Stories tagged with "resource depletion"

Umbrella View of Resource Depletion and Human Behaviour

Posted by Rembrandt on July 12, 2009 - 11:02am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: alcatraz conference, cortisol, dopamine, finance, human behaviour, nate hagens, peak oil, resource depletion [list all tags]

This is a slide video of the presentation I asked Nate Hagens to give at the Oil Drum/ASPO Conference at Alcatraz, Italy in June 2009. It contains a concise summary of many issues related to depletion, energy supply, human behaviour and the financial system. More background material can be found in the articles by Nate Hagens linked below the fold. The presentation itself can be downloaded here: Umbrella View of Resource Depletion and Human Behaviour, PDF 148 slides, 8.7 MB.

Umbrella View of Resource Depletion & Human Behaviour from Rembrandt Koppelaar on Vimeo.

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The Fifth Problem: Peak Capital

Posted by Ugo Bardi on June 2, 2009 - 9:25am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: infrastructure, resource depletion, the limits to growth [list all tags]

The five main elements of the world model developed in "The Limits to Growth" study according to Magne Myrtveit .

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Minerals scarcity: A call for managed austerity and the elements of hope

Posted by Ugo Bardi on May 4, 2009 - 9:50am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: minerals, resource depletion [list all tags]

This is a guest post by André Diederen. Diederen is a senior research scientist at TNO, Holland, where he has been working since 1997 on defence related matters. His background is mechanical engineering (1987). Because a ruling paradigm in defence related matters is the precautionary principle and since this sector applies various non-abundant metals, he took a closer look at the availability of metals. The implications of metals scarcity reach far beyond the "niche" of defence related materials and might affect our entire industrial civilization.

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Mission Earth

Posted by Ugo Bardi on February 12, 2009 - 11:55pm in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: climate change, global warming, hubbert peak, resource depletion, world models [list all tags]



The seminar "Mission Earth - Modeling and Simulation for a Sustainable Future" (http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/fcellier/AGS/AGSME_2009.html) was held in Zurich on Jan 26 2009, organized by Francois Cellier and Andreas Fischlin. It was a rare occasion of a truly interdisciplinary meeting where people from different fields of modeling were given a chance to present their work and exchange views. Climate modelers and resource modelers haven't interacted very much, so far; however, resource depletion will surely have a strong effect on the future of earth's climate. While we are still far from integrated world models that take into account all factors, economic as well as environmental, this seminar was a first attempt at understanding what issues are involved.

The “Mission Earth” meeting was about three kinds of models: climate models, world models, and resource exploitation models.

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The Ultimate Fight?: The Singularity v. Resource Depletion and the Limits to Growth

Posted by Prof. Goose on June 29, 2008 - 3:00pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: kurzweil, moore's law, original, peak oil, quickening, resource depletion, singularity [list all tags]

It seems to me that one way the problems we are facing can be analyzed is as a "race." The factors/variables contributing to said "race" are captured by the following concepts:

-The Singularity or "The Law of Accelerating Returns", a concept most attributed to Ray Kurzweil. Other corollarial concepts to this idea include Moore's Law and The Quickening.

-And in the other corner, resource depletion/peak oil/net energy and the consequences/limits of exponential growth (population, pollution, and the like).

I had been thinking about this idea for a while, mentioned it to my colleagues, etc. Then I saw this piece by John Tierney entitled "Malthus v. the Singularity" at the NYT a couple of weeks ago, which has kept it on my mind. My questions for you and some other ideas are under the fold.

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