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When Will It All Run Out?
Nothing lasts forever (except central bank dovishness) in the real world. Here is an interpretation of when the world will run out of each metal or energy source...
There is a limited supply of these commodities – and if there are no discoveries, no price changes, and no changes in consumption, we are running out relatively soon. In my opinion, there are two caveats that are always worth considering when looking at something like this.
1. “Reserves” are an engineering number that are based on economic viability. Technically speaking, there are small concentrations of gold everywhere. It is just not usually viable to mine 0.1 g/t gold. When we will “run out” of each mineral in this chart is based on current reserves and prices. If the gold price doubles, then suddenly it is economic to mine more.
2. This chart is a reminder that something has to give. Either prices are going to have to go up, or new amazing discoveries have to be made to keep prices down. It’s basic economics, and either way it seems that there are many opportunities in the mining industry for investors and speculators on both fronts.
* * *
Of course, The Fed can just print some more oil or gold or uranium, right?
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Many Hollywood movies and television are nothing more government and corporate propaganda. The films plant 'helpful' memes.
My favorite was when '24' showed Los Angeles getting blown up by a suitcase nuke. Some Americans went around for weeks wondering which city was next.
And provide the perfect resistence to gamma rays.
i wonder if human kind will ever run out of bullshit charts
Yes:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qC1NtNcoU_g/Uo9KWvxhnrI/AAAAAAAAc20/YJ6DnDdibM...
Thank you. I needed a smile.
Fucking pessimist.
The whole problem is with that new fangled models of yours.
Yeah, Sudden Debt, that is classic Zero Hedge chart porn to illustrate its masthead quote. In general, economics is the allocation of scarce resources, amongst the dominant members of the current generation of human beings. The basic problem is that, for future generations, that curve may well look at lot more abrupt! More and more people are going to die before they were born, or die soon after they were born.
Overshoot in a nutshell:
"After a long period during which more of the stock is consumed each day by the growing population than was consumed on the preceding day, the stock starts to exhaust. Deposits of the stock become harder to find. Less can be obtained from the stock each day than the day before.
The time now remaining before complete exhaustion of the stock may be much shorter than the time that elapsed between encounter with the stock and the first signs of approaching scarcity. Soon, individuals begin to compete desperately for the remaining stock. To stay alive, they resort to alternative resources of lower and lower quality. By consuming the sources of flow, they destroy the capacity of their environment to produce the original flow. They also destroy the capacity of their environment to produce flows of alternative resources. Most of the population dies.
Ecologists call the resulting collapse of the population a crash, or die off. As a result of a crash, the carrying capacity for the overshot species, and for other species, becomes less than if the overshot species had not stumbled onto the stock in the first place. The population may remain at a very low level for a shorter or longer time--or forever. Because of the exponential nature of population growth in the presence of abundant resources, a single generation of the population--the most numerous generation-- experiences abundance in its youth, starvation in maturity, and premature death for most of its members. "Crash" is an apt term--a population crash can happen very quickly.
Malthus thought that population would approach a sustainable limit, then hover there, with many people living in poverty and misery. He did not imagine overshoot and sudden collapse. He did not understand that technology was converting mineral concentrations and much of the biosphere into windfall stocks that would stimulate rapid population growth. Now, two hundred years after Malthus, humans have multiplied their numbers far beyond any sustainable limit, and the end of the windfall stocks is in sight. ..."
Of course, the creation of the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts greatly facilitated "paying" for the strip-mining of the planet's natural resources, while high grading ourselves to hell, (which not only enslaved, but also probably destroyed future generations.) THE SINGLE MOST CERTAIN THING ABOUT HUMAN CIVILIZATION IS THAT IS CONTROLLED BY LIES BACKED BY VIOLENCE, WITH THE POLITICAL ECONOMY BEING BASED ON ENFORCED FRAUDS. Therefore, we are going to rush at an exponential rate into the limits of natural resources, in ways which result in the vast majority of the human population being mass murdered. However, as far as I can now tell, there is nothing which can be done, other than some series of technological miracles, and even greater political miracles, to prevent these two basic charts from becoming the REAL FUTURE:
http://www.marijuanaparty.ca/IMG/png/limits-to-growth-forecast.png
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/shape-of-typical-secul...
P.S.
These days, the banksters' indulgence in "hookers and blow" perhaps make more sense, since the future has been irredeemably fucked by the triumphs of the banksters controlling civilization.
Since I was a teenager, several decades ago, I had thought about those kinds of charts, and tried to do something to mitigate how bad that was going to get, to maybe be able to recover better sooner. However, I have since been forced to conclude that I was totally wasting my time, since the history of politics, and especially the vicious spirals in the funding of the political processes, has driven our society to become terminally screwed up, sick and insane!
Other than irrational hopes for some series of technological and political miracles, the next Century or so is going to result in the vast majority of human beings ending up being mass murdered, and the chart of typical life expectancies THEN is going to look a LOT DIFFERENT than the one you posted, Sudden Debt.
You got a couple of down-votes with no one offering up why. Fucking punks!
What needs to be added, which would support the notion of the curve dropping off more quickly, is that a big shock to global trade, our JIT systems, will have a HUGE impact.
What all these blind monkeys fail to understand is that it's about PEAK EXPORT. Typical of the "American" mind (TPTB have programmed well) is that all the world's resources should be available to them (the justification being based on "for a price," as though that price can always be met).
There's a tipping point leading up to the tipping point...
Well, Seer, there appear to be a few who make down votes immediately? I have noticed a pattern following my posts that I often promptly get some down votes, and then gradually get more up votes after that. (It is not just me, I have also noticed that pattern of voting for some others too.) It is quite strange, and I tend to wonder what may be the motivations of the trolls that bother to do that.
Meanwhile, I sympathize with those who want to be able to continue to rationalize and justify themselves living large, consuming as much natural resources as they possibly can within the established economic systems, without any concern or compassion for future generations. The phrase "for the children" tends to be one of the most extremely hypocritical regularly used in the English language.
I WISH that I could come to different conclusions than those I have been forced to come to. I certainly believe that there are an abundance of possible creative breakthroughs regarding Alternative Energies & Society Adapted to Them! HOWEVER, in my opinion, those tend to underestimate the degree to which the real world is controlled by lies backed by violence, and therefore, those enforced frauds make any better resolutions practically impossible, while instead making Peak Insanities the most probable ways that people adapt to the limits of the environment.
Also, Seer, as you probably already know, Gail Tverberg has has several articles republished on Zero Hedge, from her Web site, http://ourfiniteworld.com/
In a much milder way than I perceive, she presents the ways that the FIRST THING TO GO IS THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM! Under the established systems, nothing can be done unless more "money" is created out of nothing as debt to "pay" for that to be done. However, that debt slavery system has already generated numbers which have become debt insanities! Therefore, as we reach the limits to exponential growth, instead of adapting to that sanely, we can more confidently predict psychotic breakdowns, and collapses into chaos, as insane social storms blow through, as manifestations of Peak Insanities, along with Peak Everything Else.
As several comments above already pointed out, there are lot of deeply irrational and profoundly unscientific opinions about "economics" promoted on Zero Hedge, which deliberately ignore the basic laws of physics and the ecological environment, which is no surprise, since our civilization is dominated by Useful Idiots and the Something For Nothing Society:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-04/useful-idiots-and-something-nothing-society-part-5-5
There must necessarily be SOME "limits to growth." Those must result in death controls due to those real environmental limits. The problem of human civilization adapting to those limits is that our current death controls operate through the maximum possible deceits, which in turn back up debt controls based on the maximum possible frauds. Therefore, for that society to adapt to limits more sanely is practically impossible. The weakest link in the theories of possible alternatives is the financial system is fundamentally fraudulent, but nevertheless, that is enforced. However, as far as I can now tell, there is nothing practical which can be done to prevent that, other try maintain some irrational hope for some series of technological miracles, and even greater political miracles, and continue to work towards those miracles.
In my view, the existing social pyramid systems have clearly prepared for the approaching limits by false flag attacks to start more genocidal wars, and get ready for democidal martial law. The ONLY way that the pyramidion people that dominate civilization have apparently prepared for the limits of natural resources is to get ready to mass murder the majority of the human population. I repeat, I WISH that I could avoid that conclusion. However, I see no way to do that.
Therefore, I sympathize with the mainstream morons who are able and willing to deliberately ignore the basic facts about society and the natural world, so that they can continue to enjoy living inside of a society run on the basis of organized lies, operating robberies, because they personally are benefiting at the present time from the ways those systems are working, while they are able to deliberately ignore the longer term consequences of doing that. Those who work within the established systems are able to enjoy the benefits from that, while the more they are able to deliberately ignore what they are really doing, the more they are able to personally enjoy doing that.
Yes. There will be some suffering.
"If the gold price doubles, then suddenly it is economic to mine more."
This is hugely incorrect. It is a lot more complicated than just price of the results. As recovery becomes more difficult energy inputs go up exponentially, but energy supplies do not. There is more waste to dispose of and fewer places to dump it which also increases energy input and might simply shut you down when you cannot haul your waste out of the mine anymore. Basic physics applies to all of this. You could get a nice price on the market, but elementary physics precludes you from bringing anything to market at all. Same argument applies to minerals in asteroids, or on the moon. Would you calculate return based on the available resource? Certainly not, you would have to figure in energy costs, risks and insurance costs, lack of basic technology, R&D costs of technology, lack of time, moreover lack of anyone willing to talk to you about your stupid idea, etc.
Engineers know and understand all these issues. Economists and investors simply never do, or they revert to appeals to magic and hand-waving.
It is a lot worse than you think. There are resources you could point to that for many reasons will remain in the earth forever.
And oil and natgas and among them, if anyone was still wondering.
Based on that chart, and with new uses for silver discovered almost daily, @ $20.00 oz 10-15 times under where it should be now..
Dream. It will never see the light of day.
That's quite a persuasive argument you made there...You'll have to excuse me if I hold on to my silver anyway, just in case your well thought out and reasoned stance on it ends up being wrong.
My argument was above, and I notice it remains uncontested as argued. Go into any tangent you like, I am quite clear on what I meant and said and what I said of now stands.
I believe the previous poster meant that the price of silver will rise 10 to 15 fold from current, in today's dollars, because of the real cost of extraction as you discussed.
Were you thinking the poster meant that the proven reserves of silver would increase 10 to 15 fold due to higher pricing?
Not trying to be a dick, but your two comments appear to contradict each other. The first comment is well reasoned and would seem to argue for a higher price in precious metals in general, while your second declares it's an impossiblity with little support as to why that would be...
I would like to hear you explain how a scarce resource that will become more scarce due to the increasing energy cost of mining it will collapse in price? Especially if gold and silver begin to reprise their monetary roles. I can see the mining industry failing for the reasons you put forth, but the actual metal would do nothing but gain in value.
I think that as we speak, scientists are working on solar cell technology that uses comex futures contracts rather than physical silver. So it's all good.
Just like any commodity, silver was traditionally priced based on Iits rarity. Generally, about 15 ounces of silver were extracted with each ounce of gold. So, silver traditionally traded at 1/15 the price of gold. Expect that to return with the collapse of fiat. And, forget valuations in fiat currency. Start getting used to thinkig in terms of how many pounds of beef, corn, wheat, etc. that an ounce of gold or silver will buy in the absence of "funny money". Download the Cole report if you want to start recalibrating your understanding of gold as money.
blu
gold is unlike any commodity...almost all that has been mined can come to the market if the price is attractive. After all that is why people hoard gold...to sell it for currency later when they need to or when they see the price is right in their opinion. Not much is leaving those hoards now as those smart enough to hold gold know it's price is a fraction of what it will be when the big event comes.
"all that has been mined"
The article was not about how refined materials make the rounds of the markets but about recovering remaining natural reserves at cost, and how much longer we can do that. My point was directed towards the silly idea that it's all equal at scale which it is not. Basic physics apply as do (not a few) environmental regulations not to mention local push-back as mountains of wastes accumulate in someone's backyard.
Diminishing returns. Learn what it means.
Blu: You are right on.
This article has nothing to do with reality.
It's likely worse than what they project... In ALL categories. The direction is still valid.
Fuck! There IS intelligent life on this planet! Thank YOU!
No reason to be wringing your hands mates!!! we will be swimming in (half price) gasoline in no time at all!!
Glory days are here again!!!
Start-Up Says it's Turning Natural Gas into Half-Price Gasolinehttp://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/15/start-up-says-its-turning...
Half the price of what?
LOL, exactly!!
I don't even have to follow the link to suppose that the energy returned on energy invested is negative.
Anyone who understands how energy is stored in carbon bonds will recognize that going from a short-carbon vapor to a long-carbon liquid is a net energy sink, period. Basic chemistry. It's reverse cracking, and will consume an energy source from somewhere to reconstruct the more complicated liquid product.
but, but, it's half price!!!
Yes, you buy 2 BOE of natural gas for $40 and turn it into 1 BOE gasoline for half the price of gasoline from oil.
Yes, you are going to lose probably at least 50% of the energy in the natural gas.
Just because there is energy consumed in making the product does not mean it doesn't make sense.
There is something like a 10 units in for 1 unit out for turning vegatable, grass and grain energy into steaks. We turn 100 units of oil energy into 1 unit of food energy. Not all forms of stored energy have equal value.
Well...but...look at Amazon.com. They make no profits but they make it up on volume. So if they make a lot this syn-fuel then it will be okay.
Great link.
Now there's a robust biz model! /sarc
Why waste Capital, Resources and Energy to do this, when you can convert your gas-guzzler into using gas! Taxis and city Buses have been doing it for years. And saving a bundle in maintenance costs.
Wanna buy some Whale Oil? I hear it's great for lanterns. How about Snake Oil? I hear it cures all sorts of ailments.
Some article I saw the other day was touting Mercurochrome as an Ebola cure. Had a bunch of Birkenstock ads on the page. Made me feel all warm and cuddly.
YEARS ago I was involved in many a debate about future energy costs. At the time I cautioned against any such certainty that prices could only go up. My reasoning was was that if folks were betting on higher prices then the House would hammer demand (job losses), and that if folks were betting on lower prices that the House would hammer supply.
750 million people in India who are living on $0.50/day would say that even at $1/bbl oil would be too expensive. On the whole I'd have to say that the income mean is dropping, which means that oil prices would have to push lower (until margins were nearing collapse).
With regards to the article, it's the same old failure to understand SCALE. I recall everyone yammering that waste vegetable oil was plentiful and free; soon the folks generating the "waste" started locking it up: never was and never would be a proponent of this crap. Of course, the "solution" would be to create more restaurants...
Meanwhile the US continues to import NG from Canada...
What's key and what's missing is the supply of Antimatter and You-Don't-Matter.
Although I have a pretty good idea about their abundance.
Fear of scarce resources is another false flag to terrify muppets into begging for fascism/socialism/central control.
None of these resources are scarce on earth. Humans will get dumbed down to the point they'll lose ability to extract and refine resources long before supply runs out.
Denial of resource scarcity, flat-earthers (world is infinite), is the hallmark of cornucopians, who help TPTB extract all sorts of funding for "promises" (never delivered) of "cheap" this and "cheap" that...
Humans will lose the ability to keep the scale of extraction up (as everyone becomes poorer and poorer due to sheer volume of humans), and without the scale there's loss of economies of scale (and POOF! margins take a dump)
duplicate deleted
LOL! Nobody said resources were infinite, or that resources would stay cheap. The entire earth hasn't been surveyed for all the available resources, nor have we exhausted our ability to extract and/or conserve resources.
Your argument pertaining to growing population increasing poverty doesn't appear to be happening. Poverty isn't caused by population consuming too much, but by politics suppressing markets. in other words, poverty is political, not economic. The poorest people are wealthier today than the poorest people were a couple hundred years ago, except when supply of goods is restricted by politics/war. In spite of the desire of central planners, it hasn't been a zero sum game as our technical abilities have improved.
The earth is enormous. The quantities of resources we've extracted and used is tiny. We'd better keep it up to devise more efficient methods of use while we have the brief technical window between dark ages and/or ice ages to get the job done.
We haven't even considered new materials or resources, either. They are developed all the time, but the only way to keep innovation going is to keep the economy growing. Thanks to our government worshippers, innovation will likely be stifled and bring on the next dark age.
We have a political problem. The people who run the show own the resources and they want top $ from you and they want total control over you. Thus the scarcity meme.
Note they don't own new technology as easily, so new technology = bad.
In a world that now depends on new technology, denial of new technology = death.
So the status quo fights to maintain their status and the stakes are life and death.
"It's not our fault. God didn't give us enough oil! You were pigs and used it all up! It's your fault, pigs!!"
Just unleash the BIS on those pesky high prices. Solved.
Of course we actually have quite a bit more then this graphic illustrates. This is mostly what is recoverable from today's technologies, and what we have found and consider recoverable. Both are moving targets. We've only really explored a couple percent of the Earth's crust.
Plus, in the future, if we ever want to invest in something real instead of derivatives and keyboards (for hitting extra 0's), there's these things called fusion and fusion arc.
Now fusion is something that will happen, as long as we strive for it. We've barely been doing it for the last few decades, otherwise we'd have it. We're probably about 10 years away if we really try to achieve it. Then another 10 or so to roll it out. It's not some pie in the sky endeavor. It's provable, look up during daytime or nighttime. That's all you need to know that it's possible.
What we need to do is go back to the moon. Morons have long been wrong about the lack of a worthiness of the space program, but it is our future. Since we abdicated progression in it since the 70's, and in some cases the 60's (see how Apollo was being dismantled before we ever landed on the moon), we haven't done what is necessary to progress the human race.
Morons go out there and say, there's no point to returning to the moon. Oh yes there is. Besides the technologies invented or improved to go there, there is thousands of years supply of Helium 3 on the moon. It also allows an opportunity to improve our accuracy describing or discovering brand new principles that when discovered tend to give you the building blocks for new technologies.
Helium-3 gets emitted by the Sun, and since the moon doesn't have the protection the Earth has from it's atmosphere and magnetic field, we don't get much here, but the moon does.
That's why China, those that haven't succumbed to the British Empire and their Green Fascist control fantasy, are gearing up their moon aspirations and the goal is.... to mine Helium 3. For what? Fusion of course. There's something far more valuable then Saudi Oil, and it's on the moon, and us clueless Americans are letting others get the jump on us, even though we had the tech to go there 45 years ago. Oh and many of the materials in this article are well in abundance on the moon.
http://www.mining.com/china-is-taking-lunar-mining-seriously-65595/
It was literally our idea that came during the Apollo program, and now China is going to do it instead of us. Brilliant!
We preferred the British Empire's Wall Street looting model.
Oh and beyond all this is the fusion arc, which is literally creating elements. Elements don't happen, they are made from the fusion process occurring in stars. That's right, Gold, and all the other naturally occurring elements, are the byproducts of fusion.
So a fusion arc is literally real alchemy. Creating elements by harnessing fusion.
So we can go this real route that requires investment, or we can continue with the wars the British Anglo-American Empire fund to start, and await the needless resource wars while we paper over the paper losses with digital 1's and 0's created out of thin air to service the derivative fraud.
Glass-Steagall
What we need to do is go back to the moon. Morons have long been wrong about the worthiness of the space program, but it is our future.
I think careful study of what the moon shots produced ... and the opportunity cost of not spending those resources exploring our seas ... would easily prove we should have studied the seas ... and for darn sure that's what we should be doing now ... instead of proving there is or isn't a god.
If one spends about 10 hours to look at all the contradictions in the evidence regarding the assertions that "men landed on the moon" it become plausible that was just another Huge LIE.
Of course, that is the LAST of the possible conspiracy theories which I would want to embrace! However, the rest of the world makes more sense after one considers that it is indeed possible that the alleged moon landings were poorly staged frauds.
That does not detract from the spin off technologies. However, it does explain better how and why everything else is so totally screwed up to seriously consider that even the alleged moon landings could have been frauds.
"Of course we actually have quite a bit more then this graphic illustrates. "
And of course you have no measurable means of backing this up.
From http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-21/eia-cuts-monterey-shale-estimat...
Of course, it's entirely possible (see the Bloomberg article above for an example) that "we actually have quite a bit LESS than this graphic illustrates." BTW - It's "than," not "then."
"We preferred the British Empire's Wall Street looting model."
Apparently unless an alternative energy source is found the smart money is in oil then coal. After all the oil is gone take profits and move to coal - unless coal rapidly rises in price above all possible value of oil. Regardless coal looks way undervalued to me. Methanol blend seems the way to go. All it takes is a simple 100$ modifcation to a car. Just as efficient 65 cents a gallon.
Can we get some stats on water?
Alpha Natural Resources, inc. NYSE: ANR - Sep 5 4:00 PM ET3.630.13 (3.46%)
Hej Tom, Hur mår du? Talar du svenska?
I'm planning on trading one of my AU coins for a Coal Stove this winter. I expect the ROI to be much better for Coal than AU.
BTW, did you know that Canada has the largest deposits of high-concentration of Uranium? It is not only the size of the deposits that matter, but their concentration. Actually, it's the product of the two quantities.
Where are you allowed to burn coal at home without getting raided?
fucking holy hell you are one of the only posters in this thread who is not retarded. coal is in the running for most undervalued asset of all time
What's it at now, $60 a ton? From $130 way back. Not likely to rise as met coal demand will be weak with Chinese ghost cities already built and thermal coal demand low because of global recession.
Obama ran Patriot Coal into the ground. JRCC also went belly up. ANR at $3.6?! Peabody at 15!
Coal companies... their time will come, but not anytime soon.
Wait for this shale and deep-water drilling thing to play out over the next 20 years -- OR for the economy to expand -- before getting bullish coal.
Thermal was pushing $180 and Met was over $300 just within the past 3 years.
But it's dirty. /sarc
Human-secularist, eco terrorist parading as gentle humane caring people. Personally, I despise them.
Powerful people have placed their bets on energy other than coal. They have hired puppets whose entire existence consists of coming up with arguments that support the powerful people. Most of the puppets don't feel the hand jammed up their ass.
"coal looks way undervalued to me"
Again, it depends on people's ability to afford it. The cost of extracting and processing coal will always be higher than that for conventional oil (in reasonable locations): one needs to factor it on an equivalence basis (coal is less energy dense).
"Can we get some stats on water?"
Good for you for mentioning water (I'd mentioned it as well). Food, Shelter and Water. Note that "energy," as we seem to define it, is not there (implied through food, not for transportation [we have feet] or cooking or heating [brr]).
When Will It All Run Out?
I was looking for "patience" on a similar map, but it seems to be safely buried beneath a vast supply beer, chips and anti-depressants.
..and reality tv, pictures of naked celebrities, XBox games, etc...
he who controls eurasia and cooperates with china, controls the future
drumbeats for war in southwest asia
Control until Those resources are drained...
Awe, come on folks... There's an endless supply of unobtainium... It's like O-negative blood... It's the universal element.
Cull the herd of banksters. Long live the children.
"...if there are no discoveries, no price changes, and no changes in consumption, we are running out relatively soon."
As the article says [quoted above], the predictions of running out are based upon no change in consumption patterns and no price changes. But this will not be the case. As the price of oil rises due to higher costs in finding it and getting it out of the ground, consumption will continue to decline. This means that what's left will last longer. Similar thing applies to the other commodities.
What's left only lasts a little longer as the military's consumption actually goes up, what with all the rioting on the streets and the confrontations in the world's hot spots.
Anyway by the time it lasts longer, it belongs to the military and not to the economy.
You're quite right. And there's also the additional consumption by the political slimeballs and hoardes of eco pressure groups as they fly around the world in private jets to attend conferences to whine about "global warming" etc. New laws and taxes are introduced to control consumption of oil by the masses, but not intended to be applied to themselves.
Until our capitalist economy collapses when the price of crude oil becomes prohibitive and the dread but inevitable American Military Coup d'Etat transpires.
As America has outdone all other empires in everything it has done, the American Coup will also be sui generis.
May those of us NOT in the Inner Party, be long gone by then.
"This means that what's left will last longer."
BUT! You say this as though it's going to be somehow held in reserve for "us." With volume loss most of the infrastruture will struggle to operate. And as infrastructure declines more and more there will be less and less reasons to re-engage in a lot of this stuff. Good luck being able to afford paying vast sums of money to get a few slaves to pump oil so that you can ???
"You say this as though it's going to be somehow held in reserve for "us."
I am simply pointing out the standard dynamics of supply & demand.
They apply to oil/gas and other commodities in the same way as other finite products. Viz: all things being equal, as supply becomes constrained, so the price rises and demand falls off. The price rise also causes people to find alternative products which are lower cost or more accessible, and to change their pattern of usage to reduce their demand, eg: some people will stop driving their car and ride a bicycle or work from home instead etc.
Therefore, all things being equal, what is left of these commodities will last for a longer period of time. In the case of oil/gas etc this will create a very long tail-off before they eventually run out completely. The year will certainly be beyond the one shown in that chart which is based upon no changes to pattern of usage/demand, even though changes are already taking place across society. Nor does it take into account new finds which help to extend (marginally) the life of those commodities.
On Peak Oil: Most people - MSM and economists included - once they came out of denial, believed that Peak Oil (aka peak supply) is an overnight event. IE: up one side of Hubbert's Curve and down the other. I never believed that. What was always going to happen - and is now happening - is that "peak oil" is a bumpy plateau. So it's actually up one side, traverse the plateau and down the other side to eventual exhaustion of supply (as described above). How long in terms of years the plateau was going to be was a matter for debate as it's affected by many factors including economic activity. The 2008 crash has extended the plateau of peak oil.
But you can be sure that the rising cost of energy played a part in the great 2008 financial crash. And if/when the global economy ever begins to recover, the price of energy will start to rise again, pushing it back into recession or slower growth. This cycle will continue until mankind either destroys itself thru "energy wars" to seize control of what's left or we find/invent new sources of cheap, abundant forms of energy to power us forward in the 21st century and beyond.
The jury's out on this. "Energy wars" are currently in the lead.
Gold won't run out. It is not consumed by the market, just stored.
At these prices, it can become scarce. Raise prices and voila, there's the gold. Silver is a different story. I think the two should be reversed on that chart.
Monster Cables. Goldschlager. circuit contacts. There are many uses which result in the gold being lost or hard to recover. Not nearly as much as silver, but still some.
Tombs, don't forget the tombs!
Time to invest in the PM's, Looks like 15 years and they will be through the roof.
Sustainability means planning our future in a way that we do not set ourselves up to crash and burn at some future date. Long-term planning has not been something politicians excel at or are even good at. Our system is geared at getting politicians reelected and fulfilling the most pressing needs of today.
Things like profit, greed, and quenching our unrelinquishing desire for growth are placed in front of longer term issues and needs. Mapping out a logical and sustainable long-term plan requires delving into some rather hefty philosophical questions like what brings real happiness. More on this important topic in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/04/planning-sustainable-future-for-m...
Growth is NOT sustainable. This isn't a political statement. It's not a guess. It's PURE logic/math. The exponential function, which I doubt anyone here can dispute, guarantees this.
I believe this is one aspect of the article that had value: by including projections based on no change in growth/consumption (steady demand).
Once we figure out fusion (any moment now), we'll be able to eventually take any old rock, pile of dirt, or bucket of water and transmute it into anything we want; gold, oil, strawberry jam, etc.
We'll just have to work out what to do with all the heat generated.
Interesting article, making a point that is obvious to anyone who thinks about the mathematics of the exponential function: "continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes."
Al Bartlett presented the point politely:
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
http://www.albartlett.org/
However, that issue revolves around how and why our current kind of human civilization has an apparent "inability to understand the exponential function."
I think the reasons are that civilization is dominated by enforced frauds, which require the vast majority of people being conditioned to not want to understand the exponential function, nor anything else to do with basic mathematical physics which would reveal that our civilization is actually being controlled with systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which are affronts to elementary common sense, and utterly absurd ... BUT NEVERTHELESS, the power of violence to back up lies has resulted in the foundation of political economy becoming enforced frauds.
Since everything that human civilization actually does is controlled by backing up lies with violence, that is why our attitudes towards the future are so starkly insane, and become more insane at an exponentially increasing rate. The primary factors that decided what human civilization did was the ability of some human beings to kill other human beings, and thereby, force all the survivors to agree with those murderers' bullshit social stories. That drove civilization to be controlled by the people who were the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence, while everyone else adapted to live inside that social slavery system, in which deliberately ignoring the truth, and agreeing with huge lies, was the most successful personal strategy for the vast majority of people, despite that requiring that they devolved to become political idiots which had an apparent "inability to understand the exponential function," which was driving the debt slavery systems that surrounded them from cradle to grave to generate numbers which would become debt insanities, while simultaneously that fraudulent accounting system based on making "money" out of nothing as debts would "pay" for strip-mining the planet. That is why human civilization will approach the limits to growth in the most insane ways possible. Furthermore, that is why there are no politically practical ways to prevent that from happening.
I know where there is some Gold @$10,000USD
Further to my 18:50 post 5186779 on "Lead and Uranium vs. Unobtainium"...
At the risk of sounding like an InfoWars regular, I suppose it depends on the World Population and "AGENDA 21". If TPTB will go to ANY length to preserve their power, wealth and lifestyle, then it's plain cold logic that they will also want to preserve it for as long as possible.
"Conspiracy Theory" or "Conspiracy Fact", a DRAMATIC reduction in the global population of humans is unavoidable -- no matter what you favorite "Guy in the Sky" allegedly told your ancestors. Alas, we've become "too successful" for our own good. The rest of the Ecosystem and the Sixth Extinction we are causing, will testify to that.
Ebola anyone?
I too used to follow Infowars but my tinfoil hat was just too damned itchy. Conspiracy theorys aside I do agree there will be a drastic reduction in the Earth's population, but i think mother nature will have more to do with it than the globalists.
It appears to be generaly agreed among the scientific community that 2 billion is about the sustainable no of people the Earth can support.
"i think mother nature will have more to do with it than the globalists."
Yes, I agree.
And actually, the globalists have helped to balloon the population. I figure that while they are probably well aware of how all is going to play out (they're NOT stupid) they're not really trying to cull the population (of course, globalists aren't some homogenous group, in which case I suppose, just as in society in general, some real psychos who really would like to perpetrate culls).
The "globalists" have lost control of the systems that they originally made and maintained.
Thats bull-sorry. The planet can support billions and billions. What's wrong is we are LIVING WRONGLY. Do you know how much food goes into the production of booze alone? It could feed the planet! God told us to be fruitful and multiply, not kill our selves. Live in harmony with his creation and be kind to others and help. Do good deeds not evil ones. Solar, wind, gardens everywhere, it can be done but not how WE are doing it!
"At the risk of sounding like an InfoWars regular..."
Captain, I believe you've crossed that line already. ^_^
Kirk your spot on. Agenda 21 is the black swan that no one sees or understands.
"Agenda 21" is a distraction from what Mother Nature WILL do. Perhaps "Agenda 21" speaks in those terms? Regardless, WTF are YOU or anyone else going to do about it?
"If TPTB will go to ANY length to preserve their power, wealth and lifestyle, then it's plain cold logic that they will also want to preserve it for as long as possible."
If?
And it also follows they will not want to share any of it with the Goyim.
The article uses a few commodities and a time-line to illustrate a larger philosophical problem:
With increasing population and finite resources something sometime has to give. It's different this time than in the past due to 7 billion consumers rising to 9 billion by 2050 and a high tech world dependant on increasingly rare resources.
That's about it, right? Well, I'm not sure whether or not what you implie is correct because you've left the whole thing open and not really supplied anything but a half-assed estimate of a few commodities and a wornout, tired line from pre-1900. You may think it's obvious, but it's far from it. Those same curves could have been drafted (and probably were) in 1950, 1975, 2000 and 2014, each time with a drop dead date somewhere 30 years into the future. But our society only functions with a horizon of 20 years at best, so interpeting 30 years or more in to the future is useless. I seriously would like to see one of the resource doom and gloomers put a little more science into the statement "When will it all run out" so that we can all tell if it's just another Chicken Little moment or really something to worry about.
It's a BIG world. Do you have better numbers?
History has many examples of collapsing civilizations, all pretty much encountering their end due to insufficient resources.
But, go ahead, feel free to live as you wish. When the cornucopian world doesn't materialize then I'm sure there will be plenty of blame for everyone, everyone except the cornucopians (who tend to be suspiciously quite a bit like politicians).
Things getting a little dull in your Mom's basement? You've commented on this one article over 30 times, have much of a life? And not a single one of your comments contained anything more than a personal insult or some completely irrelevant off-topic rant. A little introspection is probably in order (just sayin').
BS. By 2025 Man will have discovered another earth.
Actually fuck the next generation. You born too late.
"Actually fuck the next generation. You born too late."
...said every generation, ever!
"BS. By 2025 Man will have discovered another earth."
Could you be a bit more precise? The month, what month?
It's not a stretch. Kepler found planets around nearly all stars. The resolution being the limiting factor. As soon as we get a better telescope, all of these new planets become detectable.
It is logical to assume that when we build the successor to Kepler, that we will find planets the size of Venus, Earth, Titan, Ganymede, Mars and The Moon.
The timeframe for this is just about ~2025.
Getting there...that's another challenge.
Using Kepler's known data, it is conservative to estimate that our galaxy has 100billion planets. 1 out of 3600 are earth like in mass, size, and in the right place near its'star.
Do the math.
100 billion / 3600 = 27,777,778 earth like planets in our galaxy.
This figure is only going to rise, because the resolution will improve and we will be able to find more Earth-like planets. As it stands now we are finding very large planets, Neptunian in scope.
Keep stacking to the bitter end...and heat your house with coal. That's what I got out of this
What a contrarian play using coal for residential purposes. I wouldn't be surprised that the EPA bans it outright. Not by implementing legislation, but by jackboot authoritarian administration. I'm still weighing whether to do just that.
I was just looking at a wood/coal furnace at tractor supply for about $1200...boy it sure looked nice.
I've looking at ones that don't even need electricity. The rub for me is coal supply. I'd likely have to invest a couple thousand into a bulk purchase to make it economical. I've checked into it several months ago. 22 tons, washed and bagged anthricite. Delivered for, if memory serves, about $100 a ton. That would probably last 3 to 4 years.
My wood lot is self-regenerating. I don't have huge conspicuous piles (no more than other folks around me with their supply for their wood stove, well, I have less because my house is more efficient [and faces south- once again, it's important to understand energy]).
Maybe I'll need to get some coal for gasification for running my saws...
Oh, yeah, electricity to run a wood or coal stove? No way!
In the middle of 2013 the Presidential Climate Change Initiative was announced, in it Obama works hand in hand with environmental groups and avoids congress. The initiative will be carried out through executive orders by a President that recently has been unfocused and busy addressing scandal, after scandal, after scandal. Obama has promised to protect future generations if congress did not act.
I have criticized politicians lack of courage in environmental policies in an article about how presidential candidates shy away from "C" word. It is as if conservation is a dirty word.and that they will offend someone. Or is it possible that big business and lobbyist have made the subject taboo? The President should lead the way by ending the many expensive flights he takes on Air Force-1 to play golf and do fund raisers. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/06/presidential-climate-change-initi...
Bummers a fool getting his kicks from his perks> If he does not do what hes told, they will kill one of his kids first as a warning, then him.
"Conservation" = Neo-Malthusianism.
I bet you believe in the Club of Rome's cybernetic "ecosystem" model, too, don'tcha? Go peddle your garbage elsewhere.
For a detailed history on why this commenter is a fucking nutcase: http://vimeo.com/73536828
Odd that the words "conservative" and "conservation" are so close sounding... [you moron!]
If you waive enough fiat paper at the earth it will produce anything you want -- this an economic axiom !!!
That's golden! :-)
Finally bullish silver!
BTFD!
So I guess the upshot of this piece is that anyone hoarding material goods is going to be a ba-zillionaire at some distant point in the future.
That's it? That's the key to the whole thing? Seems that is what the defensive silver- and gold-bugs are getting all lathered up about -- again.
Okay fine.
But you will have to excuse me I have a life firmly based in reality to get back to now. Ta!
Only thing that willb e worth shit in the future is oil.
No guarantee if one doesn't have anything meaninful to burn it in. Perhaps whale oil?
Land.
Government interference with energy supply and demand is the greatest threat to innovation. It is that simple.
useless eaters. bill and melinda are right.
Melinda changed her last name to Bilderbergers.
as lond as there is ink, everything will be okay.
as long as there is ink, everything will be okay.
fuckyeah no more silver after 2034.
zh says so. 20 more years bitchez.
stackin...
They left out the part about no clean drinking water by 2020.
Bottlin'.......
There is plenty of water, but a lack of imagination.
Do you have an aircon or heatpump unit?
Take the water condensation tube and run that to a bucket. You will get 30+ litres per day in summer. Boil it. Run that through a cheap home made filter of act charcoal and zeolite a few times. Drinkable and delicious.
If you like you can distill the water on the stove.
The water isn't going anywhere - it is still on earth.
Do you get rain on your house? Hook the drainspouts to a multi-kilo-litre plastic resevoir as they do in Mexico. Plenty of water. Plenty.
Bloomberg seems to be trying to catch up to CNBC with this video. I mean, I mean it was fucking stupid.
But but but Bernanke said he can print infinite wealth.
A reasonably civilized tech society managed it's resources well enough to survive for thousands of years (Ancient Egypt) .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2008/02/ancient-egyptian-pharmacopia.html on how they did it .
Most people can't even understand how truley fucked we all are.
I think the point of the article is as some point, shit has to change and drastically. The sooner the better. Too many people, using too many resources.
It's about changing our paradigm from one of growth to something else... And, for sure, the Disney-like world cannot persist (not enough visitors to sustain the fantasy land).
And we'll run out of whale oil even sooner.
The whales were hunted almost to extinction, and that began the destruction of the oceanic ecologies, which operate from the top down much more so than the ecologies on the land.
Using the oceans as the world's collective sewer will eventually be the main way that habitat for human beings is finally destroyed. The same problem that the money made from killing whales multiplied faster in the bank than the whales did spread throughout every other area. Everything was done through a fundamentally fraudulent accounting system. Mass murdering whales was only the beginning of human beings trending towards mass murdering themselves.
Look at the peak oil graphs from the 1980's. They show our oil long gone by now. There is so much fossil fuel on Earth that if we burned it all we would run out of oxygen first.
Don't believe me? Think about this...
Where did the oxygen come from?
Is it inert or rective and therefore needs to be replenished?
As for metals, mining the asteroids seems like science fiction, but the reality is coming closer faster than you might think. With the NASA project to capture a near Earth asteroid and return it to the Moon's orbit we stand on the cusp of unimaginable access to raw materials.
Now ask yourself this, why do they want us to believe there is a dearth when there is a glut? Perhaps to generate sufficient fear to get people to act against their own interests.
Go out and buy up as much as you can and then BURN it! Party on, Garth!
BTW - If you're wrong you're going to be really, really fucked.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-wa...
That's just plain nuts, nuts I tell ya... </sarc>
Actually, it's not like it takes anyone with any education to understand this. Just read history. Empires end up collapsing because they fail to keep growth going: always wars come in to play, and ALL wars are about resources.
We are unable to come up with any viable solutions so we tend to do everything we can to refute that this could happen. I fully understand why this is so, and I have no problems with people admitting it (I also have no "answers"- I don't suggest "solutions" [I've stated many a time as to why, so no need to rehash]): because it comes down to "who decides?," and I have zero confidence that any human can resolve this; this, however, doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist.
Indeed, Bunga Bunga!
"It may be too late to convince the world’s politicians and wealthy elites to chart a different course. So to the rest of us, maybe it’s time to think about how we protect ourselves as we head into an uncertain future."
The world's wealthy elites and their puppet politicians are the pyramidion people because they were the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence, in order to make and maintain systems of social slavery. In recent Centuries, that was primarily through their monetary system of enforced frauds. Any deeper analysis of these issues leads to two directly related conclusions: FIRST, the death controls that backed up the debt controls dominated the political economy to strip-mine the planet's natural resources, while wiping out anybody else who stood in the way, and SECOND, the real limits to growth means the manifestation of real death controls will become more significant and forceful.
The combined effects of those two factors means that human civilization will approach the limits to growth in the most insane ways possible, namely by allowing conditions to provoke situations in which there will occur death insanities. Simultaneously, both of those two factors mean that the only genuinely better resolutions to those problems require that there be developed and implemented better death control systems. However, since those events will be transpiring during times of Peak Insanities, such better resolutions of those problems appear to be very unlikely. The only way to be "optimistic" is to be ignorant, and/or believe that there will be some series of technological and political miracles. However, since nothing else could work without better death controls, such miracles are, by definition, extremely improbable.
Another Doomer canard.
The idea is sound, until reality impinges.
Back in High School I calculated the world had 42 years of oil left.
That was 1977, + 42 = 2019.
Current estimates are that the world has 38 years left.
Clearly we are finding resources during the interims and current projections of 'we will be out of X' are just wrong.
We will arrive in 2050, and find we have 40 years of X left. This will continue for many centuries.
Another cornucopian...
The idea of infinite resources is sound, until reality impinges.
Humans ALWAYS have run out of shit.
"Back in High School I calculated the world had 42 years of oil left."
And you based this on? Was it using the same brain that you're now saying was wrong?
Piker.
Why pick on him, Jimmy Carter said while president that we would be out of natural gas by the year 2000.
The price of oil and gas shot up and all breathed a sigh of relief. The Shah and the Sheikhs could repay David Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan debts.
Then when the Shah was dying of cancer, the only country that would take him was Panama's Torrijas. When he died, David, Henry, and Jimmy simply confiscated Iran's 8 billion. They have been fighting the Great Satan ever since.
Don't stand between a Muslim cleric and a flaming dollar.
You are locked into binary yes-no 1-0 thinking.
Stating that a resource will last for several more centuries is not the same as claiming that said resource will never run out and spew forth from a cornucopia forever.
This is one of the major flaws of you peakers/doomers - you engage in on-off thinking, there are no shades of grey to you.
Also none of you realise that your ideology is the sociological equivalent of an inverse of Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. Xeno's paradox solution was that the time to cover the given distance approaches zero as the distances decrease.
The solution to yours is that as we deplete resources and raise the cost, the viablity of what remains increases and becomes ''cheap".
You also don't factor in the principle of mass conservation. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. All of the resources are still here on earth - the chemicals have not gone anywhere except for that which was launched to LEO or TLI or TMI or TSI, or used in a nuclear blast.
But you guys are notorious for being short on science, so the above realities will be downvoted as they hurt your self-esteem.
Lol ... this article is either created by completely ignorant/stupid people or more likely scaremonger/ charlatans because their data is laughably wrong.
Global warming anyone?
And how about "peak oil." not so much.
Rumor has it Tyler sold ZH for a good chunk of cheap gold and silver and in the meantime KWN took over.
Some Math:
How much of these resources are necessary for one single human?
How many humans can live on this planet?
And when is the number of humans on this planet to peak?
(Ebola anyone?)
(When is human insanity to peak?)
So - how much for how many will we really need?
Wake me up again when Avira is able to filter out all of this never ending and completely useless fear mongering BS.
As well as filtering out this endless and perverse lamenting of ever increasing growth and GDP as the only goals how this planet and manhood can survive without ending in Armageddon.
Instead maybe at some point we should start learning to live within cycles and start learning that expansion AND contraction are inevitable parts of a healthy life/nature.
Keep on leaning on the never ending growth mantra - which in the end is nothing but the bankers/evils mantra - and you again inevitable end up in feeding cancer eating up all the excesses.
I wish ZH would turn back to when it was selective in what it was reporting. Nowadays - the more fear and noise an article can spread the better it seems.
No wonder this attracts folks like ekm.
Endlessly repeating the same storíes and mantras.
For the sake of just attention mongering and being in the spotlight.
I have seen many sites coming and going.
I sincerly hope ZH will not share the fate of KWN.
Sometimes less of stuff and more quality instead is way healtier than just feeding the ever hungry and already hyperventilating animal.
Good posters already having left this place - for very specific reasons - should be an early warning sign.
But but but ...
"When will it all run out?"
What is the motivation behind such a title, such a story?
Or behind reposting such a story?
Is it all just about Clicks anymore?
Don't you guys watch movies? We can get all that stuff from comets and asteroids.
This is a prelude to a really bad staged and planned global war.
These "end of the resource cycle" skreeds show up regularly, and often are updated every 5 to 10 years to show how the resource cycle has extended.
Julian Simon was, and will be, correct. Initiative and innovation do amazing things, and substitution effects have a funny way of making things last much longer than you realize.
After all, the Club of Rome said we were all supposed to be starving and out of oil by now. Remember "Soylent Green"? It was based on this kind of nonsense.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function..."
http://www.albartlett.org/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
Limits to Growth was right.
New research shows we're nearing collapse.
By Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander, September 2, 2014.
"It may be too late to convince the world’s politicians and wealthy elites to chart a different course. So to the rest of us, maybe it’s time to think about how we protect ourselves as we head into an uncertain future."
The world's wealthy elites and their puppet politicians are the pyramidion people because they were the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence, in order to make and maintain systems of social slavery. In recent Centuries, that was primarily through their monetary system of enforced frauds. Any deeper analysis of these issues leads to two directly related conclusions: FIRST, the death controls that backed up the debt controls dominated the political economy to strip-mine the planet's natural resources, while wiping out anybody else who stood in the way, and SECOND, the real limits to growth means the manifestation of real death controls will become more significant and forceful.
The combined effects of those two factors means that human civilization will approach the limits to growth in the most insane ways possible, namely by allowing conditions to provoke situations in which there will occur death insanities. Simultaneously, both of those two factors mean that the only genuinely better resolutions to those problems require that there be developed and implemented better death control systems. However, since those events will be transpiring during times of Peak Insanities, such better resolutions of those problems appear to be very unlikely. The only way to be "optimistic" is to be ignorant, and/or believe that there will be some series of technological and political miracles. However, since nothing else could work without better death controls, such miracles are, by definition, extremely improbable.
As long as we have politicians we will have a plentiful supply of methane.
And when will the hemp run out? Oh it happened in the 50's. Too bad, that could have saved us all.