IGX

There are several energy folks who feel that all this can be mitigated for a while and perhaps averted if we get on the stick.

And lots of smart folks who think Peak Oil is bullshit.

I haven't looked at it either way.

Jack wrote:There is no alternative fuel on the horizon that will save us, no one has planned for "no oil" or massively expensive oil.

This documentary is very level, not alarmist,...

These two statements are not consistent with each other. In 1902 there was nothing "on the horizon" that could take a man across the Atlantic faster than a boat. Less than 30 years later that had changed.

People who make predictions like this are always looking at current technologies, current prices, and current rates of technological development. They don't understand that as prices rise, the incentive for people to invest in research rises and the rate of development rises. They also tend to ignore how leaps in technology happen. Finally, they ignore the fact that as prices of oil rise, alternatives that are now too costly become more attractive, which spurs more investment, and so on.

Pinky wrote:
People who make predictions like this are always looking at current technologies, current prices, and current rates of technological development.

I think this may be a fundamental piece of human psychology. You see this in the markets all the time.

For my part I sold my car, joined carshare and walk/train/bus to work.

Jack wrote:THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream.

2030 is projected as a time frame for when things will get really ugly...The suburban life is a bill of goods we've been sold that is not sustainable and never has been. With no gas in your car, and no way to heat your home, how will you live and drive thirty miles one way to work?

Sounds interesting. Personally, I think the loss of the suburban life will be a plus.

You see it when people try to make macroeconomic forecasts too, and that's one reason why those forecasts are a bunch of nonsense. The further out they go, the more comical they become.

I was talking a woman who does research in resource economics and economic history earlier this winter. (I got free beer out of it too.) She's been talking to people who want to develop financial devices to hedge against the risk of large changes in climate. She told them that the last time mankind saw the sort of change they're talking about, we invented agriculture. There's no way you can predict that sort of thing.

What we're fairly good at is predicting how individuals and firms will usually respond to a given incentive. That's why anyone who wants us to use less oil and explore alternatives more should be happy that prices are rising. Higher prices means slowing the rate of consumption and giving more room for alternatives to make a profit. Those are two predictions that are based on what we know about people and firms. Not what people with crystal balls think about the future.

nafod wrote:

Jack wrote:THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream.

2030 is projected as a time frame for when things will get really ugly...The suburban life is a bill of goods we've been sold that is not sustainable and never has been. With no gas in your car, and no way to heat your home, how will you live and drive thirty miles one way to work?

Sounds interesting. Personally, I think the loss of the suburban life will be a plus.

Nafod, I agree. Now people will have to take responsibility for their urban centers instead of just endless sprawl and stripmalls.

nafod wrote:

Jack wrote:THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream.

2030 is projected as a time frame for when things will get really ugly...The suburban life is a bill of goods we've been sold that is not sustainable and never has been. With no gas in your car, and no way to heat your home, how will you live and drive thirty miles one way to work?

Sounds interesting. Personally, I think the loss of the suburban life will be a plus.

Some folks such as Paolo Soleri (arcosanti.org) have been playing for a long time with ways to "implode" sprawl and design living communities that are walkable and also promote interpersonal interaction. A major benefit is that large expanses of current suburbia would be left to reforest (at least in some of the plans).

"End of Oil" or no, the fact that our country grew up expanding into a seemingly limitless space embedded the idea of "bigger is better" into our culture, and that's unfortunate. Time to reverse.

Fat Cat wrote:

nafod wrote:

Jack wrote:THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream.

2030 is projected as a time frame for when things will get really ugly...The suburban life is a bill of goods we've been sold that is not sustainable and never has been. With no gas in your car, and no way to heat your home, how will you live and drive thirty miles one way to work?

Sounds interesting. Personally, I think the loss of the suburban life will be a plus.

Nafod, I agree. Now people will have to take responsibility for their urban centers instead of just endless sprawl and stripmalls.

It'd be nice if it would work, but energy costs as a percentage of income have fallen way down, even from their peaks in the 70's. Technological increases even at this point have made switching to alt energy sources feasible if oil costs continue to rise.

Bottom line is that people don't want to live in the cities-- with all their problems-- and are willing to pay not to.

DEATHTURD wrote: Bottom line is that people don't want to live in the cities-- with all their problems-- and are willing to pay not to.

I totally disagree. People most definitely want to live in cities, urbanization has been a 2,000 year trend, and this can only increase if there is momentum to solve the urban problems you are alluding to. JMO, but some older cities that were designed around pre-automobile visions are incredibly inviting and promote interaction between people. Cities like Munich and Zagreb are wonderful places to live, work and play.

Fat Cat wrote:

DEATHTURD wrote: Bottom line is that people don't want to live in the cities-- with all their problems-- and are willing to pay not to.

I totally disagree. People most definitely want to live in cities, urbanization has been a 2,000 year trend, and this can only increase if there is momentum to solve the urban problems you are alluding to. JMO, but some older cities that were designed around pre-automobile visions are incredibly inviting and promote interaction between people. Cities like Munich and Zagreb are wonderful places to live, work and play.

My sympathies are with Fat Cat here. I would prefer to live in a city; however, some cities (DC) really do have too many problems for my tastes. Luckily, not every city is DC.

I actually MUCH prefer the sticks, I was just stating what the majority prefer. I grew up in hillbilly country and that is where I personally prefer to be, just to clarify.

Something to consider about predictions regarding the end of oil is that the timeline doesn't matter. What's absolute is that a endpoint exists. It's stupid that we ignore this and don't start working on restructuring either our energy needs or energy source now.

KMF wrote:Something to consider about predictions regarding the end of oil is that the timeline doesn't matter. What's absolute is that a endpoint exists. It's stupid that we ignore this and don't start working on restructuring either our energy needs or energy source now.

BING!

Fat Cat wrote:

DEATHTURD wrote: Bottom line is that people don't want to live in the cities-- with all their problems-- and are willing to pay not to.

I totally disagree. People most definitely want to live in cities, urbanization has been a 2,000 year trend, and this can only increase if there is momentum to solve the urban problems you are alluding to. JMO, but some older cities that were designed around pre-automobile visions are incredibly inviting and promote interaction between people. Cities like Munich and Zagreb are wonderful places to live, work and play.

They're not going rural, just to clarify,they're moving to the suburbs. I'd like to believe that there is actual momentum to solve urban problems-- high cost of living, perception of high crime, bloated governments-- but it isn't happening many places. Jobs aren't necessarily in the cities anymore either, the suburbs are sucking up a lot of these too. Look at LA-- people who can are moving to the Inland Valley. Chicago and Portland are following a similar pattern.

Jack wrote:

KMF wrote:Something to consider about predictions regarding the end of oil is that the timeline doesn't matter. What's absolute is that a endpoint exists. It's stupid that we ignore this and don't start working on restructuring either our energy needs or energy source now.

Right on Doc.

Also,

You can't say oil is depleting or going away without someone in the room saying, no it's not or something like that.

If you could read, you would know that no one's saying that. What I have said is that you're spewing (and believing) alarmist nonsense because you don't know the first thing about how people and firms respond to scarcity and the resulting prices. Until you do, you should keep your chicken little bullshit to yourself. People are working on this. Moreover, the rate at which they work on if will increase. That's not at prediction based on reading scifi and watching crackpot nonsense in an abundant amount of spare time. That's a prediction that's based on everything we know about how humans respond to incentives.

The law of diminishing returns demands it.

LOL at you saying anything about laws or returns.

Btw, Jack, if you're really worried about this and want "us" to do something to have more time to develop alternatives, start writing your congressmen and otherwise campaigning for higher gas taxes. Short run demand for oil has proven pretty inelastic, but if you knock the price of a gallon of gas up more, people are going to start demanding a lot more fuel efficiency from their new cars. (This is especially true if people don't think the prices will go back down, as some do now.) If you trust politicians to not waste that money on boondoggles like ethanol, you might want that money used to subsidize research. Otherwise, it could be used to reduce other taxes, pay off the debt, etc.

Jack,

Check this out, the guy who discovered it lives 5 miles away from my house. Could be a solution http://www.sequoiaonline.com/blogs/ARCH ... to_eng.htm

Jack wrote:Sounds good to go me, but none of that changes that the supply of oil eventually cannot meet the demand. It's not alarmist, it's the reality.

No, supply eventually won't be able to meet what demand is now at today's prices. What you're missing is that what can be supplied and what is demanded at today's prices are not relevant. As oil become more scarce, the price of consuming oil will rise. As prices rise, the quantity demanded falls, especially in the long run. That's reality.

Jack wrote:They talked at some length about exactly that, and they discussed how Oil will reach a price (which means gas will reach a price too) that will make it's use prohibitive.

But you don't know what will happen before that and neither do they. They're assuming there will be no alternatives before that happens, and that assumption is silly. They're looking at what's around now and drawing conclusions that aren't justified. Before supply gets low enough to make prices at our current levels of demand prohibitive, demand could be almost nonexistent.

Jack wrote:I read you, and I can't argue with that except I see no alternatives. Ideas, but no cost effective solutions. From start to finish, it has to be more economical to lure industry from oil. No such thing exists yet. It's not hydrogen, not yet, not for forty years or more.

See what I wrote above. The fact that you don't see an alternative now doesn't mean there won't be one in 10 or 20 years. Even the guess that hydrogen is 40 or more years aways from being a viable option is nonsense. Someone could discover something tomorrow that would make hydrogen feasible in 5 years, or they could discover something that would make hydrogen look like a waste of time. You can't look at how technology's advancing now and project that linearly into the future.

This is also why the alarmist, sky-is-falling approach to this problem is dangerous. It's going to make people want to pick an option (hydrogen, better batteries, etc.) and only fund research in that direction. If we pick that alternative based on what now seems the most feasible, we risk picking the wrong alternative and delaying progress.

If you want something done about this, embrace higher fuel prices, support a tax that raises them more, and support very broad funding for research into anything that isn't proven to be a boondoggle (e.g., ethanol). Worrying that a Mad Max future is almost inevitable is silly and unproductive.

Pinky, I agree that you can't predict what might come along to improve the situation, but I'd say that the pattern of sprawl, big cars, McMansions, and absurd waste has got to end. Extending that US pattern to the whole world looks like disaster, ending in a "Blade Runner" future rather than a "Mad Max" one.

BTW, what do you think of the research into cellulosic ethanol? I agree that diverting grain from food to ETOH production is stupid; about as stupid as feeding grain to cows. But various companies are playing with enzymatic and/or bacterial approaches to break stalks and other waste down to where they can be converted to ETOH. Cellulose is a carbohydrate, just a very tightly-bound one. Hey, it works for termites...

GoDogGo! wrote:Pinky, I agree that you can't predict what might come along to improve the situation, but I'd say that the pattern of sprawl, big cars, McMansions, and absurd waste has got to end. Extending that US pattern to the whole world looks like disaster, ending in a "Blade Runner" future rather than a "Mad Max" one.

A "Blade Runner" future would be much cooler than a "Mad Max" future. Seriously, I think prices are going to (eventually) restrain sprawl. There are currently people who commute to DC from as far as West Virginia. A big part of the reason that happens is the cost of living closer in. If fuel prices rise, the relative cost of commuting that far will rise as well. This is very important because it means the value of my crappy house will rise.

BTW, what do you think of the research into cellulosic ethanol? I agree that diverting grain from food to ETOH production is stupid; about as stupid as feeding grain to cows. But various companies are playing with enzymatic and/or bacterial approaches to break stalks and other waste down to where they can be converted to ETOH. Cellulose is a carbohydrate, just a very tightly-bound one. Hey, it works for termites...

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that we just can't grow enough of anything to make a dent in our energy consumption, especially when we consider the energy expended in planting, harvesting, processing, etc. Even if that is wrong, the problem with ethanol is that it's been taken over by good-for-nothing, piece of shit farm state politicians and special interest groups. The only way anything productive will come out of ethanol is if we first round up all of those people and boil them down to make biodiesel.

Oil will dwindle away rather than disappear overnight, leaving ample opportunity for the forces Pinky mentions to deliver alternatives

Ethanol makes tequila more expensive and is therefore the devil.

Hagbard wrote:Ethanol makes tequila more expensive and is therefore the devil.

When you can drive to a filling station and with the swipe of a credit card fill your car with energy and yourself with happiness from the very same nozzle...is that not heaven?

I picture an america with full service stations where you ask the attendant to fill'er up and a splash in my coke if you please.

The good news is that the most riot prone segments of our population rely more on public transit than cars. Keep a few buses run and they'll be fine.