Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:46 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil
[quote="MonteQuest"][quote="Pfish"]
MonteQuest wrote:
We know it is already mainstream, but when will it really hit home for everyone? How will the world respond?
Read my Year in Review Blog. June 2004 cover of National G and the fall issue of Yes! MAgazine is pretty mainstream, but not on the 6 o'clock news.
Mainstream is Paris Hilton
Mainstream is the DOW
Mainstream is talk about what the Pres is doing today
Mainstream is Climate Change
Peak Oil is still fringe, even today June 2007 _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:51 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
zoidberg wrote:
It is a mistake to underestimate the survival drive. Its got billions of years of evolution behind it. We're not going to burn it all down - some people might try, but they'll be killed/imprisoned, the vehicle for this force will be the central governments -which will be at the height of their size during the peak. I dont see them playing a role further down the road - but for 2010 time period your worried about they'll be the ticket, for some good old fashioned rationing, employing mass violence, and providing a central rallying point.
People with money and power can kill those without and survive.
Where do you fit in the picture? _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 3626 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:06 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
zoidberg wrote:
What_Went_Wrong wrote:
Anyway, I'd be very surprised if we are all still here talking about this in 2010. very surprised.
Everyone has a vital interest in avoiding that scenario and will willingly choose the necessary sacrifices to avoid an all out collapse.
Wish that applied to CEOs and politicians. I think corporations are fundamentally insane; or they're like moles, great at what they do despite its consequences, and put them out in the sunlight and they're pretty helpless. Or cancers. Global metastization.
This notion of oil being merely a fraction of the energy we spend...do you live next to a supermarket? Or a vineyard? Imagine US gas prices going through the roof. Who's going to be able to afford to drive to get food anymore? Will the trucks still deliver to the stores that supply the food in the first place? Will the growers still be able to supply food? How are employees going to get to the store to work, either?
Buy local? How many farmers know how to grow food without turning an ignition key? Without fertilizers and pesticides?
This is why people talk here using metaphors like going over a cliff. The rate civilizations decline is dependent on how fragile they are on supplying energy to people, and as it stands we couldn't be more brittle. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
C'mon man, who're you gonna believe?
Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 1203 Location: Left the cult
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 5:58 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
smiley wrote:
To me it seems that the oil prices are increasing at the fastest pace in history. Even if you discard inflation and look at the increase percentagewise, prices are increasing at the same pace as in the seventies.
Back then we called it an oil shock, why should we treat it any different now.
Yeah, but it's not $200 yet.
The proof is in the effect, if the rise is too fast it will lead to a crash. We haven't crashed yet. So far, the rise is being weathered.
I'm actually pretty surprised that oil has tripled in price with only debatable effects at the margins. If oil is so vital, how can that be?
Even Kunstler, who is perhaps one of the most strident, calls it a Long Emergency.
Quote:
Kunstler argues that as energy becomes scarce, transportation will become difficult or impossible, causing food and other necessary commodities to become unavailable in many communities. It will be necessary for local communities to become self-sufficient for food production, but many communities will be unable to do so, particularly large cities. The result will be mass starvation, disease, and civil unrest. Kunstler suggests that governments will be incapable of managing these problems. This period of scarcity and collapse will possibly last for hundreds of years, hence the "long" emergency of the book's title.
Kunstler has studied this a lot more than I. Why is Kunstler wrong? _________________ It's all downhill from here
Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 1203 Location: Left the cult
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 6:08 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
TheDude wrote:
This notion of oil being merely a fraction of the energy we spend...do you live next to a supermarket? Or a vineyard? Imagine US gas prices going through the roof. Who's going to be able to afford to drive to get food anymore? Will the trucks still deliver to the stores that supply the food in the first place? Will the growers still be able to supply food? How are employees going to get to the store to work, either?
Oil supply is not going to go off a cliff, so the scenario you describe is fantasy.
Americans consume about 10 times as much as everyone else, and 5 times as much as they need. Far from being brittle, there is a huge amount of redundany in the system.
I'm really not sure why people get so wedded to a fast crash scenario. Is it to make it more sound more dramatic, in order to spur action? GW has this problem. It's hard to get people motivated over something that happens in a century.
If you really want to get the message "out there", the shock tactics are not credible, and don't actually work. If you want to validate your own beliefs, then OK, you're just writing doomer porn. Whatever turns you on, I guess. _________________ It's all downhill from here
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:53 pm Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
Quote:
Yeah, but it's not $200 yet.
The proof is in the effect, if the rise is too fast it will lead to a crash. We haven't crashed yet. So far, the rise is being weathered.
......
Kunstler has studied this a lot more than I. Why is Kunstler wrong?
Kustler is not wrong, (I think.) But Kunstler and I are looking at different timescales. What I think is that the oil prices are locked up in a parabolic rise. This is a well known phenomenon in markets.
These rises have occurred many times in recent history. The dotcom craze is one example, the Hunt induced silver spike is another.
A parabolic rise has nothing to do with the laws of supply and demand. It has everything to do with investor sentiment and exhuberance.
At the end of a parabolic rise prices go nearly vertical. So you see tremendous price increases in a short period, (before common sense kicks in and prices drop). I think we are not at that point yet so we could still rise a lot (150, 200, 250 who knows).
Over a longer period it is just a spike, but your question was whether prices could hit $200 short term and I think they can.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:05 pm Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
bobcousins wrote:
I'm actually pretty surprised that oil has tripled in price with only debatable effects at the margins. If oil is so vital, how can that be?
It's called "charging it" or "putting it on the card."
Oil revenues are also not put in a mattress, they fuel economic growth.
Those "margins" are third world people priced out of the oil game.
And those whose houses are being auctioned on the steps of the courthouses don't feel marginal either.
Somebody has to absorb the increases, hmmm? _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:08 pm Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
bobcousins wrote:
Oil supply is not going to go off a cliff, so the scenario you describe is fantasy.
If you define a cliff as 25% in a week, no. But a 5% decline means 50% gone in 14 years.
Might as well be a cliff.
How does an economy slowly not grow at all, hmm? _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:12 pm Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
smiley wrote:
At the end of a parabolic rise prices go nearly vertical. So you see tremendous price increases in a short period, (before common sense kicks in and prices drop). I think we are not at that point yet so we could still rise a lot (150, 200, 250 who knows).
How does common sense kick in to tell you to stop breathing, eating, drinking water, or using energy?
Energy is not your everyday commodity, especially when it gets scarce with no alternatives. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Joined: Aug 13, 2005 Posts: 603 Location: BlueRidgeVA
Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 3:32 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
MonteQuest wrote:
bobcousins wrote:
Oil supply is not going to go off a cliff, so the scenario you describe is fantasy.
Might as well be a cliff.
How does an economy slowly not grow at all, hmm?
The US economy catches a bad cold at anything less than 2% yearly growth. In fact, the 2% growth rate is viewed as a tipping point into recession. There are only a few times in recent history when the US economy has dropped into negative (contractionary) range and this has only been for a quarter or so.
US financial markets would go into panic mode with quarter after quarter of GDP contraction. And this could happen with just the early 1-2% yearly drop in oil production. The later steeper declines would definitely send the US economy into the hole.
Of course, the gentler slower production drops may not occur. A faster more violent drop may occur in available exports due to a number of factors which include the "new paradigm" thinking among producers who refuse to keeping exhausting a valuable resource to be burned up by the US economy. Or a resource war scenario in which oil infrastructure is destroyed en masse.
Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 7:39 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
DesertBear2 wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
bobcousins wrote:
Oil supply is not going to go off a cliff, so the scenario you describe is fantasy.
Might as well be a cliff.
How does an economy slowly not grow at all, hmm?
The US economy catches a bad cold at anything less than 2% yearly growth. In fact, the 2% growth rate is viewed as a tipping point into recession. There are only a few times in recent history when the US economy has dropped into negative (contractionary) range and this has only been for a quarter or so.
US financial markets would go into panic mode with quarter after quarter of GDP contraction. And this could happen with just the early 1-2% yearly drop in oil production.
Exactly. Why would anyone stay in the market when there are no assured long-term ROI's? It's always been buy low & "sell high." _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Joined: Feb 17, 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Toronto, Canada
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:32 pm Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
Waiting, quietly waiting...
You know, lately I'm feeling like it's really starting to be ON now, as in we'll actually see demand pass supply in the next year or so. _________________ Beware the deadly bulb!
Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:58 am Post subject: Re: Waiting for Peak Oil...Quietly Waiting
That threshold was reached some time ago.
pigleg wrote:
Waiting, quietly waiting...
You know, lately I'm feeling like it's really starting to be ON now, as in we'll actually see demand pass supply in the next year or so.
_________________ Gravity is not a force, it is a boundary layer.
Everything is coincident.
Love: the state of suspended anticipation.
To get any appreciable distance from the Earth in
a sensible amount of time, you must lie.
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