This is very much in the spirit of GWB who would state stuff like, we will improve our carbon intensity by XX% in Y years. Where I suspect he just took the predictions of future carbon intensity under BAU, and then put them up as an ambitious sounding goal. Of course China's CI will improve (either that or the economy will collapse), they know they are close to peak coal. Maybe all those wind farms, solar panels, and hydro, are not being built because of a desire to go green, but because they know they will need all the power they can get.

Agreed.

It's interesting to look at the Consumption (C) to Production (P) ratios for US, coal, natural gas and oil (EIA). 100% marks the demarcation line between net exporter and net importer status.

C/P for 1998 & 2008:

Coal: 93% & 96%

NG: 117% & 114%

Oil: 203% & 229%

Because of an uptick in production, and a further decline in consumption, the C/P ratio for oil fell to 205% in 2009, and there was probably drop in the NG ratio too. However, I believe that the US is still a NG net importer, and we are still the world's largest net oil importer.

Regarding coal, there has been a recent uptick in net exports, but the longer term trend line shows us approaching net importer status. The C/P ratio in 1980 was 85%. The 1980 to 2008 trend line suggests that we approach zero net exports around 2020. EIA net coal exports chart through 2008:

It seems to me that there is an increasingly desperate effort in the MSM to persuade us that there is no inherent problem with a virtually infinite rate of increase in our consumption of a finite fossil fuel resource base (e..g, recent NYT story).

There Will Be Exports

Yes, there is no hope for some people. When somebody has a good delusional system going for them, there's no way to convince them they're wrong without chemical assistance. You have to put them on the right medication FIRST, and then explain to them the realities of the world.

Anyhow, while examining the claim that "the US is the Saudi Arabia of coal" (not true, Australia is the Saudi Arabia of coal), I discovered that Canada is the largest importer of US coal. We Canadians really need to stop doing that because, 1) Canada has huge coal reserves of its own and, 2) it's polluting the air, not only in Canada but the US.

The largest single emitter of greenhouse gases in North American is Ontario's Nanticoke power plant. It gets 100% of its coal from the US because Ontario has no significant coal deposits. Unfortunately, eastern US coal is high in sulfur and particulates, and Ontario's power plants have no real pollution controls. The choking winds and acid rain don't stop when they get to the US border, and there's the mountaintop removal thing in Appalachia as well.

Now, while the western US has huge reserves of low-sulfur, low-particulate coal, western Canada has huge deposits of the same (97% of Canada's coal is in the West). Unfortunately, it's too expensive to ship western Canadian coal to eastern Canada, which is why it goes to Asia instead. Western US coal only goes to the eastern US because of the stringent air pollution regulations in the US, which Ontario does not have.

Basically, Ontario needs to rethink its energy strategy, and quit importing high-sulfur US coal. Unfortunately Ontario's electricity system is a wonderland of failed energy strategies. They ran out of undeveloped hydro sites, their nuclear reactors developed cracks, and the current "hold hands and sing Kumbaya" renewable strategy is probably going to work equally badly. They just need to get on the right medication and THEN think things through.

Anthracite? Where is all this anthracite? Anthracite production peaked in 1917 at 100 million tons per year. Now it's about 5 million tons per year. Total US production is about 1 billion tons per year. It's low ash and soot output and high cost make it suitable for special applications. It's too expensive for large scale electricity generation. Bituminous and sub-bituminous are the big noise in coal right now. Where does Newsweek find these people? Is there any hope of sending them back?

Bearing in mind that Halifax averages 196 fog days each year, if you can get energy savings on solar installations here, you can get savings anywhere.

Will be interesting to see how many people take up the offer.

At least the municipality is making an effort.

We've been working with our local city on energy savings and recovery in their infrastructure. Had a quick look at the topography of Halifax and unfortunately there is not a lot of elevation difference to capture some natural potential energy.

However, here's a few ideas from the Techno-Genie if you haven't tried them yet:

1. Pressure Reducing Valve (PRV) replacement micro generation by Difgen. Installed as a by-pass on an existing PRV it will generated electricity while reducing the pressure from the water storage.
http://www.zeropex.com/eng/Products/Prodotti/Difgen

2. Sewage treatment plant aeration blowers. If the plant is using centrifugal multi-stage blowers, they can be replaced with high speed turbo blowers. We've just started an energy efficiency study on this to prove out the kWh savings, but our preliminary calculations show significant results. Since you're on the other side of the world, I can share some of this with you when we are complete.
http://www.kturbo.com/english/main.html

3. Sewage treatment gas recovery. There are many good reasons for doing this such as lower GHG release, smell abatement, and energy generation or heating.

We find that as organizations take on these type of energy projects they naturally evolve their paradigm into energy awareness and look for other efficiencies. The notion of energy production and use becomes much more immediate.

Bureaucratic bafflegab with baffleslides.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but their "undulating plateau" rests upon a lot of yet-to-be-developed/yet-to-be descovered oil.

So the decline starts to get a lot steeper a lot sooner than anticipated.

That is maybe a good thing. The faster the collapse, the less resources wasted and less waste produced.

No nations show any sign of changing anyway. It is like the article above - "The other way out" :

For years, international (Peak Oil) watchers have predicted two possible solutions to the island’s economic problems. The “biological solution” is the (collapse of civiization)...

Just found out the health insurance costs at my wife's work is going up again. Only good thing is the company is picking up 90% of the new costs. The out of pocket max is jumping from $1500 to $3000 for the family plan (company picks up 90% of that increase). Policy runs about $300/month (includes dental).

These plans are basically turning into what I would call "catastrophic coverage". Basically you need to have serious injury/disease/etc before the insurance company starts paying out (outside of covered yearly check ups).

My brother was telling me his house insurance is changing its coverage. I didn't get the specifics, but basically if a hail storm damages part of your roof, they are only covering the part damaged, so you need to come up with the rest should you have to replace the whole roof (new shingles on only part of the roof makes no sense).

Good for mom and dad. Why leave the kids anything?

"If there's anything worse than squabbling with your siblings over who gets mom and dad's house, it's finding out it has to be sold to pay off their credit card debt."

If mom and dad were wise enough to get the reverse mortgage first, then max the credit cards, the credit card companies will get stiffed.

All you and your siblings have to do is look the debt collectors in the eye and tell them that you are not responsible for your late parent's debt. Of course, when enough banks get stuck, they will pull the strings of their congress critters, and debt will once again become inheritable, just like feudal times.

The same thing is true about this generation to the next generation about crude oil though seldom considered in this way: "Screw em, let them find their own oil."

Also consider the reverse mortgage. Those RMs started before early 2008 are already under water and the house is now owned by HUD who insured the loan. The actual transfer will not occur until both seniors leave the house for nursing homes, death or whatever new plans arise. But the seniors have a lot more money to spend (essentially 60% of their home equity) in their later years. Those after 2008 are not near as lucrative as before because the home appraisal is much less.

Dying with your credit cards maxed out and no equity in your home anyway is "sticking it to the man". They may not remember what they had for breakfast but there is some sort Ann Rand-ish poetic justice there.

Why are the reservoirs so low? Very dry year? Several moderately dry years in a row? Some other reason?

Paal-

Funny you should mention this. Last night I was doing a some reading on Norway's hydro production. I never realized that almost 100% of the electricity there comes from hydro.

Is electric heat common in Norway?

Norway should just tap that $300 billion oil fund and throw in a couple of nuclear reactors.

What are the implications for Denmark? I know Denmark is using Norway for backup power for its wind generators, and if Norway doesn't have enough hydro power to provide backup, what does Denmark do when the wind doesn't blow?

I use propane to heat my house that I am renting out. I recently had a prospective renter who decided not to rent my house in part because the heating costs were too high compared to natural gas where she came from. I guess I should have told her that propane and natural gas cannot be compared. There are also two wood stoves in my rental house. Renters save money on propane by using the wood stoves because wood is cheaper around here on a btu basis than propane. Guess my future renters shouldn't bother with the hassle of using wood because energy cannot be compared.

In the real world, people make decisions every day on the relative value of different energy or heat sources. But I guess they are all misguided because energy cannot be compared.

I know it is pointless to point this out because you will just continue your mantra. But in the real world, btus matter. Natural gas prices are cheap. Compared to what? Well, in your world, I guess no one can make that comparison.

And, by the way, people compare different metals all the time when they decide what metals to use in items like bicycles. Strength to weight ratios and the costs for the same are a very big deal.

Your analogies are bogus.

Of course utility and built infrastructure impact energy prices.

But I do think markets will tend to force different energy sources to roughly equivalent $/btu or $/kWh over time. If natural gas keeps being cheaper than gasoline, then over time vehicles will be converted to natural gas, driving up gas demand and price towards equivalence. Certainly there is price stickiness and the time delay from infrastructure adaptation.

As a mechanical engineer doing product design, material costs had big impacts on design decisions, so while it was not formalized, we frequently compared metals based on price and performance. If titanium was not so expensive, it would be used a lot more, based on ultimate strength and stiffness/weight, but commonly we used a larger quantity of cheaper steel instead, so product designers compare metals and other structural materials all the time, and make design decisions based on price, with resulting supply/demand effects on prices.

I even compare apples and oranges at the super market, choosing based on some matrix of preference and costs, so fruit prices are linked too (at least in the consumer's mind and hence the market).

Comparing different forms of energy based on energy content is wrong.

x, what do you use energy for ?

Grain analysts understand. They do not try to compare corn and soybeans for example.

Like you can compare energies for it energy contents, you can compare grains for the amount of kcal it contains and for its nutritional value. And that is what counts for grains at least if you use it as food.

Likewise metal analysts would be derided to no end if they tried to establish iron equivalents for gold. They understand that forms of metal are different even though they are all measured in tons.

I think I understand what makes "x" tick (or what doesn't as the case may be).

I think he missed 3rd or 4th grade where we all learned about properties of materials in science class. So we learned about mass, in terms of what rock weighed more than another. Or learned which materials were magnetic.

Down the line, we learned how to use these properties to come up with the notion of equivalency. So we learned that if we wanted the equivalent weight of iron in a smaller volume, we would consider gold. Or that if we wanted another magnetic material besides iron, we would not consider gold.

Mr.X apparently missed this bit in his education and so has developed this strange blindspot. He seems logical in every other way. Our blindspots are what makes us individuals.

I don't think he is as dense as you think. He is calling this energy equivalent a "natural" price instead of a market price. His point is that natural gas, as an energy source, is plentiful and a relative bargain right now. Which it is. And hence it is being used now to generate cheap electricity which is slowing renewable deployment.

I doubt Ken Deffeyes has tried to stuff a hose of natural gas into his car's gas tank. ;-)

and don't forget that all gas is not found by ng rigs. oil production is increasing, so associated gas is also increasing.

I'm interested to see how NG fares in the future its my guinea pig for the technology effect.

Clearly current NG production is basically entirely dependent on technical advances without them we would be much lower.

A couple of thoughts.

1.) Peaking conventional production happened to correlate with technical advances in NG extraction Deep Water and Shale.
This allowed UNG to quickly take advantage of declining conventional production. In a sense we where able to over compensate for declining conventional production. Obviously being able to reuse the existing pipelines and other infrastructure has been a huge benefit to UNG.
NG and Oil are coupled at several levels rising oil prices can result in rising NG prices. Obviously they don't have too but sufficient coupling exists that if NG production is tight and oil prices rising you can get the BTU effect.

2.) To be blunt most of the UNG plays are nothing more than elaborate ponzi schemes that will eventually blow up. Ready access to credit and effectively fraudulent marketing allowed what will probably prove to be huge money losers to be created. I'll try to keep this as civil as possible. To be PC correct its a bubble.

3.) The high initial flow rates which is a technical artifact make the short term production look much better than long term as long as you have and intense drilling program.

Out of all of this I'd argue that the early adoption of UNG is probably the most significant as conventional production is just now entering its steep decline phase. Next the flow rate profile ranks second.

Finally as far as I can tell it seems technically driven advances seem to result in a exponential increase followed by a linear production pattern. The important part is that the initial onset of decline seems to be a very shallow linear decline. Often confused with a undulating plateau on purpose or because of data quality.

However what happens next ?

Conventional NG production will enter its steep decline phase UNG production will be faced with its own steep decline inherent in its technical extraction profile. The effectively premature onset of UNG production and follow on price collapse plus general economic conditions will make expansion difficult even as profitability improves. And this is itself questionable as your dealing with a race between falling production and rising prices. If prices are increasing 5% a year and your production is falling 20% then ...

And just to repeat don't underestimate the longer term impact of a boom bust cycle a follow on boom is infinitely harder to trigger.
Esp given that for NG financial games not intrinsic demand played a role in the early boom.

And last but not least it seems to me that its almost impossible to determine when negative factors will converge if they do to turn the situation on its head. My current guess is 2-3 years from the drilling peak you have a chance for the situation to change fairly dramatically. But this is completely dependent on the exact profile of underlying conventional NG declines.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3673

Assuming that UNG follows and initial shallow decline thence fairly soon into a steep slope aka Shark Fin effect. Then if you look at the link you can see that some time in the next few years you would see overall NG production fall dramatically from a combination of steep falls in both UNG and conventional.

My new modified shark fin model is based on the concept that the technology effect has two stages. The long term model from steady technical advances and a short term period around peak. The longer term effect of technical advances is ever more rapid depletion of real reserves often hidden as reserve additions based on production. This gives the final cliff. However in general the technology is optimized near peak indeed optimum extraction rate and peak are effectively the synonymous. Lots of interesting reasons why this may well be a fundamental truth.

Regardless depending on the exact timing and interplay between technology and geologic peak around the peak event itself excessive application of technology serves to significantly alter the production curve for a while. I believe you and WT often mention the enormous number of oil wells drilled when US production peaked. In the long run they where uneconomical indeed often in the short run however if horizontal drilling had been advanced at that time along with other needed technologies then US peak could have coincided with technical peak and US production could have gone quite a bit higher for a while.

Indeed the ready supply of cheap Middle East oil i.e it was provincial not market peak ensured that US peak was not tied to technical peak. Could it have been ? Sure we where sending men to the moon well before US peak. If it had been a market peak event I'd argue that the latent technical ability existed and could have been rapidly deployed and refined.

The reason this is important is because it offers a counter example to the shark fin case as history has shown. But the key point is that market forces where probably critical for the fact that US peak and technical peak where offset by decades. If the market forces had existed then I'd argue that horizontal drilling would have advanced rapidly and US production would have followed the technically driven production pattern. You can readily simply reverse this and not that investments in technical advances are primarily market driven. US acceptance of higher fuel economy for example had support from the market. Similar fuel efficient cars had been available for decades. The latent technical capacity was not and issue its market demand that determines the outcome.

Obviously given that North American NG is not as fungible as oil and external supplies i.e LNG are not a intrinsic threat the North American NG peak and technical peak where coincident. LNG prices are at par or higher than local prices thus they don't cause the shift that they did with oil.

So finally you can see my keen interest if I'm right about the production profile then one year soon say in the next five years or so I think sooner the US will be plunged into and NG crisis it cannot recover from. Tapping the LNG market will not solve the problem as it would simply send global LNG prices soaring.

The big problem is when ?

Although the modified shark fin model gives a better picture of peak itself i.e you have a period where production is healthy either rising flat or falling slowly it does not really tell you when depletion from the last technical surge and overall longer term depletion finally result in rapidly falling production levels.

My best guess right now is that your effectively pulling 10-20% more of the real reserve production forward in time. If we assume a symmetric peak at 50% by definition then the technical peak event lasts till your 60-70% depleted. Perhaps even to 80% tough to say but obviously no more.

Now here is the kicker if you got this far. Actual reserves never changed from what would have been produced if conventional extraction had resulted in a symmetric production profile !

We will never produce any more NG than we could have produced from our original conventional reserves using reasonable technical means.
Once the technology was sufficient to extract the resource additional technical advances added nothing to real reserves.

The reason is fairly simple they where not fundamental but market forces whats happened for Oil and NG is that technical advances have simply substituted for conventional production that would have been produced if we had followed a symmetric decline profile.

Its a pure substitution of a equivalent substitute its obfuscated because its oil for oil and NG for NG.

What was substituted was expensive NG and oil using conventional methods. If you believe this then by definition the substituted product was not marketable. There was no market for keeping technology constant and allowing a gradual decline in conventional production thus we had to substitute. The flip side is that substitution did not change the overall reserves. The long tail of conventional production would never have been produced anyway.

What technical advances do is simply delay the onset of the destruction of the market for oil and NG by providing what is obviously a cheaper substitute to falling conventional production and destruction of the market itself.

Overall production is actually about equal to the original conventional reserve estimates. Technically advanced extraction should then be roughly equal to the first half of conventional production at best. However given its simply another mine bell curve 25% is far more likely as falling technical production itself in inaccessible i.e you don't get the second half of technical oil/NG production either.
Its also past the collapse of the market.

Thus overall production is equal to 75% of the original technically extractable reserves available once technology had matured to the point they could be extracted on and obvious symmetric curve. Say 60% or so up the original production profile and once discovery had peaked. The amounts actually produced during the shark fin decline phase before the market collapses are small enough to not be that important. Important to us perhaps but realistically only a few years of production.

So last but not least given the above you can make a rough estimate as to timing. Assuming that conventional production would have declined symmetrically over 30 years for US NG then if you half that you get 15 years where UNG production matters before the market collapses.

Assuming UNG started taking off about 1990 then you get to about 2005. Its obviously a ballpark estimate so give it a 30% error term to be generous i.e if its off by more than that then the thesis is wrong. Of course the "start" date decision has its own error when is substitution valid ? Certainly not in the first few years of production only after UNG is making a significant market impact. For UNG this could shift the start date out to 1995 as apposed to 1990. Not a huge deal in the big picture as your basically talking about 10 years of error.
The net result is you have till somewhere in 2005-2015 or so for technical substitution to maintain the market for NG.

Using the claim that you don't start right when the technology is deployed but only after its growth is established the bias would be for the latter dates. However 2015 is itself probably to generous. So say 2007-2013 should be the range where technology substitution fails and the market collapses and overall production will be equal to 75% of original reserve estimates.

Whats interesting to me is that the future market for NG in North America may have already collapsed. I.e the destruction event is in the past and its just a matter of how it expresses itself. I suspect that given its a technical thing that the market collapse is correlated with the initial collapse in rig count.

All the same reasoning also applies to oil and as for NG the collapse in rig count signals the death of the market.

With this identity argument then the problem is trivial. The market collapse started in 2009.

http://www.wtrg.com/rotaryrigs.html

Indeed given these assumption that its all marketing and about the collapse of the market itself we can go even further.
We have a well known historical event that makes it easy to understand Market collapses and that is the Great Depression.

Given that whats happening right now is simply the natural dead cat bounce death rattle before final market collapse.

Thus with that identification the problem itself is even more trivial since its just duplicate of the original or first collapse of our technical society. In this case because its induced by real fundamental constraints its the last one but the collapsing market does not care what the underlying causes are.

How long do we have then ?
The above does not help a who lot however we can make one last attempt to refine the problem. The time scales of the collapse of oil production and NG production seems very similar to previous market collapses.

So we can take a peak at historical data markets are markets in the end.

http://dshort.com/articles/2010/bear-turns-to-bull.html

Using that it seems we are already overdue for the big one. I suspect that because this time around its a fundamental resource problem the initial financial contraction bought a bit of time but almost certainly at the expense of a final steeper decline.

I'm unable to come up with a way using this approach to clearly put the final crash out into the future. Obviously it has not happened yet so it is but if so only extremely temporary events are keeping the crash at bay.

Indeed this fits very well with whats happened at the financial level since the 2009 crash. Ever more extreme financial measures seem to only result in less and less real effect.

The remaining question is simply will the financial games to avert collapse induce a collapse of the technical civilization before the final collapse in Oil/NG production take it out. One must assume that the willingness to engage in such financial brinkmanship is itself driven by knowledge of and impending resource collapse. A sort of macabre destroy the village to save it sort of game.
My best guess is that all thats happening is that the people in power now are maneuvering to retain control through the market collapse event. A coup if you will by a subset of our current leaders.

Regardless the final result is that if the analysis is correct then it seems that the natural result is that a significant number should be able to see that a collapse is coming soon. Thus the knowledge of certain collapse becomes a critical part of the collapse process.

If anything this is where the current collapse differs from the original Great Depression. And understanding of the certainty of the collapse did not exist until much later. In our case thats not true thus it will influence the progression of events during the collapse phase itself. Not that it can be averted but obviously if your in power it can be used to eventually great advantage.

And last but not least it should be clear that the US would be facing the twin problems of a near simultaneous collapse of domestic NG production and global oil production. If that not the end of the world at least for the US then I don't know what is.

Your load is mainly cooling(4250 heating dd, 16F winter degree design temp) so you could look at a 14 SEER/9 HPSE heat pump paired with a 95% AFUE furnace for the latest thing in efficient HVAC--'hybrid heating and cooling'--it is even more efficient than a 95% AFUE furnace and a SEER 14 condensing unit.
Your existing furnace paired with an efficient HP/AC condensing unit may not get you a +13 SEER rating because you don't a have super efficient ECM or variable speed blower motor--people undestimate the energy used running a constant speed fan.
Going from a SEER 8 to a SEER 12 versus a SEER 16 will
save maybe $50 more per year.
Your easiest savings is on the split system heat pump higher SEER using your old furnace as below 32 deg heating.
The furnace only runs when the outdoor air is below 32 which is about 550 hours per year in Albuquerque.

Another route is minisplit inverter heat pumps(SEER up to 19) which have evaprators in up to 3 rooms--but they are also pricey.

I suspect your HVAC salesman is selling you something you don't need unless you really, really want the 30 cents on the dollar IRS tax credit.

Jeez, H, if I lived in NM and planned to stay in the house, I would give strong thought to solar hot water.

$2400 seems like a lot for an installed tankless. The last one I installed (propane, 2.8gpm) was $1270 retail, I charged $325 to install, including vent. The electric tankless' efficiency is on par with the gas models (depending on model purchased), but the last one I installed required 150 amp service at 240 vac (3 - 50 amp connections), quite expensive.

Many contractors aren't prone to think outside the box much. They install what they sell (brand) and won't suggest anything that their vendors don't promote/carry. Their statements regarding heatpumps seems sus to me. There's a tax credit for geothermal heat pumps in your state: http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=NM34F&re... May be worth considering. Not sure about air source heatpumps.

I don't know about heat pumps, but my parents, when they retired and moved to west Texas, had an air-tempering setup installed on the intake for the HVAC system in their house. Basically, it was a couple of hundred feet of 8" PVC, running from the intake out through the yard, about 8 or 10 feet underground, then back into the house. It warmed the air in winter, and cooled it in summer, thus reducing the load on the system considerably. (The house also was framed with 2x6s, so it had more than the usual amount of wall insulation.)

It sounds like the sub contractor want to sell you a system for $2400 ducks to earn some extra ducks for himself.

Heat pumps should be more efficient for a lower temperature differential. I guess the effect of humidity is very small although it may be worth to notice that cooling air may cause condense.

Go find a different contractor.

Heat pumps stop working at about 25 F. If it's colder than that, you need a furnace anyway.

By the way, I had one tell me a ductless heat pump could not be installed in a lathe and plaster wall. I was going to have to rip out the wall down to bare studs. Then he would install the magic device, and then I could put up drywall.

But for only three times as much money, he could install a full size ducted heat pump and electric furnace installation for the entire house.

He did not get the job.

After perusing the International Residential Code a bit, it appears the relevant prohibition is this:

"M1801.11:3. Connectors serving appliances operating under a natural draft shall not be connected to any portion of a mechanical draft system operating under positive pressure."

So the concern seems to be backdrafting where the power vented flue gases of one appliance potentially push the natural draft exhaust of the other back into the dwelling. I'm assuming that you don't have room for two separate flues, one natural draft and one power vent, but what about the possibility of using a concentric stainless steel flue? I don't know if this can be done, and you would need to check with the appliance manufacturers and your building officials, but maybe you could inquire.

Alternatively, Tjernlund makes a draft inducer which will convert a natural draft flue to a power vent. In this case, it may be then possible to combine the flues. Again, get professional advice, as I'm just throwing out ideas beyond my expertise.

Also, there are combination water heater/space heating appliances, see:

http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/HVAC/space-heating-water-he...

Regards,

This is exactly what the oligarchs want.

A decentralized, robust, regulated financial system would result in more equitable gains in society, flowing to the middle class.

Whereas in our current system, concentrated in big banks and deregulated, allows them to make greater profits, and when their bets go bad they make the argument that the system will crash unless you bail them out.

Unemployment, unpayable debt, high taxation, foreclosures, misery for the population. Riskless bonuses for the bankers.

Brilliant.

Thanks, an interesting and useful paper.

(you can find the actual paper at http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1011/1011.3707v2.pdf )

The take home for me, besides the increasing connection of the economy through finance, is that oil company correlation has shifted from correlation with oil supply to correlation with materials and through that to technology. At the same time commodity values are correlated with the finance sector, rather than inversely correlated as you might expect.

What does that mean?

Well, I'd suggest that oil companies fortunes have increasingly been determined by the demand side of the equation, rather than the supply - eg the markets think its a never ending supply, they really don't get peaking. At the same time they look to financial market health to determine value for these raw materials, not the other way round.

So the market isn't looking at the fundamentals of the oil supply industry, they are playing abstract games centred on their finance 'industry'. The correlation (coupling) of this financial game-playing entity with the rest of the economy means stupidities here ripple outward to everything else - not the reverse.

Put all that together and you have a situation were changes in the real world; commodities, housing, energy, etc. catch them by surprise because their attention is elsewhere. They will continue to do dumb things because it's no longer a community interesting in investment in real things, its only interested in gambling on itself.

Obviously it needs massive reform, and even more obviously it's not going to get it till after the next crash at the earliest. With the reports that individual market prices are even more correlated now with the whole market sentiment - they haven't changed a bit since 2008. Everything in the paper about being setup for a cascading crash is even more valid now.

I believe that the consensus is moving - more and more mainstream analysts are realizing peak oil is close by. This may be a factor in the upward trend in oil prices. There may be a tipping point where peak oil becomes the consensus view - resulting in a rush to secure future oil supplies.

Nothing new here, but the rising tide of awareness continues.

Agreed, and I would take it a step farther and say that when oil rises above a 100 a barrel to some price that causes another step down in the economy, there will be a lot more Mainstream news outlets reporting on peak oil, because having happened twice it will be easier to connect the dots. Even though real estate values will take another hit with a lot more foreclosures occurring, it will become clearer that high priced oil acts as a huge drag on economic activity. With higher profile news reporting on peak oil it should finally permeate the majority of the populace. At least that is my suggestion of what will occur.

Excellent video which I recommend to all. You didn't point out it's from Press TV, Iran - but I will :-) The spirit of Dr. Bakhtiari lives on.

Can you think of any past civilizations that have overrun their resource base? Any previous civilizations that have collapsed? Why didn't human imagination and ingenuity save them? How are we different? Also, is imagination and ingenuity independent of energy?

The Malthusian narrative has failed for two centuries and counting, but its adherents keep insisting that a die-off is just around the corner.

Are you saying:
(1) a global die-off hasn't happened before, therefore it will never happen?
(2) human ingenuity has always managed to overcome local resource depletion, therefore infinite population growth on a finite Earth is physically possible?

Remember, there is no peak to human imagination and ingenuity!

Do you really think unlimited population/economic growth is possible beacause human imagination and ingenuity are more important than finite arable land, fresh water, fossil fuels, etc.

Remember, there is no peak to human imagination and ingenuity!

Human ingenuity still hasn't found the cure for cancer, AIDS, Hepatitis C&B, and the list can go on and on! AND we need these cures badly!

Still, we would be better off if we'd use teleportation instead of planes, cars, etc. There's no teleportation yet! Why doesn't human ingenuity come to the rescue?

Quantum computers would be very useful in pharmaceutics! In fact a QC would probably find the cures for the above health issues. There is no QC yet! So, why doesn't human ingenuity come to the rescue again?

Examples like these are plentiful.

I believe that the doomers have abandoned hope. They look at the scale of the problem and the amount of change required to address those changes, and they despair. Many of them are, in essence, declaring that they do not want to adapt, they want to hang on to what they have. Since they also understand that business as usual (a non adaption scenario) is not likely to be viable, they are conflicted. They also have a tendency to argue vehemently for the validity of their philosophical stance. Pointing out that they are doomers, and that there is hope for the future, is an easy way of getting them to react.

There is another group of people who also accept the future problem scenario arising from fossil fuel depletion. This group is, arguably, more pragmatic and are adapting to changing circumstances. While they may believe that their future lifestyle will not be as convenient as the one they currently experience, they are willing to make the best of it and, perhaps, hope that the myriad efforts of billions of other humans will result in an outcome that is not a collapse scenario.

You offered one scenario which seemed to suggest that the basic inputs to our system, like food, will be manufactured. I suggest that you consider looking at manufacturing as an application of energy to transform materials. That use of energy will be a stumbling block in a fossil fuel constrained future.

While it is true that mankind has repeatedly surmounted constraints in the past, it is also true that nearly all of the solutions required an increase in the overall usage of energy. Expensive energy presents a fundamentally new constraint for modern technological society. While increases in efficiency will certainly help, a key concern is what to do when the increasing price of energy is greater than the efficiency gains.

A billion human minds is a staggering amount of inventiveness. When connected together, say with internet mediated social networks, the result can be absolutely amazing achievements! Humanity will adapt. It always has and always will. It is demonstrably the most adaptable organism on the planet. I also suspect that the ability to adapt is non linearly related to the number of engaged humans. So there is hope for the future.

An aspect of the social dynamics of TOD, and not the only one, appears to be one wherein the pragmatic optimists I mentioned above show up, learn about peak oil, get vehemently beaten around the ears when they talk about optimistic outcomes, and then go off to adapt and create solutions that work. The doomers remain...

Dear Magical Thinker, what we could do, should do and will do are all different things. What we could do is limited by physics. What we should do requires wisdom to foresee the limits of our world, the consequences of our choices and the desire to sacrifice. What we will do ends up being driven by emotion, instinct, desire and our ability to do.

Written by Magical Thinker:
But if you look at things more creatively, you’ll see that we aren’t limited to this planet, its current resource distribution or even our current primate forms. Arable land, water and fossil fuels are of course important, but at some point I expect us to be able to manufacture those things almost at will.

With unlimited cheap energy we could concentrate increasingly rarefied resources approaching your utopia. But energy is not unlimited and forever cheap because the second law of thermodynamics places constraints. We are limited to planet Earth. Do you know why? Imagination is boundless, but Mother Nature is merciless. Scientists and engineers, grounded in the real world, are necessary to turn imagination into reality. A dreamer does not see what is happening around him as he conjures and lives in his imaginary, magical world.

Bob Shaw's question from Phoenix, AZ: "Are humans smarter than yeast?"

I would like to offer a general criticism of the “peak everything” crowd, which is that you seem to suffer from a rather literal, unimaginative view of human history and potential.

Unimaginative as in not-"magical"?

I’m reminded of a tribe of hunter-gatherers gathered around a fire lamenting their imminent demise from climate change or lack of game ten thousand years ago.

Is this tribe in your head or do you have an actual tribe you can point to?

The Malthusian narrative has failed for two centuries and counting,

As you've opted to claim this - can you define what YOU think the "Malthusian narrative" is?

That way, if your claim is to be debated "we" are all on the same page.

Remember, there is no peak to human imagination and ingenuity!

Do you have actual data to back up this claim?

Human beings are the magic-wielding animals

So now your debating point is to use wordy-words like "magic"?

Wait...isn't "magic" a term used to explain something one does not understand?

Please show you have understanding - explain exactly what you mean by "Malthusian narrative"?

Travel by train is looking better and better. In any case, it's interesting that the Israelis don't use the full body scanners.

http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/Full+body+scanners+waste+money+Israel...
Full-body scanners are waste of money, Israeli expert says

A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install "useless" imaging machines at airports across the country.

"I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747," Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.

"That's why we haven't put them in our airport," Sela said, referring to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world.

Do you have similar data for India?If yes please post.Tks

Where does your estimated figure for 2012 come from? It's certainly not the World Bank. And for the first ten months of 2010, Chinese electrical generation is reported (by the Chinese) as up 14.9% on 2009. 2009 was up 6.3% on 2008. So your estimate of 2010 per capita consumption up only 9% on 2008 seems complete nonsense when compared to the official Chinese data.

Or do you not believe the official government data?