Potentially 60BB of oil in Falklands waters.......

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear

That doesn't mean we will find ways to commute with a 5000lb SUV again, but rather take other forms of commute or office space distribution more clearly. More local production to eliminate transit waste, smaller and more decentralized offices, people buy from mom and pop again to save gas, or even clothes line for laundry.

Most people will survive, spoil brats won't. But then again they won't survive without an SUV, a plasma TV, and a McMansion anyways.


The economy will unravel at that point.

The "system" needs perpetually expanding growth to feed the debt based creation of currency.

If you are going to stop using energy, not drive an hour to work etc., consumption will retract, and debt based money collapses.

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
I don't agree, but I bet its often true!


It's always true. It may not be on the primary level of consequence. It may be a secondary or tertiary liability.

Everything that technology brings us has unintended side effects. Once you step outside of harmonious integration with nature, you've also created some liability.

That is, unless you think that there's magic. While there is no such thing as mechanical perpetual motion, there are surely perpetually sustainable systems.

For example, it's absolutely foolish to cut timber at a rate higher than you can replace it. You need to manage that in a sustainable manner or it is ASSURED it's not an "IF" situation ...but a "WHEN" until you're past some point of no return.

I think it's called a tragedy of the commons. Fossil fuels are like that ..as was the North Atlantic Cod and the whale hunting.

We can synthesize just about anything with a few fundamental components, but all those things require cheap energy. That is, regardless of how great your LED flashlight is, it's pretty worthless if the chemical/material components to make the battery are scares or cost 35X as much to duplicate in terms of energy.

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: Steve S
Around here cattle are pastured till a certain size then taken to feed lots to fatten them up for market. Most people would not eat grass fed only beef.

Most people won't drive energy efficient cars...
Most people won't ride a couple miles to work on a bike...
Most people won't pay more for good food...
Most people won't take public transit...

I think most people are clueless about alot of important issues, and that's the way large business interests want them to be... And maybe that's the way most sheeople want to be?

 

[Gary Allan]

Well, Indy, it's also a requirement. Our whole existence ..and our purpose, is wrapped around continued and expanding consumption.

In a planet of finite energy and resources, that has to ultimately spell a collision between the vehicle you use to distribute and fund stuff ..and having stuff to distribute and funds.

It's really all so silly if you think about it. Not that I necessarily see practical or plausible "civil" alternatives, but it really makes little sense to consume stuff ..vital stuff, just for the sake of giving people a purpose to justify their existence. It is, in effect ..a jobs program. There's no need for the labors of 6B people.

Now if you want to figure a way to tap the elemental rich solar system ..building big smelting platforms that tour the asteroid belt ..figuring a way to tap the gas giants for what they can yield ...then let the grasshopper continue playing his fiddle. So far ... I just don't see the ants planning much for the future.

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Well, Indy, it's also a requirement. Our whole existence ..and our purpose, is wrapped around continued and expanding consumption.

Maybe "most people" realize this and don't want to mess with the system they are dependent on? Even though its obvious like you say, its got to end at some point...

I guess personally we walk the talk to some extent. My wife takes every 4th year off from teaching, 3/4 of her salary is more than enough to pay her share of the bills. Usually a new teacher gets a contract for the year and gets some experience. As you can see we don't drive fancy cars but we'll still have the house we built paid off in a dozen or so years...
We try not to consume wastefully, for environmental, financial, and even ethical reasons. I'm no PETA member but industrial meat production isn't something I want to support with my money. We'd rather raise or hunt our own dinner in humane conditions and there's no question that its antibotic or hormone free...
We are by no means self sufficient but doing some physical labour to provide the basics of life for ourselves does make you think about the impact of your choices...

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Shannow

If you are going to stop using energy, not drive an hour to work etc., consumption will retract, and debt based money collapses.


I disagree. Historically speaking all excess income after necessary expense turns into home affordability and increase real estate price, thus more debt. It is always there one way or the other, controlled macro economically by the interest rate and risk.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Steve S
Around here cattle are pastured till a certain size then taken to feed lots to fatten them up for market. Most people would not eat grass fed only beef.

Most people won't drive energy efficient cars...
Most people won't ride a couple miles to work on a bike...
Most people won't pay more for good food...
Most people won't take public transit...

I think most people are clueless about alot of important issues, and that's the way large business interests want them to be... And maybe that's the way most sheeople want to be?




But most people will if they can't afford to a large car, take public transit, or ride bike to work, if China and India started driving and can afford oil just like we do and drive up the oil price.

 

[IndyIan]

Well China is going to overtake the US in car sales this year so its happening now, so we'll see what happens with oil prices in the next couple years.
Living out in the sticks I have to say I'm not a big fan of rising fuel prices but I guess it may force me to change vehicles to something even more efficient. Or car pooling.

 

[Gary Allan]

It won't matter. Unless you're buying a beater NEON for $300 and no one is buying new fuel efficient cars, just where is it really going to save money or energy?

I often laughed when a member pondered his vacation in his Excursion when fuel prices were almost $4/gallon. He probably had $500 payments on the Excursion ..and spent $3000 on the vacation. Skip one night at the hotel. Give up one resort priced meal.

Gas has to get to $8/gallon for my wife's commute to equal $350/month. What car can she lease/buy to save a dime? None. She may be able to lease a car for $350/month, but how is she going to fuel it? Let alone the energy needed to create another automobile and the watershed consumption that it enables.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Gas has to get to $8/gallon for my wife's commute to equal $350/month. What car can she lease/buy to save a dime? None. She may be able to lease a car for $350/month, but how is she going to fuel it? Let alone the energy needed to create another automobile and the watershed consumption that it enables.


In many places on earth gas price is $8 a gallon, we have artificially low price due to our foreign policy, military influence, and subsidized road via other taxes to get it as low as $3 a gallon today.

Your wife is probably working close enough to home. Many people commute 100+ miles a day to get a cheaper house. When the gas price hit, the home price will drop further because it doesn't make sense to buy a house that far away and commute anymore. Eventually things will balance out (in at least the developed world), because housing price is always the wild card that will adjust according to the disposable income after all the other expense, and if you look at the housing price, it usually doesn't have much to do with the cost to build, but rather land price and interest rate.

 

[Gary Allan]

Well, I think the "eventually" part is where you're off target. It implies a stabilization for any "settling out" to occur. I think the dynamic nature of things is going to be way too fast paced for anything other than chaos in free fall. Economics tends to install sensible pauses ..we called them recessions. Our last recession was only over due by a decade, and in that out of phase relationship, the amplitude of the recession, and its duration, are going to be much more severe and much more protracted.


I'm not sure how I would buffer myself for the evolutions that I see on the unknown horizon. I think our normal conventions of investment and planning are going to be run over and reinvented before our eyes.

There will have to be some realignment of basic philosophies. I'm not talking from the view of any form of consumer, but that of a global civilization as a whole.

That is, unless you consider comfort and wealth the way one Vietnamese village chief did as interviewed a bit after the fall of the south ...as he assured the interviewer that he was a very wealthy man ..as he proudly displayed his dysfunctional Peugeot in a grass garage.

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: Shannow

Agriculture worked because we used less energy (human and animal) than the solar energy that hit the land...positive energy balance.


So then I assume you want to eliminate the use of oil for growing food and want to push people back into the fields in order to maintain a "balance"?


You know what you look like when you assume.

Never said that, but it's silly that family farms go broke so that agribusiness can turn oil into food at a nett energy loss.

It's silly that cattle are lockedup, and fed grain, instead of the healthier (for them AND us) grazing them on grass

I am still looking for an alternative...

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: IndyIan

Most people won't drive energy efficient cars...
Most people won't ride a couple miles to work on a bike...
Most people won't pay more for good food...
Most people won't take public transit...

I think most people are clueless about alot of important issues, and that's the way large business interests want them to be... And maybe that's the way most sheeople want to be?



And there we have the entire rational of those that want higher gas prices:
The general public is too stupid to do the "right thing" and the elite that are intelligent enough to see the "shades of gray" of the topic need to forcefully "guide" all the dummies through life.

How wonderful a view of the rest of humanity you all have. How nice it must be to be among the "enlightened".

 

[Shannow]

Like I keep saying.

Stop doing stupid stuff like boiling the water out of orange juice in Brazil, then adding it back later.

Californian oranges are $2.79/Kg at my supermarket, and I'd guess that significantly more than 64 calories was invested in getting them there...they are tasteless when they get here, and probably half end up getting thrown out.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
A healthy stability is good, too high or too low (relative to long term sustainable level) should be corrected, just like interest rate and tax rate.

Yeah....that worked out REALLY well... Have you seen the economy lately? The "experts" that can see the gray areas did such a fantastic job in the areas you mention, they should be in control of oil prices as well. Makes me sleep well.

Quote:
I think you have your economics backward.

Can you show me an example of price controls improving anything?

What will happen if you dramatically increase gas prices?

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Shannow

Stop doing stupid stuff like boiling the water out of orange juice in Brazil, then adding it back later.

Do you have a link for this? You keep bring it up with no information.
Quote:
and I'd guess that significantly more than 64 calories was invested in getting them there

And yet people buy them. Do you propose a ban on importing Cali oranges?

Please put forth a criteria as to which foods should be shipped based on their nutritional value.

 

[Shannow]

Tempest, you keep spruking that the market delivers "efficiency", I keep saying that it doesn't deliver thermal efficeincy, or efficient use of finite fuel resources.

Do you understand how we got to the top of the food chain...expending less energy than we could hunt, gather and grow.

We've now got a genie that can do ridiculous amounts of work for little cost, and we do stupid stuff and squander it.

Does it make sense for your market to fly lettuce half way across the globe ?

As to the orange juice, why do you need a link.

What is "reconstituted juice, manufactured from imported product", and why do you need the name and phone number of the bloke operating the boiler ?

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: fsskier

At one energy seminar the speaker was attacked for proposing that we could generate most of the nations power - during the daytime- with 100 square miles of desert covered with solar panels. Certainly this vast space was too much to give up... although its only a square with 10 miles on each side.

http://www.metaefficient.com/news/north-americas-largest-solar-electric-plant-in-switched-on.html

Does it make sense to spend $100 million to save $20 million?

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Tempest, you keep spruking that the market delivers "efficiency", I keep saying that it doesn't deliver thermal efficeincy, or efficient use of finite fuel resources.

Do you understand how we got to the top of the food chain...expending less energy than we could hunt, gather and grow.

We've now got a genie that can do ridiculous amounts of work for little cost, and we do stupid stuff and squander it.

Does it make sense for your market to fly lettuce half way across the globe ?

As to the orange juice, why do you need a link.

What is "reconstituted juice, manufactured from imported product", and why do you need the name and phone number of the bloke operating the boiler ?

So you still don't have an alternative to the current system?

You are putting forth the juice example, not me. How are we to discuss anything without information? As I said before, there could be MANY factors involved.

Quote:
I keep saying that it doesn't deliver thermal efficeincy, or efficient use of finite fuel resources.

So going from 1 farmer in 6 people to 1 farmer in 125 people isn't efficient? All the while getting MUCH more yield from each plot of land? Would you rather be working in the fields rather than what you are doing now?
Quote:
Does it make sense for your market to fly lettuce half way across the globe ?

I tried to find a link on that but couldn't. Can you provide one?

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
So going from 1 farmer in 6 people to 1 farmer in 125 people isn't efficient?


It's not efficient or inefficient stated that way.

So going from 6Billion inhabitants to 3 (not billion ..just 3) isn't efficient?

Quote:

All the while getting MUCH more yield from each plot of land? Would you rather be working in the fields rather than what you are doing now?


At much higher costs in energy. Please keep your eye on energy and please stop trying to side wind it into MASS PRODUCTION which is always energy intensive and not labor intensive when you have free slaves in fossil fuels. Those slaves won't be in great supply forever and you, by your own admission of ignorance, have absolutely nothing to replace them.

(I love this)

So, you advocate driving off a cliff since you can't steer?