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End Of Cheap Fossil Fuels Could Have More Severe Consequences Than Thought
Submitted by Kurt Cobb via OilPrice.com,
The characteristic feeling of the post-2008 world has been one of anxiety. Occasionally, that anxiety breaks out into fear as it did in the last two weeks when stock markets around the world swooned and middle class and wealthy investors had a sudden visitation from Pan, the god from whose name we get the word "panic." Pan's appearance is yet another reminder that the relative stability of the globe from the end of World War II right up until 2008 is over. We are in uncharted waters.
Here is the crux of the matter as expressed in a piece which I wrote last year:
The relentless, if zigzag, rise in financial markets for the past 150 years has been sustained by cheap fossil fuels and a benign climate. We cannot count on either from here on out....
Another thing we cannot necessarily count on is the remarkable geopolitical stability that the world experienced for two long stretches during the fossil fuel age. The first one lasted from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the beginning of World War I in 1914 (interrupted only by the brief Franco-Prussian War). The second lasted from the end of World War II in 1945 until now.
Following the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq, the Middle East has experienced increasing chaos devolving into a civil war in Syria; the rapid success of forces calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria which are busily reshaping the borders of those two countries; and now the renewed chaos in Libya. We must add to this the Russian-Ukranian conflict. It is no accident that all of these conflicts are related to oil and natural gas.
As I view the current world landscape, I am reminded of two movies (which I've written about before) that I think capture the Zeitgeist: Melancholia and Take Shelter. In both the protagonists increasingly sense that something is terribly wrong, but can't quite put their finger on it. Everyone around them thinks they are ill or crazy. But for both protagonists, their anxiety comes from an inner vision that stems not from mere psychic disturbances, but rather from alarming real-world circumstances that are about to break into the open.
In a sense, these two characters represent those of us who cannot repress the pervasive anxiety of our times and who seek not merely to alleviate it, but rather to face it--to find out its origins and address its causes.
And here we return to the god Pan, mentioned at the outset. It is fitting that this god of nature--of shepherds, flocks, and wild places--should also in our age be associated with the panic we feel. For it is nature itself which is weighing on our economy in the form of climate change and fossil fuel depletion. As California--the seventh largest economy in the world behind France--burns in the heat of a multi-year drought, the grim consequences of our poor stewardship are becoming apparent. The images of fiery forests and dust-dry fields command our attention.
But hidden from the view of most is the role that increasingly expensive energy has played since the beginning of this century in slowing economic growth. The shorthand way of understanding this is that in the last century we extracted all the easy-to-get fossil fuels. Now we are going after the hard-to-get remainder which are costly to extract. That takes resources away from the energy-consuming part of the economy and creates a drag on economic growth. Hence, a dramatically slower economy in 2015 after four years of record or near record average daily prices for the most critical fossil fuel, oil. (The recent drop in oil prices is primarily a reflection of slowing demand that comes from a slowing economy.)
The financial industry through the media has intervened forcefully during the recent stock market sell-off to tell us all not to panic. These corrections are normal, they say, and long-term investors--that is, virtually everyone except Wall Street--should ignore them. What the industry and the media do not tell us is that these are not normal times.
Circumstances have changed dramatically. The evidence is there if only we have eyes to see it. Interest rates in much of the world are still stuck at or near zero seven years after the last worldwide downturn. How will the world's central banks stimulate the economy after the next inevitable recession? By lowering interests that are already at zero? In the post-World War II paradigm, rates would be at much higher levels today, say four or five percent, and economic growth would be much faster.
Annual world economic growth from 1961 through 2000 according to the World Bank was 3.8 percent per year. From 2000 to 2013, an era of increasingly expensive energy, it slowed to 2.4 percent. From the initial spurt of 4.1 percent growth in 2010 (after a contraction of 2.1 percent in 2009), growth settled down to 2.3 percent in 2012 and 2013, slightly below the recent average. This is despite unprecedented efforts to stimulate the world economy through large increases in government spending and record low interest rates.
And, as mentioned above, the geopolitical stability that has been the backdrop to the pervasive buy-and-hold investment mentality has disappeared. Like the protagonists of Melancholia and Take Shelter, we anxiously await we-know-not-what.
As we do, Pan makes his ever-more-frequent appearances. Franklin Roosevelt is famous for saying: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." But fear is a protective mechanism. We are right to fear things that can hurt us and to act accordingly. We cannot solve our problems if we refuse to accept that we have them.
Sometimes Pan is trying to help us by warning us. Sometimes it is possible to hear him playing his flute long before he arrives on the scene. But can we listen and act in some way other than panic?
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We do not need Oil and Gas as energy sources.
Tesla gave us access to endless energy long ago. Look what happened to him.
Keep fear alive.
I love how he blames the instability in the Middle East to the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq rather than on the invasion and occupation in the first place. Not saying the Middle East was especially stable before, but everything we touch there turns to shit. It would have been a lot better off without our involvement in the first place.
Given the amount of down arrows that I received above, I find it surprising that even readers of ZH do not understand what Tesla actually accomplished. Oil and Gas have other uses, such as plastics, but could have been replaced by electricity produced at near zero cost by Tesla applications. Just imagine what this world could have been if Tesla wasn't destroyed, and his techoologies suppressed. For one thing, there would have been no need for oil and gas resource driven wars.
http://www.viewzone.com/tesla.html
I think he may have been on to something as well. The way his research was ransacked upon his death would lead one to believe that there was definitely something of value there but nonetheless, until we see free energy it doesn't exist.
Only once this corruption is routed out of banking, science and governments will we find out. I would also like to see the documents pertaining to world history that the Vatican is hiding within it's bowels. Apparently the Smithsonian is bogarting quite a bit as well.
This, my work, is intended to go beyond Tesla, new OR Old...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjmWeypvoQg
Oil??
We ain't got no oil...
We don't need no oil..
I don't have to show any stinking oil!!!
this clown writes about more expensive energy between 2000 and 2013. hey idiot....did higher energy prices have anything to do with wars in iraq and the middle east......let the stupid begin.....oh wait....crudeprice.com at shit writing again
enough of these ass wipes and their dribble
The consequences...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1DcqnkzGEFQ
..
Tesla did not understand resistance in tuned circuits. Read his books on the subject. From that error comes all the errors all the ignorati make about the great Tesla secret.
A first year EE knows more about electricity than Tesla did. And there is no doubt Tesla was a genius - for his time. But we have come quite a ways in understanding in the last 120 years.
Now it is quite possible you are a LOVER. It is not possible that you are an EE.
You're a cunt, you know that?
Don't bother bringing elementary physics into the discussion around here.
Tesla was a born genius I tell you who invented purpetual motion and he didn't need any of your fancy ed-you-ka-shuns neither. That's the problem with America, too much sciencing and not enough horse sense.
No, sadly, Tesla did not invent any infinite free source of energy. That was probably one of the most misquoted parts of his work. What he said was that he could TRANSMIT energy, and people could recieve it for free. The generation still consumed gas, oil, coal, or some other awful non renewable, environmentally catastrophic source.
Telsa invented wireless transmission of electricity by chrging up the lower portion of the earth's atmosphere. That is what the transmitter at Wardenclyffe was designed to do. Picture the part of the atmostphere a little above ground up a few miles into the air as a huge capacitor. His high voltage transmitter charged that up, and with the right equipment and antenna, he could bleed it back down someplace else and use it.
The reason it was shut down was that Teslas backer, JP Morgan, were worried that they could not put a meter on the other end, and people would steal the electricity.
There was also the small matter of his process if widely used turning cities into the functional equivalent of large microwave ovens. But then at least we would have a proper market in tin-foil hats.
said transmission of energy was very inefficient too...
Latina Lover:
I have been familiar with the apparently suppressed potential of Tesla's ideas for a few decades. However, the most important point you made was:
The same pattern applied through the history of alcohol prohibition and pot prohibition, as well as over and over again, regarding every issue one examines. It ALWAYS happens that: "The more you learn, the worse it gets!" The deeper problems are that BECAUSE human beings and civilization operate as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows, civilization is NECESSARILY controlled by the principles and methods of organized crime, and so, the paths of least resistance become the paths of least morality. Society ends up dominanted by the most psychopathic people, who are the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence, while their social success has resulted in the vast majority of other people adapting to accept living inside of a political economy based on governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks.
Within that context, many people adapted to adopt their personal strategies that best enabled them to take advantage of the ways that civilization was controlled by fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems. Indeed, most of the range of "actionable intelligence" presented on Zero Hedge is actually the range of more or less realistic responses to the ways that the political economy is based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS.
EVERY possible Alternative Energies & Society Adapted to Them ends up still inside the overall social pyramid systems based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, whereby the debt controls are backed by the death controls. The potential of suppressed Tesla technologies is similar to that of the much more obvious historical ways that the poential of ethanol, at the foundation of organic chemistry, and the suppression of the potential of hemp, as the single best plant on the planet for people, for food, fiber, fun and medicine, all fit within civilization being controlled by increasingly integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which basically boiled down to systems of DEBT SLAVERY BACKED BY WARS BASED ON DECEITS.
At the present time, the only way to fund any creative alternatives must take place within the overall MAD Money As Debt systems. Since almost all of the public "money" supply is created out of nothing as debts, by privately controlled banks, while those are FRAUDS ENFORCED by governments, to finance any creative alternatives must deepen the degree to which there is already debt slavery, which has already generated numbers which have become debt insanities. (Hence, there tend more to be bullshit subsidizations, like "Telsa" vehicles, rather than saner investments.)
I thought that the article above was basically correct about the BIG PROBLEMS, which were the total human population and human activities increasing at an exponential rate, due to the industrial revolutions enabling the planet's natural resources to be strip-mined, while doing that to a fresh planet initially did not manifest the final consequences of an economy running on a debt engine treadmill, that turned natural resources into garbage and pollution as fast as possible, while that was presented as "good things" do to!
For sure, the article above was correct that the easy availabilty of cheap oil, during a period of relatively good weather, enabled the total human population and level of activities to increase at an exponential rate, while the mental attitudes towards that happening were based on the maximum possible bullshit, since all of the sociopolitical systems were being dominated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
While I have no doubt that there are plenty of creative alternatives, which could be integrated into systems of human, industrial and natural ecologies that were more relatively more sustainable, those would only actually be possible with better death control systems at their central core. Therefore, from more realistic political perspectives, practically speaking, it does not matter that much whether or not Telsa was correct about any possible alternative energy sources. I an NOT asserting that is not theoretically important, which is obviously is, rather, I am asserting that whether or not those ideas were suppressed or developed would continue to depend upon the combined money/murder systems, where money was measurement backed by murder, as the most abstract form of private property being claims backed by coercions.
In my opinion, there is no doubt that their could be creative alternatives, integrated into alternative systems, HOWEVER, those sorts of technological miracles would require an even greater series of political miracles to be enabled to actually happen. The essential problem continues to be the human death control systems, with the human murder systems as the most extreme form of those. The relatively temporary periods of the development of abundant cheap oil, during times of relatively good weather, enabled the background issues regarding the death controls to be abated. Indeed, in the same ways that the debts were deferred onto the future, the deaths were deferred into the future.
If one is serious about alternative energies, then one should be serious about the kinds of profound paradigm shifts which are necessary to apply to political science, in order to better understand human beings and civilizations as manifestations of general energy systems. At the present time, the publicly dominate forms of political science and political economy are almost totally dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world views, which present everything as operating inside of Wonderland Matrix Bizarro World.
The existing political economy is based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks, while the vast majority of people do not understand that, because they have been conditioned to not want to understand that. The overall social situation has become that those ENFORCED FRAUDS have been developed to the point where they are more than 99% complete, and thus, the ways that civilization is controlled are more than 99% based upon triumphant organized crime, whose excessive successes have become runaway criminal insanities, which now take the form of globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs.
Any series of basic scientific breakthroughs, as well as any series of technological miracles related to energy supplies, would still be STUCK INSIDE ENFORCED FRAUDS. Those systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits have already generated numbers which have become debt insanities, which are headed towards provoking death insanities. There are no creative alternatives which could be developed within the established political economy that did not increase the "money" supplies, where that means increasing the levels of debt insanities, that we are already drowning under.
At the present time, there are no genuine "alternatives" to having been able to strip-mine a fresh planet, i.e., to return to the days of cheap and abundant petroleum resources, able to be deployed in ways where the longer term consequences from doing that had not yet been manifested. As the article above suggested, we have apparently passed the turning points, where we have tipped over the edge of the longer term consequences just beginning to become more significant than the shorter to medium consequences were previously.
Since the established systems were based upon privatizing the profits, while socializing the losses, we are also just beginning to tip over the edge where the accumulation socialized losses are becoming greater than the previously privatized profits. However, at the same time, our current political systems can NOT respond to those changes, since the FUNDING OF POLITICS continues to drive the vicious spirals that privatization of profits to continue to socialize the losses. The profits from frauds continue to be reinvested in more frauds.
Within that context, it is politically impossible to develop any integrated systems of alternative energy technologies that made more overall sense, because of the ways that the established systems are so totally based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, whose social successes depend so much upon the vast majority of people continuing to take for granted that they are living inside of Wonderland Matrix Bizarro Worlds, where they were taught to think about everything in the most absurdly backwards ways possible, to the degree that the only generally understood languages used to communicate with are so deeply buried in bullshit as to be worse than useless.
Indeed, the most important consideration respecting Tesla is to "look what happened to him" BECAUSE the same pattern of social facts happened over and over and over again, because of the ways that the death controls were the core to everything else, and necessarily had to be. The history of civilization was based on the history of warfare, wherein success was based on deceits and treacheries. That enabled the development of a civilization that now manifests through governments that are the biggest forms of organized crime, effectively controlled by the international banksters, which are the best organized gangsters, to the degree that the entire political economy is now more than 99% based on ENFORCING FRAUDS, while, inside that context, more than 99% of the public continue acting like incompetent political idiots.
Moreover, the core of organized crime is surrounded by controlled opposition groups that never promote better ways to think about developing better death control systems, but continue to promote impossible ideals that there should not be any death controls, or none that human beings are aware of operating. The vast majority of the groups that appear to oppose the core of organized crime that actually controls civilization do NOT present realistic ways to operate better organized crime, that must be based upon better death control systems.
Those dominate established systems, as the central core of organized crimes based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, within the lifetime of those alive today, HAVE become globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. There has been prodigious progress in physical science, enabling technologies to become trillions of times more capable and powerful, which are still primarily being employed to be better at backing up lies with violence. Within the established social pyramid systems, any further progress in science and techology actually ends up mainly manifesting as progress in being able to ENFORCE FRAUDS.
With respect to Tesla, as well as with respect to every other area in which there could be creatively alternatives, the same issues are the PRIORITIES: "Look what happened to him." The deeper problems with respect to possible development and integration of alternative energy supplies continue to be that civilization is based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, that depends upon the overwhelming vast majority of people continuing to deliberately ignore the principle of the conservation of energy as much as possible, while also deliberately misunderstanding the concept of entorpy in the most absurdly backward ways possible.
tl;dr anyone? Please...
It's not the tl;dr as much as the convoluting.
+1000 Post, Rad. Marijuana. Best of the day.
I do not have an EE background; instead I am burdened with multiple business degrees.I plan to read more deeply and learn more about what he is purported to have discovered.
It seems to me however, that there are many stories of suppressed alternate energy technologies, utilizing principles far beyond those of conventionally taught science. Moreover, I do not doubt for a moment that factions within government would do anything to suppress them, beholden as they are to vested interests.
There certainly ARE "many stories of suppressed alternate energy technologies!"
Appearantly there is quite a bit of energy in a drop of water, the issue being that we haven't yet reached the point of figuring out how to harness it.
We most definately have figured out how to harness it. Please, everybody, do your research. This is very important!
Stan Meyer found and developed a means of powering the internal combustion engine from ambient energy using water as a recirculating liquid, vapor and HH O gas medium. The water is not consumed. The bottom line is:
IT DOES WORK !!!!
And it was brutally suppressed to keep the PetroDollar wealth confiscation ponzi alive.
All of humanity would be tremendously more wealthy and independent of the utility control system currently in place.
With only the capital cost of the engine and lower maintainance, with zero fuel cost, energy would be almost free.
The world would be a very different place.
Start by examining the US Patents in his name.
What? You need evidence?
Educate yoursef:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWJI3uOgl3s
How much is a gallon of gasoline worth? If you put a single gallon in a car, drove it until it ran out, then turned around and pushed the car back home by your own hands, you’d find out. It would take you about 500 hours to push the car home on a flat road with no wind. A gallon of gas has the equivalent energy of 500 hours of hard human labor. So assume you had the money to pay someone else to push that car home for you. At $7.25 per hour it would cost you $3,625. Is a gallon of gasoline worth $3,625? Think about it.
Going to use a horse to pull your car back home? In America there are about 233 million cars, there are only about 5.5 million horses. How much would a horse be worth if there was no gasoline? Think about it.
Yes, fosil fuels are important to our life style.
Oh yeah. Got that right. And electricity. Something like 50% from coal. the other 50% from all other sources. Imagine no refrigerator, no gas stove, no phone, .... gets real very fast.
That made no actual sense. If we are reduced to pushing automobiles around or pulling them with horses then the value of a gallon of gasoline is not $3,600 but instead reverts to it's historic average, being zero.
So I'm not sure what your point was.
The point is most of us live better than 19th century royalty and the reason this is possible is cheap liquid energy. A gallon of gas accomplishes for a man what would have taken him 500 hours of hard labor in the 19th century. The fact that you and millions more like you are missing this point is what I find really troubling about this issue.
How much is the qubic meter of gold buried 500 feet below your home worth? Nothing until you discover it is there and do something to recover it. All value and wealth are the result of human knowledge and effort. Nothing has value unles value is added by man.
If what you mean is that all value and wealth is illusion, then I have to agree.
Does gold have value because someone dug it up, or because mankind already assigned it value and therefore digs it out of the ground to access that value? Gold has value because mankind has assigned it value, wherever it happens to be.
Value is also assigned by forced/mandated scarcity. In certain parts of Africa, diamonds and other types of gems are relatively common, but a certain cartel makes sure access to the supply is restrictred enough to keep prices high.
Energy has value, it's just a matter of knowing where it is and how to harness/extract it. If access to energy can be restricted, those that enforce the restrictions can also enforce the value assigned.
A Web site is named after
the issues Buzz identified:
http://22billionenergyslaves.blogspot.ca/
22 Billion Energy SlavesHarnessing inanimate energy sources has been changing everything by many orders of magnitude, EXCEPT that some human beings continue to control other human beings through backing up lies with violence, in ways which mostly continue to get away with being publicly presented in ways which are totally based upon the bullshit world view promoted by the biggest bullies, (which have now become the banksters.)
Although some human beings have made prodigious progress in physical science, which has enabled inanimate energy sources to be harnessed, NONE of that kind of thinking has been allowed to be significantly applied to politics. Human civilizations developed for thousands of years to be based on backing up lies with violence. Those became systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which were amplified to astronomical sizes by the industrial revolutions, which were based on harnessing inanimate energy sources. However, the basic ways that society is dominated by bullshit is way more profound that most people ever begin to consider, especially since the history of the philosophy of science was often the history of compromises with the biggest bullies' bullshit world views, namely, continued promotion of dualities, expressed as false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals.
While some human beings have better understood general energy systems, and been able to harness those, that was done inside of social pyramid systems that were mostly based on human slavery for thousands of years. While harnessing inanimate energy sources was like having many inanimate slaves to do that work, the basic structure of human society continue to be social pyramid systems, based on backing up lies with violence, operated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
When we are forced to adapt to the depletion of petroleum resources, as well as the all around general problems of diminishing returns from strip-mining the planet, that will necessarily require that we radically change the human ecologies. However, since the actually existing human ecologies were dominated by human murder systems, whose social successfulness was based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds, and those core groups of organized crime, manifesting on larger and larger scales, surrounded themselves with controlled opposition groups (which were pretty well all of the dominate religions and ideologies), the general ways that human beings think about political problems, and political economy in particular, are as absurdly backwards as possible, which makes developing genuinely better human ecologies appears to be political impossible to actually do!
The most abstract form of inverted perceptions was that the entropy equations of thermodynamics and information theory had an arbitrary minus sign inserted into them, in order that those would then continue to be consistent with the biggest bullies' bullshit world views, which always present everything to the public as Wonderland Matrix Bizarro Worlds. The essential problem is that when it comes to human beings understanding themselves as manifestation of general energy systems, and therefore, how human energy systems actually work with industrial and natural energy systems, civilization as it currently operates is controlled by Huge Lies, backed up by Lots of Violence, with respect to everything, everywhere, and that is automatically getting worse, faster.
In my view, the vast majority of people do not think about what it means to operate political economy through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, which exist because governments ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks. What has actually happened is that the roughly "122 Billion Energy Slaves" provided by harnessing inanimate energy sources STILL operate through human slavery systems, which merely have become more sophisticated systems of DEBT SLAVERY.
Since there is almost nothing but a core of triumphant organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups, there is almost nothing but bogus "solutions" presented for the problems of running into the limits of being able to strip-mine the planet's natural resources at an exponential rate. Even IF there was some series of technological miracles, those would have to be surpassed by a series of political miracles, IF the human species was actually going to adapt to survive that progress in physical science. At the present time, there is almost no public progress in political science, because that would first and foremost have to become progress in the general public understanding of the human death control systems in general, with the most extreme form of that being the murder systems.
However, such political progress is in a head-on collision with the established systems having become most successful through being most deceitful and treacherous, while they were thus also able to control the opposition, in order that such fake "opposition" would also stay within the same overall bullshit view regarding the death control systems. Human beings have an increasingly difficult time coping with progress in physical science, because that has provided technologies which are trillions of times more capable and powerful than ever before in human history, while those capacities are still being channeled through social pyramid systems based on deceitful death controls, backing up fraudulent debt controls.
Of course, none of that actually violates the basic laws of nature. Rather, it is clear that the only connection between human laws and natural laws is the ability to back up lies with violence. However, at the same time, we are winding ourselves up into worse and worse intense paradoxes, due to operating the most important things that we must do, namely the human death control systems, in ways which are done within the context of their social successfulness being based on deceitfulness, and that included the ways that the controlled opposition groups to the established systems stay within the same deceitful frame of reference regarding those death control systems.
Progress in physical science has changed things tremendously. However, so far, there has been no similar progress in political science. Given that, the ways that we are actually headed towards confronting events like depletion of petroleum resources and bad weather, etc., are primarily that we are headed towards future situations where there will manifest death insanities. There have been developed weapons of mass destruction, that have harnessed inanimate energy sources in ways which could kill billions of people. However, at the same time, we continue to think about the death controls that back up the debt controls in the most intensely anti-scientific ways possible.
I REPEAT, since our political economy is based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks, the overwhelming vast majority of people live in ways that depend upon attitudes of the maximum possible deliberate ignorance towards the principle of the conservation of energy, as well as the maximum deliberate misunderstanding of the concept of entropy in the most absurdly possible ways. Since our society is almost totally a social pyramid system, based upon thousand of years of backing up lies with violence, whereby the ancient forms of slavery gradually developed to become more sophisticated systems of debt slavery, and since almost everyone is enjoying social successfulness within those systems to the degree that they are able to operate as professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, the harnessing of inanimate energy sources was able to enormously amplify those social pyramid systems, but nevertheless, those systems continued to be publicly presented in the most extremely bullshit ways possible.
Every day, the contradictions between progress in physical science, without that being surpassed by progress in political science, continue to get bigger and BIGGER. The essential reasons for that are that the core of civilization is its death control systems, with the human murder systems as the most obviously extreme forms of that. The history of the social successfulness of warfare was due to warfare being the oldest and best developed form of social science and social engineering, BUT, whose successfulness depended upon deceits and treacheries. Warfare after the significantly scaled up harnessing of inanimate energy sources (say from about the days of the American Civil War onward) has become a worse and worse meat-grinder of death insanities.
Moreover, that would automatically get worse, faster, as long as progress in physical science is not surpassed by progress in political science. Civilization now operates through social pyramid systems, that have small minorities, the pyramidion people, who have specialized in being dishonest and violent, that thereby control larger majorities which have adapted to become ignorant and afraid. I believe it is clear to anyone willing to look that the USA has led the way towards that situation, and that the ride down, after the previous ride up, now looks increasingly terrifying, due to there having been almost nothing prepared for the future in which there are diminishing returns from being able to continue to strip-mine the planet other than those preparations made by the ruling classes to start more genocidal wars, as well as impose democidal martial law.
A the present time, the controls over the development of inanimate energy sources is directed by the basic political economy systems, namely, governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks, who operate through those fundamentally fraudulent accounting systems to direct how the potential harnessing of the inanimate energy sources actually gets done. The basic mediations between the human world's energy systems, versus the industrial and natural world's energy systems, are that those are done through attitudes based on the maximum possible evil deliberate ignorance, because that is what is socially necessary to enable systems based on financial ENFORCED FRAUDS to continue to operate.
IF human beings were to become more scientific about the relationships of their artificial selection systems, within the natural selection systems, then that would require profound paradigm shifts, and series of intellectual scientific revolutions, which would make all previous paradigm shifts achieved in physical science appear as trivially easy by comparison. There is ONLY one realistic resolution to our real problems, and that is to develop better death control systems. That ONLY become even more imperative as we more and more run into the limits of diminishing returns regarding being able to continue to strip-mine the planet's natural resources. One way or another, sooner or later, we will be forced to develop radically different human ecologies, in response to those limits. (Which could include causing our own extinction, if we fail to adapt better to progress in physical science.)
At the present time, it certainly looks like the main ways that we will most probably adapt to any significant decrease in the number of inanimate energy slaves that we can command to do our work are most probably going to take the form of debt insanities provoking death insanities. We are currently living inside of a civilization that appears to have become terminally sick and insane, due to its excessive successfulness at operating through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems.
Although money is necessarily measurement backed by murder, the overwhelming vast majority of people manage to deliberately ignore and/or deny that basic fact. The deeper issues are that human civilization as it currently exists became based on the history of human slavery systems. Those were ameliorated somewhat, at least in the short-term, by the development of inanimate energy slaves. However, that still continued to be channeled through social pyramid systems which were based on small minorities specializing in being dishonest and violence, in order to control large majorities that therefore became ignorant and afraid, i.e., systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS operating their DEBT SLAVERY BACKED BY DECEITFUL WARS.
Those are ways that we are now rushing into the unprecedented situation where there are globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. Meanwhile, by and large, the ruling classes amongst those monkeys and apes do not want that situation to be better understood, while those they rule over tend to also feel that they do not want to understand that better either. Human beings collectively continue to behave in more and more suicidal ways, because they pretty well totally do not want to understand themselves and their social systems any better.
We actually developed the potential to harness inanimate energy in criminally insane ways, whose consequences have become worse and worse runaway criminal insanities. We ended up in that situation because there had to be some death control systems, at the core of all the other social systems, while those were selected to become most socially successful by being the most deceitful and treacherous, and that included that their successfulness also dominated and controlled their apparent "opposition." Harnessing inanimate energy sources, where doing that by using petroleum, etc., was first and foremost, since it was easiest and most available, was enabled by progress in physical science. However, that kind of "progress" in physical science ended up still operating inside of political systems based on backing up lies with violence, ONLY WAY MORE SO ...
That is why any real decrease in the availability and usefulness of inanimate energy sources is primarily set up to cause there to develop death insanities as the result. Our civilization continues to operate through the most intensely anti-scientific attitudes about itself possible, due to its history of successful warfare, based on backing up deceits with destruction, then becoming the history of successful finance based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS.
Our social systems have generated intense paradoxes, which can be understood as the consistent contradictions due to human beings and civilizations operating as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows, which actually did that in ways which necessarily most closely matched the principles and methods of organized crime. Everywhere, society is currently controlled by the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, and therefore, the bogus "solutions" that they propose are promoted in ways which have their mechanisms misunderstood in the most absurdly backward ways possible.
I do not believe that there will suddenly stop being inanimate energy sources which human beings can harness. Rather, I believe that those will continue to be extremely significant potentials. However, all of that now suffers from human beings and civilization deliberately ignoring and misunderstanding themselves to the maximum possible degrees, due to the long history of successful warfare based on deceits, then becoming socially successful economics based on ENFORCING FRAUDS.
We are faced with the most intense paradoxes, presenting as those consistent contradictions, regarding the ways that the ruling classes, or the pyramidion people, do not want others to understand the ways that their systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS really work, while, at the same time, the vast majority of those people who were ruled over for generation after generation also do not want to understand those systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS that they were living within. Even on Zero Hedge, most of the apparent opposition to the banksters that made and maintained those systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS do not want to more deeply understand the real reasons for how and why those systems developed to actually exist and dominate everything else.
Within 10 years oil as a means of transportation in the USA will be a minor factor. Ditto for home heating.
If things get too far out of control there is always 500 years of coal.
The age of oil is over.
We have not needed coal, oil, or nuclear energy for more than 100 years. Please learn this is important!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=863
an insult that pople still call it fossil fuels. how many billions of barrels of dinosaur carcass does the earth hold? thought the bp well would have killed that lie. but no.
"Great Idea! Great! But we have more immediate goals"
I submit we annex Mexico. There, I said it.
The energy "crisis" is a complete and total scam. Even without Tesla technology, there are a bazillion ways to efficiently extract energy from the environment. But the flouridated, ionized, GMO'd public doesnt know any better, and are convinced that petroluem (a useless black goo) is the life blood of human activity. Its an old lie invented by the tribe.
*DONT FORGET TO DO SOME RESEARCH ON INDUSTRIAL HEMP
Oil is a useless black goo?
Oil is millions of years of concentrated solar energy, in a highly concentrated, easily stored and easily transported state.
All other forms of energy we use needs vast quantities of additional energy, resources, water, land, and labor to be usefull.
Petroleum is the raw material utilized in more processed goods than anything else. Over 10,000.
There is no energy shortage. The sun supplies way more energy to the planet in one day, than used by all the countries in a year. We just can't grab and store it efficiently. Storage is the problem. STORAGE. How to store the energy so you can use it when and where it's needed. Like on a jet. Or at night.
Solve the storage problem, you'll solve the energy problem. But we still depend, like it or not, on oil.
It's hardly a useless black goo.
Go ahead, respond. You'll just look dumber.
Yes, petroluem does have a very high energy density. But so do tons of other oils and solvents that can be derived from plant matter (which is also concentrated sun energy). Petroluem is useless because hemp can provide all of the products that petroluem does, without also providing tons of toxic, feminizing byproducts and offgassing. And im not just pulling that out of my ass, I have worked with BOTH hemp, and petroluem based composites (carbon-fiber, kevlar, etc). Hemp fibers are every bit as strong as carbon fiber, are non toxic, and can be grown on a MASSIVE scale in a matter of weeks (ive seen hemp stalks gain an inch of diameter in under 2 weeks).
Your rockefeller funded education has convinced you that humans are stuck with petroluem.
You smoking it too? :)
Land, water, fertilizer, fossil fueled tractors, trucks. Don't ever do an honest cost benefit analysis.
Edit: weeks of concentrated sun vs MILLIONS of years. Do you get it.
I wish we could do it. We can't. Physics. Nature. No free energy. Laws of Thermodynamics.
"Don't ever do an honest cost benefit analysis"
Dont ever go out there, and work with the stuff yourself. It would only take a fraction of the unused farmland in the United States to provide all of the energy needed for North America from hemp. It also revitalizes the land in the process, and doesnt poison all organic matter!
So you are saying that hemp can be planted, fertilized (?), harvested, processed into a liquid, solid or gas fuel in sufficient quantities to power the equipment for the previous steps, then the remainder of the hemp made into all of the traditional petroleum based-products and delivered to customers without adding any energy into the mix -- all from growing hemp? I think this thought pathway has been extensively researched, and the equations do not balance for all non-fossil fuel processes.
No, the Rockefeller funded institutions "researched" it and told you it wont work. Using corn for ethanol will not work because it has such a low output. But hemp puts many times more ethanol per acre than corn. And the entire plant can be converted into fuel using enzymes.
The best part of growing hemp is that it can be grown without the need for irrigation or fertilizers...It will almost grow on a fucking rock kind of like oats....convert your tractor to run on hemp oil...or grease oil from the local KFC...problem solved.
The idea that a massive concept like 'free energy' has been suppressed for 100 years is too improbable to believe.
Tesla was a genius no doubt but for such a discovery to have remained covered up through the Second World War is preposterous. It would have saved Germany or allowed the US or Japan to emerge victorious early in the conflict.
I know there are powerful people in the world but something this huge simply could not remain hidden this long.
I do not believe Tesla actually proved his concapt.
All the people 'working' on this problem are doing it from their garages because they have not been able to convince investors that their ideas were good....and trust me...there is a way to makle 'free' energy pay.
Right - just because big oil and gas companies have a ton of money and own half of the world's politicians doesn't mean that they could do something so preposterous as suppress a cheaper and more efficient source of enrgy. And how could anybody else besides Oswald have been responsible for JFK's assassination? Surely someone would have squealed by now. And don't get me started on all those conspiracy theorists who think that anyone but OBL was responsible for 9/11.
If you believe 'all things are possible' you will spend your whole life trying to figure things out.
I say get a good solid scientific education and then pick your top 5 or ten things to worry about. Even professional worriers (like me) have to draw the line some where.
I am a civil litigator so the true facts in the context of fraud and deceit are what I do and I can't separate that. However, I do like your suggestion about drawing the line somewhere. A bit less insanity might do some good.
If everything we believe came down to agreed facts that nobody could disagree on, then we would have little use for courts.
In the realm of physics there are no courts, and yet fraud and deceit do not survive for long.
And that is how the human world differs from real the world, and why the two almost never overlap.
Tesla's legendary free energy based on planetary resonance has never been demonstrated as viable. Why? Thermodynamics. Not conspiracy.
There are other alternatives. Instead of spending the money on war and QE, if they spent that money to support renewable energy alternatives - whatever the alternitives are (except nuclear fission) - we wouldn't be worrying about which country Europe's fucking pipelines come from.
That may be true but as we all know many things have been hidden effectively from the general population. The solution is simple, if someone makes a discovery and starts flapping there lips about it you discredit or kill them. There have been a few mysteries and people will say that they're hoaxes but so is carbon induced global warming. Bottom line is we really don't know. Here is one side of the story about Dr. Reich who died in prison.
"In 1940, Dr. Reich, an Austrian immigrant, made the claim to a scientific discovery of a previously unknown energy existing in the atmosphere, in space, and within all living organisms."
"His work was methodically criticized and grossly misrepresented in popular magazine articles. Eventually, the medical community encouraged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek and obtain a court injunction to stop Dr. Reich from researching, writing, and speaking about orgone. Ultimately, he was charged with contempt of court for the technical violation of an obscure cosmetic labeling law, which sent him and an associate, Dr. Silvert, to prison."
"as we all know many things have been hidden effectively from the general population"
I don't know that, and the evidence of history suggests you are wildly incorrect.
If humans had access to free unlimited energy, we'd destroy the entire planet in less than two weeks.
And this declaration is based on?
We've had access to unlimited free energy for about 300 years already.
imagine the free energy fairy sprinkled pixie dust around...
now let's play a game - it's a simple game...you pick a number greater than the current population of the earth ...100 trillion maybe. Then when your number is reached...what's the plan?
The problem is not lack of energy - the problem is too many monkeys. And those with real power know this. Ahh but you need a population of billions to pick out those with IQs of 200+ to figure out a way (CERN?) to shake the fossil fuel/material world monkey off of their back - while the rest of us build their lifeboats and prison cells. But that means the only planet we have gets destroyed in the process while a small few jump on the particle lifeboat.
How many had IQs of 200+ 50,000 years ago?
That's a silly postulate. If you are going to fiddle with physics then why stop there, might was well include infinite food and water while you are at it and throw in a couple more temporal dimensions to scatter people around it. In fact, you can have one of your own and live on Earth by yourself. Given the proper M-theory dynamics you already have an infinite number of realities, go pick one that suits you. Let us all know how that worked out.
No. The problem is and was always energy limitations. We came down from the trees for that reason, and never got over it and never figured it out.
And to your IQ question; there just as many by population ratio as there are now.
and that number was what?
I stated it as a ratio. All things are relative.
We have THORIUM, thats the answer. Safe,cheap,abundant and perfect for making high efficiency electricity,liquid hydrocarbons and fertilizer.
WE AHVE ALL BEEN SCAMMED BY THIS PEAK OIL RUBBISH
We DONT need the Middle East.
I need everyone to believe this.
Ex-Chinese-jefe Chou En-Lai was famous for responding to a question from someone re the French Revolution's effects:
"It's too soon to say..."
My feeling would be similar re fossil fuels. Note very low prices now. My PhD in Geology amigo is an "oil finder" (and paid very well), he once wrote me that there is "plenty of oil".
Trouble I have with the "there is plenty of oil" thesis is that when the price of oil quintupled from $30 to $147 and steadied at $100+ for years...only the US, Canada, and Russia were able to increase production to take advantage of the significantly higher price (and with super expensive, lower quality, highly leveraged fracking and tar sands). The rest of the world production flatlined...and I find it really hard to believe corporations, dictatorships, etc. didn't want to take advantage of that huge price spike with more production.
http://econimica.blogspot.com/2015/06/us-population-and-housinga-tale-of-two.html
Maybe they did not want to give up oil for mere dollars. Maybe they are saving it...you know...like for marriage.
The Saudi's and most Arab oil producing countries don't have to resort to anything other than drilling to get oil out of the ground. When the time comes, they too will be able to utilize more sophisticated techniques to extract even more crude oil for export. Why frack when you can drill?
The point is, for better or worse, the world is flooded with oil, at least to the extent that it will carry us (assuming we survive) to a time when better energy alternatives are feasible and cheap.
tennquist, that might be the most full-on retard comment of the day. I fear you do not at all grok thermodynamics, population density, or our truly fucked up economic/monetary systems.
Energy per capita for the earth is down over the last 10+ years, and everyone "aspires" to live a "western" or "european" lifestyle - - not that I am an advocate of said lifestyle, but the marketing has been grand. And we are "flooded with oil" - - um, no.
I get the point of what you are saying, but when speaking in terms of raising or lowering oil prices, why are you speaking in terms of countries instead of corporations? It is the oil companies that control the supply of oil and therfore dictate the price. That being said, there relatively few corporations that control the majority of the oil production and with that the price.
It cracks me up when the MSM says "Saudi Arabia/Iraq/etc. is reducing oil production which will increase price". Shouldn't they say "Aramco/BP/Shell/ExxonMobil/PetroChina is reducing oil production which will increase price"?
Wouldn't it be advantageous and very easy for the big players to control the price and production?
Or am I wrong?
Not wrong...just using geogpraphic areas to underscore where production changed. However, as noted above, corporations passing on higher earnings and profits or dictators or political leaders in nations like Venezuela...I find it hard to believe they wouldn't maximize production, if it were possible, to max out share prices, bonus, etc..
I find it hard to believe they wouldn't maximize production, if it were possible, to max out share prices, bonus, etc..
Isn't that exactly what they did since 2000? Didn't the companies I listed above record record setting profits all through the 2000's?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_corporate_profits_and_lo...
I put in the wrong link above...below is the correct link.
From '05 through '13, on a sustained 100% increase in price, global production (x-US/Canada) fell 1% while US/Canada production increased 42%. I don't know of many CEO's who don't want simply more but to outperform all peers...and bringing more of something to market at record prices is the fastest way to "win". Likewise for dictators who can have even larger trade surplus' and give away more goodies to supporterss and populations to secure their leadership.
http://econimica.blogspot.com/2015/04/how-peaking-global-crude-oil-production.html
The real question is; what is $20. Or $50. Or $150???
When 100 million of our 330 million population are out of work, something feeds them. Bought with $$$$. That come from where? That have a value of what?
There is where those fuckers are tricking us. Got us placing a value on everything, using a Peice of paper, or an idea. The dollar.
Define it for me, please.
Civilizations that are one million, and ten million years more advanced than ours do not use oil for energy, and do not use debt as money.
Do your research and learn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=863
Shhhh- don't be giving away the secrets that keep the 90% unwashed in line and afraid.
The world is awash in oil- geologists stopped talking about "shortages" long ago- now it's all about pricing and control of refining.
Without the fear of "running out of oil", we'd have fewer politicians.
What's wrong with you, man? Don't say that shit out loud, you'll get droned.....
America can fix the ME. Just a little more time. And gerrymander the borders a little.
I believe the plan to fix the Middle East is to bring all the muslims to Europe and hand over the area to Israel.
Personalized beanies (yarmulkes) all around!
Works for me...BTW, nice fun bags...
the abrahamic inheritance is much larger than most imagine
www.genie.com
look at what they do...who's on the board...oh and some esoteric symbology for a logo just to rub it in.
The global military socio-economic political climate is changing for sure. The tension is so thick it could carve up various continents.
What "end of cheap fossil fuel prices" is it that this poster is talking about?
Certainly can't be oil. Not when at its current $46 pb, oil is closer to its inflation-adjusted price in 1950 of $26 pb than it is to its inflation-adjusted high in 2008 of $146 pb.
Far closer.
http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart
no, he's referring to coal.
oh wait...
You really don't know what the "rocky plateau" is ... do you?
most don't
we do eat oil - oh well too bad that is just the way the cookie crumbles - got drunk off wine is someone elses bottle and now comes the hang over.
fools
The massive overvaluation of the dollar has resulted in mispricing of all commodities. The world just can't sustain the load much longer. For the people to use and enjoy the bounty of the Earth we need a better monetary system. Trying to understand the problem using the dollar as the medium of exchange will not/ can not make sense.
How are the frackers going to pay back the junk bonds that they issued when oil was ~$100/bbl now that it is under $50/bbl?
Get lucky and buy the stock of the company that'll get the bailouts, just before the bailouts are announced?
You said it! Junk bonds, no need to pay them back. Only 550 billion USD of these out there ....
They're not. Another example of the looting of the bond market, helped along by fraud to prevent meaningful price discovery and assessment of risk.
We'd all be changing the way we live our lives if price discovery had been allowed. Instead, we're going to go on with the current paradigm no matter how much fraud it takes to maintain it until it breaks. Just wait for the "But but but! Nobody could have seen this coming!" to give way to something worse.
Agreed. Which one is it ? Terrifying geopolitical consequences because crude is too cheap (last week) or the end of cheap fossil fuels will wipe out our way of life (today)? What's with the constant fear mongering. There's plenty of crap to worry about but don't make stuff up. Things are sucky enough as they are.
What should the price of oil be when the costs to produce it at the current levels exceed the costs that people can afford to purchase it? The way our existing economy works will not tolerate any major supply disruptions, yet we cannot afford to maintain this economy. Oil can be both too expensive, yet not expensive enough at the same time.
So, stop using oil. There is a better way to power our civilization:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=863
The market price of the commodity is being distorted by artificially cheap debt.
Cheap debt has enabled the creation of enormous production capacity, which has pushed down prices. In the absence of artifically low debt and the distortions in market signals, most of these projects would require much higher prices to be viable.
We are looking at a relatively short-term low in energy prices, and in truth, the higher real prices will effectively be paid one way or the other by future bond defaults (the bondholder's loss is effectively subsidizing you the consumer's cheap energy price).
There has been no truly groundbreaking technology that has change the trend in lower EROEI. If market prices stay low, it will not be because energy is cheaper to produce. It will be because we are destroying demand.
I neither agree nor disagree with your price calls. What I will say is that I expect oil prices to remain volatile. We can either firgure out how to live with less oil, or oil can remain both too cheap and too expensive at the same time. If real price discovery were allowed across the board, we'd be doing the former right now.
For a small idea of the amount of " work" in a gallon of fuel;
Put a gallon of gas in your car. Drive it until it runs out. Push it back to the starting point. Fossil fuels are a miracle to humanity. Both a blessing and a curse.
Yeah, fuck doing that. I appriciate a gallon of gas based on pushing cars off the road. I'm not pushing one 20 miles. Just go out and walk 20 miles in a day like our ancestors did. That'll give you an appriciation for what gasoline does for us by itself, without lugging the extra mass of a car around.
But, do you think that the current model of industrial agriculture would be around with true price discovery? I think that it would, at the very least, be showing signs of being on its way out. How much oil does it take to grow Monsanto's shit and ship it to the masses? If true price discovery said that the US had to knock 2mbpd off of its consumption, we'd be faced with choices like phasing industrial agriculture out.
In a world of true price discovery and value, ( my fantasy?) there would be a lot less people. And the ones here would be smarter, usefull and more polite to each other.
Maybe.
It's going to be a fantasy, until it is not. That transition is going to be a real bitch. Don't expect people to be polite during that transition either.
Fracking has been getting cheaper as the technology improves. A fracked well that 2 years ago could produce 100 bbls a day now comes in at 400 bbl a day. And the natural gas that used to get flared? It now runs the well pump.
You have no idea what the right price should be. Because it is going down and will be for some time. We haven't yet run out of gains. ROI is going up. And that is all that counts. Because ROI determines what you pay at the pump. No one pays the mythical EROI.
Suppose EROI is .01 but based on ROI the cost for a gallon of gas is $.01 a gallon. Would you be better off with an EROI of .85 and $10 a gallon gas? Only if you believe Plant Food is a danger to the planet.
And what is your external source of energy that you're pumping into oil extraction if your EROEI is less than 1.0? Because if you don't have one, production will come to a screeching halt. That's a physics thing, which will trump any economic thing every single time.
"If market prices stay low, it will not be because energy is cheaper to produce. It will be because we are destroying demand."
Peak oil is only temporary - cull a few billion - no problem - then do it again in 100 years...just enough time to figure out how to use CERN (or not and die trying).
Ref: "There has been no truly groundbreaking technology that has change the trend in lower EROEI."
Your statement is FALSE! Please, educate yourself!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=...
Fuck you Kurt.
yep
You hear lutes? See a doctor. Panic is spontaneous.
I agree with the concept that a nonrenewable resource must eventually end, but..... Cheap fossil fuels have been ending for a long time now. When do you think they might actually, you know, end.
Read any of the 'end of oil books' out there...it is not like there is a spigot that gets turned off in some master control room. The part that we have to look at is when oil supply starts going down the back side of the bell curve, mix in explosive population growth in developing countries, and then you really have something to worry about... all of the easily recoverable/cheap oil is long gone...
Except we don't have explosive population growth in develped nations. We have huge influxes of third world migrants, and they are not interchangeable with the native population. If you think a Somali tribesman is going to be able to maintain a complex modern Western economy then you're insane.
About 3 years ago.
lol
you don't get it do you
peak oil is only a temporary condition temporarily - but will buy enough time to work on "other things"
What I get is that the laws of thermodynamics always win.
As for those supposed other things; you can keep your magic and I hope it comforts you.
well - it's magic for the masses and magick for the few
you do know solomon was a mushroom - don't you? the same one that is said to have captured the jinn in an alladins lamp and used magick to have them build the 1st temple (that there is no proof anywhere ever existed) - that by the way is on the logo here with the rising sun:
www.genie.com
that by the way is owned by a jewish cartel (solomon's key/star of david etc).
you really do need to expand your imagination and look into what really drives reality - and it goes quite a bit beyond "laws of thermodynamics" lol
i feel like we know each other "magic" - i never brought up...silent country? PO? who you be oh wise one?
When I see talk of the "geopolitical stability" from 1945 to present it makes me wonder if I live in some alternate universe from the author.
Yeah that whole WW3 thing was brutal, ruined my entire decade, how did he miss that?
Was coal really cheaper at the turn of the 19'th century, when men dug it with picks, and shovels?
Have you priced a Cat 797 lately?
There is nothing cheaper than slave labor. And when something is free you don't worry about productivity much.
+/- $5M
Do many companies buy those things new? What is CAT's annual unit sales volume on those over the last 5 years?
When you see a headline line this you realize they do not get how resources and markets actually work.
When a resource becomes scarce, unreliable or exclusive people find other ways of doing important things, and the price of that resource eventually drops near zero as it becomes a relic.
As we are seeing regarding crude oil.
I heart economics. So devious.
+100
Oil, coal and nuclear energy are obsolete relics. Cheaper, cleaner and safer energy sources are available.However, they will not be used unless we demand them enmass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=...
I had enough at, California drought. There have been droughts for all of time. What evidence ties this one to the exhaust of my pickup?
None really. No real evidence. But that's how they trick everyone...they leave it up to the imagination and then panic sets in. Then compliance to the people with the "answers".
No evidence of any kind.
You should absolutely continue doing exactly what you do.
Most Americans believe the Earth has an infinite supply of everything - as long as we are willing to murder the shit out of our fellow man to get it. Truth is: there is no magical cornucopia, there is a REASON the Canadians started boiling tar sands and there is a REASON you don't boil tar sands at less than $80/barrel.
(but keep up with the magical thinking)
(it will help to entertain you in the line at the food bank)
At the beginning of the oil industry, gasoline was a useless by product. It was dumped in the rivers to dispose.
Some day, far in the future, I beleive historians will look back in utter disbelief that we burned oil as a fuel.
But in 2015, my F250 uses diesel, not dilithium crystals.
So oil at $50 a bbl is magical? I agree - compared to $120.
And natural gas may be abiotic. Look up Thomas Gold.
You're sort of right about reasoning with respect to resource utilization, but still missing quite a bit. All natural resources production follows a controlled process of reserves estimation (at least the ones produced by publicly owned western companies - reserve calculations are controlled by the listing markets). Reserves consist of both an inplace resources coupled with a technical production multiplier related to cost (i.e. - reserves are larger when you can afford to spend more to produce them). $10 a barrel oil reserves are small compared to $100 a barrel oil reserves. That's reality, not magic. So your $80 a barrel oil from Canadian tar sands drops out of being reserves once the production cost makes it uneconomical to produce them, but they were reserves when the price was higher. Nothing magical or far fetched about that
So just how much oil is there in world reserves? You can't answer that question until you know the price. And it'll be different tomorrow when newer technology changes the production cost curves. It's not a static number, although people like Kurt treat it as such.
When does oil become too expensive to use for what it's currently being used for? When will people switch to other forms of energy instead of using oil? I don't know because I'm not involved with research and development of new technologies. But neither is Kurt and the boys at the peak oil sites. They're traders looking to make a buck off of oil price movements and financial changes relative to the energy market. I don't doubt some of them are very well intentioned, as you probably are. But it's not living in the real world when you ignore just what drives the market in favor of pet ideas.
In reference to: "there is a REASON the Canadians started boiling tar sands"
Yes, and the reason is: IGNORANCE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=...
Mars has an infinite supply of everything, once engineered, let's go there.
The UNIVERSE has an infinite supply of everything, once engineered, let's deploy there.
What I fear: Flawed immigrant investor program may be extended without reform http://www.cis.org/north/quiet-little-struggle-over-extending-eb-5-program
A more appropriate title for the article should have been "End of Expensive Fossil Fuels Could Have More Severe Consequences Than Thought"
Fossil fuels (gasoline, diesel) are expensive because of government intervention through taxes.
'
'
'Thorium, He3 (http://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html) and more.
Paintable solar cells, batteries. All of this stuff is gonna be huge if the ranchers let us cattle have it.
Otherwize?…
Get'cher yer guns.
•?•
V-V
No body is keeping it from you. You just can't afford it. Maybe you can work to lower the cost.
I'm tired of these "doomsday end of the ............. "(fill in the blank)
The only end I'm anxious about, anxious for it to happen, is the end of the nation-state.
Yeah, because people where so Rousseau's Émile back then before the 16th century and the nation state...
Fossil Fuels..... So Dino had space travel?
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html
Cobb is a crack smoking idiot.
The world is in over production of oil.....with new reserves going at least for another couple of CENTURIES.
FAIL
Thank god I worked late tonight - too many trolls to battle. "New reserves for centuries" - - in the ground, yes; for you to use in 10 years or so, no.
A repeat since quite a few seemed to have missed it:
Tesla did not understand resistance in tuned circuits. Read his books on the subject. From that error comes all the errors all the ignorati make about the great Tesla secret.
A first year EE knows more about electricity than Tesla did. And there is no doubt Tesla was a genius - for his time. But we have come quite a ways in understanding in the last 120 years.
We have been brainwashed for the last 120 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lyXi1efbYrk#t=863
Oil is going to $30.00bbl long before it's going back to $100.00bbl.
BFD if we have a major war. It isn't going to be fought like WWII with thousands of tanks and troop carriers rolling all over the place.
Lots of people will be killed or vaporized in a very short amount of time, and I can assure you that won't be good for energy demand.
I'm not sure of the author's background (nor do I care), but just how much oil does he own? Because that's the only thing that his use of the word "We" can be attached to. I got news for you, Kurt: no one is asking your opinion about what they are going to do with THEIR oil. You, I and the rest of the world's population don't get to vote on how energy is going to be used. Yes, the EU can mandate carbon credits (and then watch as Russia and the Ukraine games them out of billions and makes the whole thing a highly visible farce). Yes, Obama can mandate stiff air-polution controls (and watch as coal resources, ownership and usage moves to the aisian markets without any improvement in carbon consumption while electricity prices escalate in the USA). Yes, the UN can hold conferences on sustainability and energy usage (and watch as corrupt officials and regimes profit from the forced transfer of payments from donor nations while things get worse in the target countries). All of these pipe dreams about controlling the masses use of energy all result in failure because energy is privately owned and uses for it are privately determined. Anytime a "global thinker" like Kurt speaks about where "we" came from and where "we" are going with respect to energy (or capital or food or you name it), it is as meaningless as if he talked about where Mars or Jupiter are headed. The premise is fatally flawed and any conclusions are worthless.
For years, I concluded the USA was buying oil from the ME to save our resources .
I used to say, they pump out a non renewable resource, sell it to us for monopoly money( and some gold?), and we use it to have a better life. When theirs is gone, and the "value" has increased by magnitudes, we will be sitting on oceans of the stuff.
I still believe that is a part of it.
The US doesn't buy any oil from anyone. US companies buy oil that is refined and sold in the US. This may seem like nittpicking, but the country as some all-seeing entity doesn't buy anything (except for the petty officials who use the government credit card to fill up the autofleet with gas ... but that's a different story). US companies only buy oil from the Middle East or elsewhere as it provides a profit or is needed to fulfill a contractual obligation. When Obama travels to Saudia Arabia he is not negotiating oil deals for Exxon ... they are not stupid enough to let him negotiate anything for them. So your idea that "we" are not using our oil but are saving it, while at the same time using "their" oil only works if you believe there is a huge scale conspiracy among oil companies to save one national supply over another. I don't think you can make much of a case for this.
The reasons for why oil production shifts from one spot to another is a fairly complex mix of geology, technology, regulations, political stability, and entreprenuership. Read The Prize by Daniel Yergin if you want to get an idea of the immensity of the issue. Simple articles like the OPs are hardly worth reading, and I don't usually read them ... but I do read the comments for laughs.
Actually, we do buy non-U.S. oil. We produce around 9mb/day domestically, but use around 19mb/day. That extra 10mb/day comes from non-U.S. sources.
When thieves fall out...
It's not "Fossil" fuel. That is a Rochefeller term to make people think it's a depleting resource. That way they could/can charge more money for it. The Earth naturally produces hydrocarbons. Fact!
Not fact. A made-up theory by a crackpot named Gold. If oil was abiogenic, it would be plentiful. You probably believe in chem trails, too.
we dont need to stimulate Economy, we dont need "growth" this paradigm is an artificial one, made up by banks and their owners.
we dont need to produce more and more, we can stop now and just do enough to survive.
they didnt have the "growth" drive in golden times in ancient Greece, they were happy.