I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
The timing for Jeffrey D. Sachs's new book on how to avert global economic catastrophe couldn't be better, with food riots in Haiti, oil topping $120 a barrel and a gnawing sense that there's just less of everything - rice, fossil fuels, credit - to go around. Of course, we've been here before. In the 19th century, Thomas Malthus teased out the implications of humans reproducing more rapidly than the supply of food could grow. In 1972, the Club of Rome published, to much hoopla, a book titled "Limits to Growth." The thesis: There are too many people and too few natural resources to go around. In 1978, Mr. Smith, my sixth-grade science teacher, proclaimed that there was sufficient petroleum to last 25 to 30 years. Well, as Yogi Berra may have said, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."
And yet. Even congenital optimists have good reason to suspect that this time the prophets of economic doom may be on point, with the advent of seemingly unstoppable developments like climate change and the explosive growth of China and India. Which is why Sachs's book - lucid, quietly urgent and relentlessly logical - resonates. Things are different today, he writes, because of four trends: human pressure on the earth, a dangerous rise in population, extreme poverty and a political climate characterized by "cynicism, defeatism and outdated institutions." These pressures will increase as the developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world. By 2050, he writes, the world's population may rise to 9.2 billion from 6.6 billion today, an increase of 2.6 billion people, which is "too many people to absorb safely." The combination of climate change and a rapidly growing population clustering in coastal urban zones will set the stage for many Katrinas, not to mention "a global epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease and adult-onset diabetes."
Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 2:15 am Post subject: Re: Jeffrey Sachs's call to arms to avert global disaster
Good book tip! Thx!
I´ve never expected keywords like "Malthus" or "Club of Rome", (amongst others) to come out of the mouth of Mr. Sachs...
and even more, keywords like "... consumes paper and energy" coming out from Mr. Gross, the guy that in turn, recomends the book...
Quote:
Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be - like the reality of yesterday - an illusion tomorrow. - Luigi Pirandello
Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:22 am Post subject: Re: Jeffrey Sachs's call to arms to avert global disaster
I think we'll hear plenty more "Sachs" out there as PO becomes a reality to more folks. I refer to their solutions as "King of the World". They don't normally express it so but they are all saying "if I were in charge" I could acheive this or that.
I can readily play the same game. Having been a petroleum geologist (for over 30 years) I had no trouble seeing PO from the beginning of my career. I could have greatly reduced the impact of PO if the whole world (or at least the US) if they would have just done exactly as I ordered. Coming up with solutions is a lot easier then implamenting them.
We should prepare ourselves emotionally for this onslaught of Kings". It will be difficult to hear the common sense over their roars.
Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:36 am Post subject: Re: Jeffrey Sachs's call to arms to avert global disaster
Damn...I just remembered the perfest joke for this thread:
A chemist, a physicist and an economist are ship wrecked on a island. All they could salvage from their ship were cases of canned beans. But they have no impliments to open the cans. The island is even devoid of rocks they could use to smash them open.
The chemist says' "I know what to do. We'll let the cans sit in a tidal pool the anodic reaction will dissolve the metal"
The physicist says "That's a dumb idea. The salt water will leak into the cans and ruin the beans. We should start a fire using focused rays of the sun and heat the cans until the excess pressure developed , according to Bowls' law, causes them to rupture"
The chemist said "That's a stupid plan. The cans will explode and the beans will end up in the sand and will be ruined.
The economist said "You're both dumb. The solution is obvious"
"Then what is the solution to our problem?" asked the chemist and physicist.
"Easy" said the economist: "First, let's assume we have a can opener......................"
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 2050 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:34 am Post subject: Re: Jeffrey Sachs's call to arms to avert global disaster
abelardlindsay wrote:
Quote:
"a global epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease and adult-onset diabetes."
Having too many people will lead to an epidemic of obesity? This guys thinking is f'in muddled.
No, I don't think he meant that. It was a combination of climate change, a rapidly growing population and the global epidemics that are likely to result in many Katrina scale catastrophes.
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