This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: Peak Dow, Peak GDP And Peak Oil
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
Peak Dow, Peak GDP And Peak Oil
Peak Oil and Peak Credit do not exist in a vacuum; they're why we have Peak GDP, Peak Dow and peak Income.
You don't get Peak Oil and cheap abundance in everything else: you get Peak X, Y and Z, for example Peak Oil, Peak Dow and Peak GDP. Peaks come in causal series, and yesterday I highlighted one such series: Peak Housing, Peak Fraud, Peak Suburbia and Peak Property Taxes.
Would we really be surprised if Peak Oil was associated with Peak GDP and Peak Dow Jones stock market average? Let's start with a chart of global oil production and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), courtesy of Chartist Friend from Pittsburgh.
This chart suggests the Dow may track oil production on the downside, just as it tracked it on the upside.
We get a slightly different but related view if we look at the price of gasoline and gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic activity. Here we see that high prices of gasoline are correlated with low economic activity/stagnant GDP:
While GDP is somewhat abstract, disposable household income is what's in our checking account. Once again we find a high cost of gasoline is correlated with stagnant income:
Common sense suggests that if employment is rising, the stock market should follow as more jobs means more wages, sales and profits. We see this correlation in the overlay of the S&P 500 (SPX) and employment until the latest recession and stock market Bull run-up: this is clearly a jobless "recovery" yet the stock market has more than doubled. Is this decoupling of employment from the stock market "the new normal" or an aberration that's about to revert to historical correlation? To do that, the market would need to fall in half or the economy would need to add 10+ million jobs in short order.
If we combine Peak Oil with Peak Credit, we get a household sector with stagnant disposable income burdened by servicing monumental debt loads. Here is a chart of household liabilities and wages/salaries, unadjusted for inflation. Household debt has completely outstripped income.
These charts do not paint a picture of robust recovery, they sketch a grim picture of stagnant household incomes and rising costs for fuel and debt service.
»
- 12269 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
The first chart looks like one of my kid's drawings. Oh I taught him so well!
Peak Bullshit
Peak-peak.
Hey abiotic folks, you really think that even if your theory is true, that the nougaty center of the earth is creating oil faster than its depleted? Follow up question, if oil is replenishing in a timely manner why the ultra expensive and risky deep sea exploration?
Final thought, the Peak Oil theory sure helps line up all the activity we have seen world wide for about 11+ years. Lots of disparate phenomena that look like elite desperation (eg openly stolen elections, emergent police states world wide, costly wars in oil rich regions etc etc ad nauseum) suddenly make a TON of sense when you view the world through a Peak Oil lens.
Bring the Gold
Um,dude just because you observe a thing, then you observe a second, doesn't mean that the first caused the second or even that they are related.
The human mind needs to see patterns, we can't handle chaos.
We also enjoy the simplest solutions because we just are not designed to process complex thoughts.
I once read that you should have no more than five people work for you. That is because those five generate one hundred and twenty five combinations of issues through their interactions. Pretty hard to keep focused on that many problems and potential problems.
Sure, there is complexity. I don't remember denying that... There are also large scale problems that cause tectonic shifts in the activities of large complex socities. To each their own.
How do you get peak oil when U.S. production has increased to its highest level in a decade??
Peak oil is BS: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8698ae80-4503-11e0-80e7-00144feab49a.html#axzz1tATnJsXW
Headlines from the Financial Times are usually hopium.
http://www.postcarbon.org/blogs/Bakken-Bump-2-17-2012-10-49-08.jpg
I still see a peak.
Does highest in a decade also mean highest of all time?
FT is only one of many sources reporting increased oil production in U.S. Wow, junked for presenting facts. The quality of debate on ZH is the only thing that's peaked in the recent past...
@ATM, Does not need to be highest of all time. Peak oil theory states production will never rise again and can only decline. Thus, production increases in U.S. invalidate the theory. Sorry.
The Peak Oil Theory is a prediction that charting yearly production over the global data set will produce something similar to a bell curve. Individual wells, fields, countries, and even world producion, can fluctuate within this theory. Do you believe that U.S. Production charts are not representative of a bell curve?
There is an abundant supply of $300 bbl oil, however the supply of $30 bbl oil has been permanently depleted. The only reason why US production has gone up is because the price of oil has nearly quadrupled. Note that although the price of oil nearly quadrupled the amount of domestic production only increased a small fraction.
The US increases of oil production are temporary, Shale oil drilling will top out in the next two or three years. However, declines from convential oil production will likely exceed shale oil increases in the next 12 to 18 months. Higher oil prices affords increased drilling from less economical fields, but high prices also lead to demand destruction. Demand destruction will lead to significant price declines, forcing shale oil production to shut-in and stop drilling, Slowly the price of oil will creep back and the shale oil drilling will resume, but the US will never come close to exceeding its peak production in the 1970's. Also note that US demand for oil is down by about 15% from 21 mbpd to about 18 mpbd. The cost of oil has a big impact on consumption.
Occasional increases average out into a bell curve over time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg
Skip to 3:00 if you're in a hurry, but the whole thing is worth the time to see.
highest level in a decade is still much lower than 1970. Noise vs trend, check it out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trend_estimation
and:
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?country=us&product=oil&graph=production
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc...
Peak oil has a lot of demand side answers that have been viciously suppressed or just plain bought off. The Pouge Carb (Canada)...he was bought off, died rich and miserable, unable to speak, legally bound...the water-guy, Stanley Meyers, who was poisoned the night he got his DoD contract (WWII aircraft engines ran on part water, it's old techniques anyways)... then there is th ewhole Brown's gas thing...
On and on and on....
Peak oil, in it's totality is a scam. There is stuff out there to kill 40% off the demand side pronto!
Peak all this shit is a scam, our real troubles lie esle-where, not in this nut-house scenario being burned on people's minds 24/7
ori
/re-membering-deepwater-horizon
But ori, I think you are talking about an anti-growth solution. Yeast in a petri dish never choose to reproduce less.
"Yeast in a petri dish never choose to reproduce less"
Is that quote yours? It's damn good. If there is an original source, would you be good enough to post? I love it.
The inherent problem of evolution is that we don't do shrinkage. Sawtooth waves are the natural progression.
That's mine. CC licensed, no attribution required. Share and share alike.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
But that is in this current, triangular world Bob, perhaps it's time the edges got rounded out a little.
We are intelligent enough,collectively to be wave riders instead of wall crashers. Its' all about choices and consensus and conscience.
And true enough Spastica. But when everyone tries to rush for the exits simultaneously or the pipe of life suddenly shrinks by a third or more, you'd better understand how to shrink a little right.
Seems like what we are coming up to. Like a birth canal slide or a sperm to egg chase, take your pick.
ori
I don't think we disagree much at all, except maybe on the likelihood that humanti is going to make a collective wise choice. I'm coming to belive that there is no such thing as collective "free will," and that our species is merely outgrowing its petri dish.
I really AM Bob, Vivek.
Well, you sure are a SubGenius BobRex, that is fer shure.
ori
PS: I'm still wondering...nah..... :-)
So you say that I'm claiming false causation and then bust out conspiracy theories about engines that run on water...wow. If you are asserting that dependence on Oil has been for decades a scam, sure I'm willing to buy that there is transparent history (see Carter plan below) that would back that up. There probably were viable alternatives had we embarked on them in time. For instance, had we continued with Carter's plan for the past 32 years we probably would be largely energy independent in the US.
That said, NOW we have reached the point where turning the Titanic around isn't really an option. Switching over to any energy source alternative (assuming one exists that could adequately replace the energy density of oil, there isn't one that is publicly acknowledged...) would simply take too long. Indeed, it couldn't happen at all without a HUGE decrease in the standard of living in the West and also the developing countries eg BRICs at least during the transition phase.
Nobody wants to hear that, and that is the root of Peak Oil denial. It floors me that people seem to believe in limitless supplies of all resources when everything from the Dodo, to Easter Island, to the Thylicaine and any other number of things has proven that in fact there are LIMITS to resources on Earth. Yes those were island examples, we are a floating island in space. Whatever though, clearly we are pretty far from Peak Denial.
Thank you. Global resource depletion, tangled in with exponential population growth, is something few can (or want to) wrap their heads around.
I really doubt abiotic oil exists. The earth is hot down there though. If I were to invest in long term energy, deep well geothermal has potential. Drilling 6+ miles to inject water for steam extraction is the tricky part. It's been done before, at enormous cost. But if the heat source remains viable for centuries, the initial capital investment for drilling may prove worthwhile and profitable. Alot of fresh water, another diminishing resource, would be used and lost. Would it be worth it?
Peak EVERYTHING is a Technochracy ruled, resource based (on false assumptions and false, engineered booms and busts, famines and floods) FRAUD of enormous proportions.
You sound like your paycheck comes from Peak Oil HAVING to be a reality. I believed it till I saw other-wise.
It's not about it's limitlessness, it's about it's being burnt in 15%-30% efficient IC engines. where, with a simple change, you can boost performance by 40%. i can do it. To any IC engned car.
Are you an academic per-chance?
ori
I got a 2008 Dodge Ram. Feel free to demonstrate on my rig.
You can add Tom Ogle to that list ORI:
http://fuel-efficient-vehicles.org/energy-news/?page_id=787
Imagine how diluted their petrodollar-fiat-debt control matrix would be by having 'false-sell' fuel supplies extended by a super-efficiency of 100 mph in the 70's....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7qHmB62Y6c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYyVnCeWV1A
Here's what I dont' understand about the abiotic theory - the temperature of the inner Earth is hot. The mantle, the closest layer below the surface is over 1000 degrees Kelvin (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/PhillipChan.shtml). The auto-ignition temperature of oil is 670 degrees Kelvin. So even if the Earth is creating oil abiotically, how is it not burning and converting into other substances?
It's near the Upper Mantle where it is generated and you forgot to factor in tremendous pressure at depth.
Inorganic chemistry + (Heat + Pressure @ depth) = Geologic Processes
Think of petroleum as a liquid mineral.
lack of oxygen maybe??? IDK
Yeah, oil will be "replenished", after man destroys itself (and most other species) and all the carcasses become the New Oil, a few million years from now. The radiation-immune mutants that evolve by then will probably drill for all of our nuclear waste instead, however.
peak ponzi
http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/how-did-dinosaurs-get-miles-under-the-earth/?cat_orig=world
Don't forget the peak dollar. This will be a bigger factor than peak oil as the world turns to using gold and the yuan in place of the dollar.
Jim Willie states gold is winning the Epic Battle. Just ask Iran and the Chinese.
http://www.silverdoctors.com/jim-willie-us-dollar-vs-gold-epic-money-bat...
Gold-YES, Yaun? Are you saying that the Yaun is not manipulated by the PBoC?- FAIL.
read the comment again. the previous poster made no claims about the Yuan not being manipulated, simply that the Yuan will increase in prominence and the USD decline. As the American sphere of influence shrinks and China's grows, the Yuan will be used more and more for trade between China and its partners. It is not a better currency, it just is the currency of the regional power.
Far out. The bullshit will have to start piling up exponentially now to cover up the truth.
Call it what it all really is. Peak stupidity on all fronts. The insane are now in full control of the asylum, hedge accordingly.
Talk about ugly charts. Truly ugly charts.
And yet......and yet the band plays on as if rescue is just over the horizon.
Ben with some close friends.
God doesn't believe in limits. The Kingdom Of God is abiotic. Who do you think started all this "peak" nonsense, hmm? Could it be.....Satan?
edit: One should feel free to insert "The Invisible Hand" for "God," if that is what one places one's faith in. Likewise, one can use "hippies" for "Satan" if one prefers.
Spaghetti Monster doesn't believe in limits. The Kingdom Of Spaghetti monster is abiotic. Who do you think started all this "peak" nonsense, hmm? Could it be.....Ninjas?
The Invisible Pink Unicorn is acceptable, too.
The Way is a limitless vessel;
Used by the self, it is not filled by the world;
It cannot be cut, knotted, dimmed or stilled;
Its depths are hidden, ubiquitous and eternal;
I don't know where it comes from;
It comes before nature.
Rush Limbaugh Eats Everything
precisely, anything make-beleive is acceptable, damn, I missed the sarcasm again.
LawsofPhysics
Everything is true/false/and meaningless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMYQyhjiYA
Sardonic doesn't work well on mildly insane financial forums.
Sardonic=Islamo-gay-fascist, so - no.
Protracted exchange incoming? I'd say affirmative, but let's see if I can be succinct to spare us all: Nissan Leaf, let's not quibble over reasons.
Gene! DAMN you just got BUSTED. A CLASSIC example of why trolling on this blog is VERY BAD idea:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/disasters-natural-and-keynesian#comment-23...
Start here:
Thu, 04/26/2012 - 14:11 | 2377396 GeneMarchbanksPapa SMurf doesn't believe in limits. The Kingdom Of Papa Smurf is abiotic. Who do you think started all this "peak" nonsense, hmm? Could it be.....Gargamel?
Actually the supply-side did.
It's really quite elementary.
We are living a supply-side end-game dystopia.
The demand side is just sitting back, dazed and con-fuzed!
ori
Fucking harlarious.
Hey moron, the next time your car breaks down or a loved one gets cancer, you have a choice. Look to the bible for a real fix or the user's manual and science.
The bible, like other works of fiction, provides comfort and guidance etc.
Beleive it or not, by actually trying to disprove the theory of evolution a number of cures for many diseases have been developed and lives have been saved.
How many lives have been taken in the name of your bible/God. I THINK IT IS PRETTY FUCKING CLEAR WHERE SATAN RESIDES.
LawsofPhysics
Sorry dude but there is no fix for Cancer. A patch maybe, but no fix.
Modern medicine has no fix for anything, we patch. I heard someone say " Medicine is what we do while we wait for nature to take it's course".
That sums it up.
semantics, there is no "fix" for humanity either, doesn't mean you might want to stick around a bit longer now does it? Hey, at least you are free to go ahead an shoot yourself in the head, I mean why wait for "nature to take its course", as you say.
LawsofPhysics
Humanity, like everything else, is evolving.
You can't fix evolution.
Precisely, you are part of evolution. Whether or not your bloodline continues is another matter altogether.
You remind me of an MRI of the brain I once saw on neurology grand rounds. It showed the tumor of a +20 year breast cancer survivor.
Who's harlarious but more importantly why are you fucking him?
I think I missed the sarasm, my bad.
'sarasm' you meant orgasm surely.
GeneMarchbanks
I think he meant Saran wrap.
Maybe Saladin, or Salad dressing.
Salad Shooter. He definately meant Salad Shooter.
You should write or**sm becasue SkyNet picks up on those kinds of words and puts you in a databse. Or so someone told me on ZH the other day.
"The bible, like other works of fiction..."
As the man of science you profess to be, please provide the link to the journal published, peer reviewed and results duplicated scientific experiment which scientifically proves your statement. I'd love to review the methodology.
Or are you just making that statement as an article of [gasp!] faith?
darteaus
Funny how people live by faith everyday.
They go to bed having the faith they will wake up the next morning.
Faith is neutral. People had faith in Jim Jones. "By their fruits" and whatnot.
People go to bed with lots of things my friend, and wake up with them too, what is your point? Don't make assumptions about my faith when you have no clue, it just shows your ignorance.
My point is that in science the whole point is to try and disprove things. Try and do the same for the bible and people respond presisely as you do, hostile. Maybe you want to go burn or kill some people now (as events like the inquisition did-protect that "faith" at all cost)? How about you go be productive instead.
I see what you did there... challenge him to prove the negative... nice work.
One doesn't need to prove the negative here, but merely recognize that most of the bible is little more the plagiarized re-telling of stories that predate the bible, sometimes by thousands of years. It's an aggregation of mythology that existed at the time of its creation.
"...challenge him to prove the negative..."
Nope. He made the claim, and I asked for his scientific evidence.
In the scientific field, bold claims must be accompanied by bold evidence - not new assertions and ad hominium attacks.
It's the scientific way; didn't you know?
no... it's exactly what you've done. I don't care... I don't have a horse in this race, but you are asking him to prove a negative.
It is not illogical to assume that all mythology appears to have a root related to reality somewhere in the deep dark distant past.
The co-incidnces of the great flood, the unexplicability of the Mayans to have known of Precession and the timley appearance of the constellations....
There would just seem, no matter how small, a good chance that there is a link to past experience.
I can buy that. If people presented the bible that way... a collection of mythology dating back 5000+ years, some of which may have some connection to past experience... I'd be good with that. Quick... someone call my parents, my brother and sisters and most of my extended family :-).
yep,... save the redeemable, and perish the poor --- who says that eugenics is just for the well to do?indeed, practicing witchcraft in ones own backyard makes perfect 'cents' - b[u]y and fore 'sir Camelot de`Darwin', the chosen few, whilst ignoring the plague on thy sovereign neighbors front-step -- for the glory of his`kindness of deeds? cure the chosen, and eradicate the soiled below, as we evolve into cyborgs for the good of our species - mantled in cold steel, with but logic as a heart! cures are but todays 'WMD', masked in goodwill...
Please , could we also have peak corruption and peak stupidity as well ??
One order of peak corruption and stupidity coming up.
Hold please.
Ummm. There seems to be a problem. You already have an order in for this from last decade. Do you wish to upgrade to the double trouble special?
Press 1 for yes, 2 for yes, 3 for yes, 4...........
Hey CD. There will never be peak stupidity.
Just when you thought you made it idiot-proof, along comes a new and improved idiot.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. R.A. Heinlen
One can only hope you are wrong. Otherwise I want off this dirt ball from hell.
Scotty, beam me up. Please. I'm begging you.
In fact Mrs. Cog and I are working on this right now. Just downloaded the formula for rocket fuel and are ready for the testing phase to begin.
10........9........8.........
Speaking of corruption and stupidity; live WH briefing: http://video.foxnews.com/video-live-streaming.html?video_id=1155606214001
Maybe he would like to speak to Peggy...
This article is absurd.
I could almost stop there, but hell, he spoke without anything to say, too.
Oil production is the limit on economic activity. Eventually it's also the limit on population. Why would all that define the Dow? The Dow can move with share buybacks. That would define earnings per share.
This article is an absurd stretch of cause and effect . . . of an effect that has not happened and may not. What was the point of all this?
Oh, sorry, silly question. Click revenue.
Not his best work.
"Common sense suggests that if employment is rising, the stock market should follow as more jobs means more wages, sales and profits."
Common sense suggests that if central banks got the markets by the balls, nothing else matters.
I am really sick of articles by this Charles Hugh Smith guy.
The correlation on those charts sux ass.
+1
Thanks for saving me a lenghy reply, buzz!
welcome to peak Idiocracy.
"welcome to COSTCO, I love you".
+1 Idiocracy reference.
I loved the concept and so much of the movie almost worked... but as a whole... it kind of missed. Not sure why. It always seemed so close. Maybe my expectations were too high going in as I felt like I had pitched the concept 100 times before the movie was ever made.
Mike Judge has GREAT concepts but poorly realized films. Both Idocracy and Office Space have great funny bits but are hardly great films. That's OK, becasue the messages are so accurate. TV has been his best medium, I think.
I thought Office Space succeeded where Idocracy failed. But like I said, I'm sure my expectations heading into each had a lot to do with it. Kind of why most people hate marriage.
The reason Idiocracy didn't quite work is that it had a happy ending.
A more realistic ending would have been pandemics, wars, starvation, and cannibalism.
It seems to me we are becoming a 2 class society- haves and have nots. The haves are enough to sustain for now but that class is shrinking. As gas goes up, taxes go up, food costs go up do the have-nots start to eliminate igadgets,cable TV, eating out, driving etc. I have met several people who have gone from $75K jobs to $45k jobs in the past 3 years. Sooner or later that catches up with you. Purely anecdotal but I would think we may be peaking
Someone I know went from 100K to 72K. This is in IT / Business Analyst.
Some may call it " Triple Peaks", I call it Head and Shoulders. 16 trillion dollars of fluff got us the head and another 10 Trillion ought to get us right down to the ass. About this time they will have stuck their heads so far up their asses, they will finally begin to stink. And yes, the Jobless recovery...One of my favorite quotes was from Peter Schiff a few years back...
"For those market boosters who are prattling on about the possibility of a "jobless recovery," I offer an invitation to join me for a breakfast of "fat-free bacon," "eggless omelets," and "no-carb bread." As unappetizing as such a meal may sound, it would nevertheless offer more substance than the oxymoronic concept of an economic resurgence without job creation."
And if I ever have to watch another video of Lloyd Blankfein lisping about sissys, I honestly think I will lose it...
You forgot the drinks - sugar-free soda and alcohol-free beer.
Mmmmmm....
It's so simple, it's a tragedy that so few choose to see it.
Energy=Money/GDP
Money/GDP=Power
Ergo
Energy=Power
For practical purposes, all energy is either from the Sun or from stored, depletable energy sources (Fossil Fuels, Nuclear).
All the power in the world pre-fossil fuels was from the Sun.
Today, most power in the world is from the depletable sources, but those sources are now dwindling.
The fight today, before we return to the days of the Sun, is to control the dwindling resources.
Once you understand that Energy=GDP=Power, and energy per capita is declining, then foreign policy becomes obvious, economic depression becomes obvious, loss of individual rights becomes obvious, and the future becomes obvious.
Most Americans don't want to understand that energy is depleting, because to do so would require a massive paradigm shift. Most people, after a certain age, can't make that shift. If you tell the average person that gas will eventually be rationed, their first thought is, that's impossible, because I wouldn't be able to commute to work. Unwilling paradigm destruction usually is the result, rather than a willful paradigm shift.
Energy per capita has been declining for well over 10 years. It will continue to do so for the next 50, if not 100. We will return to the days when only the sun provided us with energy.
America rose and was built on cheap energy. It will fall and crumble on ever more expensive energy.
The true tragedy of the Oil Age, which is rapidly ending, is not how extraordinarily wasteful we all were. It's the fact that so very, very few appreciate how phenomenally easy we've had it.
No problem - we'll just borrow more money:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qJ1zvZ7BfGw/T5bTnGzH6JI/AAAAAAAAB6s/QLuxxqp7wrI/s1600/120424-B.png
Well said and well understood, Frank.
View the 20th century through a lens of oil and it all looks different, and more clear.
If Hitler's generals not grown up in a pre oil world, they would have piled on all resources towards shutting off oil from getting to England in the late 1930s before the US was ever involved. It all came from the middle east then and would have been an easy blockade from the source. Then presto, no RAF airplanes in the sky to stop you and Englad would have fallen long before the US was involved.
Reagan's boom years of the 80s happened to arrive when Alaskan oil did, what a coincidence.
Technology itself derived from simply academic conferences, where thoughts could be easily exchanged, and that required travel . . . using oil. Technology didn't put men on the moon. Oil did. Rockets and equipment got to the launch pad because of oil.
And now all that ends and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Oh, one last nitpick. Energy pre fossil fuels being solar . . . energy post fossil fuels is solar too. The algae that made oil and the plant matter that made coal . . . all of it grew from sunshine.
Peak Aboo!
Clearly the answer is to prop up that declining consumer debt level by first securitizing it, then trade it for some more fresh ZIRPable credit.
Peak patience?
Really badly labeled, scaled, and conceptualized charts. Stick to social commentary CHS, you're reasonably good at that. I believe that the timing of our financial / economic crisis with possible peak oil / population is not coincidental, but the Dow could still go to 10 million as the shelves empty and we fight in the streets. It's an artificial construct that can be manipulated at will.
Has Russia made too many promises?
"Just a few of these promises include: to increase social spending by $170 billion, double the wages of doctors, policemen, and college professors, triple student stipends and increase maternity payments to boost Russia’s sagging birth rate, and the list goes on. Such is the immensity of Putin’s election promises that some analysts have speculated that oil would have to maintain a price of between $140 and $150 over the next six years to keep the federal budget from dipping into huge deficit spending."
http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/russia-in-the-arctic-rise-of-the-pola...
Peak bear. Ben wants up, not down. We're all bullish now!
The last graph pretty much says it all..
Even if most people could continue to service their debt, how long will that take? And what about the lack of consumption in a system that relies on continual growth. How many people are exiting the workforce? How much debt can't be defaulted on? If it can be wiped out through default, how will that ripple feel in an uber-leveraged financial system? How does 50% youth unemployment affect payment?
Americans screwed themselves - It's The System, stupid.
One thing not near it's peak, nor even starting up the slope, is harnessing solar power. I expect (that's right, expect) breakthroughs in artificial photosynthesis and other methods of capturing the huge photo and electro-magnetic radiation that bathes the earth every day.
If only we had the capital (and cheap energy source) to make those smart investments. The capital mal-invetment and mis-allocation continues.
Exactly. You can only implement a new infrastructure by using the one you have already, and it takes time, capital, and resources that are being squandered. That's the biggest problem with the peak oil predicament, just like so many other current trends: Lying and can-kicking eventually have repercussions.
5 trillion Fed bailout-dollars could have paid for a solar system on EVERY home in the U.S.!
It's not optimal of course, but still.
Peak oil is predicted yearly, since at least 1970. Someone has an ax to grind.
In 1970, the first chart would have showed oil production peaking in 1972 with a big decline thereafter.
In 1990, the first chart would have showed oil production peaking in 1992 with a big decline thereafter.
In 2010, the first chart would have showed oil production peaking in 2012 with a big decline thereafter.
Which is why some folks don't fully buy into the extreme projected case.
And tell me what are the numbers on the left scale? They are certainly wrong for the DJIA -- which traded 600-1000 from 1966 to 1980 and now stands at 13,000 (that chart shows it doubling from 1980 to 2012). This guy is crap.
Closing in on the 2008 SP500 high.
http://bullandbearmash.com/index/sp-500/weekly/
The one tell that makes this suspect is the very low volume behind this push up since Dec 2011. Not a sign of strength.
Now get a true graph for oil production and forget about peak oil for this and the next century.
How many times, in 24hrs. does the oil market open and close.
Everyday I look and it is down to a higher number.
Kinda reminds me of jobless claims.