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: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:13 am Post subject: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
Quote:
Peak Cider
Let’s develop an analogy for world oil extraction and depletion:
The world’s oil fields are like a vast apple orchard. You have inherited this orchard and don’t yet know its full extent, so you hire people to survey it. Similarly, petroleum resources have been inherited from the geologic past and are finite—we just don’t know exactly HOW finite.
You have advanced to the point that you know the approximate number of trees. You just do not know exactly how much fruit these trees hold. Likewise, 95% of the world’s oilfields have been discovered, but we are uncertain of the true extent of the oil they contain.
The trees in this orchard are of several varieties, with differing qualities—tart, sweet, acid, astringent, aromatic. You have Summer apples—Red Astrachan, Chenango Strawberry, and Yellow Transparent; Fall varieties—Cortland, Macintosh, Gravenstein; and Winter apples—Baldwin, Northern Spy, Roxbury Russet. Oil, too, comes in several “flavors”: light, medium, heavy; sweet, sour; bitumen, gas liquids, “organic marlstone.”
Your specialty: cidering. Call it “refining.” You build cider houses and presses and invest in distillery equipment to enable your operation.
You hire and send out armies of pickers (“rigs,” etc.) to begin harvesting the crop. At first, it is easy: from the ground, the pickers gather all the ripest, juiciest, non-blemished apples, the finest varieties for cider. The workers truck the barrels of apples to the cider houses, your operation begins, and customers begin lining up outside the doors.
The cider flows a-plenty, and as the satisfactory quality of this cider becomes more widely know, the customers keep streaming to your doors and business booms. You soon can afford to hire more workers, build more cider houses, and increase your supply and your customer base.
As the lowest-hanging, reddest, finest apple trees begin to “deplete,” the workers move onto the higher limbs and to other trees. They use apple-pickers on poles (“technology”) and gather apples from the so-so varieties. Blended ciders are very good, though. They distill nicely and with some filtering and additives make a serviceable cider.
Business continues to grow, along with supply, so you’re making money and can afford to invest in new technologies: apple ladders, larger baskets and trucks, bigger presses and filtering equipment, finer yeasts and fermentation vessels. People have abandoned other beverages in favor of your ciders and have come to expect it. The lines out the doors extend out of sight and you’re moving cider like never before.
Soon enough, every tree has workers in it, high in the limbs, some even in high-tech “cherry-picker” equipment to reach those tasty-but-out-of-reach beauties. Prices must rise to keep this operation afloat and working at a high enough capacity to satisfy demand. The presses and distilleries run at full-tilt.
You are at peak.
And demand continues to grow.
So, you send workers back to the depleted trees to pick all the apples, not just the ripe, healthy ones. They pick unripe, blemished and diseased apples. They pick inferior and out-of-season varieties. The cider house workers are processing apples as fast as they come in, but the lower-quality fruit needs more TLC to make the quality ciders people have come to expect, and customers are having to wait in long lines.
With the low-hanging fruit all but gone; with workers abandoning some trees and clambering up others; with all but a few trees criss-crossed with ladders and dense with workers stripping them clean; your survey crew reports back that there are a few more good-quality trees in the back forty, but even picking these trees clean and fermenting the juice cannot keep up with rising demand.
And so the quantity and the quality of your cider begin to decrease: slowly at first, but relentlessly. Time to empty your inventory and close up shop.
You spend the winter planning next year’s crop, and your customers switch to more abundant beers and wines.
The latter options are, sadly, not available for petroleum producers and their customers.
Love, kJ _________________ "By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:33 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
Overall it sounded pretty good to me. The only trouble that I see is that apples replenish every year and technology (fertilizers, pesticides etc.) truly does produce more supply, not just deplete it faster like with oil.
I like the part about the different varieties though. I think that is one of the most ignored factors of oil depletion. _________________ Don't worry, we have the best govt that money can buy
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:40 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
Quote:
That analogy implies that oil grows on trees
Does the closing statement help solve that problem?
(no analogy can be flawless, I know) _________________ "By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price
Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Posts: 1136 Location: Central Texas
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:54 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
killJOY wrote:
Quote:
The cider flows a-plenty, and as the satisfactory quality of this cider becomes more widely know, the customers keep streaming to your doors and business booms. You soon can afford to hire more workers, build more cider houses, and increase your supply and your customer base.
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:59 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
It is more like making a gravel pit out of your orchard in my opinon. The cider could go on forever if managed nicely, whereas the gravel pit is a depletable resource, and at the end you are left with nothing. There isn't any land left to grow trees and no possiblity of a steady income from it.
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 11:18 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
Any analogy is only appropriate if apples are compared with apples and not with oranges (oil). (couldn't resist).
The use of analogy is fine as long as every 'if' is verifiable and the subsequent 'if' is verifiable and so on. Othewise it's like a house of cards and it all collapses. If your premises aren't all undisputed then the conclusion becomes hollow.
The other issue of any lengthy analogy is people think about the analogy more than the actual point trying to be explained. The discussion turns not to 'is that true about oil production' but rather 'is that true about apples?...what if the tree grower did this or that?"
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 11:23 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
Quote:
The use of analogy is fine as long as every 'if' is verifiable and the subsequent 'if' is verifiable and so on. Othewise it's like a house of cards and it all collapses.
this is the problem with ALL analogies: NEVER is every "if" verifiable. Ultimately, all analogies are false.
That's why I've included the final statement.
The comments here tempt me to add:
"Sadly, oil doesn't grow on trees. And there is no next year's crop." _________________ "By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 11:40 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
killJOY wrote:
"Sadly, oil doesn't grow on trees. And there is no next year's crop."
I fully understand where you are coming from, but I do agree with the comments that orchard is not the best possible term to use:
1) People have short attention spans. Lots of them will not get to the end of your elquently written analogy, where you offer the most important piece of info, the fact that the resource is not renewable.
2) Orchard is a very positive term, and due seriousness of the issue it might be better to use some more sombre language. People are so incredibly optimistic creatures that unless you refer to some more vital commodity than cider, they might not understand the seriousness of the issue.
Your piece is well written and thought out, it just might lead your mainstream man to think about getting a drink at the local pub rather than understanding the Peak Oil concept better.
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 11:58 am Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
Quote:
think about getting a drink at the local pub
I'm ready. _________________ "By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price
Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 1203 Location: Left the cult
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 12:32 pm Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
It's a well worked analogy, but perhaps slightly stretched. Once the reader understands the details of the analogy and the correspondence to oil refining, he could perhaps have been able to understand an explanation of Peak Oil directly.
I think the main problem is that you need an analog that captures the essence of the original without requiring too much explanation. I think most people's idea of an orchard is that you pick the apples, then make cider, then they grow again next year. There is nothing obviously peaky about it. Unfortunately I can't think of anything that has an obvious peak that would relate to Peak Oil.
As an example of finite resources, as has been noted, apples are generally considered renewable. _________________ It's all downhill from here
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1850 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 12:33 pm Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
i like the analogy of cider, it includes both production and refinement. if you wanted to really tie it in with current events, you might mention that at some point it was actually the brewery that was the bottleneck to cider availability, and some took this fact to mean that there was no shortage of apples.
i also don't believe it's too 'happy' an analogy; oil is something most americans do think of as something to guzzle and enjoy. i'm a graphic designer; the colors due to be popular next year are warm and "happy happy happy"; i call it the 'denial' color trend.
my only two concerns while reading were addressed in the last paragraph, and have been noted by other responders: one, that oil is not renewable the way apples are; and two, that people need oil in a way that they do not need cider (though i have a few friends who might disagree).
actually now that i think of it, there is a third concern: that cider consumption should lead to a massive and unsustainable population increase. (well, hmm, alcohol can release inhibitions...) tongue in cheek of course, and of course these comments are nitpicking. a good analogy and an enjoyable read.
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 12:53 pm Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
(thank you both for reminding me of the complexities of oil depletion. It IS exceedingly difficult to draw an analogy.) _________________ "By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6623 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 2:14 pm Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
"As the lowest-hanging, reddest, finest apple trees begin to 'deplete' . . . ."
kill, since the trees themselves are not "lowest hanging," you need to rephrase this as follows: "As the trees with the lowest-hanging, reddest, finest apples begin to 'deplete' . . . ." Or maybe simply as "As the lowest-hanging, reddest, finest apples begin to 'deplete' . . . ."
(What is really depleting, the fruit or the trees?)
Overall this is quite well written. I'm not sure the analogy itself holds up, though, on close examination. More apple trees can always be planted; more oil fields can't be. A whole new crop of apples comes in every year, and with good husbandry, it can be larger and better than the previous year's crop. Oil is about to go into terminal decline.
Also, I haven't had much experience with growing apples yet, but are the best-quality apples always on the lowest limbs?
Joined: Jul 04, 2005 Posts: 18 Location: Vancouver, BC
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 2:22 pm Post subject: Re: "Pick" apart my analogy before I publish
I like the analogy, seems to hold up fairly well, when you consider that oil is also "renewable". You just need to explain that the harvesting season is relatively short, (200 years), while the winter/spring is on the level of a few million years... We'll have a long wait for the next harvest. _________________ You gotta be tough, if you're gonna be stupid - Unknown
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