More Important Than Anything Else On Here

[Titan]

The end of energy is sooner than you think.

[Ugly Bastard]

We will evolve. We always have.

-Ugly Bastard

[Titan]

I hope we die out.

[ninjaface]

Originally posted by Ugly Bastard:
We will evolve. We always have.

-Ugly Bastard

Personally, I'm hoping for horns or hind hooves.

[ October 25, 2004, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: ninjaface ]

[Titan]

Originally posted by ninjaface:
Personally, I'm hoping for horns or hind hooves.

I fail to see how the disintegration of the oil and water economies and subsequent destruction of our industrialized civilizations is going to give you horns.

[Mr. Blonde]

There absolutely have to be more (and more efficient) fuel on this planet. Our current form is the remains of dead animals. When you get right down to it, thats pretty primitive.

Originally posted by Ugly Bastard:
We will evolve. We always have.

-Ugly Bastard

He's right. We'll figure something out.

[ninjaface]

Well, I just read the entire thing and shared some part with some friends. My thoughts are that we are royally fucked in so many ways. I honostly believe we won't figure something out. Prepare to go Amish.

[victim]

I don't know which is more entertaining... the hyperbolic scaremongers or the delusional naysayers.

Dance, jesters, dance!

Ok this is retarded

I didn't feel like doing this but I feel like I'm going to have to.

The following is a paraphrase of a lecture from my economics teacher:

We will never run out of oil.

Immagine we give you a prize, an entire auditorium filled with pistachios (or any other kind of nut with a shell). You can eat these pistachios as you please, but the only rule is that you can never take them out of the room. So you go in and start eating, throwing the shells back into the room. At first you are free to eat as you please, uninhibited by the empty shells. Gradually the ratio of shells to nuts raises. Even at 50/50 it's still not hard to find new nuts to eat, but after a while it becomes a little task to find new nuts. As you continue the process you will need to dig further and further to find nuts to eat among the empty shells. Eventually you just give up. The nuts are there but you don't feel like searching anymore.

This is exactly the case with petroleum. We will never run out, only the costs of production will raise, and this rise will be continuous and gradual. People will drive less, become more efficient, but only in response to increased prices.

It wont be a big deal, ever. As prices raise, people respond rationally... drive a little less, carpool a little more... nothing drastic.

I am a firm believer that basic economic principles can explain everything.

[Beebs]

Quantom Mechanics?

Not as complicated as you would think.

[victim]

Continuing to spread the flames:

Originally posted by DJ FC:
Ok this is retarded

I didn't feel like doing this but I feel like I'm going to have to.

The following is a paraphrase of a lecture from my economics teacher:

We will never run out of oil.

Immagine we give you a prize, an entire auditorium filled with pistachios (or any other kind of nut with a shell). You can eat these pistachios as you please, but the only rule is that you can never take them out of the room. So you go in and start eating, throwing the shells back into the room. At first you are free to eat as you please, uninhibited by the empty shells. Gradually the ratio of shells to nuts raises. Even at 50/50 it's still not hard to find new nuts to eat, but after a while it becomes a little task to find new nuts. As you continue the process you will need to dig further and further to find nuts to eat among the empty shells. Eventually you just give up. The nuts are there but you don't feel like searching anymore.

This is exactly the case with petroleum. We will never run out, only the costs of production will raise, and this rise will be continuous and gradual. People will drive less, become more efficient, but only in response to increased prices.

It wont be a big deal, ever. As prices raise, people respond rationally... drive a little less, carpool a little more... nothing drastic.

I am a firm believer that basic economic principles can explain everything.

The argument is like this, though, in terms of your own oversimplified analogy:

Okay, so you win an auditorium full of pistachios.

Congratulations.

You open the door and dive right in, eating pistachios like there's no tomorrow, cracking open shells left and right, thereby getting fatter and fatter, and needing to eat more and more pistachios to stay satisfied.

Soon enough, you're huge, and struggling to keep yourself full. The shells begin to overtake the nuts, and you start to get a little nervous, yet keep shoveling more and more in. It begins to get hard to keep up with your needs, you get a little desperate for nuts, tearing up the carpet and laying waste to anything else in your way.

Eventually though, you realize, the nuts can't feed you any longer, you'll have to move on... so you go for the door, and you're too fat to fit through, so you starve... and die.

[ October 26, 2004, 12:11 AM: Message edited by: victim ]

[Ugly Bastard]

So that was a kickass post then.

-Ugly Bastard

[St. Anky]

victim, that had to be the worst comparison to running out of oil that I have ever seen. Think about it, we used to think steam engines were the shit, then the next big one was oil, then nuclear. We'll find a way to do it. Windmills today, are 100X more productive now than they were 50 years ago. Plus, there are incredibly efficient gasoline motors out there that motor companies have created, but they wont produce them because of their corporate ties with oil companies. Muster that for a moment.

Motor companies, (Ford, Chevy, Dodge) they are pretty much partners with oil companies. In order for both to get paid, they need to make sure oil is a necessity. In order to make a good profit, they need to keep the price of oil moderately priced. Therefore, it would not be a good idea (in business means) to produce a motor that was highly efficient on gasoline.

Just because we're owned by assholes, doesn't necessarily make them stupid assholes.

Hey man all my argument says is that the change will be gradual... and driven by price.

For decreased oil there is increased price... and therefor rational people will respond by consuming less oil, it's a fact of economics.

The thing you forget is that even at the beginning... finding new nuts (and oil) always costs more once the easy ones are out of the way.

[ October 26, 2004, 01:01 AM: Message edited by: DJ FC ]

[St. Anky]

right, but in this circumstance (the US) a government entity is controlling the flow of the nuts. Economically, this would be a control agent within the market. We are able, at this time, to become 100x more efficient with fuel, but we don't, because suppliers and motor companies would lose money. We dont need to be consuming as much oil as we do, but manufacturers only supply us with enough to keep guzzling oil.

Compare the US to any other country in the world. Guess who has more cars per household. Us, average 3 automobiles per household. Anywhere else, average 1.

Thats a lot of cars if you think about it.

If the government were supplying us with less oil than was the market clearing quantity, then price should rise, which it has. Oil is at a record high price, and is expected by some to reach $70/barrel. Do you think this will curb oil use? I certainly think it will, by the very nature of economics. People will drive a little less, buy more efficient cars a little more, as the price rises, the response will rise as well.

Originally posted by St. Anky:
Motor companies, (Ford, Chevy, Dodge) they are pretty much partners with oil companies. In order for both to get paid, they need to make sure oil is a necessity. In order to make a good profit, they need to keep the price of oil moderately priced. Therefore, it would not be a good idea (in business means) to produce a motor that was highly efficient on gasoline.

I hope you don't honestly believe this argument.

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally posted by St. Anky:
Think about it, we used to think steam engines were the shit, then the next big one was oil, then nuclear. We'll find a way to do it.

This ties in with what i said in my earlier post. There has to be a more efficient way of energy/fuel than the combustion of liquified animal remains. NASA just needs to get their ass in gear.

[VOL]

I'm with UB on this one. I think we will be able to evolve well enough to keep going with our everyday lives. They have already started finding ways to produce fuel through other products. Now they just have to find one, make it good, and figure out how the world can afford it. They better get to developing though, we don't need a crisis.

[St. Anky]

DJ FC, it seems you are well aware of economic issues, both modern and past. You fail to note, however, that oil itself is an inelastic good. At whatever the price, americans will pay it. No matter what the price for oil is, we need our cars. We're bound to them. Its the american way. Put the price of gas at $4 dollars a gallon, we'll pay it. I remember back in the day when people said if gas rose above a dollar they wouldn't buy and instead take the bus. It didn't happen. They adjusted their budgets and found a way to make do. I agree with everyone else who says we'll get by, we always do.

In my opinion, we need to become less dependent on oil for energy. Like I said before, more practical and ecologically sound ways of obtaining energy are becoming developed and are being fined tuned. Europe is highly dependent at this time on wind and hydro-electric power. Their cars are also very gas efficient. We as a country, just need to upgrade our entire energy budget and make some investments that will help us out in the long run. But then again, there's the threat of corporations that are highly dependent on the sale of oil that wouldn't dare let the government invest in anything else.

What you fail to note is that "inelastic" is a relative term. Everything... even insulin, is elastic to a point, and oil is no exception. There are prices at which Americans consume less oil. Do you think Americans drive as much now as they did 2 years ago? Not likely. People no longer take as many "pleasure" trips, and consolidate many trips into a few more productive trips (when you go to the store, you visit many different places in one trip to get everything done, instead of repeat trips). Now, the elasticity of oil may not be unit elastic, I will conscede this point, but the matter of the issue is that Americans are consuming less and less oil as the price rises, and this trend will not discontinue.

Another property of economics: The longer a trend of price increases continues, the more elastic an item becomes. Basically speaking, oil may be relatively inelastic today, over the course of a week, or over the course of a year, but in the long run... it will become more and more elastic to the point where we may be non-dependant on it entirely. This is due to increased amount of substitute items (public transportation, hybrid cars, solar power, etc...) that comparitively become less expensive, or become available.

[St. Anky]

Like I said before, even in the past, people have seen this trend of the ever increasing price of oil. However, people have been using just as much oil as they did, if not more, despite the increasing price.

I'd like to see some evidence of that.

I think you'd find that as prices raise people use less oil.

We can all agree that oil is not an inferior good.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...933C4F058B.htm

It can't be that the world is really running out of oil. The Club of Rome warned 25 years ago of oil depletion by the end of the 20th century when proven reserves were at 643 billion bbl. Today they are at 1.2 trillion bbl. Yes, China and India are now serious consumers of oil, but they have not yet been explored to any significant degree.

In fact, the world as a whole has not been explored for liquid oil, let alone for heavier oils.

In the entire history of the world oil industry, a total of 4.6 million wells have been drilled, with the US accounting for 3.2 million of those!

Africa is four times the size of the US (minus Alaska), yet in the last eight years there have been only 6,280 wells drilled on the continent while 209,400 have been drilled in the US.

There is undoubtedly as much oil in Africa undiscovered as there has been produced in the history of the world oil industry.

The same can be said for Latin America. As for the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has drilled only 1,000 wells in the past eight years, almost all of them production wells, not exploratory wells.

Iraq, with the second highest total amount of proven reserves - 110 billion bbl - has drilled only 100 wells over that period.

"Oil is of course the most important commodity in the world. For the world oil industry to stop investing in its development for almost three years was a shocking lapse"


Which brings us back to the original question: If there is so much oil in the world, why is the price so high? The answer, simply, is that from 1998 to 2001, the world energy oil industry went on vacation.

[ October 26, 2004, 12:10 PM: Message edited by: DJ FC ]