward the city for its safe-driving record.
For the most part, hundreds of drivers waited patiently for hours for about $30 US worth of free gasoline each that Allstate Insurance provided at one station.
However, some motorists started lining up before midnight and the queue stretched far from the station into a residential area, trapping some residents in their driveways, said police spokeswoman Anne Schwartz.
That led to fights and arrests for disorderly conduct.
In one case, three officers were sent to a hospital as a precaution because they were spattered with blood from someone's bloodied nose, Schwartz said.
The two crashes apparently occurred when queued-up motorists tried to let friends into line, Schwartz said.
"Any time you offer free gas when it is $3 a gallon, it is not surprising people would get excited," she said.
Allstate gave away a tanker truck load of gasoline as a reward to Milwaukee for ranking No. 1 among mid-sized cities on its safe drivers list.
Specifically:
I betcha, somewhere else in this long DrumBeat, someone will say "we aren't doing anything!"
Cornucopians declared a years ago that peak oil would not even be a speedbump on the highway of progress. Doomers declared years ago that peak oil is a cliff at the end of that highway.
... I guess I'm glad I'm not calcified. I'm glad that I can see a 30% humand response as ... cautiously ... a huge societal movement. A huge change from the seeming "frog in hot water" condition of two years ago.
Likewise, all of us living today were born and raised in a period of human overshoot so we don't recognize it as the danger signal that perhaps we should. There is NO solution to this short of finding several more earths or a massive reduction in population. Since the former is extremely unlikely, the latter is the probable result of our population overshoot.
Everything that we do short of reducing the population amounts to re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. I am aware that you do not believe this but as I said, being born and raised inside the context of an overshoot event, it's not likely that you would believe it until it occurs. Thus, I don't see my position as "calcified" but as the result of careful consideration of the observable facts surrounding our population, our resulting resource consumption, and our resulting impact on the environment.
I would be thrilled if we found a technological solution to all this that gave us more energy, cleaned up the environment, and allowed us to feed 7+ billion people in a sustainable manner. But it's extremely unlikely to occur.
So yes, I am pleased that people have moved to the end of the ship still sticking out of the cold waters. But does anybody have a life jacket? ;)
Not enough, and it will require a SLOW sinking of the Titanic to get anything done, but I trying to create a solution.
Personally, I prefer 'Polishing the silver on the Hindenburg' myself.
In my lifetime, the human population of the earth has just about tripled. The population of most all other species has fallen by a similar amount, depending on the species. And if our population should reach 10 billion, which it would without peak oil, most other species would simply disappear as we would continue to take over more and more of their habitat.
When you say, "We are deep into overshoot and there is NO way out. Even if peak oil were 100 years out, that would only exacerbate the problem. If that happened we would just go deeper into overshoot, multiplying the suffering and misery when the collapse did come," what exactly does "there is NO way out" mean?
Is it the worldwide collapse of industrial civilization?
Is it a significant, forced (by energy constraints) reduction in human population? If so, how much is needed to count as a collapse? And what if we significantly reduce the human population via attrition--much lower birth rates coupled with a notmal death rate? Would that be a collapse (because we're being forced by resource limits to do something drastic), or would it count as an adaptation?
Is it a combination? Something else?
Again, this is purely an attempt to undertstand your position. I see comments like yours online all the time, and I'm never sure exactly what the speaker means.
There is a solution but it's not one likely to be taken voluntarily by homo sapiens - reduce the population. Ergo, nature will do it as it always does. Observing other examples of mammalian overshoot, it's not unreasonable to expect a 90% dieoff within one or two generations so we're talking about a remaining global population of around 600 million. But further, after such dieoffs, such populations tend to continue downward for various reasons. So if I had to bracket it, I'd guess that the dieoff is somewhere between 80% and 100% of the species with the most likely number matching other mammalian dieoffs in the 90% range.
Now why do I disagree with the folks at Anthropik and even with Tainter and Diamond? Because I believe that a society can be engineered that deliberately evaluates every "advance" against the complexity costs that it imposes as well as whether the advance is sustainable or not. But how do you avoid the competition spiral of peer polities that Tainter mentions? If you are the most advanced civilization and committed to keeping your species from destroying the planet, you terminate any possible competitor, ruthlessly and totally. If the rest of homo sapiens wander the globe as hunter gatherers, you don't care. If they develop an agricultural civilization they are embarking down the road toward complexity and you will either be absorbed by them or absorb them yourself resulting in (a) increasing complexity and (b) increasing population again. To avoid this, you destroy the competition. Do I think this society will actually occur? No, but as a mental exercise, I can envision it.
Note: I do NOT like the results of this mental exercise but I cannot see how a technological civilization can exist and avoid the competitive complexity spiral except by ensuring it has no competitors. Well, another way is to remove yourself from planet earth but that doesn't look likely at this point, does it? I do believe we have the tech to build space colonies that could exist independent of planet earth but I don't think we have the desire or will to do so, thus such an option, while possible, is not something I expect to occur. In either case though, such a civilization would have to place hard limits on population and vigorously enforce them as well as carefully evaluate every single "advance" and decide if it was sustainable or not, and whether the change in complexity was worth what the advance represented. However, if I allow for my technological civilization to be a "singleton" (as we call such things in the software biz), then I can see a way for it to exist and survive.
Finally, as I said, this is all hypothetical and while our knowledge of mammalian overshoot is good, homo sapiens has a wildcard, our intelligence, that has on more than one occasion extended the overshoot period even further than was expected. So we may pull another rabbit out of the hat but unless we pull out a rabbit that can sustain 7 billion people, we're just delaying the inevitable.
I understand our current world population situation to be one of growth, which is decelerating fairly quickly from it's peak several decades ago, in percentage terms. My understanding is that current trends will have population stabilizing around 2050, purely due to voluntary decisions to have fewer children. Further, it is very likely that population will fall reasonably quickly thereafter, like it is in Russia, Italy and Japan currently.
Thus, I would argue that "population overshoot" does not describe our current situation. You would probably describe it as having stabilized at a higher level than is sustainable, but that's not quite the same thing.
Would you agree?
Check this graph over at dieoff.org but there are numerous others that show exactly the same thing. In historical terms, we are near the peak of an exponential explosion. If you compare 2006 to 1980 it doesn't look so bad. But if you compare 2006 to the great bulk of human history, the exponential shape of the curve is patently obvious.
Thus, no, I do not agree that it has stabilized because it has not. The world population increases by about 85 million to 90 million annually. That's another billion in 12-13 years. That's doubling the entire population within a human lifetime and that number of new bodies per year has not slowed down at all. Only in the OECD nations have we seen growth rates dropping and even there they increase at measurable percentage rates, which means they remain on some exponential curve. Even a 1.1% growth rate as the US has now will double the US population in under 70 years. Do you understand that any steady percentage increase results in a growth curve and the only question is the overall shape?
The only deceleration occurring is because we appear to be at the resource peak and it is beginning to constrain further growth. This is true in water, arable land, oil, natural gas, and numerous other resources.
For the moment, I'm just talking about population issues.
"But when one understands the process that has been responsible for population growth, it becomes clear that an end to growth is the beginning of collapse. "
This is fine theoretically, but it seems entirely divorced from reality. The fact is that 1st and 2nd world population stabilization is due to affluence, not poverty or resource constraints.
The fact is that Africa is the only area of the world with high death rates, and it's the largest area of the world that still has high birth rates. Poverty causes high birth rates and death rates, affluence lowers both. The causes of poverty in Africa has very little to do with Peak Oil, though obviously PO makes it worse.
The fact is that humanity is voluntarily reducing its own growth rate. It hasn't gotten there fully, but it's getting there.
High fertility rates were caused in large part by a dramatic drop in infant mortality - it took a while for birth rates to follow, and that lag caused a spike in growth rates. 50 years ago the average family size in the world was 6-8, now it's less than 3. Fertility rates have plummeted, and are just above replacement level (replacement is 2.1, and fertility is at 2.6), and are continuing to drop quickly.
You may feel these improvements are too late, but wouldn't you agree that it's very different from yeast or reindeer?
Overshoot is the name for both a process and a condition. A population that has stopped growing because its resources are gone is still in an overshoot condition, it just hasn't started to crash yet.
I don't know what to say to this. It's completely at odds with what any professional demographer or population planning expert would tell you. Are you suggesting that the below replacement fertility rates in Europe, Japan, Canada and non-immigrant US are because of poverty???
Poverty in Africa is due to a lot of things, but peak oil and global resource depletion aren't among them. Starvation in the world has nothing to do with natural limits to food production, and overall obesity is a much greater health hazard than malnutrtion. Chinese population planning may not have been democratic, but it was a rational, deliberate policy decision, not a random thing or a reaction to previously reached resource limits.
Is world population undesirably high? Of course. Is it causing terrible damage to natural systems and widespread extinctions? No question. Will it inevitably decline amid catastrophic social collapse? I haven't seen anything any good support for that.
Ecologists on the other hand tend to take the view that a reproductive population has certain characteristics regardless of the level of development of its constituent organisms. There are certain fundamental characteristics shared by populations of reindeer, yeast and humans that produce analagous patterns of growth, stability and collapse.
The argument with humans has always been that we are smart enough to overcome our instinctive biological drives. I believe this is where we part company. I see precious little evidence that we as a reproductive, competitive species are willing or able to restrain our overall growth through an application of conscious will.
If we accept the notions of Peak Oil and environmental degradation, there is no question that a decline in human numbers is going to occur. The questions are, when will it start, how steep will the slope be, and how far will our population decline?
My position is that the deceleration of human population growth, rather than being evidence of our good fortune and intelligence, is a signal that the decline is already underway. How steep it gets will depend on the degree of interaction of oil depletion and climate change events (including the possibility of one or more tipping points).
One thing that would help us out is for there to be a longish period of gradually increasing troubles and minor shocks that are obvious enough to wake the species up to the need for change, while still having enough time and resources left to do something about it. Will that happen?
As to how far the human population will ultimately decline, that is even more a matter of conjecture. I base my predictions on historical population levels absent large amounts of concentrated energy, plus the ameliorating effects of accumulated knowledge, minus the undershoot that ecologists have observed in the collapse of other populations, minus the reduced carrying capacity of a world afflicted by resource degradation and GHG overload. So all in all it balances out in my mind at a billion people.
It's not science when you prefer theory to data.
C'est what? Theories are how science works. Data is not the defining feature of science, data is gathered to confirm or refute theories. Perhaps the word you were looking for is "hypothesis", but in that case I can assure you that there are sufficient theories and data in ecological studies to carry the notion of population overshoot well beyond the status of a hypothesis.
My hypothesis is that we, considered asd a population, obey much the same rules as other populations that have been studied under controlled conditions. It's hard (not to mention unethical) to conduct a controlled experiment on overshoot with humans, so there is admittedly little direct supporting data, beyond small examples like Easter Island.
On this one, I'm quite comfortable with the underpinnings of my hypothesis and the conclusions I've drawn from it. Others will need to wait for more signals before accepting such an apocalyptic worldview, and I have no problem with that. I'm just one yeast cell in the petri dish.
Instead you want to move to indirect support (your view of generic mammals) and work your way forward again from there.
I mean, look at all the brass tacks things the US did in response to World War II: gas and food rationing, metal drives, telling car companies no more consumer vehicles, etc.
Do other mammals respond that way? Did that happen on Easter Island, for that matter? Are you sure that won't happen in the US again?
As a reminder, I am not your mirror image. I am not a Pollyanna who thinks he knows how the future will break. I'm a moderate who would challenge anyone on either extreme for a known and prognosticated future.
My concern is that we are facing a complex interlocked set of extremely large problems, and solutions to problems in one domain may exacerbate problems in others others. A crude example of that is installing huge amounts of coal-fired electrical capacity because oil and NG have gotten too expensive or the local supply is limited (as in China). Good for the Peak Oil problem, bad for the Global Warming problem.
People are not known for altruistic behaviour when their well-being is threatened, and we tend to be very short-sighted when it's in our personal best interest. We will indeed do everything possible to survive, but as my understanding of the nature, scale and interactions of the problems we face has grown I have become increasingly pessimistic that we will be able to figure out the right things to do, especially from a whole-system perspective.
Marginal Revolution on PJ O'Rourke on Moral Sentiments
... hot off the presses, and apropos.
Given that we are a pretty competitive species, any plan that involves giving up a competitive advantage that might be seized by someone else does not have a high chance of success. That's why I prompt people to make only changes that are financially beneficial to them. The fact that they are helpful in the fight against PO/GW is an incidental sweetener.
The message seems to be that the human species have demonstrated a moral compass (regardless of where we think it comes from) and that compass has shaped the outcome in human societies. Some fare well (Sweden, Canada), some fare badly (Albania).
The doomer, predetermined course, seems to say that the whole world is one big Albania. That does not capture the full reality.
BTW I read "Eat the Rich" a few years ago, and it was very good.
But again, I think we are getting back to what you think/feel being the proof for what you think/feel.
You have not shown in any rigorous way that the world is one big Albania.
People are very altruistic at an individual level. Nations tend to be less so, though. Governments are generally unwilling to take courses of action that could put their citizens at a relative disadvantage to those of other countries - if only because it tends to shorten their time in office.
How do you get Sweden to become an Albania without proving they are ultimately the same?
Such things as:
Some facts supported by data:
- Peak Oil
- Global Warming
- Soil depletion.
- Fish stock depletion
Analyses:- People tend to be more selfish when in large groups or if they believe they will be out-competed for a desired good.
- Altruism can only be reliably expected to extend to family or possibly tribe members.
- People become tremendously inventive when their lives are at risk, but the horizons of their altruism may be narrowed.
- People tend to ignore signs of problems until they become overwhelmingly obvious, especially if the solution will take work and self-denial.
Analogies- Yeast cultures grown on non-renewable food substrates overshoot and die off.
- Populations of many different types of animals kept in overcrowded, resource-poor conditions develop dysfunctional behaviours.
Now, how those all balance out depends on your personal opinion, even if you're scientifically inclined. Will our inventiveness overcome the restrictions imposed by oil depletion? Will our altruism overcome our tendency to protect our families in times of crisis, at the expense of others outside our circle? Will our intelligence overcome our urge to deny developing problems until too late? If you answer yes to these, you will not fall into the doomer camp. Answering no, especially to the first question, means that our risk of collapse is extremely high.I don't want Sweden to become an Albania. I'm trying to foster the exact opposite outcome. I know enough about human nature, though, to be dubious of the prospect of teaching people to be altruistic as the doors in their personal world begin closing.
then logic dictates that I halt, and go no further.
Now, not making a prediction, projection, or promise ... I can make the humble conjecture that it will come to a tension between conservation, new tech, and human behavior. TBD.
(BTW, I think (conjecture, not prediction) ocean depletion might be a bigger problem than peak oil. I hope the ocean is more robust than I fear it really is.)
But hey, the future is peordained, and so you are off the hook.
But we can each choose how far we want to go beyond that. I don't think Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments requires us to give away all our belongings and live the life of a saint ... but small sacrifices may not be out of line.
I think small contributions might be (at a minimum) "actions that we would expect from an Impartial Spectator who is sympathetic, but objective and all-knowing, yet still sympathetic anyway."
That's what keeps us all from falling to the worst sort of human behavior, decline, and collapse.
It is a very bad sign, in science, when a theory becomes an article of faith.
How many read the history books?
How many simply re-write their history books?
Columbus "discovered" America in 1492? Yeah. Right.
How about America "discoverd" the world in 1942?
I assume that you think you have all the answers to each ... so why don't you just lay them out. Extra credit if you can show mathematically that the percentage of humans who read history is categorically insufficient.
OTOH, there is such an immense library of histories that it is physically impossible to grasp all of history. We have to rely on history experts (professors) to point us toward the more important parts of history and in that regard, I think many of my history professors were woefully short sighted because they had a "speciality" such as The French Revolution or The American Civil War and they were not able to place those events within the bigger river of homo sapien expansionism across this globe.
I think that works like Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel" (which I have not yet read even though I know its basic message) are the kinds of things that ought to be taught starting from high school so that students have a broad stroke painting in their heads of how we humans have spread ourselves across the 4 corners of the Earth and how different sub populations met with different fates due to luck and adaptive organization of their social orders.
FWIW, I think both books paint us (all humans) as carrying the same loose set of skills and motivations. I did not take away any firm answer on the ultimate fate of the human species from either book.
I read about half of "Collapse" and took away that there are big known problems out there - often with imperfect solutions.
Fortunately it was not proven that the imperfect leads to failure. There are risks certainly - which is why we all (from peak oil groups, to wildlife conservationists, to global warming activists, etc.) can't go home quite yet.
;-)
Me too. For summer reading pleasure. It was too thick of tome to keep plowing through. The biggest surprise for me was Chapt. 1 on Montanna. Who would of thought? We all kind of know about Easter Island. But Montanna? Right here in the heart of the heartland?
As for "fate of humanity", what do you mean "we" kimosabee?
I suspect that there are some groups on this planet who expect (no even plan for ...) "the other guy" to go over the edge first.
The discussion for the last few days has been with dieoff folks who see that outcome, for humanities, as preordained.
... to talk about who goes first would be to accept that premise as a starting point.
We should all read more history, myself included.
Don't historians oft bend the history without breaking it? :-)
- Europe, Japan, the US, and other nations accounting for roughly half the population of the world have reduced their fertility rates to replacement or below (replacement being defined as 2.1 children per woman).
- that the world overall has reduced it's fertility rate from 5.0 in 1950 to 2.6 today, and that fertility rates continue to decline in a pretty linear fashion (e.g., from 3.0 in 1992 to 2.8 in 1999 to 2.6 in 2005).
- that overall world population growth rates hit a peak of about 2% around 1960, and have declined to about 1.1% now.
- that population growth has fallen more slowly than fertility rates due to "population momentum" due to young populations and low death rates.
Would you agree with these?I agree that populations and population growth is declining in the areas you mention. I disagree with the formulation "countries have reduced their fertility rates" because this implies conscious, deliberate actions. While there have been some deliberate actions (deregulating birth control and abortions, one-child policies etc.) I am not convinced that those measures are the main reason for the decreases. If you were to say "fertility rates have fallen in these countries" I'd have no problem.
My second thought is that the argument is moot. A slowing of the population growth at this point, whether it's by design or resource restriction, makes little difference to what I perceive as the outcome. If we can't reduce the world's population by, oh, say 30% in the next generation, we're going to be in a world of hurt. A population growth rate of 1.1% (hell, even 0.1%) isn't going to get us there.
What do you think are the reasons? My understanding is that they are education, urbanization, pensions, longer lives, etc.
"My second thought is that the argument is moot."
I agree that our population levels are much higher than desirable, and that they're doing much harm to the world. But, the "argument" seems important to me because it seems to be a metaphor for our view of human rationality. If we believe that humans are no smarter than yeast, we can easily believe that our societies will not be able to handle the challenges ahead. If we believe we're smarter than yeast, we may be a bit more optimistic.
Would you agree that in Japan, Europe and the US that fertility rates dropped below replacement due to conscious decisions on the part of women and couples to not have more children?
I agree that the reason fertility is dropping is because perople are deciding to have fewer kids. The reasons for that decision appear to be complex, though - different motives would apply in Iran than in Italy, for example, because those two countries are in very different situations with respect to affluence and womens' rights.
I wonder if there are motives we are missing because they are hard for people to articulate. I've heard many people say "I don't want to bring kids into a world like this" without being able to justify it any further than that. Then there are people like my sister and me. We both decided when we were quite young (under 16) that we did not ever want to have kids, but the justification never went beyond "I really don't like kids all that much." There are obviously deeper sentiments behind these inchoate expressions, but I haven't seen any research that addresses the question yet.
As to whether we're smarter than yeast, I think the answer is "Yes and no, depending on what you mean by 'smarter'". We are definitely more rational as individuals, but I don't think reason has the degree of influence over species behaviour that pride ourselves that it does. Large groups of people can behave enormously irrationally when faced with difficult problems. Demagogues of all stripes know this and use it to their advantage. There are lots of smart people in religions, for that matter.
So while we hairless apes are pretty damn clever, get us in a troop confronting another troop over the rights to a watering hole, and the old monkey-brain takes over. Ultimately, I feel that will be our undoing - while individuals will be smart enough to come up with solutions, the great majority of people will be simply unable to hear them.
+1, Alas...
To me the are a sign that while we monkeys are not perfect (we're a long way from it), we do move to action when it looks like we must.
Sorry Nick, but this is just not the case. As I said, some nations are voluntarily reducing their population growth rate but that is not the reason the population growth rate is being reduced in Africa and in most of Asia. We have diseases related to malnutrition, whe have AIDS, we have war, and we have a host of other problems. These are all Malthusian problems, there is nothing voluntarily about it.
But of course you do have China, where the reduction is still not voluntarily, but dictated by the state. Now if we just had a world dictator.....
In developed or undeveloped socieites? Are you saying birth control has no effect, or that at the global level it is having no effect because of unchecked growth in less developed states? Europe has declining native population, as does Japan. The US would be near to stable if not for immigration.
The problem with population control is poverty but, more to the point, ignorance and religion.
Remember, despite the OECD nations having low growth birth rates most of them are still growing and overall the planet is adding 85-90 million new bodies per year, or 1,000,000,000 roughly every 12 years. And that number has held steady for years now. In just 48 years we're talking about nearly 11 billion people. In 100 years, it's 15 billion. This simply cannot and will not continue.
It simply is not going to work for all 6.5 billion people. So what do you suggest instead? Education alone will not work. Poor people need these extra young hands, both on the farm and especially in the cities where it may take an entire extended family working at poverty wages to have enough to let them all live packed into some small space.
Probably die. Africa is a prime example of failed societies trying to support too many people.
Hello Darwinian,
While I agree with the general thrust of your arguments, it is the example of China that I would hesitate to have other regions emulate. I am not sure whether you are aware of the "poverty" economist, Amartya Sen, (the 1998 Nobel Prize winner) and his works. His "Development as Freedom" is a nice book, although one may not entirely agree with him. I am mentioning the follwoing statistics from memory (I read the book a couple of years ago):
China instituted the One-child policy in 1979. At that time, the population growth rate of the state of Kerala in India was higher than that of China. Kerala is one of the politically messiest places in the messiest democracy that is India. However, due to the effective public education and other social programs, in 15 years' time, Kerala's birth rate had fallen below China's. Granted, it may not be apt to compare a state with 30 million people to a huge country of 1.3 billion, but still the story is interesting. We may not need dictatorships to attain zero population growth. And you may want to do a search of the Quality of Life in Kerala, especially those related to infant mortality, literacy, life expectancy etc.
(Disclaimer: I am from Kerala, so I may be biased :-))
Good points.
I urge you all to check out the Population Reference Bureau's web site; it has a lot of great information about current population and demographics, as well as projections. The 2005 Population Data Sheet and its attachments is a good place to start.
Demographers identified what they call the Demographic Transition as early as the 1920's. According to the model, human societies start out with high birth rates and high death rates, and relatively stable populations. In stage 2, access improvements in basic necessities cause a decrease in the death rate while birth rates continue to be high, causing populations to grow quickly. In stage 3, access to contraception, education, urbanization, pensions, etc. causes birth rates to decrease, and population growth rates decline. In stage 4, populations reach a new equilibrium of low birth rates and low death rates. In this regard, humans are quite different from reindeer or yeast; as access to resources increases, i.e. societies get richer, population growth tends to decline, not increase.
In a great many countries, this model still seems to hold true. The countries with the biggest fertility declines over the past decade were generally "middle class" countries (not middle class by US standards, but by world standards), like China, Thailand, Malaysia, etc; the highest fertility rates are generally in the poorest countries. The PRB projects that the entire world will pass through the demographic transition, and that world population will peak at something like 9 billion: "The United Nations population projection often considered to be the most likely (the "medium" projection) assumes that fertility in developing countries will drop to an average of 2.1 children perwoman by 2050 and eventually to 1.85."
A number of countries with low fertility rates, even rates below replacement (generally figured as 2.1 children born to each woman), have growing populations because of increased longevity. China's population is still growing because of increased longevity, but is projected to decline after 2025. Two Indian states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, are already below replacement, at 1.8 and 2.0 children per woman, and the other southern states (Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka) are just above replacement.
A number of countries now have fertility rates well below replacement. The countries with the lowest fertility rates (approximately 1.2 children per woman) are Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Ukraine. Eight of ten are in eastern Europe, and two are "Asian Tigers". The regions of the world with the lowest fertility rates are Southern Europe (notably Italy and Spain) and Eastern Europe (including Russia at 1.4). Europe as a whole is projected to go from 730 million today to 660 million by 2050, even assuming considerable immigration and longer life expectancies; Japan's population is expected to shrink, too. Africa, however, is projected to nearly double.
Fertility is tricky; some of the low fertility countries have experienced considerable economic distress, while others have some of the highest economic growth rates per capita. The US has considerably higher fertility than the rest of the developed world. The extraordinarily low fertility rates in Southern and Eastern Europe weren't projected a decade or so ago. Many countries have seen larger-than-projected fertility declines, but a number of countries "stalled" in the demographic transition, including the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Kenya, and Turkey. It looks like AIDS will really devastate Southern Africa. But generally, the big fertility declines to date are not due to "Malthusian die-off", but from getting richer.
Just to be clear: I do think that even if world population stabilizes at 9 billion and then starts to decline that we are in for considerable trouble, and we should do everything we can to encourage lower fertility rates. Maybe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can be convinced to make family planning services a priority, along with immunization and education. And will peak oil change all of this? Of course it will; the PRB projections don't account for it. But I don't think we are necessarily doomed to a hyper-Malthusian nightmare future; if we act quickly and decisively to accelerate fertility decline around the world by humane means to a level well below replacement, accompanied by a push towards powered-down sustainability in the rich countries, then we stand an outside chance at a future that isn't entirely awful; hardly "up with people", but about all the optimism I can reasonably project.
a] Stop everyone breeding. You could allow 'fertility windows' [say '1 year on 10 off' or whatever] or you limit by x children each [I didn't say it was easy!]
OR
b] You have a lottery, people are randomly sterilized [temporary or permanent? Lots of options]
Allowing free choice [with or without 'education'] is a gene pool disaster
Your ideas, as presented in "The Republic", influenced a lot of later political philosophies, two which came into fruitition in the previous century: Communism and Nazism.
To make a long story short, they failed. You've lost. The Athenian democracy which you so hated has transformed the world forever. Even in the most bestial, inhumane, collectivist societies today, people understand that the rules of society are man-made, not like natural laws, and they can never quite free themselves from the consciousness that people are responsible for them.
True, there are people in fringe groups which advocate ideas like yours (breeding lottery, etc), but they are far, far from power. Even if they succeded in the short run, they have the seed of their demise planted in them, since they have known great freedom, and can't easily be tricked to believe that lack of freedom is better.
Oh, while you're here: Plato, you are a fascist loon, and you have seen democracy, you did in fact know better. Who are you to decide what's a "disaster" for the gene pool? It's nature that decides which genes go on and which don't, not you. Natural selection goes on. It may not be optimal for the future, but you've missed the whole point of natural selection if you believe it should be. It's optimal for the now, which is all natural selection ever is.
It's nothing to do with philosophy or politics - just obvious logic. As with most things population related people choose not to see it. If you allow people to choose not to breed, what happens to the selection of people with 'responsible' genes?
Your comments raise questions of nature and nurture; we know that superficial characteristics like eye, skin, or hair color are genetically determined, but the jury is still out as to whether qualities like intellect, compassion, creativity, or responsibility are genetically determined. I can't see rejecting voluntary contraception in favor of coercive methods on the basis of scant or nonexistent evidence that voluntary methods are doing irreperable harm to the human gene pool, especially since there is much more compelling evidence that human numbers are endangering our species' long term prospects.
Assuming for the sake of argument that characteristics like responsibility are genetically determined, how do we know who has the responsible genes, and whether voluntary contraception is selecting against them? One could assume that in low-fertility countries, or in my case, a low-fertility city, that people who do not reproduce are the responsible ones, giving up the rewards of childbearing in service to the greater good. On the other hand, I look at the couple upstairs raising a three-year old in the city; they are great parents, and shouldering much more responsibility than I am. Perhaps my society, by relieving me from the universal expectation that everyone must shoulder parental responsibility, has freed me to exercise my irresponsible nature by remaining childless.
I hope most sane people would agree that the opposite would be an infinitely worse problem.
When peak oil happens, depending on the rate of depletion & the political situation, the solutions from people like you may be a bigger problem than it.
You don't "allow" people to choose not to breed. All us non-totalitarians agree that freedoms don't need justification, it is restrictions in freedom that need justification.
You haven't got a clue of what I said, have you? Nature doesn't care about "responsible" genes, not now, not at any point. Right now it may seem nature is selecting for traditional catholic values, that may seem wrong, irresponsible or stupid for you if you don't share them, but tough luck for you. This sort of selection is not unnatural. You are not some sort of master of nature, above it, you're part of it. You cannot be an objective judge of what genes are good and not, and anyway the whole point of natural selection is that this is not decided beforehand.
Leave selection to nature. In "her" blindness, "she" is far wiser than your supposed foresight. If you're right, the genes you think are right will prevail in the long run. If you're not, as I said, tough luck.
Yes you do. If you allow people to 'contra' their 'conception' then you allow them to choose not to breed.
[You haven't got a clue of what I said, have you?]
We agree on this.
[Nature doesn't care about "responsible" genes, not now, not at any point]
You've lost me again. Do you understand that the genepool is affected by factors such as 'attraction' ie mental selection, and physical factors such as fertility, sperm health etc?
[Right now it may seem nature is selecting for traditional catholic values, that may seem wrong, irresponsible or stupid for you if you don't share them, but tough luck for you]
Theres no need to get in a lather - it appears you are agreeing with me that contraception is affecting the outcome of genetic selection?
[Leave selection to nature. In "her" blindness, "she" is far wiser than your supposed foresight. If you're right, the genes you think are right will prevail in the long run. If you're not, as I said, tough luck.]
You dont get it do you? Maybe Plato would understand..
If you have voluntary contraception then we are NOT leaving selection to nature. You are leaving it to the choice of individuals. So you are saying people know better than nature. Or maybe, it's whatever YOUR choice is that counts right??
Our decisions are part of nature. We are not standing outside of it. This prevents us from making objective judgements about what genes would be most valuable etc. What we should do is follow our nature - our better nature, which tells us that people have certain inalienable rights, and so on. It may be only "monkey predjudice" or whatever, but we are not in a position to judge.
Yes, it's my choice that counts. My choices in this area (and many others) is my business, so if you want to change it, you have to do it by convincing me. Saying that you won't permit it doesn't cut it, because I don't need your permission.
Which it is;0)
Nobody should like the results of this mental exercise.
But some are very close to your views and pursuing the "exercise" a bit too far:
The Omega Project
Suggesting the culling of the "excess" population by nukes.
We have enough mad millenarists among the "classic" religious nuts, no need for Peak Oil millenarists.
It means exactly that, "there is NO way out!" I thought my position was pretty well encapsulated in the two quotes I posted, one from Jared Diamond and the other from William Catton.
Yes, that is exactly what it is. It is the end of civilization as we know it.
Yes Lou, it is a forced reduction in human population. And yes, energy constraints will be the trigger and the main impetus of the collapse. But there is no way we can get there by normal attrition and lower birth rates. That would take at least half a century to turn things around. Besides, a worldwide birth control program is impossible. Here is David Price's take on that suggestion:
Lou, if you really wish to understand my position you can do no better than read David Price's excellent essay "Energy and Human Evolution", URL above. It is a short essay and can be read in five to ten minutes. It explains my position completely. Or, if you can find a copy, William Catton's classic "Overshoot" explains everything in great detail, as does Reg Morrison's "The Spirit in the Gene." Both are available on Amazon.com.
Ron Patterson, the Darwinian
I'm as bloody as you, Darwinian. But I'm not a philosophical doomer, more a pragmatic doomer. Earlier today at TOD I wrote:
We are well into overshoot, there is no convincing evidence that this planet can sustainably support (without consuming fossil hydrocarbons) as much as 1 billion at US living standards, 2 billion at EU living standards, etc.
Today I read somewhere that if we had a whole new planet with as much oil as this one to exploit it would only delay peak oil by about 33 years at current consumption growth. Current economic and consumption models are non-viable and will be shown to be so the painful way within a decade or so at the longest.
It's quite simple: humans must change radically or die in very large numbers. The omens look poor. Probably the best realistic solution is a significant human die-off followed by radical human change. Yes, the extreme disparity of wealth and consumption must change, as must excessive breeding. It's time to grow up, human monkeys.
Speaking of collapse and die-off I attempted to devise a rough practical scale for this a few years back:
http://theslide.blogspot.com/2006/01/levels-of-collapse-warning-may-be.html
It's getting near time for me to refine it, devise intermediate points for levels 1 to 4, define measures and criteria to determine (and possibly help predict) levels of collapse. I would very much like to see any similar attempts and discuss the detail with anyone seriously interested.
I have a purpose: once collapse risks reaching level 3 or worse knowledge preservation becomes critically important in determining the quality, quantity and possibly wisdom of subsequent (human) life and society. Should needs must and time permit I hope to actively foster important knowledge preservation. Most who read this probably think I'm mad; that is my fervent hope, too.
I'm just snatching one line here, but there seems to be a sentiment above that there will be no feedback loops. There seems to be an assumption that not even the onset of obvious problems will spur adaptation.
Is this another reason pessimists don't need to wait for more data or observation?
I really don't know how anyone could be sure about something so far away. One might be skeptical, or pessimistic, but ... I mean really, who is smart enough or well informed enough to "know" about the 3rd or 4th social movement of the 21st century? I know I'm not, and I suspect that some of the more famous pundits who think they "know" could use a good dose of intellectual humility.
There are natural feedback loops and they seem to be overwhelmingly against the way humanity is swimming.
There seems to be very minimal awareness, correction or adaptation by humans to what I see as glaringly obvious problems of human making.
The data is ample, consistent and conclusive. If you don't think it is so then I have to say you are willfully blind.
The problems are ours, very clearly of our own making, and equally clearly we are doing a woeful almost nothing to solve them.
This trajectory results in near total doom for human civilisation as currently exists. A massive change in direction is pre-requisite for any alternative result, unless we are rescued by [the cavalry | benevolent aliens | Superman | some God or other].
It is not far away, you will see it seriously begin to unfold within 2 years, any social movements better start now cos the time is that short. I have the advantage of you where 'know' and the next few years are concerned but I will not go into that further, judge it in retrospect on new year's eve 2008. I'm neither famous nor pundit, just honest.
I might agree if there were not a US EPA (etc.), and if that model of environmental regulation were not spreading into asia, etc.
I get the flaws in the system, but these doomer arguments seem to pretend there is no system.
Who missed the clear air act?
If you want to say that this is what you think, OK. But if you want to convince anyone, you should say why it is true. Sorry, I can't just take your word fot it.
Wonder how?
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2411.htm
Wonder what point oil has to get to before a bio-weapon is unleashed to lower population as a way to lower demand as a way to lower prices so the oil party can keep going for the survivors?
I ask these questions because I live in the northeast of Brasil. Where I live, 80 percent of the inhabitants are black, with a total population of 3 million.
I don't know if any of them actually drive a car(speaking anecdotally). Most of them live is Farvellas, own tiny homes which use very little electricity. I think it is safe to assume they don't own plasma tv's.
But 20 percent of us own big plasma tv's and several cars per family unit. We have microwaves, some of us even own big homes. We take long drives on weekends to far away beaches to avoid the black people.
(I am sorry if this sounds politically in correct and offensive, however I am not inventing this particular social reality.)
The issue is that some of the parties doing the shooting these days have nuclear weapons. And might just opt to use 'em.
This gent isn't positive about the way things are going.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/dubyadubyathree.php
(sigh someone's ego is gonna get spanked, and they are going to let loose the big mushroom shaped dogs of war.)
Since 3+ billion probably have to go I think I would vote for a virulent pandemic killing 50%+ but that is highly improbable unless deliberately engineered - in which case the motives of the perpetrators and their more probable survival troubles me. Would be globally very smelly for a while. (yes, I know that sounds callous
A relatively focused nuclear cull is possibly the second best. It would need to take out getting on for a billion people initially, fallout and knock on effects would probably account for twice that within a handful of years. The problems are: it needs to disrupt / reduce high consumption and its supply chain. That means about 30%+ cities with populations over a million or so have to be seriously hit. The lucky ones would evaporate.
Most likely is a few serious conflicts, a few newks getting chucked, one or two serious newk exchanges (Pakistan-India, Israel-Iran?), global decay, mundane disease and malnutrition.
Any microbiologist TOD readers to put this in perspective?
Do we know of anyone sequencing out a "live" virus with current tech?
"Persons or entities deemed to be hostile to the United States, and its allies, have obtained and manufactured smallpox virus "
And more than a few web pages go into the Russian smallpox program I stumbled across 4 or more years ago.
So one might not need to build smallpox from parts.
http://tinyurl.com/j6hhu
There's plenty of companies who can synthesize that sequence for you. That is, they take the individual bases (nucleotides) and combine them into a long chain DNA sequence (oligonucleotide).
Viruses are miraculous little things in that they use their host cell to make more of themselves. All you need to do is:
- Get the DNA into a host cell (the virus would normally inject it there, but you've just got naked DNA)
- Get the cell to start making the proteins from the DNA sequence and replicate the DNA
The proteins will then come together with the replicated DNA to make more virus particle.The first one is easy, we transfect DNA into cells all the time. I'm not a virologist, but I do know (from undergrad classes) that cells have ways of fighting infection (destroying injected DNA), so I don't think #2 is that easy but certainly possible as it's not that different than the way that the virus normally replicates.
Did I answer your question?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2122619.stm
So yeah, viruses have been made and tested.
I haven't seen anything specific on TOD that supports this. I've seen good arguments for peak oil, but not for peak energy.
Is your argument based on peak oil/energy, or do you believe this based on other things?
and think "no worries then." That's a level of "dieoff" I've already been enjoying all my life.
Now, my perspective is that I want to tie immediate threats down to hard evidence. I say that things more than a few decades away are "unpredictable" but I mean that in a serious threat-based sense. I just don't think it would be rational for me to go buy a remote farm because I project trouble in "a few decades." It's easy enough to make a mental note for something like that, and see how it plays ... over the next decade at least.
So, do you think that you've analyzed this in the sense that "you've got your hat in the ring" for far future outcomes, or do you think futures 4,5,6,... decades hence can be known.
And that's the key here. We don't know what wildcards will play out here but all other things as they are right now and the population in the state it is in right now, I would continue to assume we are headed for massive dieoff in the space of a decade to a few decades tops. And I mean billions.
So what can alter this?
- We may be able to replace oil with a decent EROEI alternate energy source.
- We may discover some means of sustainably feeding 6.5 billion people.
- There may be partial dieoff spurred by war, pandemics, or other factors that sufficiently relieve stresses on the resource base that we can, as a species, develop a rational plan to reach a sustainable state.
And I am sure there are other wildcards too, hence why I read sites like TOD.But on the other side of the coin, commuting a little less, getting a $400,000 mortgage instead of a $500,000 mortgage, etc., are not changing the fundamentals. So far our species is still nibbling at the very edges of the overall problem. If we continue to do that too long it will be too late. Maybe it already is and maybe it's not. I can see no clear way to determine that from where we sit.
In the end though, odograph, there MUST be either a massive influx of new resources (and it must be sustainable!) or there will be a dieoff. So in the end, I suppose I see 3 ways out of this box:
- We discover a sustainable solution to our resource consumption issues (which are driven by population and thus requires a sustainable solution to that as well); or
- We reduce our population voluntarily to a sustainable level (which I believe has a snowball's chance in hell of occurring before we hit the resource wall); or
- Nature reduces our population for us.
Our task then is to discover a way to effect #1 or #2 (or some combination thereof) before #3 is imposed on us by nature.The fact that those n-dimensions behave like that ball seems to be your premise above, and not your conclusion.
(Human population cannot grow forever, to state the obvious, but that does not prove that population movement in he next decades is downward, let alone rapidly downward.)
I think the thing to pay attention to, aside from whether-or-not the prognostication is going to actually happen, is the magnitude of the expected event.
Falling off a bike while on the trail may have a higher probability of occurrence than, say, a 10-km diameter asteroid hitting the Earth. But the consequences of the latter event are much, much greater than if someone falls from their bike.
The scenarios of doom that I've seen for Peak Oil are mind-bogglingly huge, and, the best examinations of the potential problems with PO are also well-constructed logically. Due to the potential magnitude of suffering, even if the middle-of-the-road doomer-type scenarios for PO have a low probability of occurrence, they are most definitely worth paying attention to.
Quite unlike someone falling on a bike (which I have done many, many times, I note).
-best
Then again, I've stumbled into (onto) bikes before...
Maybe less conviction would be more convincing to me ... if you get that seeming contradiction?
Tell me why we are special, blessed, divine, and exempt from the same biological processes that apply to every other mammalian species on the planet.
(there are chartists in the market who will tell you what a curve "looks like" and I take that with a grain of salt as well.)
Actually, it doesn't at all . Overshoot curves have sudden increases in death rates which overwhelm stable, high birth rates. The world is having a "demographic transition", where falling death rates are followed by lagging declines in birth rates. That doesn't look anything like an overshoot curve.
As I finished, I was happy that I hadn't been eaten by a mountain lion (they're present), didn't get bit by a rattlesnake (I see 'em now and then), and I didn't crash and have to go to the hospital (again).
In light of that hour of risk/reward, I kind of boggle that I should "feel" this threat of million year history hanging over my head.
I think doomers do feel it, but ... I think the outlook is more centered in such feelings than any data we have ready to hand.
it's like moving to the 2nd and 4th floor while trying to drag all their belongings with them.
I'm often "considering" finding a better job, but I only rarely actually search for one. Sorry Odograph, but that doesn't look very impressive with the correct wording.
Crude futures rally past $76 a barrel on Middle East chaos
-C.
DANIEL YERGIN DAY, JULY 13, 2006
by Jeffrey J. Brown
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The front-month futures contract climbed past $76 a barrel Thursday for the first time ever on the New York Mercantile Exchange, with August crude touching $76.30 and last trading at $76.21, up $1.26.
In regard to efforts to deny the reality of Peak Oil, I have previously described what I call the "Iron Triangle," which I define as: (1) most auto, housing and finance companies; (2) most of the mainstream media and (3) most major oil companies, major oil exporters and the energy analysts that work for the major oil companies and major oil exporters.
(http://www.energybulletin.net/15126.html)
In my opinion, the Iron Triangle has a vested interest in denying the reality of Peak Oil, and they are, in effect, working together to encourage Americans to continue buying large vehicles, in order to continue driving large distances to and from large mortgages.
My reasoning is as follows.
The auto/housing/finance group wants to continue selling and financing large autos and houses.
The media group wants to continue selling advertising for large autos, houses and loans.
The major oil companies are concerned that if they admit to the reality of Peak Oil, they may face punitive taxation. The major oil exporters are afraid of military takeovers, if they admit to the reality of Peak Oil. The energy analysts are hired guns. This group provides the intellectual ammunition for the other two groups.
In all fairness, there are some notable exceptions. Mike Jackson, CEO of the AutoNation group, has called for a much higher gasoline tax, in order to reduce oil consumption. The Dallas Morning News, and some other papers, have run pro and con pieces on Peak Oil. ChevronTexaco, while not quite admitting the reality of Peak Oil, has come close. However, these are isolated exceptions in an ocean of Peak Oil denial.
ExxonMobil is a good example of the major oil company faction. Opec of course is the Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), founded by Daniel Yergin, is a good example of the energy analyst faction. Following are recent direct quotes, in chronological order, regarding Peak Oil, by these three factions.
CERA:
"Rather than a 'peak,' we should expect an 'undulating plateau' perhaps three or four decades from now."
Mr. Robert Esser
Senior Consultant and Director, Global Oil and Gas Resources
Cambridge Energy Research Associates
Huntington, NY,
Understanding the Peak Oil Theory
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
December 7, 2005
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/12072005hearing1733/Esser2772.htm
EXXONMOBIL:
"Contrary to the theory, oil production shows no signs of a peak... Oil is a finite resource, but because it is so incredibly large, a peak will not occur this year, next year, or for decades to come"
ExxonMobil Advertisement in New York Times, June 2, 2006
http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporate/OpEd_peakoil.pdf
OPEC:
"We in Opec do not subscribe to the peak-oil theory."
Acting Secretary General of Opec, Mohammed Barkindo
July 11, 2006
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=276971&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__busines s/
It is interesting to note that Mr. Esser's testimony in front of a congressional subcommittee corresponded to Kenneth Deffeyes' estimate that the world had used about half of its conventional crude plus condensate reserves, which is about the same point that US Lower 48 oil production, as predicted by M. King Hubbert, started declining.
Since Mr. Esser's declaration that we were years to decades away from anything resembling Peak Oil and since Dr. Deffeyes declaration that we were at Peak Oil, world crude plus condensate production is down by 1%, the Saudis have admitted to a production decline of about 5% and US net petroleum imports have shown a very interesting pattern. US petroleum imports and oil prices suggest that we have started a series of progressive cycles of demand destruction, where declining net oil export capacity worldwide is allocated to the high bidders, with the low bidders forced to reduce their consumption.
In any case, in a column in Forbes Magazine, published on 11/1/04, Daniel Yergin, in response to a question about the future direction of oil prices, dismissed concerns about oil supplies and asserted that oil prices on 11/1/05 would at $38 per barrel. Note that oil prices exceeded $60 in the summer of 2005, prior to the hurricanes.
In my opinion, Mr. Yergin serves as an excellent symbol of the major oil company/major oil exporter/energy analyst group. And since oil prices are now trading at close to $76 per barrel--twice Mr. Yergin's prediction--I hereby designate July 13, 2006 as "Daniel Yergin Day," in honor of Mr. Yergin's continued efforts to, in effect, persuade Americans to continue driving large debt financed vehicles, on large commutes to and from large mortgages.
One of the little ironies about the Peak Oil debate is that it is those who are trying their best to warn Americans about the dangers posed by Peak Oil---Matt Simmons; Colin Campbell; Kenneth Deffeyes; Boone Pickens, Jim Kunstler etc.--who are most often blamed for rising oil prices. I think that it is just the opposite. It seems logical to me that those who are asserting that we have plentiful supplies of oil are doing far more to encourage consumption--and thus higher oil prices--than those who are asserting that we have problems with oil supplies.
If you believe Matt Simmons, et al, about the future direction of energy prices, you will drastically reduce your overall consumption, especially your energy consumption, by living in a small energy efficient home, close to where you work--which would ideally allow you to walk or take mass transit to work, or at least result in a short commute.
In my opinion, it is those who are telling us that Peak Oil is decades away--such as ExxonMobil, Opec and Yergin--who are most responsible for, in effect, encouraging Americans to continue driving $50,000 SUV's on 50 mile roundtrips to and from $500,000 mortgages in the suburbs.
My personal take on this issue is that we have to kill consumption--via a large tax on energy consumption, offset by tax cuts elsewhere--before consumption kills us.
Jeffrey J. Brown is an independent petroleum geologist in the Dallas, Texas area. e-mail: westexas@aol.com
-C.
It needs to have its own URL so we can set up the Google bomb. ;-)
You're a word short at the end here ...
I think you may have a better chance of getting picked up by the mainstream press if you condensed to short article of around 200-250 words and focused exclusively on Yergin and PO. Your essential pull quote is:
Kill the Iron Triangle references - it may be true, but mentioning it (especially right at the outset) will just make sure your Daniel Yergin Day story is marginalized or ignored entirely.
That's my .02
None of the above is meant as a criticism. You do wonderful work here. I just think that going after people like Yergin is the thin end of the wedge and this is a rare opportunity to get people thinking about the bigger issues. If you can use the mainstream media to get this across, so much the better.
Best of luck!
Feel free to edit, copy, paste, add you own comments, distribute with and without attribution to me, if you wish. I'm not copywriting the "Daniel Yergin Day" term.
IMO, I do think that is is important to outline the financial motivations behind so many people that are denying Peak Oil.
I'd go look for it myself, but I'm filtered at the moment, and Blogger is on the "bad" list.
For readers as shallow as I, Cardigan's lede makes a good hook. I would also do the "iron triangle" stuff as another short and pithy post.
(I've added one link on my blog for DANIEL YERGIN DAY)
" $50,000 SUV's on 50 mile roundtrips to and from $500,000 mortgages in the suburbs."
might alienate some folks who would think that your real problem was with the money rather than the energy. Making a change from $ to gas-guzzling and something else (not sure how to describe the energy sink-hole that such a large house is) might make sure that all the people described in that sentence understand the energy wastage involved in such a lifestyle.
Just a thought.
Thanks for posting your article!
McMammoth-mortgaged McMansions?
energy hog homes?
fuel swilling dwellings?
petro-dependent domiciles?
Just throwing out ideas as I watch oil head for $77...
Rat
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/07/13/ap2876947.html
Excerpt:
Oil prices hit a new high above $76 a barrel Thursday in a market agitated by escalating violence in the Middle East, the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program and news of explosions on Nigerian pipelines.
"The oil price has become a register of geopolitical tensions and fears," said Daniel Yergin, who heads Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
Yergin said the supply-demand fundamentals are improving, with global oil inventories and spare oil-production capacity rising, but clearly not enough to offset the geopolitical unrest.
"If only all this pesky global political, military, societal, and economic unrest would come to an end, we could have cheap petroleum again."
Riiiiigght..... You just keep right on dreaming, Mr. Yergin.
IMO, the problems in the Middle East are just the match that lights the tinderbox of the developing supply/demand imbalance, in much the same way that the 1973 Arab/Israeli War and the Arab Oil embargo ignited the 1,000% increase in oil prices in the Seventies, because of a temporary supply/demand imbalance. IMO, today's developing supply/demand imbalance is not temporary. I predict that we will see continued cycles of demand destruction.
BTW, by the time that the 1973 war came to an end, the US and the Soviet Union were at the brink of war. Nixon declared a world wide military alert, in response to a Soviet proposal to move troops into the Middle East to end the war.
There are some reports that the captured Israeli soldiers have been moved to Iran. As I noted in one of my earlier posts, big wars can start from relatively small events, e.g., the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
The realy scary part is that it would give a good excuse for civilian hardship within SA, an external enemy to blame and fight against instead of an internal error in resoure allocations.
- Israelis had several Egyptian divisions surrounded and dying of thirst. They were within sixty hours of possibly 100,000 deaths.
- Nixon said, "Let them go back to Egypt."
- Begin said words to the effect that it serves them right, because Egypt started the Yom Kippur War and now they were reaping what they had sown. "Let'm die, that'll teach them a lesson."
- Nixon said to Israel: "We'll make you an offer you cannot refuse."
- Begin said: "O.K., we are listening."
- Nixon said: "How about a billion a year in military aid for the next twenty-five years, if you let the Egyptians live."
- Begin said: "It's a deal."
- Sadat said: "I have to save face. What is in this deal for me?"
- Nixon said: "We'll give you the same as we're giving Israel but just a little more in the form of flour and wheat so you won't have food riots.
Then the story gets stranger and stranger and I'm going to leave some parts out, but not the public part where, of all people, Walter Cronkheit, got into the negotiations on the CBS Evening News and basically forced Begin and Sadat to talk to one another, which neither one wanted. Sadat knew that we was almost certain to be killed if he made peace with Israel but did so anyway--for which I think he deserves enormous credit.Next the story takes some twists and turns that are generally well documented in the mass media, especially on PBS news, "New York Times," "Washington Post," and "Wall St. Journal." No secrets at the end.
10. For making peace with Israel, Sadat is killed as an object lesson by the Islamofascists that peace with Israel is grounds for assassination.
I submit that
- Israel has not called for full mobilization.
- Israel could do lots of things, especially to Syria, that she has not done so far in this crisis.
- Hezbollah is clearly Iran's catspaw in all of this.
Therefore this crisis is still at a low to moderate level. The sad thing for Israel and their govt. is that they probably will not get their three soldiers back. Once again the Palestinian people get the real short end of the stick. They hardly rate being pawns in all of this.Look for an extension of the wall along the Lebanon border.
The hasty dissolution of their empire resulted in three of the world's hottest hot spots:
- Israel and Palestine
- Iraq
- Pakistan and India
One wonders what the dissolution of the U.S. empire will leave in its wake...Blame can be spread around very far and wide on this one. The World Community has decided, at least for now, to accept the boundaries that we are stuck with. And we are stuck with some weird ones.
- Nigeria, half Muslim/half Christian, and I won't even touch on the tribal splits.
- Africa with its colonial boundaries make little sense.
- Latin America. Bolivia is essentially two countries, upland indians, and the lowlanders. At least most of Brazil speaks the same tongue.
- Canada and Quebec
- Thailand and the Muslim south.
- France is filled with minorities. Germans in Alsace, Basque in the South, Catalans in the South, Italians in Corsica . . . , Breton Celts in Brittany.
Now, do we really want to go in and divide everything up on religious and ethnic grounds? At a certain point you have to accept things as they are. Just as many Palestinians accept an Israeli state, and some do not.No, we don't. If they don't have oil, we don't care, anyway.
Besides, the re-division will happen naturally.
What would we see 100 years from now? Regional nations with boundaries carved up based on access to water and trade partners? One can only speculate...
-Washigonia (west coast states) with gradual northward population shifts,
-Peoples Republic of Texas (which will have annexed Louisiana east to Baton Rouge and left everything else to the survivalists and water people),
-Great Plains populated along the river and canal corridors, with territorial capitals and sparse government centers,
-Strong agricultural and manufacturing regions along and east of the Missouri River, around the Great Lakes, and along the Atlantic seaboard,
-The Grand Great Plateu of Appelachia (also called Haliburtonia), having been plundered of its coal, now used as nuclear burial grounds, mercenary training facilities and detention centers,
-Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Quebec, and New Brunswick as the breadbasket (or "potato basket") of the northeast,
-Southwest and Rocky Mountain states return to a version of the old west. Populations of Phoenix, Pueblo, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, etc. go the way of the Hohokam and Anasazi, becoming vast concrete ghost towns, settling gradually into the sands of memory and time.
-A reef where the fabled land of Florida used to be.
If you and I are both here in 100 years you can prove me wrong :-P
Book Description
"Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a "stable-state" ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, the isolated, mysterious Ecotopia welcomes its first officially sanctioned American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston.
Like a modern Gulliver, the skeptical Weston is by turns impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange practices: employee ownership of farms and businesses, the twenty-hour work week, the fanatical elimination of pollution, "mini-cities" that defeat overcrowding, devotion to trees bordering on worship, a woman-dominated government, and bloody, ritual war games. Bombarded by innovative, unsettling ideas, set afire by a relationship with a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman, Weston's conflict of values intensifies-and leads to a startling climax.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553348477/104-0664673-2599927?v=glance&n=283155
A special anniversary issue of that book is due out for Christmas.
I always thought they were kind of kooky myself. My liked the University faction myself.
I always made it priority to wipe out the Believers as quickly as possible.
It wasn't like they had a choice in the matter. Britain was broke!
France was Isreal's main ally and weapons supplier up till then. France also sold a small nuke to Isreal.
LBJ decided to change direction as did de Gaulle. The US sold Isreal F-4s just after the 6 Day War when all of their enemies air forces were destroyed. The Joint Chiefs wanted to sell them used a/c just rotated out of Vietnam, but Isreal got brand new F-4s (Block 48 ?) instead and the USAF & USN kept flying the older F-4s into combat).
All other US allies (AFAIK) had a treaty of alliance (NATO, SEATO, ANZAC, etc.) ratified by the Senate. Isreal became a de facto ally over night by executive action.
That's ominous, perhaps the next revalation will be: the chips implanted in all israeli military personnel allow us to track their exact position and tell if they are alive / conscious / dead.
No doubt they are totally trackable by nuclear missile guidence.
http://www.technorati.com/search/daniel%20yergin%20day
There are four now.
http://www.google.com/search?q=daniel+yergin+day
we're not making it from the (unquoted) google perspective
I have to agree that high taxes on energy consumption, especially within the US, is the way to go - on gasoline and especially jet fuel - where some international accord may be required. Though it is worth noting that Sweden and France have just introduced new taxes on air travell. This will cut US energy consumption and help reduce the trade deficit. I'd feel inclined to leave other taxes alone and get rid of the budget deficit aswell - but there again I'm not a US citizen. So why should I care? Well the old saying "when American sneezes the rest of the world gets a cold" - I have to be concerned right now that America is about to get a doze of influenza.
I'm not sure I fully agree with your take on the position of the oil majors but am at a bit of a loss to provide a wholly convincing alternative explanation. They do undoubtedly belong to one of a dying breed of corporations - buying back their own stock by the billion, a prime symptom of an industry in decline (growing companies issue stock). Perhaps acknowledging the terminal state of their business may send their stock prices on the way to the core. Also fear of nationalisation, not so much at home but outwith the OECD - once non-OECD countries sense they posses vital but dwindling resources their could be a dash to nationalise - and this has already strated. Finally, in the UK at least I'm sure Lord Browne could be persuaded to tow a government line in order to not alarm the poor old people. That next election is always just around the corner.
However, you summarize your perspective on Peak Oil masterfully. The satirical, comical thrust of the piece works nicely, too, to soften the dire news it contains. That kind of outreach is effective, I think.
Again, terrific job!
Vermont Agatha Zoe
Oh yes.......... his own words.
Sorry these folks just don't think ahead like that. The media/finance/auto industries are engaged in short term planning. For instance the auto industry would have been much more focused on developing energy efficient cars, so that they would still have a market in the future. People in the finance industry are focused on making a quick buck and plan to cash out before the housing bubble/credit crunch happens, PO isn't even on thier radar yet. For the media, planning five minutes in the future is long term planning. I've had many private discussions with lots of people in theses industry. While there are few sharp folks, the majority of them believe the run up in oil prices is because of the oil companies and the war in Iraq. Plus the majority of the Media believes in global warming and promotes CO2 tax which would ultimate end economic growth, and hurt ad. sales.
I agree with your logic with the oil industry. If you read the financial press releases of the major oil companies, they have two sides. One side says there is plenty of oil, the other talks about declining reserves and experiencing difficulty finding new profitable fields to replace consumption. From my inside source, their biggest concern is that if they discuss PO they'll get pushed out of foriegn countries and they are also concerned about exporters cutting off the US and Europe.
>by living in a small energy efficient home, close to where you work--which would ideally allow you to walk or take mass transit to work, or at least result in a short commute.
This is going to be unrealistic for the majority of the American middle class which already loaded up on debt to buy new homes/vacation homes or spent a boat load on remodeling their home to keep up with the Jones. People that relocated to the exburbs did so because they couldn't afford to live close to work. Because of the housing bubble a lot of apartment complex switched to condos to cash out. This force a lot of people to relocate or fork over a ton of money to buy a crappy apartment.
>In my opinion, it is those who are telling us that Peak Oil is decades away--such as ExxonMobil, Opec and Yergin--who are most responsible for, in effect, encouraging Americans to continue driving $50,000 SUV's on 50 mile roundtrips to and from $500,000 mortgages in the suburbs.
It wouldn't make a difference. If they did, Exxon and the rest of the oil companies would be pushed out of the remaining international projects (aka Venezuela, Russia) as more countries nationalize energy reserves. Its way too late to change tracks. I am certain that Norway, Canada, Australia, and the majority of OPEC would terminate all existing export contracts with the US for their own national security reasons.
>My personal take on this issue is that we have to kill consumption--via a large tax on energy consumption, offset by tax cuts elsewhere--before consumption kills us.
This isn't going to work. China and India will just consume what ever we don't. To drop global consumption we would need to jack up interest rates, which would trigger a global recession (and reduce global consumption). An energy tax that would be capable of curbing US demand would cause a US recession anyway.
While it may be cute to cull old skeleton quotes (mostly out of context), EIA in December dropped their peak estimate from 120.6-mbd (2005) to 101.9-mbd in their new High Price Scenario; it is clear that CERA/Essor have reduced their long term production estimates from 126-mbd to only 108-mbd in the aforementioned USA Congressional Hearings Testimony; ExxonMobil has since dropped their peak estimate from 126-mbd to 113-mbd; OPEC cutback from 114.9 to 106-mbd.
And in the meantime, as i discussed in another thread, Campbell/Laherrere/Skrebowski all have substantial increases in their pre-ASPO5 submissions.
A similar merging of URR is only stymied by recent high prices.
This thread is relevant 'cuz it seems there are far too many zealots at TOD. Some would day radical fundamentalist extremists in another domain. There is no need to exaggerate the quotes and data of those with opposing views to make a point a TOD.
We know who y'all are and we know why y'all are doing it...
From WSJ, a couple days ago..
http://www.cera.com/news/details/1,,8239,00.html
"Today, about 40 million barrels a day of oil cross oceans in tankers; within 15 years, that will be 70 million barrels." Daniel Yergin
Ahh well... let the dog have his day. I don't have his crystal ball, maybe he's right.. but it's not how I'll be investing.
"Energy security should also include enhanced efficiency in the use of energy. There is much more to accomplish here, and it too ought to be a major topic at the G-8 summit. U.S. energy efficiency has doubled since the 1970s. A great contribution will result from greater efficiency in China and Russia (which use far more energy per unit of GDP than do the U.S.), and Western Europe and Japan (which can become more efficient).
- So we're doing our part, now if only China and Russia (commies!) would pitch in, too. But y'all, you just keep on shoppin! Yer doin grate!
"Diversification can go much farther than development of "non-OPEC" fuels. Today, there is a more robust menu of alternatives, including the making of liquid fuels either out of natural gas or from the application of biology in ways that are still being developed in the laboratory.
.. alas!
On a side note, I returned from Winnipeg yesterday from a 3 day meeting with clients. It sems the Canadians there are banking heavily on the Tar sands in Alberta. These were accounants and they all knew about the tar sands and the "promise" they hold for Canada. I slipped up and began telling them of EROEI and the enviornmental impact etc. Oh boy, that went over like a lead balloon.
Appaently these folks have been told that Canada is the next SA and riches are on the way. I kinda feel sorry for them.
-C.
-C.
I think you will have a great pleasure for drinking it, even with it sitting in its bottle for a long time. If really you dislike bubbles you might even sell it for more than 250$, 1991 was a real great millesime for dom perignon. If you decide to drink it, be sure to have a good meal with it. Cheers !
-C.
-C.
Let us know when it's up, and where.
On more general note, Yergin's failure to account for depletion should serve as a lesson, when we are trying to predict the future ourselves. For example it may very well turn out that many people here have failed to account for the development of substitutes for oil - a thing which is very likely to happen, IMO.
The history of the alternatives should start with the moment oil crossed 40-50$ mark and stayed there. On a historical scale, we have just woken up in an oil-scarce world.
No, but a lot of talk and money is being foolishly throw at corn ethanol. Soon or later (probably later) they figure out how foolish it was.
But peak oil means a peak in (cheap) oil production.
IMO the combination of all these alternatives could provide a stable and less painful transition to post-oil future. My real worries are for the political implications and the societal inertia which will resist any change or voluntary sacrifice as long as possible.
I also agree that conservation and its cousin, efficiency, could dramatically reduce our oil consumption.
In a somewhat related matter, I am reading Gene Logsdon's All Flesh is Grass in which he explains (similarly to Joel Salatin) the ability of grass-based (pasture) farming to provide more food, better quality food while using far less oil and natural gas.
movement/idea called the "singularity" primarily
started by writer Vernor Vinge and now pushed by
inventor Ray Kurzweil. The basic idea is that computers,
, genetics, nanotechnology, and reverse-engineering the brain
brain are all growing exponentially (1.5 to 2 per year)
and this growth will result in huge changes in 20 30
years and unfathomable changes (the singulariity) in 40 years
years. For example this months Technology Review
discusses genetically engineering bacteria to make
gasoline.
I would be curious to see what are the arguments supporting this thesis. IMO there is not a single "pattern" for technological development. If there is a pattern I'd say it would look like this: after a breakthrough is made (the discovery of the computer in the 50-s for example) the initial stages look pretty much like exponential development until some inflection point is reached after which the low of deminishing returns kicks in. The development stalls for indefinate time until another breakthrough is achieved which gives a start of another growth/deminishing returns cycles. In this case it would be the discovery of personal computing in the 70-s, and the Internet in the 80-s.
Personal computers are already pretty much a mature technology, and the Internet is probably at or after the inflection point (after which exponential growth looks unlikely).
The key point here IMO is that there is no real guarantee or a law that postulates if and when a breaktroughs appears. Previous discoveries and changing environment indeed foster more research efforts but the success is not guaranteed for anything. Cure for cancer does not appear simply because we want it so much.
Please explain how "superhuman artificial intelligence" would provide energy?
Bypassing the second law of thermodynamics may be?
Though I personally believe that some breakthrough in artificial intelligence is likely I don't see this as a magic wand.
The Singularity crowd is "yet another" millenarist cult looking for a savior, wish granting genius, a "God in a box".
This is the expectable scanning behavior of a social system under stress.
Go read more stuff conrad...
Secondly, as was mentioned befor on these threads, the number of patents per capita is diminishing since the late 19th century or so: that demonstrates that we have to do with diminishing returns, not accelerating returns.
on a side note the whole 'silver bb theory' looks allot like a rube goldberg machine.
for those of you that don't know imagine the most complex machine you can imagine with as many steps in it's opperation as posible to do some very simple task like turning on a light switch or squeezing a tube of toothpaste.
here is one such device.
http://www.rube-goldberg.com/html/pencil_sharpener.htm
silver bb's are like a rube goldberg machine
(no explanation given, just the declaration of metaphor)
and so we are doomed
Do you base this on more than hope or wishful thinking?
So far it seems the alternatives (ethanol, CTL, renewable-based electric power, etc) don't get us very far substituting for oil and have their own problems. Looking at where we are now, I see these (or some of them) as important and growing going ahead, but still collectively producing significantly less total energy than the oil that will be lost. If there is a substitute, I don't think we have found it yet, and we'd better hurry. I'm less optimistic I'm afraid. If you know something better and concrete, believe me I'd be happy to know.
Now, all that could go faster, but 18 months ago I was really worried that I wouldn't see it at all.
CTL can certainly work for PO, just not for GW. Why do you feel renewable-based electric power can't work?
Hydrogen is not a source of energy but a carrier, and has to be created through energy input with unavoidable losses in the transition. Other more qualified contributors have analyzed these issues more quantitatively.
We do have to go to renewables, and they will supply a lot of energy, but fundamentally we will have to move to an overall much lower level of energy consumption. The idea of "substituting for" oil as though we will be able to keep going as we are now but with something else in our tanks is an illusion, a dangerous expectation.
If you want to start a fight then beat up ExxonMobil or the Bush Administration or the "carbon dioxide is life itself" morons or some other person or group that's actually doing some harm.
Expending effort in this way is noble and all because these people think they are going to save humanity or maybe just the USA or some other set of homo sapiens. Of course, this assumes that the situation can be saved...
I'm not sure insults help, but I think he is a truly dangerous man (even if unintentionally) and needs to be publicly challenged as much as possible.