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Eight Energy Myths Explained
Submitted by Gail Tverberg of Our Finite World blog,
Republicans, Democrats, and environmentalists all have favorite energy myths. Even Peak Oil believers have favorite energy myths. The following are a few common mis-beliefs, coming from a variety of energy perspectives. I will start with a recent myth, and then discuss some longer-standing ones.
Myth 1. The fact that oil producers are talking about wanting to export crude oil means that the US has more than enough crude oil for its own needs.
The real story is that producers want to sell their crude oil at as high a price as possible. If they have a choice of refineries A, B, and C in this country to sell their crude oil to, the maximum amount they can receive for their oil is limited by the price the price these refineries are paying, less the cost of shipping the oil to these refineries.
If it suddenly becomes possible to sell crude oil to refineries elsewhere, the possibility arises that a higher price will be available in another country. Refineries are optimized for a particular type of crude. If, for example, refineries in Europe are short of light, sweet crude because such oil from Libya is mostly still unavailable, a European refinery might be willing to pay a higher price for crude oil from the Bakken (which also produces light sweet, crude) than a refinery in this country. Even with shipping costs, an oil producer might be able to make a bigger profit on its oil sold outside of the US than sold within the US.
The US consumed 18.9 million barrels a day of petroleum products during 2013. In order to meet its oil needs, the US imported 6.2 million barrels of oil a day in 2013 (netting exported oil products against imported crude oil). Thus, the US is, and will likely continue to be, a major oil crude oil importer.
If production and consumption remain at a constant level, adding crude oil exports would require adding crude oil imports as well. These crude oil imports might be of a different kind of oil than that that is exported–quite possibly sour, heavy crude instead of sweet, light crude. Or perhaps US refineries specializing in light, sweet crude will be forced to raise their purchase prices, to match world crude oil prices for that type of product.
The reason exports of crude oil make sense from an oil producer’s point of view is that they stand to make more money by exporting their crude to overseas refineries that will pay more. How this will work out in the end is unclear. If US refiners of light, sweet crude are forced to raise the prices they pay for oil, and the selling price of US oil products doesn’t rise to compensate, then more US refiners of light, sweet crude will go out of business, fixing a likely world oversupply of such refiners. Or perhaps prices of US finished products will rise, reflecting the fact that the US has to some extent in the past received a bargain (related to the gap between European Brent and US WTI oil prices), relative to world prices. In this case US consumers will end up paying more.
The one thing that is very clear is that the desire to ship crude oil abroad does not reflect too much total crude oil being produced in the United States. At most, what it means is an overabundance of refineries, worldwide, adapted to light, sweet crude. This happens because over the years, the world’s oil mix has been generally changing to heavier, sourer types of oil. Perhaps if there is more oil from shale formations, the mix will start to change back again. This is a very big “if,” however. The media tend to overplay the possibilities of such extraction as well.
Myth 2. The economy doesn’t really need very much energy.
We humans need food of the right type, to provide us with the energy we need to carry out our activities. The economy is very similar: it needs energy of the right types to carry out its activities.
One essential activity of the economy is growing and processing food. In developing countries in warm parts of the world, food production, storage, transport, and preparation accounts for the vast majority of economic activity (Pimental and Pimental, 2007). In traditional societies, much of the energy comes from human and animal labor and burning biomass.
If a developing country substitutes modern fuels for traditional energy sources in food production and preparation, the whole nature of the economy changes. We can see this starting to happen on a world-wide basis in the early 1800s, as energy other than biomass use ramped up.

Figure 1. World Energy Consumption by Source, Based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects and together with BP Statistical Data on 1965 and subsequent
The Industrial Revolution began in the late 1700s in Britain. It was enabled by coal usage, which made it possible to make metals, glass, and cement in much greater quantities than in the past. Without coal, deforestation had become a problem, especially near cold urban areas, such as London. With coal, it became possible to use industrial processes that required heat without the problem of deforestation. Processes using high levels of heat also became cheaper, because it was no longer necessary to cut down trees, make charcoal from the wood, and transport the charcoal long distances (because near-by wood had already been depleted).
The availability of coal allowed the use of new technology to be ramped up. For example, according to Wikipedia, the first steam engine was patented in 1608, and the first commercial steam engine was patented in 1712. In 1781, James Watt invented an improved version of the steam engine. But to actually implement the steam engine widely using metal trains running on metal tracks, coal was needed to make relatively inexpensive metal in quantity.
Concrete and metal could be used to make modern hydroelectric power plants, allowing electricity to be made in quantity. Devices such as light bulbs (using glass and metal) could be made in quantity, as well as wires used for transmitting electricity, allowing a longer work-day.
The use of coal also led to agriculture changes as well, cutting back on the need for farmers and ranchers. New devices such as steel plows and reapers and hay rakes were manufactured, which could be pulled by horses, transferring work from humans to animals. Barbed-wire fence allowed the western part of the US to become cropland, instead one large unfenced range. With fewer people needed in agriculture, more people became available to work in cities in factories.
Our economy is now very different from what it was back about 1820, because of increased energy use. We have large cities, with food and raw materials transported from a distance to population centers. Water and sewer treatments greatly reduce the risk of disease transmission of people living in such close proximity. Vehicles powered by oil or electricity eliminate the mess of animal-powered transport. Many more roads can be paved.
If we were to try to leave today’s high-energy system and go back to a system that uses biofuels (or only biofuels plus some additional devices that can be made with biofuels), it would require huge changes.
Myth 3. We can easily transition to renewables.
On Figure 1, above, the only renewables are hydroelectric and biofuels. While energy supply has risen rapidly, population has risen rapidly as well.
When we look at energy use on a per capita basis, the result is as shown in Figure 3, below.

Figure 3. Per capita world energy consumption, calculated by dividing world energy consumption (based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent) by population estimates, based on Angus Maddison data.
The energy consumption level in 1820 would be at a basic level–only enough to grow and process food, heat homes, make clothing, and provide for some very basic industries. Based on Figure 3, even this required a little over 20 gigajoules of energy per capita. If we add together per capita biofuels and hydroelectric on Figure 3, they would come out to only about 11 gigajoules of energy per capita. To get to the 1820 level of per capita energy consumption, we would either need to add something else, such as coal, or wait a very, very long time until (perhaps) renewables including hydroelectric could be ramped up enough.
If we want to talk about renewables that can be made without fossil fuels, the amount would be smaller yet. As noted previously, modern hydroelectric power is enabled by coal, so we would need to exclude this. We would also need to exclude modern biofuels, such as ethanol made from corn and biodiesel made from rape seed, because they are greatly enabled by today’s farming and transportation equipment and indirectly by our ability to make metal in quantity.
I have included wind and solar in the “Biofuels” category for convenience. They are so small in quantity that they wouldn’t be visible as a separate categories, wind amounting to only 1.0% of world energy supply in 2012, and solar amounting to 0.2%, according to BP data. We would need to exclude them as well, because they too require fossil fuels to be produced and transported.
In total, the biofuels category without all of these modern additions might be close to the amount available in 1820. Population now is roughly seven times as large, suggesting only one-seventh as much energy per capita. Of course, in 1820 the amount of wood used led to significant deforestation, so even this level of biofuel use was not ideal. And there would be the additional detail of transporting wood to markets. Back in 1820, we had horses for transport, but we would not have enough horses for this purpose today.
Myth 4. Population isn’t related to energy availability.
If we compare Figures 2 and 3, we see that the surge in population that took place immediately after World War II coincided with the period that per-capita energy use was ramping up rapidly. The increased affluence of the 1950s (fueled by low oil prices and increased ability to buy goods using oil) allowed parents to have more children. Better sanitation and innovations such as antibiotics (made possible by fossil fuels) also allowed more of these children to live to maturity.
Furthermore, the Green Revolution which took place during this time period is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. It ramped up the use of irrigation, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, hybrid seed, and the development of high yield grains. All of these techniques were enabled by availability of oil. Greater use of agricultural equipment, allowing seeds to be sowed closer together, also helped raise production. By this time, electricity reached farming communities, allowing use of equipment such as milking machines.
If we take a longer view of the situation, we find that a “bend” in the world population occurred about the time of Industrial Revolution, and the ramp up of coal use (Figure 4). Increased farming equipment made with metals increased food output, allowing greater world population.

Figure 4. World population based on data from “Atlas of World History,” McEvedy and Jones, Penguin Reference Books, 1978
and Wikipedia-World Population.
Furthermore, when we look at countries that have seen large drops in energy consumption, we tend to see population declines. For example, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were drops in energy consumption in a number of countries whose energy was affected (Figure 5).
Myth 5. It is easy to substitute one type of energy for another.
Any changeover from one type of energy to another is likely to be slow and expensive, if it can be accomplished at all.
One major issue is the fact that different types of energy have very different uses. When oil production was ramped up, during and following World War II, it added new capabilities, compared to coal. With only coal (and hydroelectric, enabled by coal), we could have battery-powered cars, with limited range. Or ethanol-powered cars, but ethanol required a huge amount of land to grow the necessary crops. We could have trains, but these didn’t go from door to door. With the availability of oil, we were able to have personal transportation vehicles that went from door to door, and trucks that delivered goods from where they were produced to the consumer, or to any other desired location.
We were also able to build airplanes. With airplanes, we were able to win World War II. Airplanes also made international business feasible on much greater scale, because it became possible for managers to visit operations abroad in a relatively short time-frame, and because it was possible to bring workers from one country to another for training, if needed. Without air transport, it is doubtful that the current number of internationally integrated businesses could be maintained.
The passage of time does not change the inherent differences between different types of fuels. Oil is still the fuel of preference for long-distance travel, because (a) it is energy dense so it fits in a relatively small tank, (b) it is a liquid, so it is easy to dispense at refueling stations, and (c) we are now set up for liquid fuel use, with a huge number of cars and trucks on the road which use oil and refueling stations to serve these vehicles. Also, oil works much better than electricity for air transport.
Changing to electricity for transportation is likely to be a slow and expensive process. One important point is that the cost of electric vehicles needs to be brought down to where they are affordable for buyers, if we do not want the changeover to have a hugely adverse effect on the economy. This is the case because salaries are not going to rise to pay for high-priced cars, and the government cannot afford large subsidies for everyone. Another issue is that the range of electric vehicles needs to be increased, if vehicle owners are to be able to continue to use their vehicles for long-distance driving.
No matter what type of changeover is made, the changeover needs to implemented slowly, over a period of 25 years or more, so that buyers do not lose the trade in value of their oil-powered vehicles. If the changeover is done too quickly, citizens will lose their trade in value of their oil-powered cars, and because of this, will not be able to afford the new vehicles.
If a changeover to electric transportation vehicles is to be made, many vehicles other than cars will need to be made electric, as well. These would include long haul trucks, busses, airplanes, construction equipment, and agricultural equipment, all of which would need to be made electric. Costs would need to be brought down, and necessary refueling equipment would need to be installed, further adding to the slowness of the changeover process.
Another issue is that even apart from energy uses, oil is used in many applications as a raw material. For example, it is used in making herbicides and pesticides, asphalt roads and asphalt shingles for roofs, medicines, cosmetics, building materials, dyes, and flavoring. There is no possibility that electricity could be adapted to these uses. Coal could perhaps be adapted for these uses, because it is also a fossil fuel.
Myth 6. Oil will “run out” because it is limited in supply and non-renewable.
This myth is actually closer to the truth than the other myths. The situation is a little different from “running out,” however. The real situation is that oil limits are likely to disrupt the economy in various ways. This economic disruption is likely to be what leads to an abrupt drop in oil supply. One likely possibility is that a lack of debt availability and low wages will keep oil prices from rising to the level that oil producers need for extraction. Under this scenario, oil producers will see little point in investing in new production. There is evidence that this scenario is already starting to happen.
There is another version of this myth that is even more incorrect. According to this myth, the situation with oil supply (and other types of fossil fuel supply) is as follows:
Myth 7. Oil supply (and the supply of other fossil fuels) will start depleting when the supply is 50% exhausted. We can therefore expect a long, slow decline in fossil fuel use.
This myth is a favorite of peak oil believers. Indirectly, similar beliefs underly climate change models as well. It is based on what I believe is an incorrect reading of the writings of M. King Hubbert. Hubbert is a geologist and physicist who foretold a decline of US oil production, and eventually world production, in various documents, including Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels, published in 1956. Hubbert observed that under certain circumstances, the production of various fossil fuels tends to follow a rather symmetric curve.

Figure 7. M. King Hubbert’s 1956 image of expected world crude oil production, assuming ultimate recoverable oil of 1,250 billion barrels.
A major reason that this type of forecast is wrong is because it is based on a scenario in which some other type of energy supply was able to be ramped up, before oil supply started to decline.
With this ramp up in energy supply, the economy can continue as in the past without a major financial problem arising relating to the reduced oil supply. Without a ramp up in energy supply of some other type, there would be a problem with too high a population in relationship to the declining energy supply. Per-capita energy supply would drop rapidly, making it increasingly difficult to produce enough goods and services. In particular, maintaining government services is likely to become a problem. Needed taxes are likely to rise too high relative to what citizens can afford, leading to major problems, even collapse, based on the research of Turchin and Nefedov (2009).
Myth 8. Renewable energy is available in essentially unlimited supply.
The issue with all types of energy supply, from fossil fuels, to nuclear (based on uranium), to geothermal, to hydroelectric, to wind and solar, is diminishing returns. At some point, the cost of producing energy becomes less efficient, and because of this, the cost of production begins to rise. It is the fact wages do not rise to compensate for these higher costs and that cheaper substitutes do not become available that causes financial problems for the economic system.
In the case of oil, rising cost of extraction comes because the cheap-to-extract oil is extracted first, leaving only the expensive-to-extract oil. This is the problem we recently have been experiencing. Similar problems arise with natural gas and coal, but the sharp upturn in costs may come later because they are available in somewhat greater supply relative to demand.
Uranium and other metals experience the same problem with diminishing returns, as the cheapest to extract portions of these minerals is extracted first, and we must eventually move on to lower-grade ores.
Part of the problem with so-called renewables is that they are made of minerals, and these minerals are subject to the same depletion issues as other minerals. This may not be a problem if the minerals are very abundant, such as iron or aluminum. But if minerals are lesser supply, such as rare earth minerals and lithium, depletion may lead to rising costs of extraction, and ultimately higher costs of devices using the minerals.
Another issue is choice of sites. When hydroelectric plants are installed, the best locations tend to be chosen first. Gradually, less desirable locations are added. The same holds for wind turbines. Offshore wind turbines tend to be more expensive than onshore turbines. If abundant onshore locations, close to population centers, had been available for recent European construction, it seems likely that these would have been used instead of offshore turbines.
When it comes to wood, overuse and deforestation has been a constant problem throughout the ages. As population rises, and other energy resources become less available, the situation is likely to become even worse.
Finally, renewables, even if they use less oil, still tend to be dependent on oil. Oil is important for operating mining equipment and for transporting devices from the location where they are made to the location where they are to be put in service. Helicopters (requiring oil) are used in maintenance of wind turbines, especially off shore, and in maintenance of electric transmission lines. Even if repairs can be made with trucks, operation of these trucks still generally requires oil. Maintenance of roads also requires oil. Even transporting wood to market requires oil.
If there is a true shortage of oil, there will be a huge drop-off in the production of renewables, and maintenance of existing renewables will become more difficult. Solar panels that are used apart from the electric grid may be long-lasting, but batteries, inverters, long distance electric transmission lines, and many other things we now take for granted are likely to disappear.
Thus, renewables are not available in unlimited supply. If oil supply is severely constrained, we may even discover that many existing renewables are not even last very long lasting.
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What a great concise history of the world, in effect. And now the neoCommunist/Greens are destroying the wealth engine, so crazed in their pogrom against coal in particular, and fossil fuels in general. They won't be happy until most of the population dies off or suffers in abject proverty so as to save Mother Earth. I say feed the socialists into the power generation mix (bio fuel) and allow them to claim their self actualization.
GROWTH is destroying the future!
How the fuck is extracting more and more finite resources out of the ground going to save us in the long-run? See how polluted China is getting? Yeah, do it even faster and the bonus along with your short-term economic gains is long-term environmental destruction (and health problems)
"They won't be happy until most of the population dies off or suffers in abject proverty so as to save Mother Earth. I say feed the socialists into the power generation mix (bio fuel) and allow them to claim their self actualization."
You're projecting. News flash: MOST OF HUMANITY CURRENTLY AND HISTORICALLY HAS BEEN POOR. 750 million people in India living on $0.50/day; 2/3 of the world's population lives on $3/day or less. Yeah, distract the fact that you're living high on the hog (in comparison) by blasting at all those nasty humans that your disgruntled ass can conjure up.
Stupid fuck.
"The future ain't what it used to be." There be a lot of truth in that quote. It is getting truer all of the time.
Obviously you don't (and apparently never will) grasp how asinine and trite it is to endlessly repeat (like a scratched-record) what any observant 10 year old can workout in a few seconds, that a planet is not an infinite quantity.
Guess what, most people know that. I knew it when a kid, it kinda obvious but somehow I kept it all together and got over it. So I can't help but wonder what the fascination is to keep repeating this mantra as if it's news to someone, somewhere, anywhere, or even remotely useful as a rolling and endless 'newsflash'.
But regardless the fanatically finite-obsessed broken-siren of the neurotically self-concerned wails on a chorus of impending 'unprecedented' doom ... it's quite the mergency.
Meanwhile, only 3.9 billion years of known dynamic biological activity on a finite planet goes on living like it always has, and will continue to, for quite a few more billion years yet.
yup ... quite the global 'mergency ... and quite terrifying ... whatever shall we do?
Having looked into the likes of the Club of Rome, their sponsoring of certain books and science that furthers the malthusian meme, and listening to many, like Catherine Austin Fitts, who variously describe tech bubbles as just one way of removing competing tech advancing companies with propriety tech, through take overs, raids, IP regulations and company proprietary cannibalism...One can only guess at the amount of tech hidden from us that would challenge certain corporations and deliver cheap decent energy and, if left alone the normal crop growing indpendance and trade that varies with normal climate not fucked with climate and water.
Further witnessing and reading about countless productive lands destroyed for the gain of vested interests to extract their desired minerals whilst they falsley create food and water shortages; no wonder the 'finite' meme for our global population is so strong.
Understanding the use of "national parks" as private hunting reserves for HRH and camps for terrorist militia throughout certain continents as a base to destabilise and ensure oil/mineral security for outside interests, should raise a moment of pause. Nations without war can grow food and be indpendent of killing wildilfe but it big business (for Germans??) as I witnessed in Vietnam.
Via co-workers & relatives I know of several oil fields globally that are unnecessarily run in a specific way to destroy underground water quality - leaving countless villages with toxic water. It was not even a great cost saving, just a mechanism to poison crops, people and force migration by families after deformaties and illness.
Also I am watching enviro reg's growing to protect land from its current state of "good health" - land used for 100 years that is considered in good health apparentl must now be removed from the farmers who have kept it in good health... food shortages are obvious; but its not due to population growth.
The land removed from us evil people and placed into national parks is officially recognised as dying; watermelon Tim Flannery calls these patches 'Marsupial Ghost Towns', while farmers see them as weed and predatory animal breeding grounds costing them a fortune in removal on their 'productive' land.
We are all being turned into wastelands.
Food prices shall soar. You can bet on it, make dosh from betting on it.
But it is not due to population and scarcity.
For eg. Fuck China for poisoning their land that is not population growth that is 'free trade' shifting manufacturing to a country with a corrupt government.
UE, I was one of the suckers who wasted the equivalent of a perfectly good six-pack buying the 'Population Bomb'.
What people don't seem to grasp is that 12 thousand years ago the great barrier reef didn't even exist, because the tide was out only about 100 meters for around 100k years and the water was far too cold for corals except near the equator. Plus, on top, for millennia prior to 12k years ago about 98% of Australia was far drier then now and desert-sand and dust-storm dominated, far more so than the North African Sahara desert is now.
But we humans are great 'despoilers' donchaknow?! Nature's normal operation is never responsible for bad stuff, Ghai but smiles on the life benevolently, it's only the evil human who has the power to exstinkerate life and despoil environment and the earth itself!
So let's just forget that we're also as natural as the earth itself and the earth was made rich, bountiful and more beautiful even by our presence and action. The truth is we're the greatest creation earth has ever produced, we are here because we won the right to exist, and that right is to make our own environmental niches on this planet, and to use every bit of technology and capacity that we need to, to continue to bloom and crash-through every limitation in the way, as we did with every former limitation to our ability to thrive.
We are going to crash-through or die trying, no matter what any flock of spineless wowsers says, or how their rhetoric tries to compel humanity to just give up and feel sorry for itself and fail to even try any more.
Pure idiocy.
I despair at the staggering ignorance and imbalance in every discussion surrounding the eco-doom utter madness and nonsense infesting the internet. I'm not the slightest interested in 'emergency' this, and 'crisis' that, and all the 'collapse' uber-blather, here and elsewhere.
Generally not one bit of it is real, and the snake-oil peddlers of enviro-doom are not interested in perspective. And not one of the 'science-backed' claims can be trusted to not be corrupt deceitful flagrant fabrications. And there's not even one formal or official agency of govt, nor any NGO (particularly NGOs in fact!) which can be trusted to be telling the truth about anything, at any time, on any issue.
Believe and accept absolutely none of what they sprout and you'll be right about 99 times out of 100, if not considerably more.
PS: I'm sure you've been loving and avidly watching the royal tourists :D ... sorry ... they'll be gone soon, but we'll still be stuck with the slobbering morons who were fawning all over them ... zombie attack cometh ... :-)
woof! royal grand kids slobbering in my bowl sux.
The Catholic church set up guilt nicely to be more broadly leveraged.
Try telling others we are a legitmate and wonderful creation.... good luck the guilt and comfortable years of a 'middle class' have softened the bellies and spirit.
"Follow the money" is no longer a valid form of inquiry but terribly obvious once you do.
I have a document somewhere in storage, one of hundreds, that shows UN Agenda 21 banning scuba diving as applied in Australia - its not an academic paper its policy being applied. After years as a Reef Check conservationist scuba diver on the Great Barrier Reef - I was stunned.
Of a hundred things my family have done to restore bush, rare butterflies, rare wallabies, etc in degraded weed and pig land. I finally understood why crocodiles were protected and not contained - its to remove us.
I want to leave now, its too much like a soft glove of Zimbawe where all land rights and legal security died replacing lifestyles with the boiling frog.
I love the land of Australia it smells and feels and looks like magic, its in my blood and feels like it can go on forever. It can't.
Its a fucking finacial and constitutional mess in the making for big trouble and no one gives a toss. Been there done that already in southern Africa. Seriously its a zombie nation.
:( shouldn't be so
Ah, I had a girl friend for years who was a research diver on the reef for part of every year. I think we all want to look after the world, but what is occurring is just extremist ideology mixing with politics. You throw out the utterly incompetant socialist clowns and vandals, then you get back the hard-core stateist royalist morons who's favorite tool is coersion and compulsion followed by thuggish offensive acts of 'enforcement'.
Those are the 'choices', we've talked about this before, its why I won't vote ever again. The third choice is either the wacko gay-green party, and as I'm not actually a fag and rather disapprove of their whole 'lifestyle' I can't vote for that bizare mix of puritanical-degenrate. Or else the other 'choice' which is some billionaire wacko with a nickle and cobolt smelter, a dinosaur park, and his very own fucking Titanic! ... lol.
Maybe the royals think we'll go for them again instead? btw, your corgi would look awesome with Dame Edna specs. :D
LOL! the tards got better and gave us a shot of Plamer to see just how much better (confused look OK).
Corgi's only wear tiara's screw you!!!
Though Ednas tights might be handy for various purposes.
Now, did you get a chance to look at this little steaming pile:
http://cecaust.com.au/pubs/pdfs/Mortgage-Bubble-Memo-Web.pdf
Do plan accordingly my friend, no one I know will listen.
its like bark'n into a storm but I keep trying,
Woof
I've also tried to tell people simply how big QLD and NSW's debt levels are per capita. People can't face it, they won't face it! They literally believe the debt does not actually exist and that their taxes do not really go towards servicing that debt - to the banks! They really can't face the possibility that the debt level really is that high. And the Queensland govt is only now beginning to slowly point out how big it is, and how serious an economic threat it is. But they're still soft soaping it, still trying to make it seem like it's 'manageable'. But it isn't really, all they can do is play along and buy time. The state literally can not pay it back and it will be forced to roll it over and have us service it for generations, and have next to no service provisioning from taxes, and we now have to totally rip the country-side apart just to keep servicing it.
So the combination of shit-for-brains Peter Beattie and the hopeless smiling socialist skunk, Anna Bligh, have totally vandalized the economic and financial prospects of Queensland for around two generations. They didn't even hesitate to sell Queensland's workers to the black-birders in bank attire.
And the silly duped suckers on the hook for it only hear rough numbers and projections for federal debts, which are a bit annoying but no serious drag on revenue yet. But the public debt of QLD and NSW is for all intents unrepayable. It's going to be a massive drain on state revenue and taxes on everyone, on top of the Federal tax load. And it will not stop for the term of our children's lives. We're going to be forced into resource extraction simply to service this massive public debt, from totally useless spending on nothing that was ever going to mean a damn (they built stupid fucking football stadiums with a chunk of it) and was put in place by outrageous vandals in labor govts of the past two decades, who did absolutely nothing but sell every public asset they could and run massive deficits with continual spending expansions.
And they never told anyone, and the voters were too apathetic to even question anything, and it was NEVER even an election issue!
This is also a major reason why I'll NEVER vote again.
I seriously considered leaving in 2010-2011 and most probably will soon as I know there's no upside here, this is all dead and wasted spending with no payback coming, it will crush those states and eventually they must 'do a Greece' as the private debt also goes bad. Economic weakness and debt collapse and asset grabs with tax rises and surcharge extortion are all baked-in and already well under way.
It will indeed be a genuine economic collapse, of epic political and social melodrama, when it finally hits. They can stretch it out a few years and they will, but the smiling socialists have sold us to the slavers and are still sitting there smiling at us like assassins and pretending they were our friends, and they were serving us. When they only served us for dinner to the debt slavers.
I think they're utter scum, traitors, fifth-columnists. The numbers make no bones about what they are, and what they did. I'd have no problem being a part of the firing squad though.
Element, a few I know are preparing for leaving for various reasons that relate to your post. Mostly a few are preparing alternatives residencies in plan b scenarious. Paraguay is a straight forward procedural option for one continent (Asia is obvious but PR seems tricky), Mauritius is an interesting option. Its growing the number I hear talking of plan b's. They also seem to be more positive when they know they have a plan b.
Element do you recall Beatty wining and dining Gorbachev 2006 in Brisbane - they taught kids to sing a song that contrdicted our national anthem. BIG warning sign. Newman was around proud and upright. BIG warning sign. Its rigged.
The Great Barrier Reef started growing 18 million years ago...
Quit making shit up or deceptively twisting reality....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef
yeh and we little plebs in the last few years fucked it up and need a smack on the bottom, got it.
if we, not TPTB, just died it would all be fine mother nature would never fucking change
stop citing wiki its too perfect and stringent and I fear its wise words
The vast majority of the barrier reef lagoon areas between the actual reefs today are between 30 and 40 meters deep and almost none of it is over 60 m deep. And none of it was present at all 12 thousand years ago.
Every bit of where it is now was then exposed a minimum of 40 to 60 meters above sea level, 12 thousand years ago, and the actual reef of today was exposed 80 to 100 meters above sea level then.
There were no reefs like now, the great barrier reef simply was not there (you blithering fool).
All that was there then were weathered limestone bluffs swept by sand dune fields over a solidified dried shingle mud base plain.
If you went there at the time you would see a wind blasted near-coastal sand dune system like a very cold version of death valley. The reef today stops just south of Bundaberg, for one simple reason, the water becomes too cold to support coral growth any further south, it simply dies out. The species diversity is highest in the north and very low in the south, until it falls to nothing.
Even your pea-brain should be able to grasp physical observational realities like those flak-wad.
Nature is always changing, however, the rates of change are using expressed in tens of thousands of years, not decades...
If you don't like wiki, you can also click through to the primary sources, they can be a tad dry though....
flakmeister we're not all retards, some of us studied this shit at the hallowed institutions of promenient corp funding, we also got over the BS by direct observation and following funded fellows who were wrong again and again and again. don't inform me on this shit pls.
Very happy for you....
Its funny how people can actually know a bit about something in some field and be the equivalent of a complete loon by believing nonsense like the Electric Universe....
Element, OT, if you are still here, what is your take of the 'vanishing' flight. The tech you had a grasp of was quite beyond me but it is still an odd itch in my head.
Not got more to say on that at this point, they knew where it was, they dropped the hydrophone on top of it on the first day to using that apparatus, so that was fairly clear. So they're simply doing the detailed mapping of the area now to locate where it ended up precisely on the bottom. I want to see the condition of the wreck, where the engines ended up with respect to it, and see the flight data logging now. I'm fully satisfied the Aust military and Canberra knew where it was all along though.
Matches my ignorant take, in time we might know why it was played like a game; innocents be buggered which is really not acceptable IMO, actually it is quite upsetting when we consider there were ordinay people on board.
never the mind the 5 Eyes and all that, will give me a reef and a bone to chew, its in wiki after all
wooof!
we're also as natural as the earth itself and the earth was made rich, bountiful and more beautiful even by our presence and action. The truth is we're the greatest creation earth has ever produced, we are here because we won the right to exist, and that right is to make our own environmental niches on this planet, and to use every bit of technology and capacity that we need to, to continue to bloom and crash-through every limitation in the way, as we did with every former limitation to our ability to thrive. We are going to crash-through or die trying, no matter what any flock of spineless wowsers says,
loving re-reading this.
Downright Randian with more than a soupcon of narcissism....
whatever... humans arrived here like everyother creature; object to yourself being present and to your existence just like His Royal Virus and de-popultion Gates scum that that dont die as they preach; narcissists indeed, they have unused staple guns in their garages (plural).
Guess what? Those who are in charge are declaring the opposite, that our resources are not depleting and never will, and a very large number of sheep are bleating as loud as they can that it's true.
That means the message hasn't been repeated nearly enough.
"Obviously you don't (and apparently never will) grasp how asinine and trite it is to endlessly repeat (like a scratched-record) what any observant 10 year old can workout in a few seconds, that a planet is not an infinite quantity."
Why thank your for your astute observation. Now go shoot yourself in the head.
"Guess what, most people know that. I knew it when a kid,"
Well fucking great for you!
Apparently you're failing to note the idiocy of folks posting that show they have absolutely no fucking idea that the planet is finite?
"But regardless the fanatically finite-obsessed broken-siren of the neurotically self-concerned wails on a chorus of impending 'unprecedented' doom ... it's quite the mergency."
Again, fuck off. You're a self-centered idiot.
Isn't it coal pollution, the mining and the burning, which causes the most serious health problems and therefore loss of wealth as you no longer can work, nor even grow food for yourself which is over-contaminated? When we burned coal in homes people died of black-lung.
You are a complete dimwit, that's twice now you've directly claimed that black lung is caused by burning coal, And it's already been pointed out to you that it's caused by inhaling fine coal dust for years during coal mining in tight unventilated mines, a thing routinely circumvented via a basic dust mask.
Show me an instance of any medical research paper from any western medical journal periodical of that era, that concluded that black-lung was being caused in coal miners by cooking with coal.
Er, you did realize it was actually coal workers who developed the condition called "black lung", right?
You are the very dumbest of the dumbest morons posting on zh. Even when you are shown why you are entirely wrong in all respects, to continue to lie an bullshit and post rank rubbish and propaganda.
But then again, just look at your post just above this one and it all becomes clear, you wrote, and I quote directly (my bold):
So you think repeating your bullshit, even though you already know its a lie, is your intended method of converting idiotic bullshit propaganda in to 'known facts' that can't be challenged, is it? Wow. And please continue, the more clowns like you do this the more the public in general stop paying attention to your transparent utter idiocy.
The last time you did this black lung thing I didn't bother to keep the reference because I figured no one could possibly be so dumb as to try that again, but you have. So I'm going to keep this little example for future reference, when you try it again, as I'm now convinced you are indeed that painfully stupid. lol
You're a fucking idiot. You can't contain all the dust everywhere from coal burning because you'd be limiting the air flow to burn the fuel, nor can you demand everyone wear a mask forever because now we're too dumb to burn something better than coal.
You're demanding an extreme amount of fuckwittery and no one's interested.
See, there you are again calling folks names. FUCK OFF.
i thought this article was about peak ass greece. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra
i was dissapointed. hey, at least there is no leakage .
Nothing like a good hockey stick....
Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Pledges to Implement South Stream Project
http://www.novinite.com/articles/160009/Bulgaria%27s+Foreign+Minister+Pl...
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin has pledged that Bulgaria will do everything within its power to implement the South Stream project.
“There is a total agreement in Bulgaria on the matter – not only within the authorities, but also between the opposition and the ruling parties,” Vigenin said in an exclusive interview for the Russian state wire service ITAR-TASS. “For us South Stream is an important project.”
In his words, “in spite our wish to help Ukraine to stabilize, we see that the situation there will not calm down soon.”
“Bulgaria and some other EU member states should not be the hostages of Ukraine’s instability,” Vigenin said.
A real shitty article, once of the worst on ZH. Pimping nuike is not a future.
Downplaying solar is NOT a future.
Is Dieoff a Future?
Sadly, (in all probability) it is "THE future." Not that I wish or promote it; just basing it on what happens to all other lifeforms that overrun the capacity of their environments.
the tell tale sign of most morons who claim to have an opinion about the energy sector as regards global warming is that they think they are qualified to pick favorites.
all energy platforms will progress more or less a the pace which their competivitve technological position dictates.
i'm not saying you cannot support subidisies and feel good about that. you can pick your favorites. but when you really think you are qualfied to think your opinion is valid because all the propoganda that you watched to convince you of your belief has no detail and is created in order to make you think your opinion of what a command and control govenrment structure should do is important.
disclosure---solar is great!
Even oil and nat gas are solar energy - fossilized, conserved sunshine from the past, millions of years of sunshine burnt up in a blink of an eye (from mother earth's time perspective).
I think you're reading it different than most. I don't see it as promoting nukes (only posters here). And, I don't think that it's anti-solar either.
There is no "solution" because the target keeps changing. We'll likely use a bit of a lot of different things. There is no one-size-fits-all (contrary to what all the pimpers running around here are suggesting).
What should be a take-away is that in no way will any alternatives support continued growth. I have concerns about running ahead with an economic system that is predicated on endless growth- seeing a big problem here.
Thanks. Great post.
It'll be peak potable water long before peak energy.
Bitchez
It's not peak energy, it's peak CHEAP energy, as damande rises, ever more fiat curreny units chase something of which there is less and less in the ground (for the most part), and harder (i.e. more costly) to produce. Declining resources (which includes clean/potable water by the way) are just a bitch to the fantasy of eternal growth, but that's JMHO. Nature has a way of sorting things out in the longrun; what is not sustainable will not survive.
"It's not peak energy, it's peak CHEAP energy"
I'll up the ante:
It's not peak energy OR peak CHEAP energy, it's peak CHEAP EXPORTED energy. Energy-importing countries are really going to struggle. The exporters will only increase their internal consumption levels, further reducing the available energy for export.
Actually no, using the energy we can make water potable so it's the loss of the energy that will lead to loss of clean water.
I guess there will be no "energy independence" in the foreseeble future for the US. Crude a bit lower shorterm, up longterm.
Late to the party here, but I believe part of the answer (not all of it) lies in changing how energy is produced and distributed.
Today, we work off a centralized distribution model, but solar, wind, biofuels (wood, coal), geothermal, and small hydro offer an opportunity to at least cut down on the use of "fossil" fuels.
Sure, these alternatives all require energy and materials to construct and maintain, but imagine the reduction in energy use on the grid and in transportation if 1/3 of the population did a few things, like a) having a garden, b) a few solar panels, c) windmills or turbines where practical.
Naturally, the big problem is overcrowding in cities, whereas people in apartments can't do much to contribute, but we need to lean away from the distributed model to a more individualist approach as much as possible.
Getting rid of regulations, zoning and other government impediments would be a good start. Education also helps.
We are running out of cheap oil and gas, for sure, and need to make changes. People intent on going off the grid, or, at least, supplanting the grid with some of their own energy, have the right idea and should be promoted, rather than ridiculed.
overcrowding into the cities is artificially created, self-sufficient rural and manufacturing communities have been destroyed by policy in multiple nations (so nothing to do with Americans, Canadians, Aussie, Kiwi's etc being unproductive).
fix the 50+yr policy drivers forcing fake oil prices, subverting technological innovations, faking FREE trade agreements, and thereby pushing more people into cities that are intentionaly not adapt and upgraded to the forced growth (this creates a perception of too many on the planet vs gross misallocation of resources and propoerty rights by TPTB) which can now be totally managed by crony corp's seeking a EBT welfare account or property bubble....see this clear and wide; and you'll now find life and resources magically work to the alternative agenda
we're not the alternative agenda
"Water and sewer treatments greatly reduce the risk of disease transmission of people living in such close proximity. "
But with composting toilets we don't need extensive sewer pipe systems which also need constant repair, and we humans should not be living in such close proximity. We aren't dead sardines in a can but we soon could be if we keep this up.
#6, #7 , oil: when the cost in real physical terms, energy available from a barrel of oil, is insufficient to get another barrel of oil out of the ground then peak oil is definitely real & irreversible.
However, we have a lot of waste heat from other processes that in a co-generation configuration could be re-captured for generation of oil from garbage. Since 2006 this technology has existed but not been widely deployed. Thermal depolymerization.
Since the Earth naturally is not producing any more oil (no new plant material is being shoved miles under the Earth to be compressed into oil) and since we're not widely turning biowaste into petroleum distillates using thermal depolymerization (but we can) that means peak oil is no myth.
Referring in this article to the "peak oil myth" is itself a misleading myth. Peak oil is real, is now.
"The issue with all types of energy supply, from fossil fuels, to nuclear (based on uranium), to geothermal, to hydroelectric, to wind and solar, is diminishing returns"
Absolutely wrong: thorium nuclear energy extraction can take far, far more energy out (95% not just 5%) compared to common uranium reactors and even then the common uranium reactors could be modified to extract more energy. The reason they don't is not just an engineering problem, it's a geo-political warfare problem. The uranium is needed to make nuclear weapons and that's the reason thorium reactors are not used. Thorium reactors can't be used to make nuclear weapons that detonate a uranium or plutonium pit.
Thorium is plentiful. It's already been extracted as a byproduct of other rare-earth elements to the point
"but batteries, inverters, long distance electric transmission lines, and many other things we now take for granted are likely to disappear"
Rather than "disappear" I suspect upgraded technologies will happen. Non-chemical batteries, those using kinetic energy in a flywheel, don't suffer the chemical decomposition of electrolyte batteries or fuel consumption of fuel cells.
Transmission lines were never needed either: since Tesla's time we knew we could use induction to transmit power without A/C lines and now we are able to use more advanced antenna engineering to aim that power very precisely to reduce loss of power.
I am sure that what you and others see/claim can and will happen, but I believe the real issue/question is one of scale. There's 7+ billion humans on this planet. Most do not even have access to what we would refer to as basic things.
"Non-chemical batteries, those using kinetic energy in a flywheel, don't suffer the chemical decomposition of electrolyte batteries or fuel consumption of fuel cells."
Unlike others who lambast anyone from repeating things, I applaud you for repeating this. I do believe that it's something that needs more looking into. But, I doubt that we're ever going to scale this or anything else up that'll both cover existing energy consumption levels as well as provide for some open-ended growth levels.
"Transmission lines were never needed either: since Tesla's time we knew we could use induction to transmit power without A/C lines and now we are able to use more advanced antenna engineering to aim that power very precisely to reduce loss of power."
Like with everything, there's a tradeoff. I'd like to see the costs associated with building and maintaining such infrastructure. Not that I care too much, but would this be a concern with air travel?