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DrumBeat: September 11, 2006
Posted by threadbot on September 11, 2006 - 9:13am
Exxon's Australia chief dimisses peak oil theory, says supplies abundant
The chairman of Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Australian unit, Mark Nolan, Monday dismissed peak oil theory and insisted the world has abundant supplies of oil and other fossil fuels.In an address to an Asia Pacific Oil & Gas Conference in Adelaide city, Nolan said peak oil predictions aren't new and have been occurring regularly since the 1920s, particularly at times of high prices.
Industry and society have always underestimated resources, he said.
"The world has an abundance of oil and there is little question scientifically that abundant energy resources exist," Nolan said.
Ditch the car? Don’t laugh, it works for some creative commuters
Nigeria: Angry youths protest power cutoffs
Dominican government will continue to subsidize energy
Iraq official calls for oil partnerships
A top Iraqi official called for partnerships with international companies to boost his country's oil industry on Sunday, saying Iraq's emergence as a "secure petro-democracy" could quell rampant sectarian violence.
Arabs urged to jointly develop nuclear energy
Japan: Another fund-guzzling white elephant?
Resource-poor Japan is pumping no small amount of public funds into its energy drive to secure foreign oil, gas and other resources in a desperate bid to ensure its energy security amid spikes in oil prices.
Cuba, India's Oil & Natural Gas Sign Oil Exploration Accord
Cutting the world's economic jugular veins
Oil is primordial, plentiful and abundant. "Peak Oil" theorists and Malthusians have been consistently incorrect in their "running out of oil" predictions in the past, and they will continue to lose credibility in the future. Why?With every new deep-oil discovery, such as Chevron's giant oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico last week (which is expected to boost the U.S. oil supplies by as much as 50 percent!) the "Peak Oil" theory moves closer to extinction – where it belongs.
Oil supply must rise to reduce gas prices
When motorists pull into gas stations and cringe at per gallon costs, not much thought is given to how many others worldwide want that same gasoline, how that gas was produced and delivered for sale, what could be done to increase global oil supply or develop alternative fueling options. But these factors determine how much we pay at the pump.
A new kind of hybrid uses hydraulics instead of batteries to save fuel
Contact
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License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Print out page 1 from the weekly chart at http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/CO/W
Then, draw a line connecting the peaks, and another connecting the valleys. You will see that the current decline in light, sweet oil has just dropped below the lower support line.
The chart covers the past two years, but the trend goes back three years this month, as can be seen on the monthly chart. Hedge funds make money by identifying and riding trends; one can imagine this chart etched in granite (or gold) in their conference rooms. My guess is that they are now buying to close short positions, and buying more to open long ones.
The center of the upper and lower bands is the fundamental price trend line, around $74/b now. This line expresses the fundamentals of supply and demand, reflecting a constant supply and growing numbers of rich people, not least Asian. What else can the line do but climb? The line has been extremely steady, completely ignoring geopolitical risks, fear premiums, etc. Hedge funds can affect the oscillation around the fundamental price, but do not have any affect on the price line itself.
I think the decreasing volatility expresses the market's grwoing acceptance of the overall trend and its growing ability to ignore extraneous events and focus on fundamental supply and demand. World supply has been nearly flat since late 2004, while the demand from asia, the US, and the booming oil exporting nations themselves has been strong. The resulting steady increase in price is the mechanism that encourages poor consumers to get off the bus so a growing number of rich can fill up their suv's.
IMO, the trend will change when fundamentals change; the world gets more supply (or less), rich countries go into recession, bird flu. You'll know it when you see it.
Second, world OECD stocks are at a ten-year low, maybe foreign buyers are waiting for falling oil/dollar, in which case current price might be attractive. IMO, the first sign of solid support will bring many buyers and strong bounce.
See, you can make the charts say anything you want.
That could be a good thing, if so.
"First they ignore you, then..."
You're not wrong.
Anyway, even arguing against bring the attention to the problem, which is good. However, it tell that it's not a problem, so I dont know what it will bring.
Seems to me that every message convey this kind of idea :
"Yeah there is a fire in the house, but that's no problem, we are using extinguisher, water and we have called the firefighters, just keep on watching your TV."
I.E. we have no proble but we are solving it!
Since Skrebowski and Collins have predicted small increase in production (yet small and being slightly positive for the depletion of existing field) up until 2010. It gives us more time to convince people of the gravity of the problem.
Geology will definetly put a lid on the mouth of all the cornocupians.
"Much of the crisis we face today in oil refining is the result of not building a single new refinery in 28 years - thanks to the radical environmentalist movement. This must change or we will continue to remain subject to a Mideast political and Black Gold stranglehold."
Ok, so step one is the assumption that we have an oil refining "crisis." We'll ignore that this is an unsubstantiated claim and accept him at his word. Step two is the stated cause being the lack of a refinery building program. We'll ignore the gratuitous jab at environmentalists - most of whom would be pleasantly surprised to find they have so much power. Then step three is to conclude that if we don't build refineries we will remain subject to ME "stranglehold" - an undefined term here, but we'll assume he's referring to the book by a similar name.
So: 1) oil refining is in a crisis
2) the crisis is caused by a lack of a refinery building program
3) No refinery building leads to ME stranglehold
Looking at it this way, I'm at a loss as to even how to assess the logic. I could see; 1) there is no refinery building program. 2) therefore there is a refinery crisis. Though this leaves out the intermediate step of - there is a shortage of refining capacity. But at least there is some apparent connection. What is beyond my apparently meager logic skills is figuring out how the lack of refinery building gives the ME stranglehold capabilities. If it really is just a matter of building refineries, how is that the ME's fault? (Oh, that's right, its the fault of us environmentalists).
If logic like this is representative of the mainstream then it is no wonder that we're in trouble.
Peak oil, in part, is where words and reality intersect. Reality wins, every time - words may cause you to look at reality differently, but reality is not interested in how you look at it.
This tactic is also used by the left-wing but in a far more subtle and polished manner.
IMO, Smith truly believes environmentalists are at fault. He is delusional but sincere. Many in Smith's camp have an impenetrable wall of dyslogia that prevents them from grasping reality.
On the other hand, some conservatives like Kevin Phillips are open-minded, trenchant, and present logical points of view. I am non-partisan so I am not defending right-wingers. In fact, I read George Lakoff's works and get what you are saying about framing. It's just that I think it is not wise to paint the right with overly broad brush strokes. Polarization may be good for the elites but it is counterproductive for the rest of us.
I'm not so sure polarization is a bad thing. A real problem in this country are the vast numbers of people in the "middle" who don't vote or are too "busy" to properly inform themselves, as required for a functioning democracy. By their acquiescence they share responsibility for the many horrors being perpetrated by the leadership of this country.
Remember the old quote that appears sometimes at the top of this page? The public has two modes, complacency and panic.
I think to many people extrapolate the complacency far into the downcurve of oil depletion. The really interesting time cmoes after the wake-up call.
Where I am, jobs are disappearing, house prices are falling, and people are on the verge of panic. Every time the wind blows from the east, you can smell that fear sweat that Don wrote about.
One would assume construction and home refinance.
I suspect that some parts of the country are seeing a good and "strong" economy, like in post-Katrina land where construction workers are probably swamped with repair jobs. Also in the military-industrial complex, the Iraq war is just one that keeps giving and giving. (Gee, I wonder who is going to be paying and paying for that one? Let the good times roll.)
The elephant in the living room has to be new homes and mortgage financing. As long as new home sales kept going up and up; meaning continued sales of appliances: refrigerators, washers, garage door openers, etc. and continued good times for construction crews and strong numbers for lumber, wall boards, etc.; then a lot of people were still content. I guess the game plan was to keep it going until right after Novemeber 2006 (US elections). But the system is already showing signs of strain and cracks in the dam.
I dread what comes next. (Le Deluge as Louis the XIV might say. Or who gives a flying f*** as Bush II might say, it ain't on my watch.)
That is difficult to ascertain given that rational and fair-minded conservatives are persona-non-grata in the RNC. The RNC is dominated by neoconservatives and that is a whole different animal than a true conservative. I spoke at length with many conservatives who are appalled at the reckless behavior of the ruling Republicans who inflate the deficit leaving a mess for future generations and also those in their party who care nothing for the environment. These same conservatives are also very angry at the loss of civil liberties stemming from the Patriot Act. They see the hypocrisy of their party but are unable to effect change since the ruling elite only listen to the neocon monied interests.
As a former centrist Dem I had a similar frustration at the lip service the Dem elite have given about responsible govt and fighting for the little guy, yet their actions are always conflicted and ineffectual.
My frustration led me to explore the nature of our political system in depth. I concluded what many others have - that the ruling elite of both parties present a facade of choice when in reality they are controlled by the same financial elite cabal. I had come to this conclusion before I understood peak oil and also before I read books like Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon and these latter elements just became the icing on the cake.
Polarization is not so great when it distracts the already zombie-like electorate from getting a handle on the really important issues and the MSM is all too happy the fan polarization flames.
I sympathize with your view on the two parties. Since WWII both parties have been focused on a single goal: maintaining the disparity of wealth and power "enjoyed" by Americans at the expense of the rest of the world.
IMO Democrats are worse than Republicans because Dems pretend to be "for" the working guy and the middle class. At least Republicans are up front about protecting their power and wealth.
Republicans wouldn't have a chance of getting elected if they said what they really stood for. They need the religious zealots and moderately well-to-do middle class, as well as small business voters. But the reality is they do nothing for those groups-- nothing positive anyway-- besides offer lip service and hand-me-down scraps.
In my opinion Republicans are much more crass when it comes to their real agenda compared to their claimed agenda.
Republicans don't need any of these splinter groups per se. The real strength of Republicans comes from the right wing Think Tanks.
It is the Think Tanks who tell Republican strategists (i.e. Karl Rove) what mental manipulations will work this week and what won't (i.e. Connect with the lizard brains of those who are easily terrorized by an unknown "those who hate our freedoms"). Note last week's word of the week: Islamo-facists.
Thought Control is Not China's Alone
America has thought control tanks as well --Invisible Hand kind
Absolutely! As you must know, the Neocons are Straussian adherents who believe it is necessary to use religion to control the masses. As followers of Leo Strauss, the neocons are fascists in the Mussolini tradition of merging state and corporate power. Strauss' philosophy is described in the link below:
http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/
However, don't think the emergence of such fascism and corruption began just with the current administration, they just took it to new extremes. Catherine Austin Fitts, former Asst Sec of Housing, wrote a phenomenal expose on the connection of corrupt business practices and the highest levels of govt. It's a long article, but well worth reading.
http://www.dunwalke.com/introduction.htm
The origins of corruption of our govt by the financial elite can be traced back to the creation of the Federal Reserve. I read numerous books on the topic, but as a primer you can check out a link a TOD blogger provided in today's Drumbeat.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm
"They're rarely upfront about their real agenda which is helping out the ultra wealthy and extremely large business at the expense of everyone else."
One would have to be extremely obtuse not see what their true agenda is. I think rank and file Americans can see through the veneer, but too many are caught up in the confusing media frenzy that directs them to focus on more emotive issues and hence they are reluctant to make class warfare their top issue.
My advice is to keep researching, keep digging, follow the breadcrumbs and you will discover there is much more to our 2-party system than meets the eye.
The Creature from Jekyll Island
Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magicians' secrets are unveiled. We get a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, their pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money.
http://www.realityzone.com/creature.html
I would also suggest reading Cathrine Fitts articles as you pointed out.
Follow the Money !!!
In 2008 there is a very good chance that Hiliary will take the office of POTUS. At least TPTB seem to have tired of the NeoCons' bungling and are ready for a regime change. Such an outcome will give Americans a chance to participate in a succession of alternating dynasties:
George I (H.W), B. Clinton, George II (W), H. Clinton, and possible George III (P)- Jeb's son.
"In 2008 there is a very good chance that Hiliary will take the office of POTUS. At least TPTB seem to have tired of the NeoCons' bungling and are ready for a regime change."
The sad thing is that the above would NOT be a Regime change. They are both two different sides of the same coin.
Gambino's or the Genovese's they are BOTH mafia.
As a tiny example, Read this one and see how the Clintons run in the same circles as the Bush's.
Follow the Money.
Monsanto buys 'Terminator' seeds company
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html
One more;
Remember Iran-Contra? Do a google on
'Mena mena airport iran contra clinton'
and read some of what you find.
Like this one.(read 4 or 5 before making up your mind)
http://www.ncoic.com/clinton.htm
Why do you think Clinton and Bush Sr. were so buddy buddy the last few years? It goes way back.
If you think an Independent Thinker could get into the Whitehouse without being "Wellstoned" (yes it now a verb in DC circles) you haven't been reading enough.
Do your homework.
P.S. Kerry's job was just to get "Close" enough that the populace Believed they had fair elections. He wouldn't have(and didn't) dare to look into Ohio's voting scandal.
http://www.dunwalke.com/introduction.htm
Honestly, if you do the research you will recognize that this is the tip of the iceberg.
Spending hours reading about and debating the minutiae of peak oil is futile if you don't understand the political and financial dynamics that fostered the unsustainable and reckless system that exacerbate the problems we face.
We are inundated with so much information every day that it is often difficult to filter out the noise.
My personal case in point for straining to see the forest for the trees is related to my work in medical research. I spent so much time studying science and medicine and every day reading journal articles or attending seminars that I found it difficult making the time to investigate why the U.S. health care system was so dysfunctional, wasteful, and inefficient - yet I was a part of that system. When I finally had a chance to take some courses in public health and preventive medicine and also study health care economics in some detail I began to see that the very nature of the system itself and in particular how the financial interests in the system operated was the source of dysfunction. I understood that the cure could never come in a series of reforms of various policies or the addition of more subsidies. IMO, the two glaring problems were a total lack of transparency and an ideology based not optimal health results but on a technophile treatment agenda (both meds and machines).
In my last position I saw a microcosm of the system Fitts describes - when the private sector begins feeding off the public sector like a tick. My former supervisor wore various hats as VP and the Chief of Medicine of a world renowned private research hospital, a dean of the medical school, and the CEO of a biotech company. He used his role as our director to use NIH grants to perform research on the drugs his company was developing. The NIH grants covered salaries and capital equipment. He had a few dozen medical scientists (MDs, PhDs, and a few MD-PhDs) working to test the drugs his company was developing. These researchers all received their salaries via state or federal tax dollars. Needless to say, I found the arrangement distasteful.
While my last observation may not be very commonplace in research, the general trend in medicine increasingly is corruption of medical science by monied interests to a degree not grasped by the general public or even many in the health care industry. The FDA is no longer even remotely connected to patient safety, it is little more than an arm of Big Pharma. Such is the evolution of the larger system.
You're right. Looks like we are already on the same page.
Have you done any in depth reading about the Trilateralists? The Carter admin was stacked with them. There is a well researched book called Trilateralists Over Washington.
Of course, there are many other elite groups working under the radar but the MSM never reports on their activities.
That ALONE should be a clear signal that the rest of us are outside the loop.
Another oddities that should send warning signals, besides (as you point out) the cozy relationship between Bush Sr. and B. Clinton, include other unusual pairings such as Kerry and Heinz (late husband a Republican and she switched parties right before Kerry threw his hat in the ring for POTUS). The classic example, and perhaps most bizarre is James Carville and his wife Mary Matalin.
That last pairing officially put American pseudo-bi-partisan politics into the realm of Theatre of the Absurd.
Too bad I'm not good at graphics because photos of these two nutcases would make for a good visual.
No the amazing thing is not the Pronouncements, it is that the American people have absolutely no reasoning skills.
You discribe the ability of the writers(and MSM) to set the Postulates of the theorm, and what is soooo sad is that most people take the postulates as "Given".
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
If you accept the premise of the statement, you are stuck with answering it.
Well, What would you do if you were in a dark alley, in a bad section of town, no one around, and a guy with a gun asks for your money.
Both of the above are better known examples of the issue you are pointing out.
PEOPLE ACCEPT THE PREMISES OF MSM's statements in one swallow.
"If logic like this is representative of the mainstream then it is no wonder that we're in trouble. "
It is representative of MSM because they know it works, and that the Reasoning Skills of their consumers have been completely distroyed. Thank in part the Education system that is designed to raise good WORKERS not good THINKERS.
Remember: IRAQ = Al-Qaida = 911
Osama Bin Forgotten who???
We are toast.
You made me laugh even though what you were talking about is so very sad. A nice balance. I tend not to ascribe quite as much willful malice to the MSM and their keepers. My experience has been that they are true believers and are not so much manipulating as proselytizing. Does GW really think Iraq was involved in 9/11? Yup, I think so. But that doesn't change the end result, does it.
As for toast, I believe it is western civilization that is toast. Unfortunately, its collapse is going to take an awful lot of lives.
Does LensCrafters sell the type of rose-colored glasses you're wearing?
The IQs of the elite didn't take a precipitous drop and GW knows Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
You should study the history of the geopolitics of oil. The importance of energy sources for economic and national security has ALWAYS been the biggest blip on the govt elites' radar. Read Brzezinski's book The Grand Chessboard, study analyses put out by PNAC before 9/11, or take a look at Crossing the Rubicon and you will recognize that securing the world major oil reserves was a priority for Neocons (and the elite in general) for many years. What do you suppose Cheney's energy task force was discussing before 9/11 and what were they doing with maps of ME oil in those meetings? Of course, we won't know for certain because the Supreme Court ruled in Cheney's favor.
"But that doesn't change the end result, does it."
It DOES make a difference if the electorate is being manipulated through various sources of propaganda. It is nearly impossible to effect change when the underlying cause (in this case deliberate misinformation) is unknown.
Some form of collapse is inevitable, but adopting a sense of bewilderment and defeatism that will permit collapse to take its worst possible form is irresponsible.
As for my glasses, most folks here know what color they are and few would suggest they are rose.
But, then, you seem to have made a misreading of what I was saying by putting some of your own expectations into it. Did I say that GW had a low IQ? Do you know that I accept that argument? No, you couldn't know that because it's not the case. But you blundered on making assumptions and you know what happens when you do that.
You seem to think I was suggesting that GW believed that Iraq helped plan or somehow participated in the 9/11 attacks. That would be silly. But does he believe that they (Iraq, terrorism, 9/11, islamic fascism, etc.) are all related, connected? He's been spending the last two weeks telling us so at every turn.
As for what I should study. Let's just say that I was doing post graduate work in the same department that Brzezinski taught in after he left public service. You make assumptions about my education that demonstrate 1)you know nothing about me and 2)demonstrate that you have a lot of education to go yourself.
Your take on the "manipulation" of the eloctorate is charmingly naive. The belief in the "man behind the curtain" is always amusing. But there are aspects of our culture and political system far more influential than a few "powerful" men in "smoke-filled backrooms."
I'd be happy to discuss how I see these things working. But please don't come in here telling me to go read a couple of books that influenced you. It would be the equivalent of me telling you what medical texts you should read to "really" understand your field.
It looks like you do me the same injustice that you claim I have done to you by assigning me views that I don't have. I don't naively believe in "powerful men in smoke-filled rooms" or the "man behind the curtain" as in a handful of people running the world. I do recognize that coalitions of monied interests have corrupted our govt. Exactly how these monied interests interact with each other is what needs to be brought into focus and THAT is what never gets clearly reported in our media.
If you have a background in pol sci it is hard to imagine that you wouldn't appreciate the inherent problems a continually centralizing economic and political force presents to represenative govt. I wonder if you are too close to the fine details of social or economic theories to empathize with the concerns an ordinary citizen has on this topic. Not saying you don't have the empathy but my larger point on today's threads was the problem that surfaces when professionals are too caught up in the fine details of their work to see things on a larger scale - a matter of perspective.
BTW, the reading recommendations were not condenscension, they were meant to be helpful. I can't tell you how many books and articles I have read from recommendations coming out of TOD and from friends interested in social and political issues. I was always grateful for the overtures to share knowledge.
This is precisely what I was suggesting is the oversimplification. This is the men in smoke-filled back rooms. My suggestion is to step back yet again. Why are these men (and a few women) in the position to influence our government? Why is our government susceptible to them? But even more importantly, what place do these people have in our culture? How is it that they (and their money) are influential in our broader society? Or turn that around, why does our society raise people with wealth into positions of influence? Better yet, what do we learn about our soceity and culture by understanding such people?
Let's face it, if Warren Buffet stood up tomorrow and said we should all stop pursuing wealth, should stop driving, become vegetarion, move to a farm and learn organic gardening, etc., what do you think would happen? Likely his children would have him committed. While people may be the local actor, the carrier of culture, so to speak, the individual only has that power to affect change that is available to them from where they stand in that culture.
"If you have a background in pol sci it is hard to imagine that you wouldn't appreciate the inherent problems a continually centralizing economic and political force presents to represenative govt."
I've met lots of political scientists who see no contradiction between centralized economics and institutions and representative gov't. Indeed, one of my best teachers was such a person (Saul Mendlovitz), he and others believe our best chance to avoid the woest of corporatist control of the planet comes in the shape of a representative world government. I disagree with them, though.
Indeed, your statement attributing those certain beliefs to me is somewhat baffling. I don't see where you are drawing it from. And clearly you haven't read other posts of mine where I make it clear that I not only believe that the current economic system will collapse, but believe that collapse is the best thing that can happen to us. What I actually see happening is the collapse of western civilization - not just the economy. We may have contributed some excellent ideas and institutions to the world, but I believe that we have gone over into excess. We are, in the construction of Toynbee, idolizing an ephemeral self and are no longer capable of reacting to the changes in our world in any manner other than we have in the past. (Indeed, this is precisely why one of the worst aspects of globalization is the concurrent homogenization of our lives.) This inability to respond with new social ideas, institutions and ways of living will condemn us to failure. What will make this collapse so utterly tragic is that western civilization has spread into every corner of the planet. The economic system you are concerned about being too centralized is the economic system of the western civilization, carried out to its illogical extreme.
Ok, I'd better bring this to a close. I'll check back on this thread occassionally to see if you'd like to continue this discussion. Otherwise, I'm sure we'll have chances to exchange barbs in other threads ;-)
On this commemeration day for the 10-1/10+1 event,
I think it behooves us at TOD to explore again the concept of cognitive disassociation.
Why do so many people "think" or fail to think in the way they do? In the way we do?
Why can they not come to grasp the Peak Oil idea and what it means?
On 9/10/2001 Americans believed that we were the most powerful, smartest people on Earth. If not Al Gore alone, then "we" had invented The Internet. We had invented the "New Economy". Prosperity was everywhere. Our non-negotiable way of life was spreading out like a good virus to conquer the whole world, to Globalize it, and to prove once and for all that this indeed was the "American Century". Pax America had begun and would last for 1000 years if not longer. Ronald Reagan had been so right and all the doomsters had been wrong --101% wrong. The Russian Evil Empire had been vaquished by our brilliant, though ficticious, Pebbles. We Americans were invincible and clearly God's chosen ones.
Then the 10-1/10+1 event happened.
The reality of it sent messages we dared not utter in open forums:
- "They" had outwitted us. Ergo we were not the most ingenius peoples on Earth. We were not as smart and powerful as we have deceived ourselves into believing.
- Our advanced technologies had made us vulnerable. (Who in their wildest dreams would have thunk that commercial jet aircraft could be turned into weapons agianst their own masters? --Please don't answer that with the hindsight knowledge that there were Cassandras in our vast Empire already screaming about the dangers and that the Empire chose to ignore the doom sayers. The point here is cognitive dissonance and not that "nobody could have dreamed of it".)
- We were no longer special. Up until 9/11 we Americans could argue to ourselves that we were unlike any other nation on Earth. We were special. Even though bad things had happened everywhere else (i.e. Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, China under Mao Tsetung, Cambodia under the Kemer Rouge, etc., etc.), "it" the bad thing would never, could never, happen here.
Now in the gloomy aftershadows of 9/11, along come these Peak Oil doomsters, out to attack even more of our self-evident truths:Poem by Bob Dylan
--------------------
Stay in line. stay in step. people
are afraid of someone who is not
in step with them. it makes them
look foolish t' themselves for
being in step. it might even
cross their minds that they themselves
are in the wrong step.
do not run nor cross the red line. if you go
too far out in any direction, they
will lose sight of you. they'll feel
threatened. thinking that they are
not a part of something that they
saw go past them, they'll feel
something's going on up there that
they don't know about.
revenge will set in. they will start thinking
of how t' get rid of you. act
mannerly towards them. if you don't,
they will take it personal. as you
come directly in contact face t' face
do not make it a secret of how
much you need them.
if they sense that you have no need for them,
the first thing they will do is
try t' make you need them. if
this doesn't work, they will tell
you of how much they don't need
you. if you do not show any sadness
at a remark such as this, they
will immediately tell other people
of how much they don't need you.
your name will begin t' come up
in circles where people gather
to tell about all the people they
don't need. you will begin t' get
famous this way. this, though, will
only get the people who you don't need
in the first place
all the more madder.
you will become a whole topic of conversation.
needless t' say, these people
who don't need you will start
hating themselves for needing t' talk
about you. then you yourself will
start hating yourself for causing so
much hate. as you can see, it will
all end in one great gunburst.
never trust a cop in a raincoat.
when asked t' define yourself exactly,
say you are an exact mathematician.
do not say or do anything that
he who standing in front of you
watching cannot understand, he will
feel you know something he
doesn't. he will react with blinding
speed and write your name down.
talk on his terms. if his terms
are old-fashioned an' you've
passed that stage all the more easier
t' get back there. say what he
can understand clearly. say it simple
t' keep your tongue out of your
cheek. after he hears you, he can
label you good or bad. anyone will
do. t' some people, there is only
good an' bad. in any case, it will
make him feel somewhat important.
it is better t' stay away from
these people......
It has nothing to do with the conversation, but it came to mind.
John Carr
This is why I urge people not to succumb to the extreme language and to avoid the "peak is now" position. When you take these positions, you set yourself up for the criticisms that we are now seeing. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
You will reach more people, IMO, by explaining both sides of the argument, but by also pointing out that Peak Oil is not a theory. The only controversial part is on the timing, and almost everyone agrees that it is close enough that we need to be taking serious mitigation steps.
You start off saying there are people who doubt official statements (1). You let them talk. Somewhere the term conspiracy theory (2) is introduced. You let some more peope talk, pro and con.
Then the big one: you first mention the term "conspiracy theorists" (3)
From then on, it's smooth sailing. You have now established a group, never mind that there are many different people and different ideas. They now belong together in the mind of the reader/viewer.
In the 9/11 case, it was a stusent (Loose Change), a grieving father and a religious nut, vs Popular Mechanics and the head of the 9/11 commission.
All that is now required, is to show one crazy notion (there was never a United 93) or not-trustworthy person. That discredits all of them in one fell swoop, and the balance goes to the "experts".
Remember the Kunstler quote in the Bloomberg piece? vs CERA, Exxon etc.?
Who appears more trustworthy to the uninitiated? It's an easy game, and hard to fight against.
Have you read (or discussed during your visit) Jay's views on why people accept something as true or not?
I've come to believe the following:
- the logic/arguments you use to discuss po are largely irrelevant when discussing these issues with the average person. (reader of TOD = not the average person, btw so what works here is not representative of what works out with the general public)
- if the person feels the system is screwed or not working, they will gravitate towards explanations of why the system is screwed or not working.
- the person's tribal affliations will influence which explanation they will accept as true.
Eddy the Environmentalist or Ollie the Oilman will tend to be attracted to Peak Oil as it is discussed on TOD, Energy Bulletin, etc.Harry the Enviro-Hating Right Wing Religious Sect Member will tend to be attracted to "Those evil Enviros are mucking things up, Gawd put plenty of oil in the ground . . " as an explanation.
Craig Smith and Jerome Corsi have the Harry's of the world as their followers.
As far as getting more people over to our tribe, that is dependent on two things:
One of the things I have learned over the years is how to talk to Harry, Eddie, and Ollie. I have learned how to put myself in their shoes, look at the issue from their point of view, and ask questions designed to lead them to certain conclusions.
I am certain that if you put me in a room for 1 hour with just about anyone, I can convey the gravity of the situation while coming across as completely rational. I have done this with many people of many different backgrounds. The important point, though, is to first establish some common ground so they don't see you as the enemy.
Then why don't you share some of your Talking Points with us?
One thing that I see TODders getting wrong time and again is that you can "intellectualize" with Harry.
That is so wrong. It is exactly why John Kerry and Al Gore lose time again. Why Karl Rove wins round after round.
Harry is not an intellectual, rational being. He is an emotional animal ... a herd following animal ... with extremely limited understandings of science.
I have given a lot of thought to doing a post on this. But it isn't so much what is said as how it is said. One of the advantages that I think I have is that I have spent a lot of time around a very wide range of people. My parents would represent "Harry". I grew up pretty poor. Someone posted the lyrics to "Coal Miner's Daughter" the other day, and I thought "Boy, she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth." :-)
I went to elementary school in a predominately black housing project. I put myself through college. I have scrubbed toilets and done many menial jobs. I have friends in prison, and friends who are professors. I have friends in Germany, friends in China, and friends still in the projects. I can switch modes and speak to any of these people in a language and a tone that empathizes with their situation.
Maybe my experience is not unique, but I have had several people tell me that my background is one reason I can communicate with such a wide range of people. My wife has noted that she can tell what kind of person I am talking to on the phone just by the way I talk. I do this without even noticing that I am doing it.
Anyway, I have found the line that works best, especially in groups, is "I believe that we have seen just the first winds of the comiing oil price storm". Not Peak Oil per se, but near complete agreement (in New Orleans at least) AND it increases support for streetcars.
I believe that taking action on incomplete information and understanding is more important than complete information coupled with inaction (true of too many TODers unfortunately).
Best Hopes,
Alan
This is EXACTLY the same problem we have in talking to fundamentalist Muslims. Yes they DO mean exactly what they say. Just because you, in your western based humanitarianism, cannot believe they would say and mean exactly what they say does not mean it cannot be so. It just points out how limited our own perceptions are and why we have to let go of "logic" and get even beyond that to base assumptions.
Furthermore, as Thomas Sowell clearly demonstrated in that wonderful book A Conflict of Visions, people can be completely rational and still be wrong because the underlying assumptions are wrong. So the way to talk to Harry is to approach him, gently, because no one wants to be attacked, and try to see how to wedge important facts into his base assumptions and not into the logic built on those assumptions. You can't assail his logic directly so don't try. This is the error that most people make. You must slowly, patiently, and in as friendly a manner as possible get him to accept new facts as underlying assumptions. THEN Harry ends up with conflicts and has to either discard new facts, which he will be loathe to do if you've convinced him that he figured it out for himself (with your assistance), or he will discard old assumptions and thus the conclusions of his logic change because the underlying assumptions changed first.
This is exactly what is happening in part of the evangelical Christian community today. Part of that community is speaking to the rest of it and emphasizing facts about peak oil, resource depletion, etc., and at the same time it is using the context of common religious reference (Christian values) to emphasize that man is called to be a good steward, not a glutton. This works. This is also the approach I see being used in the Hindu and Jewish religious communities in Houston as well to emphasize environment and community thinking about resource depletion and population overshoot symptoms.
The key is to not attack either the person (which you just did) or to attack their logic. Their logic is usually pretty solid, given their assumptions. So attack the assumptions, in a friendly manner. This works. Trust me on this.
I have used the approach both you and RR have described on four right-wing evangelical Christians with great success. All four are now using the new lense I gave them to convince their like-minded friends. In fact, one of these persons, an engineer with a very high IQ (he was the easiest to convince), is using his new understanding in Christian blogs to inform others.
Yes I do.
This is why I do not try to proselytize Peak Oil.
The last thing Harry is ready to hear is that world is doomed, that Chicken Little and Malthus were right.
Thank you for your pointers. They are quite valid.
people can be completely rational and still be wrong because the underlying assumptions are wrong
With your kind pointers in mind, may I suggest to you that people evolved from fight-or-flight lizards? May I suggest that buried someplace near the stem of the human brain, there lies a reptilian layer that is not "completely rational" and that it reacts to fear and terror? Perhaps people are not "completely" rational? (I include myself.)
Their logic is usually pretty solid, given their assumptions. So attack the assumptions, in a friendly manner. This works. Trust me on this.
I respectfully disagree that they operate entirely on logic.
I whole heartedly agree that I will get nowhere with them by presenting myself as an enemy of their belief system.
Thank you again for your excellent pointers.
OK, that's what I think too.
Then what do we do, argue to "change their fundamental assumptions"?
Argue with Tariq Ramadan?
Then we better use Taqiya ourselves.
P.S. Yeah! Beside other vices I am strongly anti-islamic, NOT anti-muslim!
That is, I am not against deluded people I am against deleterious virus of the mind.
And Christian fundamentalism is on par with Islam.
I Know how you feel....(explain their side)
I Felt the same way(Justify their side)..
But I found(show them the light now that they are WITH you).
The reality is we haven't even reached those most predisposed to the message of Peak Oil yet, let alone the moderates, let alone the more difficult persuadables, and even at that point we're still quite a distance away from the hardcore rightwing nutcase. Much like drilling for oil, we need to go after the cheap and easy fields (middle of the road or better individuals), before we start trying to go after difficult and expensive deep sea deposits ("Harry").
I'll second that.
Technically-astute people (i.e. engineers) make up only a tiny fraction of Western society. My informal, personal sampling of these people indicates that at best we may have 1% penetration into this insular, technically trained population pool.
In other words: 1% of the 1%.
This is why I urge people not to succumb to the extreme language and to avoid the "peak is now" position.
Since I watch production figures, peak is now, and no fear of loss of status (whatever that is) will convince me otherwise. It is better to be myrself than to try and be somebody else.If you merely watch production figures to determine that "peak is now", you would have been wrong many times in that past, as many others were. It is not just production figures that you need to be looking at.
If you lose credibility, then you have lost all power to influence people who disagree with you.
So what? I speak my truth and I don't care about missing some golden light at the end of the tunnel because I wasn't able to influence people. There's an element of fear you are expressing that is unfounded. I'm comfortable telling people that I believe oil supplies are going to dwindle and that it is likely billions will starve. I don't care if people think I'm kooky. I have no belief that I will help facilitate some benevolent government action to save the day by carefully couching my words. Ridiculous thought.
That's quite a different position than "peak is now."
I have no belief that I will help facilitate some benevolent government action to save the day by carefully couching my words.
Benevolent government action is not what is needed. Getting tough and making hard decisions is what is needed. It becomes much harder to convince the government that action is needed if your viewpoint has been marginalized because you have lost credibility. I have no interest in being marginalized. And disputing the "peak is now" position by pointing out that we can't make that determination yet is not couching words. It is truth.
That's quite a different position than "peak is now."
No it isn't. There's plenty of fossil fuels available in the Western world, even though crude production has fallen.
It becomes much harder to convince the government that action is needed if your viewpoint has been marginalized because you have lost credibility.
I have no intention of convincing the government or anyone else.
I have no interest in being marginalized.
By self-restraint, you are marginalizing yourself. I'm not suggesting anyone standing on a streetcorner holding a sign that says "The End is Near!" but if you are who you are, then you gotta be yourself.
Creditably is irrelavant. Even if the US gov't publicity announced peak oil, they will bicker for years on what to do. Its already too late anyway. Even if Peak Oil is a decade away it no where near far away to make a transistion. With a US population of 300+ million and global population of over 6.2 billion we are well past overshoot.
Second unless you tell Americans that they are immenent danager today, they simply won't care. There much too focus on spending money and enjoying themselves. Creditably won't help you change their ways. Every day there is a program or article in the news that says Americans aren't saving enough for retirement, yet every day the savings rates goes deeper in the red.
By all means, prove me wrong.
- Half of all oil we'll ever get is gone
- Maximum Production (day, month, year, whatever)
- Using more than we find.
3. Was back in the 80's. 1. Probably lies ahead and will definitely only be clear when we are far down the slope.2. Looks like staying some time in 2005, as the declines are becoming so fast that new production will not compensate.
Still, which one are we talking about? One should define ones terms before one argues about them.
PS. What does MSM mean? An acronym that is new to me has suddenly snuck in.
What it seems to mean is any large media outlet that disagrees with the writer. The same MSM is wise and enlightened when they agree with us.
I find it a tired and meaningless term that - like sheeple, murkins, etc, - is just another way for people to feel smarter than the "others".
It's Ok, you are right NOT to "feel smarter".
Siding with Joe Sixpack and Jane Soccermom will bring you plenty short term, an ugly death later.
Unless perhaps you expect to be among the "last standing men"?
It's not a question of whether the MSM agrees with you or not, it's simply noting that the media generally offers a very shallow overview of every issue (usually accompanied by alarmist or sensationalist headlines), without offering any indepth reporting that might actually educate their viewers.
I personally find the MSM today to be very lacking. It really has nothing to do with feeling smarter than anyone. I'm not sure who exactly I'm supposed to feel smarter than, the anchor? Rather, it's an issue with how they actually go about reporting on the issues.
The media is the media. Is it better than it used to be or worse? The question is subjective and impossible to answer. Media in the past has been worse at times and better at others.
I am poking fun that the habit of creating enemies that is so common here. The media doesn't agree with what you think, so they must be stupid, or more likely paid off. But then when the Chicago Tribune runs a peak oil article, everyone loves them and forgets they are the dreaded MSM.
It is useful to have a broad set of information sources and view each one critically. Some "alternative media" is excellent, but some is utter crap. Half the people cursing the MSM think it is criminally leftist and prefer to hunker down with right wing propaganda. The other half thinks the MSM is far right, or too corporate. They prefer left wing propaganda.
Broadly, I think that demonizing sources of information that disagree with you is not part of a healthy dialogue or learning process.
I don't think the public media is the greatest source of information around. It can be right, wrong, shallow, deep and dozen of other things depending on the day and the source. It is a useful window on the world, but shouldn't be your only one.
That could be from a misunderstanding of Nagorak, I rather think it is deliberate. THIS IS THE WAY TO CONFUSE THE SHEEPLES, you are one with the MSM in this endeavour.
Playing the idiot to steer the rest of your response toward your preferred mumbo-jumbo.
As if you didn't understand that "your elitest interpretation is very incorrect" could as well mean that Nagorak says "pretending that people who despise MSM are elitist is incorrect" .
The whole of his reply lends credence to that interpretation rather than yours, where you say that Nagorak accuses YOU to be an elitist.
Nah! Just an opinion of yours.
I doubt one single article makes the TODders forget about the dreaded MSM, they just rejoyce that by some accident some Peak Oil info leaked to the "masses", still with very little chance to have some impact on the hard core sheeples.
BTW, did you notice what happened to Paul Salopek?
A warning call to him?
Or an "accident" like having his article making it to the MSM?
Yes, this shows, but NOT FROM THE PEAK OIL AWARE (only marginally depending on their political leanings).
Peak Oil aware people despise the MSM for just the reasons Nagorak expounded :
"It's not a question of whether the MSM agrees with you or not, it's simply noting that the media generally offers a very shallow overview of every issue (usually accompanied by alarmist or sensationalist headlines), without offering any indepth reporting that might actually educate their viewers.
I personally find the MSM today to be very lacking. It really has nothing to do with feeling smarter than anyone."
Do you consider yourself a "source of information"?
Blah, blah, blah, totally content free babble.
Thanks for helping to prove my case.
Sure! BWA! HA! HA! HA! (so outrageous that I am running short of appropriate emoticons!)
This is Stratagem XIV, Claim Victory Despite Defeat :
This, which is an impudent trick, is played as follows: When your opponent has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out favourable to the conclusion at which you are aiming, advance the desired conclusion, - although it does not in the least follow, - as though it had been proved, and proclaim it in a tone of triumph. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed. It is akin to the fallacy non causae ut causae.
Pretty sad when I have to read overseas news sites to find out what's really going on. (The whole Jessica Lynch thing is a prime example. It was weeks, even months, before the U.S. MSM reported no what really happened. The BBC and other overseas news sites had the true story shortly after it happened. It was just bizarre, reading the two different versions of events. It was like living a country with government-controlled media or something. No, I don't think our media is controlled by the government. They're controlled by big business, but the results are similar.)
I agree that often we fall into the trap of feeling superior because we "know" about Peak Oil and therefore we convince ourselves (subconsciously) that "we" are smarter/better than the average sheeperson (singular form of sheeple).
But each of us is a sheeperson ... a monkey head ... a follower of the herd ... a crazed irrational animal.
Until you admit to that, you are going nowhere fast.
Why is that that "we", the smart and rational PO'ers go into all these personal tantrums here on TOD? attacking each other? showing off our phallic proxies? flinging monkey dung at each other? forming insider groups and ostracizing newcomers?
We are the monkeys.
We are no different or better than "them".
When I use the term "sheeple", I mean "me" more than anyone else. I am a sheeperson. I do watch TV. I am controlled by MSM. It is only with the occasional visit to TOD that I am shocked out of full engagement with the MATRIX.
... But that won't last long ...
Yes Mr. President.
The 10-1/10+1 number triggers "terror" in my reptile brain.
Yes Mr. President, I will take my shoes off in airports to show humble submission to your alpha male supremecy. Yes Mr. President, I feel "safer" now but not safe enough without your blessed "protection," blessed be your holy name. No Mr. President, I won't pay any protection money to that Tony Soprano fellow. It is all to you. Yours is the supreme protectionism. Katrina people had it coming but the rest of us will not be "left behind". I do believe. I do believe. ... Oh Todo. What has happened? Kansas isn't Kansas anymore. It's an unBrave New World. A world of terror and terror-able people. Auntie Em, I'm scared.
You know I have already admitted I am a monkey head. Do I really have to confess to sheeperson and crazed irrational animal?
We are complex freaks of nature.
Our brains evolved randomly.
1.First we have a brain stem that controls basic functions: breathing, heart beat, etc.
So you see Jack, you and I are wonderfully complex creations of some maniacal design. Confess to it all. It is in your genes and in your destiny. :-)
I don't think what you are saying is wrong as such. Merely overblown. Of course we are animals at the core. We have primal needs, fears and desires. We are also inclided to follow the herd.
However, this of its own does not prove that the entire world is a sheep herding machine, all carefully contrived to manipulate our baser instincts. The herders must be sheep too, or did they somehow rise above it all?
Neither do I think your points prove that we are bound in every moment or every action to be a slave to each of those elements. Sometimes we follow the herd, sometimes it is a subherd or antiherd we are following - or thionk we are following.. Sometimes we are leaders, sometimes followers. Sometime the desire to be antiherd is herd-like.
Of course advertisers and political actors seek to manpulte the media to influence people. Sure many media elements go along. But I don't believe the whole thing - every story, every sentence - is a carefully correographed stage set.
I also think the kneejerk opposition to the MSM and rushing to seek solace in "alternative media" is no less herd behavior. In fact to the degree that people rely only on sources thety agree with they are herdier.
I think people attack the MSM to prove they are not being herded, when if fact all they are proving is that their sheppard is a different manipulator.
This discussion has made me very hungry. I'm going to have to go out and kill some lunch. And if it has to be you, so be it. I hope you understand. I'm an animal you know.
Oh, and one more thing Jack, please wear that sweet red riding hood you so often dress up in.
(just kidding of course ... but then again, as you might know, a kid is an infantile sheep )
Do you actually think that it is simply a COINCIDENCE, despite the statistical improbability, that the big media outlets were falling all over themselves to report the Jack GOM oil cache, yet they have continued to ignore or downplay declines in Cantarell, Ghawar, and elsewhere that overwhelm whatever modest gains may be made in the GOM?
If you are Believer of such Coincidences, then you should never miss a chance to buy those lottery tickets.
If, instead, you understand the argument I just made, then you should try to extrapolate this epiphany to an understanding that a system that never hesitates to use its combined muscle to obfuscate the peak oil issue will not hesitate to do so on other issues.
That said,
MSM stands for Productions-That-Are_PAID-for_by_Big-Business.
Other than perhaps C-SPAN, PBS (maybe no longer) and other charity funded news outlets, all so-called "mainstream" NEWS outlets are actually corporately-sponsored outlets of corporate propaganda.
Do you honestly believe that NBC would truthfully report something bad about their parent, GE?
Do you honestly believe that ABC would truthfully report something bad about its parent company, Disney?
And if BP owned one these "network" news systems, you could be sure that the Purdhoe corrosion problem would be presented to the public as a minor inconvenience which BP scientists and other super-genius people are addressing in the most efficient and expedicious manner possible so therefore don't worry your pretty little heads about that one our deer members of the general public.
We report, you deerside.
This is an open forum.
Its intellectual validity is maintained only when peer review is applied and fine points are hashed out. Otherwise, if we become a bunch of hiny polishers and let each other get away with errors or omissions because we "like" the other person, then we become corrupt.
So please do pick away.
Trust me, I've got much bigger worries in real life than whether somebody on a blog is nitpicking at some of my posts.
I personally find TOD a great read because people here do argue points in a mostly civil way.
Shoot away.
BTW, I never consider myself 100% right. There is always a 99 per cent chance of error --that's Murphy's Law you know. Whatever can be said wrongly, will eventually be said wrongly --especially if uttered by me.
(For mathematicians out there, Murphy's Law is simply a restatement of the Law of Large numbers as applied to engineering practices.)
Sometimes the MSM is great, sometimes terrible. Sometimes alternative media is great sometimes it is terrible. In many cases, I think people reject the MSM because they don't agree and would rather find solace in some anonymous blog, even if all they know about it is that they agree. As I noted above, the right wing and left wing extreme have mirror image MSM rants - they both think it favors the other side.
I realize that this is part of the conspiracy theorists ten commandments and that in even daring to cast doubt on it, I am in effect drawing cartoons of your prophets. But that's why it is so much fun!
there is a new problem: PV
(peak virgins ... Shh, don't tell anyone lest you hurt the cause)
Great cartoon though.
It also means MicroSoft Messenger but I dont think thats relevant here !
Robert, I read something similar every day by people who claim production figures are no indication of the peak. True if you were paying attention only to the falling production numbers and were totally oblivious to why they were falling this would be true. There was the Iran-Iraq war which brought on the tanker wars of the 80's. Then there was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then just a few years ago OPEC cut back on production because the oil price was approaching $10 a barrel.
In other words Robert, there was always a known cause for the world's falling production numbers. This is however the first time there seem to be falling world production numbers while everyone seems to be producing flat out. (Except of course a couple of places where civil strife is preventing some production.)
My point, production figures are now an indication of production capability where in the past they were just an indication of how much oil was deliberately being held off the market.
Ron Patterson
Stuart Staniford and I debated this earlier in the year. I pointed to many locations that were not producing flat out, which is why I argued against the position that the plateau indicates that we are at peak. He added in some of this offline production, and he concluded that yes, in fact if we considered the shut-in production that the curve does turn up. He also noted that many areas are trading crudes at a big discount, which you would expect for areas that aren't producing flat out.
I still know of areas that are shut-in or not producing flat out right now. I also doubt that the Saudis were lying when they said they had extra crude for sale, but no buyers. Their claim would be too easy to dispute by any crude trader purchasing Saudi crude. Add to that the fact that U.S. inventories are very full, and I think their story is credible.
That is not to say that I think peak is 20 years away. If I had to put odds on it, I would say 75% or better chance we peak by 2016. I consider that a crisis. I also think we are going to continue to have problems meeting demand as China and India continue to grow their economies.
Plateau continues, aided by outages...
Well, I lived with the Saudis for five years and I figued out how to tell when they were lying, their lips were moving. Seriously though, exaggeration and hyperbole are simply part of being an Arab. They have been claiming that they have 260 billion barrels of reserves for so long it would become a personal crisis for every Saudi if that could proven incorrect. And if they were actually in decline, and I believe they are, they would no more admit it than they would admit to a failure of character.
They are extremely proud of the fact that they have more reserves than anyone in the world. If they could outproduce Russia today they would be doing it even if they had to sell their oil at half price. They want to be number one but that is no longer possible. So the best they can do is claim that their cut in production is intentional. And anyone who believes that doesn't know beans about Saudi Arabia or Arabs in general.
Saudi Arabia is now producing about 9 million barrels per day. In 2007 or 2008 they will be bringing more production on line but in the meantime they will be declining by about .8 million barrels per day per year. I don't believe they can keep producing at 9 mb/d but I would bet my bottom dollar they will never produce anywhere close to the 9.9 mb/d they produced in 1980, or even the 9.6 mb/d they produced for six months in 2005.
But your idea that crude traders would call their hand on this is just silly. When did you ever hear a crude trader say anything about anyone? Do you actually believe that any major crude buyer would piss Saudi Arabia off by calling them a liar? Get real!
Ron Patterson
It is one thing to exaggerate reserves. Not easy to verify that one way or the other from the outside. It is another matter to say that you have something to sell if you actually can't produce it if a buyer calls.
When did you ever hear a crude trader say anything about anyone?
Umm, every day. I talk to crude traders on a regular basis. If we are looking for crude, and Saudi says they have some for sale, everyone and their dog would know right away that they were lying if they in fact didn't have it. The news wouldn't have to come from a crude trader. Crude traders talk to lots of people. Unless someone can demonstrate that they were lying about this - and nobody has done so - then the very fact that this would be so easy to check out tends to make me believe it was probably a true claim.
"It is one thing to exaggerate reserves. Not easy to verify that one way or the other from the outside. It is another matter to say that you have something to sell if you actually can't produce it if a buyer calls."
It's not so tough to mischieviously say you have boatloads of crud(e) to sell, when you know that refining capacity does not exist. As you pointed out earlier today:
"There have been huge investments into refinery expansions. However, capacity is still pretty tight for the most part. When refineries have to run at 90% plus to meet demand, that is a recipe for supply problems, especially when an incident at a large refinery can knock off 2-3% of the nation's refining capacity."
Is there refining capacity for the stuff the Saudi's are offering? Aren't they planning to build their own crud(e) refineries? Why?
Perhaps I was not clear. By crude trader, I meant a crude trader, not a futures trader. I have traded crude oil futures myself but that would in itself give me absolutely idea whether or not the Saudis were lying.
By a crude trader I meant the people who actually contract those LCCs, people who spend over 100 million for a load of crude oil. When have you talked to one of them Robert? For only they would know if the Saudis offered them a load of crude and they turned it down.
A crude oil futures trader would not know squat and you are aware of that I am sure. Because if you are not then we have a problem sure enough.
NO, if Velaro tried to buy a load of heavy sour crude from Saudi and Saudi said they had no uncontracted oil to sell them. Then later the folks at Valero read that Saudi said they had no takers for their heavy oil, do you think Valero would scream "Liar, Liar"? No, I do not think so.
The Saudis are simply lying about the whole matter. They are producing every drop of oil they can produce.
And it would not be easy to checkout. The Saudis are absolutely secretive about everything. They would do everything possible to keep their secret and would even tell Valero some cock and bull story if they came back and asked for that extra oil.
Ron Patterson
The last time? That would be last Friday. We were discussing a specific batch of crude for my refinery - specifically which one to purchase based on the RCVs. I deal with those guys all the time.
Then later the folks at Valero read that Saudi said they had no takers for their heavy oil, do you think Valero would scream "Liar, Liar"? No, I do not think so.
No, it would not work that way. That's a straw man. The story would be "unnamed sources say...", or "privately, some industry insiders say..."
The Saudis are simply lying about the whole matter. They are producing every drop of oil they can produce.
Yet you have no actual evidence of this. And personally, being a skeptical scientific type, I require a bit more evidence before coming to such a firm conclusion. As it is, they say they have crude. Our traders can confirm that, and it would be simply impossible to keep such a secret under wraps.
The Saudis are absolutely secretive about everything.
Except when they announce publicly that they have crude for sale, but no takers.
However, the quality of their spare production capacity notwithstanding, that doesn't mean they are lying or don't have any spare capacity.
Good point.
How would everyone and their dog know they were lying? How would one check out such a claim? I'm not being facetious, this is one of the many things I know very little about. This strikes me as being like a poker player potentially bluffing. Until the cards are on the table, there isn't any way to know if they hold five aces or a pair of twos.
On the one hand, they have an excellent history of following through. On the other hand, we have legitimate sounding warnings that they may be having trouble, we know that they are ordering large numbers of rigs, and we know that they are cutting sales into a strong market.
They deal with oil traders from around the world on a daily basis. If they said they had crude, they are going to get calls from people needing crude. If they don't have it, word will get around.
But didn't they just do something much like this? Traders said "We need crude, who has more." Saudi's said "We have crude, lots of it, come to us." Traders went to Saudi Arabia and found that the Saudis did have extra crude but it was heavy and sour. Traders said "No, no, we want Arabian Light, not heavy-sour." The Saudi's replied "We have crude, lots of it, but can't find any buyers."
Unless that didn't really happen this past summer (it sure looked like that from the outside), it looks as though the Saudi's feinted and no one really knows what they actually have. All we know is they claim to have plenty of oil but when challenged they produced heavy-sour instead of light-sweet. Not many traders wanted more heavy-sour, so they weren't challenged on their capacity to produce heavy-sour. We don't know if they had more light and didn't want to give it up and we don't know how much heavy-sour they have. Isn't that what happened this summer?
Dat is, if we want to have any credibility.
Eventually, people ignore you.
Peak may or may not be now - but noone can prove it until a good number of years afterwards. Emphasize that we'll have to deal with a peak within the next 20 years, and it COULD be next year (we're running pretty blind), and people listen.
Robert Rapier, You ABSOLUTELY win the day, hands down, and said it with such brevity, (something I am never able to do easily) Great point, so well taken, again
"This is why I urge people not to succumb to the extreme language and to avoid the "peak is now" position. When you take these positions, you set yourself up for the criticisms that we are now seeing. This is a marathon, not a sprint."
The other thing we need to point out....let's just say we forget "peak" per se. We throw it out, clear out of the discussion.
We can still come up with easily a dozen reasons to reduce consumption and engage mitigation NOW.
Global warming and GHG, national security, financial stability and improvement, inprovement in the lives of the poor and middle class, reduction of infrastructure expense in moving, refining and providing wasted fuel, regiional enhancement by keeping more money in the community, reduction of pollutants and toxins other than GHG, leverage for the consumer on price and more consumer power in relation to the energy providers, both private and the national (some hostile to us) providers of oil/gas, on and on.
This message should be foremost: The time to reduce consumption is when the price drops as well as when it rises! This is how we enhance consumer power and security! We have to prove a point: We not only CAN reduce consuption, we WILL reduce consumption.
I gained all new respect for the CERA spokesman Peter Jackson...he is a so called cornucopian, and sees "oil production capacity could grow as much as 25 percent in the next decade."
Then he said, ""The next time I change my car, I will get one that's double the fuel-efficiency," he said."
THAT'S IT!! That is EXACTLY the right way to do it! I don't care if you see oil supply going up and and prices going down, STRETCH IT, SAVE IT, REGAIN THE LEVERAGE!
THIS, FOLKS, SHOULD BE OUR 9-11 PLEDGE: DO NOT GIVE YOUR POWER AND AMERICA'S POWER AWAY. Mr. Jackson, preach cornucopia till the cows come home, but endorse that kind of conservation, and PREACH THAT TOO, and you will be a friend of the cause, even if your wrong on the predictions! :-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Never though this was much of a reliable source anyway....
Maybe someone from TOD should email him (crsmith@worldnetdaily.com) and tell him that, the principle reason there has been very little investment in refineries is due the fact that oil companies weren't inclined to spend a lot of money on new infrastructure in a very probable future scenario of rapidly decreasing productive capacity due to declining reserves.
Note that Smith uses environmentalists as scapegoats. Does he really think that the "radical enviromentalist movement" has enough clout to stymie Big Oil, Big Banking, Big Media and the rest of Big Business?
yeah, I always say the following: "we had reagan and bush, reagan and bush, bush with cheney as the sec. of defense, then 8 years of clinton, then bush and cheney, bush and cheney. In other words for 18 of the last 26 years, we've had an oil man in the White House. You really think somebody like a Bush or Cheney is going to let some pesky environmentalists get in the way of building new refiniries."
who do you think a politician is going to listen to: a bunch of hippies with big dumbass signs and a bunch ofoil industy lobbyists with big fatass checks?
Yeah, right. LMAO.
Like, you know, dude, even Cheney knows enviro-hippies have their strong points.
1.) Except for ELF, they are pacifists so they go along quietly.
2.) They wear unconventional clothing so they are easy to spot and arrest.
3.) Many are permanently disoriented from years of drug experimentation so they have a hard time finding the protest.
4.) When they do show up at a protest, passersby ignore their signs and remark "What are those damn hippies up to now?"
Thank goodness Americans in the era of your youth didn't have the apathy that characterizes later generations. I am an X-gener who is very grateful for the efforts made by folks like yourself who drew the line in the sand. I hope we can rekindle that passion and help steer our Titanic away from the abyss of abject misery and resource wars.
I'd like to see some data on that.
My information was taken from one of Deffeyes' books. He was probably trying to make a broad generalization about the historical and relative level of investment in refineries shrinking.
Oil refiners have been upgrading and expanding their existing refineries for decades. Its simply cheaper and more efficient to improve the existing refineries than build new ones from scratch.
Roger yesterday claimed that many people in the Peak Oil movement claims that we are running out of oil. While there may be many very uninformed nuts out there who really believe we are running out of oil, they, by definition, could not possibly be peak oilers. It would be impossible to be at peak production and out of oil, that is just plain common sense. All peak oilers know that post peak, the amount of oil available each year will decrease each year...forever. Now I know there may be one year or two when oil the oil supply will increase, just as the US production increased for a few years after Prudhoe Bay came on line. But the trend will be downward....forever or until not enough oil is produced to even measure.
What many seem to think is that returning to 1980 oil production levels will mean a 1980 lifestyle. That is, if we will just have to scale back a little and, with the aid of ethanol and biodiesel we will get by just fine. This is what most of us peak oilers deny.
First of all, the decline is not likely to be steady. Most oil exporters will have dramatically increased their domestic production. They will supply their own needs before trying to keep the rest of the world on an even keel. There will develop an enormous difference between the oil available in countries that now export oil and countries that now must import most of their oil.
Second, most of these countries, who now realize the gravity of the situation, will start to husband their oil. They will cut back on production in order to insure stability in their own countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Third, the realization will eventually dawn on the world's markets that all the economies of the world must now shrink instead of grow. Capitalism depends on growth. People invest for growth and no one invests for shrinkage. People will pull their money out of the market because they will correctly see the crash coming. This will just exacerbate the situation and we will have a disastrous world-wide market crash. This will mean lay-offs, unemployment, and an economic disaster far surpassing anything seen in the great depression.
The world's population will have at least doubled since 1980. And since we are already seeing a drop in grain and other food production, this will greatly exacerbate the problem. Dropping oil production will mean that grain and other food production will begin to drop like a rock. There will be food riots all over the world.
And as some have already pointed out, the oil left will be prioritized. That is the military will be first in line, then what is deemed "necessary government agencies" and so on down the line.
And that is the point Roger, and others who seem to think that declining oil production will simply mean a slightly lower lifestyle. Not even close. No, the world as we know it feeds on oil. And as the oil flow is interrupted, and gets a little worse every year, then civilization as we know it will disappear a little each year. Anarchy and resource wars will probably accelerate the situation until the scenario pictured by David Price comes to pass.
Ron Patterson
But I guess that's horseshit too...
With economic growth: Invest $1000 dollars and in a year it'll "grow" to $1200.
With recession: Invest $1000 dollars and in a year it'll be worth $800. Doesn't work, does it?
re: "Cold war..." - Cold? COLD?? Anybody reading the freakin' newspaper these days?? Sheesh...
More interesting discussion of types of growth possible in our post-capitalist society as energy becomes more dear are clearly short-circuited by that kind of slogan.
As for us living in a post-capitalist society, I think that's a bit of a reach. I've heard lots of social critics calling it late capitalism or even late, late capitalism. But, post capitalism? That's a bit much. And what kind of growth do you want to talk about, maybe "sustainable growth?" Talk about your "meme's based on a stack of semantics."
Word play is one thing if its intended to get a point across, but when used to obscure it borders on insincere.
Think about it. In terms of oil strategies for the US in decades hense, we are NOT subject to the whims of a single owner at Standard Oil. We are now subject to th whims of a raft of middle managers at government agencies, and yes oil companies.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Capitalism? Please.
That demonstrates which side is playing the semantic meme game right there.
It all rests on this particular instance of a market economy having a particular, and fragile, linkage to a particular concept of growth.
The key element of capitalism is, well, capitalists. People who make their livings via investment rather than labor.
A market economy is not the same thing as capitalism, ... but I think we live in a semi-regulated, semi-socialist, semi-market economy.
While I somewht agree with the definition of capitalism as a market economy driven by capitalists ... as I said above such a thing sure as heck would not have a Strategic Petroleum Reseve. Instead, it would be left to a Rockefeller descendant.
That's the difference between our current capitalist economy and the steady-state economies of the ancient world. Charging someone interest on a loan was viewed as a grave sin, as bad as murder even. And that is so foreign to our way of thinking we can barely comprehend it.
I think I'll go outside and pick some ripe money off the money tree in my front yard. I have a car payment to make, after all. ;-)
Now, what if you wanted someone else to stake you for that first tree ... what deal would you cut him?
None.
I would do it the same way my grandparents did. Ask a neighbor for a cutting or seeds, and plant them myself.
In a no-growth society, it's very difficult to pay back interest. People don't borrow unless they are desperate. Hence the view that charging interest is evil and exploitative.
The way people used to get a stake for a new venture was through savings. On the old plantations of Hawai`i, people (often united by ethnic group) would pool their money. They'd draw lots, and the winner would get the pot. Some claim credit unions started out that way. Many Mexican immigrants do something similar, only they take regular turns rather than drawing lots. Every week, you put, say, $20 in the pot, and the person whose turn it is gets the whole shebang.
And I think you're dead wrong on that.
Non-agricultural societies - that is, societies where wealth cannot be hoarded - typically use an informal bank of their neighbors' good will. Their only real wealth is food, and they have no way to store it for long periods. The best "investment" of this wealth in your neighbors. If you've got a lot of meat or yams or whatever, distribute your excess to your neighbors. One day, they'll be the ones with the surplus, and they'll reciprocate. But not with interest. If you give them one jar of wine, don't expect to get two in return.
Yes the farmer is expecting a real return on his investment in social capital.
For instance, if 25% of his grain usually spoils per year (ie. 33% inflation) then expecting the gift of grain to be paid back in a year's time would mean he expects a real rate of return of 33% from his investment in his social capital with his neighbour.
he expects a nominal rate of return of 33% from his investment in his social capital. It exactly balances out the "inflation" giving a real rate of return of 0%.
The point is that for capitalism to work you don't need a positive real rate of growth, you just need a positive nominal rate of growth.
Michael Pollan (47 minutes) is available from at: Pollan streaming audio. Lots on corn. Available until about 9/26/2006.
James Howard Kunstler (30 mins, lower fidelity)
Kunstler streaming audio. Available until about 9/19/2006.
Money isn't real. We all just pretend it is.
It is true that the banks which funded the development of the capitalist West are not allowed under Islamic law. However, something like Microsoft most certainly isn't prohibited.
For the reasons that (a) this is not capitalism, and (b) it excludes all sorts of definitions of "growth" (well-being, happiness, knowledge, etc.) which might be possible for centuries.
It isn't even determined that GDP (a narrow definition of "growth") will not find a way to grow with lower energy intensity over the coming decades.
In order for us to have a discussion we need to have some shared vocabulary. You can quibble about the definition of capitalism if you like. Hell, we can quibble about the definition of "is" if you like. But you are attempting to throw out an argument about the role of growth in our economy based on definitions, not on discussions of growth and our economy.
In the end you may be right or wrong (that's not where I'm going with this), but if you want to convince someone that the role of growth in our economy is overstated (or even non-existent), your not going to get there by claiming they're defining things wrong (especially when they were using the words as they are commonly used).
I just said that there were many kinds of growth that they might be possible in market systems for centuries forward.
I also said that it isn't even determined that growth by the GDP measure cannot continue with a lower energy intensity.
What more do you need?
(gone for the rest of the day, best wishes)
No actually, as I drove off to work I shook my head that I can have a conversation with someone and get to a point where I really don't get what they are trying to tell me.
That's probably some communication problem I have ..
It's called selective dumbness, you can cure that anytime, if you "want"...
What other kind of growth is there than the kind when you move from a smaller number to a bigger one, or did I miss something?
2nd kind of growth: every year the same number of cars are sold, but the quality & features get better.
US GDP growth numbers include a big component of growth # 2.
Growth #2 doesn't require growth in energy or resource consumption.
we're at a "growth that doesn't require growth"
the circle is complete
and all hope gone
waiter, I'll have a double
Surprisingly enough, it's a big part of how the US government defines growth. The BLS maintains a basket of goods that it monitors, and if quality goes up (speed on a computer, say) then that's considered a contribution to GDP. If the price goes up but not the quality, that's considered inflation. Finally, of course, if quantities sold go up, that's counted towards GDP as well.
So, you can have growth without growth. Pretty amazing, huh?
Only if the improved quality and features are made of fairy dust. One of the main reasons my 1991 GM Metro gets 42 mpg in the city is that it DOESN'T have "features" like power windows, power steering, remote side mirror controllers. There is no such thing as a free lunch!
How about improved reliability? Quietness, or better handling?
Not everything relates to MPG, and not everything requires energy to run.
"There is no such thing as a free lunch!"
Life is full of free lunches. I always liked Heinlein, but TANSTAAFL just isn't true. The biggest free lunch is, of course, the sun, which runs this little corner pool of reduced entropy.
Well, I suppose we'd have to move on to a younger star, then.
Well, just because it's limited to a few measly billion years doesn't mean it isn't a free lunch.
ummmm - you're kidding about the importance of this, right?
Reminds me of a story by Asimov called "The Last Question"...
Everything which "runs" requires energy, and every lb added/subtracted to a vehicle affects mpg, and every change made requires energy, unless you live in an alternate universe with different thermodynamic laws.
A big reason we're facing an energy crisis is that way too many people believe in free lunches and are ignorant of the basis energy principles of nature.
Yes, it's true, every improvement takes work and energy.
OTOH, it's a very cheap lunch. Several designers work for several months on a design improvement which is used in 100's of thousands of cars: you spend a very small amount of energy to gain a very big improvement: you could spend, say, $1M to develop improvements which sell for $100M over the life of the car, with a E-ROI that's comparable.
"Quietness isn't free, particularly if you add sound proofing material. "
True, but again it can be very cheap. You may eliminate an imbalance in the engine. You may add tiny rubber shock absorbers at connecting points. You may improve aerodynamics, which not only reduce noise, but improve MPG.
"Everything which "runs" requires energy, and every lb added/subtracted to a vehicle affects mpg"
Sure, but these design changes may not change the weight at all, or the energy requirements of the vehicle. If you change the lines of the sheet metal to improve aerodynamics that doesn't require more sheet metal - as it happens, more likely it will reduce the sheet metal, as streamlined designs have fewer sharp angles.
Or a later retirement age...
Retirement from WHICH jobs?
Possible. What's your scenario for depletion?
With respect to jobs, a death spiral of unemployment leading to less consumption, leading to closing trades and industry leading to more unemployment.
I tried to explain that above when I said:
So sure, bigger numbers, but not necessarily in money or GDP.
In short, I think that our capitalistic system, as currently structured, depends upon what we call economic growth. The key question, however, is this: Is it possible to increase sales without growth in energy and other material througputs of the whole system? I think that Amory Lovins has shown that this is possible by maximizing efficiency, conservation, and the return of what would otherwise be waste in the system to be reutilized as inputs.
Ultimately, though, we need a steady state economy, without growth. Whether capitalism as we know it can survive in such a system seems like an open question. Regardless, however, as long as individuals, private firms, and corporations are trading goods and services, and the means of production are owned by these entities, it seems as though capitalism can be deemed to be in existance.
As an aside, if I have a business, and that business continues to return a reasonable rate of return on my capital invested, I can continue that business without growth. However, if I have a corporation, it is more likely that the very existance of that corporation is dependent upon continuous growth or promises thereof to the shareholders.
Today's economy is obsessed with growth because of the consumer society and population increases. But capitalism does not need consumerism to sustain.
Easy example: I have $100,000 and I buy an apartment building. After expenses, rents net $6,000 a year. I make 6% but I don't need any growth (increase in the value of my capital or rents).
Capitalism doesn't need growth to survive at all. A dividend based economy would work. For example, if GE's stock price never went up a dollar, sales never went up a dollar, but they could still pay their dividends they would still bring a return--albeit a smaller one.
Capitalism looks like its growth based since there has been a huge population boom in the last hundred years. If population keeps increasing, then yes we need growth. If population stabilizes then we don't and a dividend economy will provide income from our built up wealth in order to sustain.
There is a difference between growth and capitalism. Imagine a farmer. A farmer could buy a cow and try to breed it to have more cows--growth. Or a farmer could just eat the milk from the cow, and produce one calf to replace the cow to replace the mother once she dies. Both capitalism--one is about growth the other is about getting a return (milk) on investment without growth.
That said, we need a major economic overhaul in view of a shrinking energy supply.
In the contemporary world there is far more to growth than just population. There is the assumed need for increased income and increased expenditures by the individual as well. To ignore this aspect of the growth ethic is to ignore one of the fundamental values of our present economic system (whether you accept that it is capitalist or not).
Also, I said population and consumerism. Consumerism is the basis for the assumed need for increased income and increased expenditure.
The system can be retooled (although I think it unlikely) to operate better in a shrinking energy pie scenario. America's loose debt ways fuel that growth which could be moderated, but sadly will probably be forced by declining energy supply.
For example, if banks required 90% downpayment to own a house how many people would be buying houses? Not many. More people would be sharing existing houses. Same with cars--if you had to buy them cash people could not afford them and therefore would be forced to live close to their job. Or at least only own one. Oil consumption would go down a bunch if people had to buy things cash instead of on credit.
Leveraging debt creates growth because people are afraid to lose what they have (and invested into) and will work to prevent it from being taken away plus appealing to the greed factor of having more than you can truly afford at a given point in time. If you are satisfied with a 500 sq. ft. apartment, no car, no cell phone, no internet, no cable T.V., no student loans, no eating out at restaurants, no vacations, minimal health care, you don't have to work very hard to make enough money to survive in the U.S.
If you cut off American's credit lines a whole bunch of them would be living like that--and therefore using a crap load less oil. Capitalism does not need leveraged debt to exist or even function. So, what I'm saying is we need to cut out growth by restricting credit to help slow the expansion of consumption.
Constant but slow tightening of credit can force people to consume less. Which would be a good idea to start implementing to push a society to Economize, Localize, and Produce.
When you so vociferously argue that the current economic system is not capitalism, what exactly are you defending? Is there some example of pure capitalism out there? Something not residing in idea only? When most people use the word "capitalism" they are using it to refer to our modern economic system. No, its not a perfect fit to the theory, but who really cares. I say "capitalism" to someone, they know the referent. You can argue its not really capitalism all you want. But until you have changed the way most people use the word you are spitting in the wind.
Is the present economic system based entirely on growth? If you ever read my posts you know I agree. Will your plan for dramatic credit tightening work? Theoretically, maybe, but who cares, its not ever going to happen. But cutting credit would not change the growth ethic. Besides, it is not the borrower who gains in the lending process. Ask a bank to require a 90% downpayment and they will go out of business. I've referenced this elsewhere in today's DrumBeat - but Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" addresses this whole cluster of issues better than any other (and its 100 years old!).
I really do believe we are in big trouble but I like to hang on to some hope. I understand that growth = Capitalism is the way its operating now and how most look at it. I just want to point out that the system COULD operate differently and handle PO better (but it wouldn't make it tons easier).
I believe there are tools we could use to make this better than it will probably be, but since there are tools there it gives me some hope we can save ourselves from driving off a cliff. Volker style interest rates would move us from spending to saving and slow consumption a bunch. If we were only so lucky.
Putting it into historical perspective, think of a lord and peasants. If you have say, 100 acres, which can support say 200 people comfortably if the peasants and lord only reproduce at a stable replacement rate then you would have sufficient land to support the population and therefore you would need no growth.
However, that doesn't make it capitalistic. The lord owns all of the capital (land) and exploits the peasants by taking a small share from each. So the lord gets to live extremely comfortably, the peasants suffer--but survive.
Growth capitalism would be the lord organizing the peasants and conquering neighboring land so the peasants could have more kids and the lord more wealth.
There is a difference. One is unsustainable, the other is sustainable but cruel.
Another example: Someone decides he/she could make a lot of money setting up a company to make underwear. They start out privately held, essentially a large mom-n-pop company, in say, Massechusetts. They make a lot of undies, and since demand is good they add more buildings and make more undies each year. They decide to go public and issue stock. To do this they become a corporation. Now, the company founder still holds onto the majority of stock - they're no longer an owner, they're the majority stockholder which is like an owner but not the same. The corporation now has a CEO and CFO, chief executive and financial officers. Now, there are many other owners of the company's stock, counting on that stock to be worth more over time. The purpose of the CEO and CFO are to do things that make the company worth more. If that involves Wal-Mart type treatment of employees, so be it - they're obligated to do what it takes to make the company worth more. The obvious next choice is to move the manufacturing operations to China and use slave labor. (Although people never think about the wonderful prison-labor inside the US, I guess most have not seen the glossy brochures and catalogs extolling this fine resource.) Now, this company has good undie designers by now, and they're smart enough not to use that itchy thread, so they're really making a lot of undies by now. They need to Grow. Or. Die. so they're doing Nike type things, moving into an impoverished part of the third world, wrecking its farming or fishing industry, then giving its now starving residents a choice: Starve or learn to make undies. And back in the US and other affluent parts of the world, the stockholders are very happy. They drive the SUV to the arboretum to see the "rainforest" exhibit.... (one each of "rainforest" species, in a small clump....).
Now, I might be buying scope probes low and selling high, but I'm not doing what the undie factory is doing - in fact I lack the ambition to hire any employees, and have a real aversion to doing more work than I need to. I'm sure as hell not about to form a corporation and issue stock. My understanding is that Marxist theorists tussled with this also, is the small shopkeeper a member of the evil capitalist class? Is the door to door brush salesman or the guy at a local flea market selling bags of nuts and bolts? They finally had to conclude, No. These people are in reality providing a service, they're service workers. Their service is in distributing the products, and in fact they put quite a lot of labor into this, unlike the capitalists and their stock system who generally only pick up a phone. Whew! This is probably why I work something like 14 hours a day while the capitalists I know of are off yachting across the ocean and building big houses etc.
About the evil of interest, Leanan is as usual dead right - it does not exist in hunter-gatherer societies and is considered evil on a very deep level. Simple farming societies tend to have "exchange-of-favors" economies with careful, even written down, accounting. Hunter-gatherer socities don't even have that, they have gift economies with no careful accounting at all. One person, a bad hunter, may never, and never be able, to pay back all the food and favors they get, but they'll get them anyway. They may enjoy less social esteem than the great hunter but they'll always be fed. Farley Mowat talks about this in detail in his books about the Inuit he lived with. Other writers have observed this also - there's sharing of food, sharing of burdens, just as any small group of people naturally does.
You're talking to people who will question that the sky is really blue
If someone perceives it as only natural to get a yearly $6000 dollar return on $100.000, till debt do us part, and cannot link that to growth, interest, capitalism or plain raping their own ecosystem, that is likely because they think it is "natural". Good luck convincing them it is not. Hey, a tree grows, so I have proved their is growth without capitalism!!
Down the line, their argument is that you can have growth without growth.
I was just told on the phone that there is a wide discussion in Europe about how to let Muslims, who are not allowed to pay interest, borrow money in the West. People can't relate to that, they think interest is "natural". And banks would like to keep it that way. They would also like more customers, but not if they don't pay interest.
All you sweet people, without growth our banking system will collapse. What would it live on? Still it doesn't produce anything of value. It produces growth. And waste.
Yes. That was discussed on in the article I posted about the new UAE oil bourse:
Yes, that is hard to grasp in our neck of the woods, ain't it.
I just finished a review for a magazine of a book named "Satanic Purses" (it's up for worst title of the year, I'm sure), which claims that the whole terrorist thing is overblown, Osama was never very rich etc.
Anyway, the writer talks a lot about the money system, few countries have income tax in the Middle East. Interesting when you realize that "we" went after the charities big time, accusations of cash for weapons, while in reality many an orphanage now lacks donations because these charities are closed.
The Catholic church shook off the usury ban in the Renaissance (the Medici's were very rich bankers, and popes, nudge wink), the Jews at one point were allowed to charge interest to Gentiles, since they were banned from all normal jobs in Europe, and saw no other way of surviving. Then William of Orange sold the right to print money to Willaim Patterson of the Bank of England in 1698 etc.
Good story. But yes, the ban on usury is very much alive in the Arab world.
"it is my opinion that money has value, and time has value, and so anyone who "lets" money for time will incur a cost. i believe societies around the world have devised different mechanims to pay that cost (and associated risk!).".
In my opinion the whole argument about "capitalists" being people who collect "interest" is founded on an insufficiently fuzzy view of money.
Note:
Someone who lets money, as a silent partner, and later collects return (growth!!!) based on his pecentage interest (and of course the outcome of the venture), is a capitalist.
http://cief.wordpress.com/2006/03/
The renters of course. The renters get it from their income of course. Their income is from their jobs of course. Their jobs are part of the current growth capitalistic system of course. That's a silly question--I said in my post that the current economic system is directed to growth NOT income.
The point is there is a difference between income and growth. You can make enough income to sustain yourself without having to have growth. As Leanan points out--debt with interest vs. ownership with income. Debt with interest requires growth. Ownership with income does not.
If I lend you a cow who produces 2 gallons of milk per week and I charge you interest of 1 gallon of milk for the right to use my cow and you need 1 gallon of milk to survive you are just breaking even and never on the way to owning the cow. If you now have a child and you need another 0.5 gallons of milk you need growth (reproduction) of that cow for survival so you must now borrow another cow.
If you purchase a cow who produces 2 gallons of milk per week and you eat 1 gallon you have 1 gallon of surplus to sell. If you have a child you can still support them and have a little left over to sell. You don't need more cows and you've made enough to care for your replacement until you die.
I hope you are now getting my point.
Where does the cow come from, the grass it eats, the calfs it blurbs out?
Out of nowhere? How fast does the grass grow? Let's say fast enough for 10 cows.
What happens when you add number 11? That, buddy, is the essence of growth.
What jobs do the renters have? Raping and pillaging something!!!
Now you know where your rent comes from.
As I said earlier, $6000 for a $100.000 house is insane, if it remains standing for more than 16 years.
Nothing comes from nothing.
You don't have to make personal attacks. Of course something doesn't come from nothing. The grass comes from the soil and the sun.
In reading John Seymour's the Self-Sufficient Life he goes into minute details about how this all occurs. The motto he uses that everything you take from the land must be returned. The cow's poo will be returned to the land. Your poo and your child's poo will be returned to the land. Your body will be returned to the land after your death. Milk you sell can be exchanged for other useful biodegradeable materials. John Seymour owns his animals and his land.
2nd law of thermo will eventually win, but in the meantime we have a lot of energy coming from the sun. Again, my point is the current capitalistic (ownership) system is unsustainable requiring increasing growth on a finite resource background. It will collapse or have to change at least--the only question is when. But income based capitalism (i.e. taking income (or capital) and returning waste (or capital)) can be sustainable. John Seymour takes income (eggs, milk, harvest) to live and then returns this income (poo, compost, ash) to keep his capital at equilibrium.
If the inputs to the system start to decrease, the growth of GDP, and the economic model that most of the world operates on collapses. With the size and complexity of the system, a relatively small disturbance could collapse the entire system.
If you look at the US, we have survived the last 20 years because all the countries of the world have pretended to treat the dollar as a raw input to the system, and treat our continuous increases in the supply of dollars as something of value. If they stop pretending, we will very, very, quickly realize that our production of true inputs to the system are way to small to support even close to our current level of consumption and growth. If you use oil production as a measure of input production to the system, then our GDP should be about 20-25% of current levels. If you use total energy as a measuring stick, our GDP probably drops to 50-60% of current levels.
At some point, the dollar will collapse, and the US standard of living will also collapse
I said the current economic system needs a major (and unlikely to happen) overhaul--I was just debunking the statement that capitalism needs growth. It doesn't except to supply an increasing population.
Capitalism only means private ownership of property. Rights in the property are given a heirarchy such as landlord vs. tenant. Basically who gets the larger share of the pie. Growth is something different. Growth is about making the pie bigger.
People do need an ever increasing source of income under our current economic system, but it doesn't have to be that way. A business, farm animal, plot of land can produce a steady return sufficient to supply needs without having to grow (increase sales, reproduce the animal, increase land holdings). As many have pointed out here, there is a lot of crap we have that we don't need, but sadly without increasing our purchasing of that crap the current growth-based system implodes.
The Depression is the perfect example. The amount of buildings, people, raw materials, livestock, food (well excluding the Dust Bowl), were the same. Nothing was really different except the current monetary system imploded. And it caused a lot of pain. And it looks like were headed that way again. And it looks like it will probably be worse.
You make a good point about POPULATION GROWTH as one of the main drivers for growth in our economy.
In a stable population this variable would be eliminated.
Someone else touched on the idea of INFLATION feeding into growth. IMO, our hyper-fiat money system and its associated fractional reserve banking (as the fraction quickly approaches zero) is a KEY COMPONENT of the growth paradigm. Fractional reserve banking as practiced today is the root source of an endless parade of economic bubbles with booms and busts coming in waves that are picking up amplitude and frequency. At this point, the journey down from boom to bust is becoming steeper and faster - perhaps not unlike the depletion of fossil fuels.
BTW, for a fascinating look at the corruption and cronyism behind the creation of the Federal Reserve read the book The Creature from Jekyll Island.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm
With PO we aren't talking about a steady state economy we are talking about a declining economy:
As energy prices climb and become rationed, your net income from this apt. building will decline and eventually go negative. As the prices of costs to maintain your building you will pass those costs on, just like every business. But wages will not be able to keep up with rising costs. Consumers will cut back spending and business will sell less goods and services and business will downsize to the decreased demand. Some workers will not be able to find jobs as unemployment climbs and you will need to evict tenants that can no longer pay (if you can)
>Today's economy is obsessed with growth because of the consumer society and population increases. But capitalism does not need consumerism to sustain.
Perhaps, but without growth to maintain the ever increasing population, the standard of living must decline. Increasing population coupled with declining resources spells disaster. In the end, its modern civilization and quality of life that counts.
But, for a lot of rates of oil depletion, the fear that the overall economy will decline far, or forever, may be unjustified.
FWIW, I think it is wrong to make a prediction now, in 2006, based on any single depletion rate. We don't know. We should be up front about that.
Even a shallow decline has significant economic ramifications. For instance what happened to the US economy after 1971 (excluding the 1973 Oil embargo). How well was the US economy during the 1970s? Stagflation.
It will be even worse this round since there are a lot more heavy players on the global that want oil and we are deep in debt. America is no longer the land of the free, it the land of the indebted.
>FWIW, I think it is wrong to make a prediction now, in 2006, based on any single depletion rate. We don't know. We should be up front about that.
Perhaps, but there are clear warning signs reading "Danger ahead". The sign doesn't say how far ahead the danger is but it would be in your best interest to heed its warning. You can either begin to make preparations now and hope for the best or continue to ignore them. Its up to you.
>You've made several posts today that imply a very steep decline in oil production. I'll accept that for very steep declines these fears are justified.
- 50% of global oil production comes from the dozen largest fields, and all of them are using water injection or some other advance recovery techniques to maintain production, some for decades. Since when in the last 10 years did we start developing an additional 42 mmb/d production to replace these fields? Do you think will find 42 mmb/d of new production tommorow, next month, next year, in the next 10 years? You're betting on that these senior fields will continue to produce multiple mmb/d for decades to come.
- We have solid evidence that three these fields (North Sea, Cantarell & Burgan) are experience significant production declines, and that the declines are much more steeper than anyone had predicted. We also have that unverfied claims that production in Ghawar is also declining.
- The TOD partipants that are or were directly involved in conventional production say we have have a problem and the declines will be significant.
- All of the major protential providences except for Antarica have be well explored. All of the easy finds have been discovered and develop. Virtual all new projects are secondary fields discovery decades ago but were never developed because they were deemed too small to be economical.
- We have widespread nationization of Oil and gas assets, Venzuela, Bolivia, Chad, Russia, etc. Why do you think all these nations are doing this?
What other prove do you need:You been diagnosed with a life threating but operable form of cancer. Do you continue to wait until you get severe symptoms before getting the operation, because its not serious enough to be concerned with yet? "But Doctor I feel fine!"
Hopefully he is not that clever as to figure out that each of his "diffuse" comments is an opportunity for us to display counter arguments.
How could I answer that without being flogged and banned for "tracking someone"?
Care to clarify this?
If there is at least a strong minority for this at TOD and no veto from the editors I may try, for you also and a few others (no guarantee of results however).
No, there is NOTHING personal in those attacks, I am not attacking the individuals but their JOBS!
I don't enjoy that.
Too bad, I specially apologize for your displeasure, but given you are not my only audience I will not comply to your request.
Where do you see us in 100 years. All dead? Most of us dead and the rest living on farms? Once again, if you see us going straight off the cliff and then down till we hit the rocks at the bottom, why are you even talking about capitalism? Such statements have nothing to do with capitalism at all, but rather the idea that energy is going to run out rapidly and everything will collapse. Capitalism is just collateral damage in your scenario.
However, the truth is, assuming humans survive and reach a new equilibrium, renewed growth is probably in the cards at some point in the future. Our growth in the first place is not because of oil as some like to claim, it's because of us learning how to use oil (as well as coal and other sources of energy). The idea that we're going to be helpless when oil starts running out is not giving us enough credit. We don't necessarily even have to hit rock bottom before returning to growth either.
There are other sources of energy out there besides oil. If there wasn't, I guess we'd be pretty screwed. As it is, we're in for a bumpy ride. But assuming there can be no replacement for oil, nor that we can ever reach a new equilibrium point even if we do suffer from negative growth is ridiculous. I still don't think your argument has much to do with capitalism at all.
I disagree. I do not think growth is inevitable. I think we'll be held in check by Malthusian forces.
What I think is most likely to happen: a return to feudalism.
What I want to happen: we transition to sustainability while maintaining a fairly egalitarian society (as described in Diamond's Collapse). I don't think it's likely, alas, but it's what I hope for.
We should also remember that human history is at least 100,000 years long and that these massively complex surplus extraction based "civilization" modes of societal organization are only about 5,000 years old. We tend to see civilization as an improvement, but that is from our perspective within the civilization. Who are we to say that the quality of life (however that may have been defined in those past societies) wasn't better than what we have, from their perspective?
On points 1-5, they are certainly concerns, but there is also certainly not a TOD endorsed official rate of global depletion.
And I still have Stuar Staniford as a reference on a slow rate of decline (though I always lose the "slow squeeze" link).
So sure, prepare for the range of possible futures, that's what brains were built for.
... I do wait for the new Congressional accountabilty office report (November?) with interest.
Will there ever be a "peak information?"
In an economy where information is already bought and sold, that implies one kind of growth is possible, IMO.
We are already well past "peak information" but it works in reverse of other peaks, there is TOO MUCH information for anyone to handle.
It could also be called "peak brain" of "peak NSA" of "peak TIA".
and note that "growth" even by the oil=GDP fallacy only stops when we "run out of oil!!"
I thought we just said no one suggested that we were running out of oil!!!
At some future very low production, when all the efficiency moves have been tried, and all the non-critical uses have been discarded ... then at that point we better hope that solar/wind is figured out.
When is that though? A century? To really bottom out?
The market has exploited cheap oil to grow GDP, no doubt.
The interesting question is how the market (and non-market players in our societies) will respond to expensive oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
And someone (I can't remember at the moment, sorry) once said: Only economists and madmen believe that infinite growth is possible in a finite world.
Professor Max-Neef
That is Capitalism, and the assertion that Capitalism requires real economic growth of the entire economy IS horseshit.
If you disagree with someone's argument, point out the errors in the argument. Simply babbling words like "horse-shit" is the mark of a fool who does not know how to make an argument.
However:
Capital is what is left over after the basic needs of society, or the individual, have been satisfied. Capitalism is the investment of this capital for profit. Profit, by definition, means the growth of that capital. Capitalism without growth would not be capitalism at all. If you invest and lose money, that is a failed attempt at capitalism, not capitalism.
Even the local storekeeper is a capitalists. He invests in his store in hope of making a profit, a profit with which to feed himself and his family. Again "profit" by definition means the growth of the original capital.
Capitalism depends on growth. Either refute that argument babble or admit you simply cannot do so. Calling an argument horse-shit is not an argument.
Ron Patterson
It seems that the SCALE of free market capitalism is critical to whether the system becomes driven by a growth paradigm.
Of course, we don't have a true free market capitalist system in the U.S. The consolidation of corporate power into monopolies and oligolies with extension of power into the political sphere has transformed the business and govt sector into a fascist cooperative. The dominant mindset for this group is how to increase profits and manage emerging crises.
Most definitely. Just as Islam permits commerce but does not allow usury.
Many US States have usury statues.
Many Islamic nations allow "capitalists" to become silent partners.
It is only relatively recently that "usury" was re-defined to mean punitive interest rates. The traditional meaning of "usury" is charging any interest at all. It was widely prohibited in the ancient world, and the reasons for this should be of intense interest to any peak oiler.
My real point is that we lose sight of the forest when we concentrate on tree definition. I won't belabor the point because I think that would be impolite, uncivil, but ...
I really think the Islamic silent parnership thing shows strong parallels with "capitalism" as you define it, at least so far as people (the idle rich?) commiting their money to ventures in expectation of future growth.
The robber barons of the last century, through stock ownership (another increasingly regulated market mechanism) became active or silent parners, and shared upside and downside risk.
Those robber barrons did not merely loan out money, that was not what made them Capitalists.
I agree, but I see that as an example of the old traditions adapting to a new order. It doesn't tell us anything about what will happen with the new order becomes the old order.
Re. the future and predictions ... <insert Yogi Berra qoute>
I'll bite. Capitalism, as practiced in the United States, survived the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a period with substantial bouts of recession and deflation. If capitalism depends on growth, we should have expected it to disappear during the Great Depression, and it didn't. Can you find a credible historian that says that capitalism ended in the US during the Depression?
I think what people mean to say is that without sufficient growth, we will eventually end up with so much civil unrest that capitalism in the US will eventually be ended. Using that argument, we could say that the Great Depression wasn't deep enough or long enough to get rid of capitalism. Then people arguing that Peak Oil will spell the end of capitalism are saying that Oil Peaking will cause such a deep and long crisis, deeper or longer than the Great Depression, that capitalism will eventually be thrown out. (Note that Don's story, that Oil CEO linked to yesterday, is such a scenario.)
I would say that that is certainly possible, but I don't see any evidence that it is certain. My crystal ball doesn't look that far into the future. (It keeps coming up with "Reply hazy - try again" or "Outlook not so good".)
As it was, some feared the U.S. would collapse.
The first recession was 2 1/2 years and involved a 42% contraction in GNP. GNP didn't catch up with its former level for over a decade. It still doesn't look to me like lack of growth = end of capitalism. It's still certainly possible that lack of growth, if very significant and/or very long, could result in capitalism being thrown out, but the Great Depression wasn't enough to do it.
It seems too glib to say that capitalism can't exist without growth. OTOH, that doesn't mean that capitalism will necessarily survive oil peaking. IMHO it depends on how deep and long the economic deprivations are.
Well, some on the right claim it did. ;-)
While others say the Great Depression represents a failure of capitalism.
But I don't think anyone here is making that argument. Of course we have periods of slow or even negative growth. And capitalism has survived them. That doesn't mean it would survive permanent lack of growth.
That's like arguing that because the '70s oil crisis wasn't that bad, peak oil won't be, either.
OTOH, if the recessions turn out to be 40% drop, followed by 10% gain, followed by 40% drop, ad infinitum (or nauseum), then I would expect enough people to get ticked and go after the rich with pitchforks. That would be much worse than the Depression or the 70s. However, as I said below to Darwinian's post, I expect it would be the civil unrest that would do in capitalism, not the lack of growth.
I really would be interested in a definition that includes usury. I've always thought that Jesus was upset over the equivalent of loan sharks (or option ARM brokers). Of course, one of my favorite parables is that a rich man can get into heaven as easily as a camel can fit through the eye of a needle. I.e. Jesus didn't care for the rich or those who mistreated the poor.
To kjm, Leanan et al: Why would you expect pitchforks, masses in the streets and all that 19th century theater? The masses drank the Kool-Aid. They will only be disoriented. Who would lead them to the streets? What streets? Maybe to the malls?
Who says we're expecting that? I'm not.
When I say capitalism won't survive, I don't mean because of civil unrest. I mean it will be a systemic failure. It simply won't work any more, so people will stop doing it.
Errors occur when reading a long thread quickly.
is the smartest comment on the thread, when it says we nearly came to revolution, but civil unrest won't happen? I'm not sure how to connect those dots.
Last time, it would have been the union leaders who led the people into the streets. Next time, it might be the military. This Library of Congress page on the Great Depression points out "By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the nation." There was also the Bonus March.
Your point about people being disoriented is a good one though, and the government putting down the Bonus March probably helped keep people docile. If the government maintains some semblance of order, so that people go quietly, that would make preparations a bit easier.
Now people go into the streets only to shop.
fleams comment is also good because it broaches the subject of power relations, rather than fixating on economic abstraction. And because instead of positing some notion of how capitalism goes on anyway when growth stutters he puts it plainly that capitalism is mutable and history is made, not handed down by the Laws of Econ 101. And he said it better than I did.
Another clue which is either known or speculation, I haven't had the time to investigate the claim, is that the U.S. military had broken the Japanese codes and knew they were planning to strike Pearl Harbor. Supposedly, the military, expecting the attack, sent its most advanced ships out to sea and away from the harbor in order to protect critically needed ships.
Google Northwoods document, the plan proposed by a general in JFK's admin to use the U.S. military to attack U.S. targets and blame Cubans in order to galvanize the American public into supporting an invasion of Cuba. This type of behavior and mindset makes the Pearl Harbor attack advance knowlege accusation seem plausible.
Just how far down the rabbit hole to you want to go?
Another way of saying it is that we kept our values until those values were perceived to fail, and then found ourselves some new values.
The "capitalism" that people deride today was derided pre-depresion as "communism."
Now, again to move on beyond this needless semantics ... the interesting question is what kind of values we will perceive to fail in a hypothetical steep oil production decline ... and what we will do about it.
Another healthy dollop of socialism does not seem out of the question to me. Or at least central planning to the extent of rationing and mandate.
How nice!
Care to elaborate WHY this "does not seem out of the question" to you?
Or at least central planning to the extent of rationing and mandate.
Do you mean National Socialistic Central Planning?
America has examples of trying some pretty bad things though (civil war) before finding something that works.
I guess my native optimism (and/or caffiene supply) prevent me from going down that dark a path for peak oil.
Fine for you, a gut feeling but not an argument, don't pretend that to pass for one.
I did submit a no-growth ARGUMENT which you did not answered except by making apologies about your "good reserve of uncertainty", feelings again not arguments.
Moo, moo moo moo moo moo, cock-a doodle-doo !!! (© oilmanbob)
Everybody and his dog in the troll crowd has to resort to the last ditch stratagem, Claim Victory Despite Defeat :
This, which is an impudent trick, is played as follows: When your opponent has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out favourable to the conclusion at which you are aiming, advance the desired conclusion, - although it does not in the least follow, - as though it had been proved, and proclaim it in a tone of triumph. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed. It is akin to the fallacy non causae ut causae.
You have to EXPLAIN what is fuzzy beside your own brain.
I reproduce the argument here, which applies to ANY finite ressource with an associated cost of obtention :
- You keep growing and try at any time to cherry pick the BEST of every FINITE ressource or opportunity, for energy, metallic ore, arable land, clean water, you name it...
- You find out as time goes by that only the POOREST and MOST EXPENSIVE ressources are left.
- You don't switch to ALL RENEWABLE ressources.
- You DIE because though "something" is left of every ressource it costs MORE to gather than the value you can reclaim from it, EROEI < 1, that is, THE MORE YOU TOIL THE MORE YOU LOSE.
This is ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC, not a "gut call".Do I care if metallic ore runs out someday? My concern might vary with things like rates of current-use recycling, possible recovery of old metals (landfills, etc.), and the development of replacements.
Twenty years ago I bought a Vitus framed steel Peugeot road bike. Now I'm considering a carbon framed Fuji Team. What's the minimum amount of metal we'll need, a century from now, to build a bicycle? Does anyone know?
Similarly land can be made arable, or unmade, as the case may be.
Anyway, if you move from those far-future generalities about no more metals or arable land ... what are you going to do? Do you have math for how soon this is going to hit?
Or is it your gut, or your gut with world class generalizations like global-level complexity, or global-level declining returns?
My logic is just as meaningful as it is unassailable while YOUR logic keeps messing around clear facts in order to deny some evidences, for instance let me make a "bare bone" analysis of your ongoing mumbo-jumbo :
Do I care if metallic ore runs out someday? My concern might vary with things like rates of current-use recycling, possible recovery of old metals (landfills, etc.), and the development of replacements.
Of course your concern might vary if you try to model all the various rates of use, recycling, unexpected new ore discoveries, etc... THAT'S NOT THE WAY TO PLAN FOR THIS.
-
Saying my concern might vary means you don't really have a long term perspective, let's hog the ressources while we still can since we cannot predict EXACTLY when we will hit the wall.
- Not being able to compute an exact date for the shortage of this or that ressource does not mean that PLAIN EXTRAPOLATIONS of current consumption rates aren't giving us DIRE WARNINGS already.
- Assuming no "miracles" how do we plan for a definite ressource shortage of ANY SORT (beside energy and renewables), recycling of course!
- Since, assuming as of today many billions of humans (Population is the Problem), almost EVERY finite valuable ressource will be exhausted within a few dozens to a very few hundred years we better start THINKING NOW about how we manage NO-GROWTH.
Twenty years ago I bought a Vitus framed steel Peugeot road bike. Now I'm considering a carbon framed Fuji Team. What's the minimum amount of metal we'll need, a century from now, to build a bicycle? Does anyone know?Nitpicking about, say, a 30 years limit date versus a 50 years one does NOT hint at any kind of solution.
You keep hammering, we WILL SEE, may be a replacement, may be a windfall, may be, may be, may be...
Isn't this a "gut call"?
To paraphrase you :
Do you have math for how the windfall/replacement is going to happen?
But what does this means?
Since the very moment recycling would have entirely substituted for new mining for reason of unaffordable ROI of mining (hopefully assuming the ROI of recycling will not be so dire as to prevent reuse of the recycled materials for the same purposes as the genuine source), then the total available amount of this ressource WILL NOT GROW anymore!
It will even slowly decrease because there will be losses in the recycling.
It follows that, for this ressource at least, we will have to be content with a NO-GROWTH policy.
Does "anyone" expect a LOWER WORLDWIDE CONSUMPTION of metals with population growth and economic growth?
How many billions bikes "a century from now"?
Not to speak of any other uses of metals.
You never balk at ANY KIND OF CRAP!
We really need a mendacity index.
Similarly land can be made arable, or unmade, as the case may be.
Unmade, yes, easily in a few dozen years.
However to make arable land it rather take centuries or millenias AND favorable climate conditions.
Never seen any mention of Global Warming at TOD?
We are NOT living on the same time scale as geological/biological selection process, I already argued about that with another bastard.
Anyway, if you move from those far-future generalities about no more metals or arable land ... what are you going to do?
Wait for the lemmings to fall off the cliff and scrap any crumbs left.
Because even assuming instant no-growth tomorrow we are already in overshoot.
What are YOU going to do?
Do you have math for how soon this is going to hit?
Do you have math for YOUR optimistic suggestions?
Don't forget to do your homework if you ever answer my question above: "What are YOU going to do?"
Or is it your gut, or your gut with world class generalizations like global-level complexity, or global-level declining returns?
You are the pot calling the kettle black with your "gut optimism".
As I already emphasized I am only relying on ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC.
The declining returns need no "gut" nor "world class generalizations" they ARE EXPLAINED in the posting you just replied to.
As final note and for my personal satisfaction I want to emphasize again that you are not an idiot but REALLY a piece of shit because you know perfectly well what you are doing.
Oh, I quite agree. But capitalism didn't fail, did it? FDR co-opted enough of the positions of the labor leaders and retained capitalism. As Leanan pointed out conservatives would say he killed it to save it. I have no idea how close the country came to ending our experiment with capitalism, and I really doubt anyone else knows.
I think oldhippie put it pretty concisely here, when he said that "Capitalism does not necessarily die when growth stops. It does wish like hell growth would return. In the meantime it just f** everyone a bit harder and tries to guard against abominations like the New Deal."
Same as the old boss ..."
Tater dude,
You've been inhaling too deeply from your econo professor's hooka pipe.
Let's try a similar statement:
RecessionsExtinction-level meteor strikes are good. They reallocate resources that were once wasted which is a function of thefree marketsRandomness of Nature. The reallocation of these resources into positive investments creates the next expansion ofthe economynew life forms.Good for WHAT?
Good for WHOM?
Everybody forgets this, EVERYTIME, about ANY good/bad dilemma.
Neither capitalism nor investment for profit disappeared during the great depression. This article explains the nature of investments during the great depression.
It is extremely naïve to assume investment for growth disappeared during the great depression. There were a great many people with capital during the great depression, and most of them invested it wisely.
But many businesses did go bankrupt during the great depression. And if had continued long enough, as the depression that will be brought on by the consequences of peak oil will, most all businesses would have gone bankrupt.
Ron Patterson
Whew, glad I didn't make that assumption. Did someone assume that? I missed it. Can we avoid the character attacks?
Yes, many businesses did go bankrupt during the Great Depression, and many are going bankrupt every year now, and many more will go bankrupt in future recessions, including those precipitated by oil peaking. As I said above, if the deprivation reaches a sufficient level, and that level would no doubt be preceded by significant numbers of bankruptcies, then there would be enough of an uprising to throw out capitalism.
However, that's not the same as saying that capitalism requires growth. As far as I can tell, capitalism can survive even prolonged and severe recession, as long as enough people believe it's a better economic system than the alternatives. It isn't the growth that capitalism needs, it's the common acceptance. Capitalism means that someone owns the means of production and the goods are exchanged in more-or-less free markets. To throw it out you either have to have enough people conclude that the means of production should be taken away from the owners or that goods should be exchanged some other way than free markets.
IMHO, what people really mean when they say "capitalism must have growth to survive" is that without growth, the masses will revolt and overthrow the capitalists. Call it Petro-Marxism, in a non-pejorative sense. It may well happen. It seems as though it will take more than Depression-level deprivation to do it, though.
I don't think that definition is particularly useful. It means just about every society more complex than hunter-gatherers has been capitalist.
Capitalism and growth are not the same thing (remember the Soviets). Making that link leads away from the point, which is simply that perpetual growth cannot continue perpetually. Capitalism is growth-based, but growth is not capitalism.
Also, the Great Depression is a lousy example, that only diverts attention (almost as much as bringing up increasing happiness, though that one is in a category of its own when it comes to not-clear-on-the-concept).
The fact that the Great Depression didn't last forever does in no way negate the argument that continuing growth must necessarily end (unless the earth is, after all, flat).
You could argue the exact opposite: all the people that had their money taken away from them needed to rape the ecosystem all the more just to meet their minimum needs. (and the top layer got extremely rich, it was one big grab)
If you must bring up the Great Depression, there is one big difference. As Hubbert noted, even though the economy collapsed, there were abundant resources available. The fact that that is no longer the case, is the very reason that these discussions pop up on a site about resource decline.
Now take a good look around you in the US today.
Or "Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are owned mostly privately, and capital is invested in the production, distribution and other trade of goods and services, for profit in a competitive free market."
What definition would you prefer? I haven't found one that talks about interest yet.
Besides the many socialist economic systems, maybe many economic systems more complex than hunter-gatherers have been capitalist? As wikipedia puts it:
"Capitalist economic practices became institutionalized in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries, although some features of capitalist organization existed in the ancient world. Capitalism has emerged as the Western world's dominant economic system since the decline of feudalism, which eroded traditional political and religious restraints on capitalist exchange. Since the Industrial Revolution, capitalism gradually spread from Europe, particularly from Britain, across global political and cultural frontiers. In the 19th and 20th centuries, capitalism provided the main, but not exclusive, means of industrialization throughout much of the world."
Well, if that's the case, then I don't think it's useful to talk about it.
I still think the key element of capitalism is capitalists...people who live off investing rather than working.
That is the key difference between a growing and a steady-state economy. That is what is going to end. We will still have private property and markets. We won't be able to support people who don't work.
This is a wish not a demonstrable prediction.
Plus, who is the "we"?
"We" have supported people who do not work way before the advent of capitalism. The way to do this in a (relatively) steady-state economy is called feudalism.
Incidentally, there has never been any real feudalism in Finland. It has been postulated that the harsh climate wouldn't allow supporting the lifestyle of a feudal elite class.
All until the evil Norwegians ( and then the evil Danes) colonized them :-((
I understand that the Finns had some problems with the evil Swedes as well.
There are very few "capitalists" who really do absolutely nothing. Maybe their work is buying and selling investments, but that is not the same as not working. The only people who do absolutely nothing are the Paris Hiltons of the world, and they are the ones who are most likely to become feudal lords if capitalism collapsed.
Look at how few people exist out there who really make all their money off investments and not working, and I'd say the whole topic is pointless if that's what you're trying to talk about.
There are lots of impurities in how that is achieved and in many case we institute interfering bodies but the reason we accept those is, for the people who currently have the most capital (and control in a capitalist system), these interferences result in a better accumulation of capital, regadrless of facades and propaganda.
Hypothetically, if there was no world war to fight then we may never have gotten out of the Depression. It was just a vicious cycle of economic downturns and nobody wanting to take a risk in such an economy, reinforcing the downturn.
This is GNP over the Depression:
From http://www.ingrimayne.com/econ/EconomicCatastrophe/GreatDepression.html
Things were picking up from early '33 on, though there was still widespread pain.
I wouldn't doubt the same happening once the PO-induced depression hits. A demographic collapse would be much easier on all of us than the other, much bleaker scenarios.
I really don't see why "growth" is so important.
Currently we obscure growth with monetary inflation anyway; so even if you think debt is somehow going to crush us if we don't have growth, we can just have nominal growth instead of real growth.
Sorry, but I just find the assertion that capitalism requires growth wrong-headed.
It wasn't zero-growth. The economy was expanding by expanding physically. Colonialism. Going to foreign lands and exploiting their people and natural resources.
The modern equivalent would be those like JD who think we'll go to space and continue the never-ending growth party.
Even at the time that the nascent world global economic system was beginning to spread from the shores of the English Channel, there were at least two other significant economic systems far larger than that of western europe. For an excellent examination of these and their relationship to the western economic system see Claud Alvarez's "Homo Faber. Technology and culture in India, China and the West from 1500 to the present day."
Most historians (while reserving infinite quiddities) simply accept a broad correllation between capitalism and modernity. Histoire moderne begins in 1492. Histoire contemporaine (a subset of modern history) starts 1789 and by that point a bourgeisie and a capitalist system sre at the forefront and assumed.
Perhaps China may have been a better example, which I distinctly remember reading was more advanced than European society till around 1400, yet then fell back - albeit without abandoning capitalism or ceasing to exist. (I recall this from David Landes' "Wealth and Poverty of Nations" - a great read although I read it several years ago)
Many civilistions or societies have ebbed and flowed over the years, without jacking in capitalism. You could argue that the United Kingdom has been going backwards in real terms for 100yrs, yet is still mostly capitalist. Some African countries have been getting poorer almost continuously for about a century by any standard, yet their economic system would still be recognised as capitalist. (I'm thinking of Ghana specifically - but over a longer time frame you could consider Mali which used to have a nice little central African empire).
What exactly would be the alternative to capitalism? Communism is still rightly discredited, admittedly making a comeback in parts of Latin America; and I don't think anyone wants anarchy. Can anyone suggest something better?
I still have strong doubts that there is a relationship between capitalism and growth.
As for anarchy, yes, some of us do want it. There is far more to anarchism that the typical view of bomb throwers. But Anarchy as a political/economic system where authority is not vested in centralized governments? Sign me up.
Abandoning capitalism? Ancient China was not a capitalist society.
They were however mean aggressive SOBs and not shy about killing any that got in their way.
Rodney has the distinction of being the first historian to be asasinated by CIA.
The Renaissance was a period of growth as the dark ages ended. During the Dark ages more than a third of Europe died-off. With fewer inhabitats of Europe the was plenty of room for internal growth. By the time of colonizism, Europe was fully populated and need to occupy new lands in order to sustain growth.
I don't really want to go into why I think its nonsense, but if you think back to when precious metals were used for trade, coins were judged by weight and purity.
"Local currencies" imply local central banks to manage them. But perhaps a post peak world really needs more central bankers. I'm not sure.
Ultimately that might cause some prices to rise if the quantity of money exceeds the amount of goods, so in real terms the economy maybe contracting, while in nominal terms it would still be growing thanks to, for example, Bernanke's printing press...
Think of the entire economy in aggregate. We have to divide this into sectors. One of the sectors of our economy is energy. With a lacking energy sector there was no room for INTENSE growth that we experienced following the commercial adoption of crude oil. Once our energy sector was able to exploit mega cheap energy it ALLOWED the rest of the entire economy to devise ways to maximize this new cheap energy and thus all the other sectors of the economy were freed from energy constraints that were, at the time, limiting them (ie farming).
The easiest example is farming. Since we perfected agribusiness now less than a few % of our population is needed to farm and the remaining people are free to persue a chosen profession.
Prior to this revolution the economy as a whole was growing it was simply not the growth we have been used to in the last 50 years. It was much more limited and sector (industry) specific.
(from David M. Delaney's excellent 'What to do in a Failing Civilization':
http://www.geocities.com/davidmdelaney/what-to-do-in-a-failing-civilization.html )
Economic growth requires increasing the amount of high quality energy and materials degraded by the economy each year. Economic growth on a finite planet will eventually stop. If it does not exhaust the resources needed for its continuation, it will stop earlier for some other reason. Allowing resource depletion and biosphere degradation to terminate economic growth will produce catastrophe. Unfortunately, our dependence on economic growth makes it extremely unlikely that we will give it up voluntarily before the catastrophe. Our dependence has at least four aspects: A) in the need to deal with adverse consequences of labor-reducing innovations, B) in commercial bank money, C) in the need to maintain tolerance of inequality, and D) in financial markets.
A) The first dependence on economic growth is in the need to avoid the adverse consequences of innovations that reduce the need for labor.1 By definition, each labor-reducing innovation either increases the amount of a good produced or throws some people out of work. Firms that create or exploit a labor-reducing innovation create new jobs internally by driving other firms out of business. The new jobs implementing the innovation offset the loss of jobs caused by the innovation, but the innovating firms don't necessarily hire all of the job losers, because the innovation reduced the total amount of labor needed to produce the original amount of the good. In order to re-employ all job losers, the economy must grow to produce more of the good with all of the original workers, or produce more of some other good with the cheaper labor (the job losers) now available. In either case the economy grows. Much of what we consider progress is due to labor-reducing innovations. In order to live without economic growth, we would have to give up this kind of progress, or introduce arrangements to allow workers who become unproductive to retain their relative wealth and self-respect, or relegate most people to a repressed underclass. There is a powerful incentive to avoid these contingencies by encouraging economic growth.
B) The second dependence on economic growth is in the creation of money by the act of borrowing at interest from commercial banks. Much of the money in each loan by a commercial bank is created by the loan itself. The bank collects a fee--the interest--for providing the service of creating the money. Other ways of creating money have been explored in theory and practice. Successful local currencies have been based on some of these alternatives, (see Douthwaite, Short Circuit, page 61) but all national money is now created by interest-bearing loans from commercial banks. This way of creating money contributes instability to an economy based on it. In order to keep the money supply from contracting when a loan and its interest are paid, a larger total of new loans must be created, increasing the money supply. (This is not transparently obvious. For a more detailed explanation, see Douthwaite, The Ecology of Money, page 24.) When the economy grows to match the increasing money supply, the value of money is relatively stable, and commercial-bank-created money is benign. If the rate of economic growth does not match the rate of growth of the money supply, the money supply becomes unstable. Given the use of money created by interest-bearing loans from commercial banks, an economy can minimize the resulting instabilities of the money supply by sustaining moderate growth. Monetary instability would put significant hazards in the way of deliberate attempts to contract our economy unless the creation of money was radically reformed.
C) The third dependence on economic growth is in the political and geopolitical need for tolerance of inequality. Differences of wealth are at least as great within the developed countries as they are between developed and developing countries. Think of the ratio of the average income of American CEOs to the average salary of workers in their companies. Domestically and internationally, the tolerance of the poor and middle classes for the existence of wealthier classes and countries depends on a belief in economic growth. The poor struggle, while seeing that others are wealthy and still others are grotesquely wealthy. The poor are told a story: if they keep to their work and to their diversions, and tolerate the rich, they will be better off in the future than they are today. They believe this story, or at least don't revolt against it, because it is supported by propaganda and shared myths, and has been true for many. When economic growth disappears forever, the poor, like everyone else, will recognize that they will be progressively worse off, with no future relief possible. The peaceful tolerance by the poor and the middles for the rich will disappear. A peaceful end of economic growth would require redistribution of wealth, with consequent political and geopolitical contention. Desire to avoid the contention makes it unlikely that deliberate elimination of economic growth will be attempted before economic growth is ended by nature. The intolerance of differences of wealth that will then appear will itself not be tolerated by the rich, causing additional domestic and international conflict just at the advent of other adverse changes. At that time, if not before, tyrannical repression of the poor will greatly tempt the rich.
D) The fourth dependence on economic growth is in the financial markets--the mechanism of capitalization of public corporations. Public corporations, the main actors in industrial economies, depend on financial markets not only for capital for innovation, but for discipline, valuation, motivation, and a major part of their rationale for existence. Owners of capital--investors--give the use of it over to public corporations by buying equity or debt in financial markets. They do so only because they expect that they will, on average, and over the long term, receive back more than they gave up. That expectation disappears when most investors understand there will be no economic growth. Most of the apparent wealth of the world consists of equity and debt bought and sold in financial markets. A general decline of market prices reduces general wealth in proportion. Any realistic possibility of the end of growth would fill investors with something like terror. Political initiatives to bring an end to growth will be opposed by investors with every means at their command. The controversial nature of proposals that would reduce or eliminate economic growth will likely prevent the proposals from reaching even the status of political contention. When the onset of sustained economic contraction is generally perceived, investors will withdraw from financial markets. The resulting failure of the markets will make many necessary developments impossible to finance and will produce confusion and stasis in public corporations just when we need them to adapt to new circumstances.
Some on this thread might want to plunge into "Capital" by Karl Marx. But if that seems over too overwhelming a task, here is a brief summary: M > C > M1
Check it out with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. See it they disagree.
Jeezuz.
Babble, you are the one that is wrong headed. If your money don't grow then you are not engaged in capitalism.
Okay, try to understand this. Capitalism is the investment of capital for growth of that capital. Capitalism has been present in many economies where there was no growth in the economy as a whole. But there were capitalists nevertheless, busily making their money make more money. In other words their capital was growing. Businesses can grow while the economy in general shrinks.
Question: Was the economy of Florence growing while the Medici family was building a fortune? Answer: Not very much if at all. Was the Medici family engaged in capitalism? Answer: Absolutely!
If your money is not growing then you are not engaged in capitalism. Even if you are just collecting rent, that rent is growth of your original investment. Capitalism is basically money making money. Capitalism is money growing!
Ron Patterson
But even what you call capitalism (and I would be tempted to call modern banking) doesn't always have to grow. You get loan loss provisions which exceed profits some years. Sometimes Banks collapse. Others carry on. Just because a few banks (or even several) go to the wall doesn't end modern banking. People can always start a new one if there aren't any left.
Sorry I started it. Lets get back to oil.
Capitalism is basically money making more money. Capitalism is the investment of capital for the specific growth of that capital. If you buy bonds then you are capitalist. That is, your money is making money. If you work for a living, you are not necessarily a capitalist. But if your money earns money without your labor then that is capitalism. Also if your labor earns more money because of the extra capital invested in your business, that is still capitalism. But if you earn money, in any manner, without the aid of invested capital then that is not capitalism.
If you are a shopkeeper and buy products at one price and sell it at a higher price then you are a capitalist because your invested capital grew between the buy and the sell. But if your overhead is higher than the growth of your money between buy and sell, then you have failed in your attempt to be a capitalist.
Capital: What is left over after your basic needs have been satisfied.
Capitalism: Earning more money with the money left over after your basic needs have been satisfied.
Capitalism is by definition the growth of invested money. Non-growth capitalism is an oxymoron.
Capitalism must involve the investment of capital.
Capitalism must involve the growth of said capital.
If the invested capital does not grow then that is not capitalism, it is instead a failed attempt at capitalism.
Growth and capitalism go together like hand in glove, you cannot possibly have one without the other.
In other words, to say you can have capitalism without the growth of capital is just plain down in the dirt dumb because capitalism is the growth of capital.
But all this misses the fricking point!
Here is my original point which has everything to do with peak oil.
People invest in the market for one thing, the expected growth of their capital.
But after peak oil, there will be less automobiles sold, less airplanes sold, less air travel, less tires sold and basically less of everything sold. There will be massive layoffs. The economy will begin to shrink. The profits and expected profits of virtually every publicly traded company in the world will shrink. Then people will pull their money from the market because they invested for growth. This will mean the mother of all stock market crashes. Capital investment for profit (capitalism) will dry up to next to nothing.
And with no capital investment for profit (capitalism) then there can be no growth in jobs or capital. Things then only get worse. And with ever diminishing energy resources, things still get even worse from this point.
During the great depression there was always hope. As Roosevelt said, the people had nothing to fear but fear itself. But this time around, since there will be no hope of more and more oil every year, all hope will be lost.
By "no hope" I am speaking in the general sense of no hope of the overall economy recovering. Of course there will be pockets of hope, people surviving in the wilderness and so on.
No more growth, no more capitalism because people will not invest without the hope for the growth of their capital.
And that dear hearts, is the fricking point!
Ron Patterson
If your nominal capital investment doesn't grow it isn't capitalism (according to your definition) but if there is inflation then you can still have successful caapitalism (ie increasing nominal captial) while the real economy contracts.
So all your discussions about the exponential curve versus the bounds of physical reality will fall on deaf ears.
Capitalism existed before petroleum was widely utilized and did just fine. This is just someone trying to stick peak oil into a left historicist world view. Historicism is just a way to BS about the future in a politically inspiring way. Other than that it's pretty useless. It is especially useless at predicting the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism
Excellent post and I couldn't agree more! I could be wrong, but it seems that age has something to do with seeing this. You, I and a few others in our late 60's seem to intuatively recognize the down slope but few others do. My beliefs are certainly impacted by what the Depression did to my mom and dad and their families. Maybe that's the difference.
Todd; a Realist
People who have grown up (regardless of age) where everything was peachy don't have the hardware necessary to run the software programs of "things going to sh-t and quick" and "oh damn, we're on a road straight to hell."
I think people's inability to understand the consequences of some financial issues (credit, mortgage) are at least somewhat related to this, in some cases, but that is a different post.
Some of us are "wired" to expect trouble. Some of us are "wired" to believe that bad stuff happens to others, maybe, but find it nearly impossible to think that bad stuff can happen to themselves.
Another interesting observation. This one about money:
Money bears no relationship to food, water, land, oil, or anything else. We make this stuff up.
Capitalism as imagined by Adam Smith bore little relationship to the capitalism of today. Tiny cottage industries, small shops, and individuals doing face-to-face business were predominant.
As I recall, Smith did not trust the idea of buying shares in ventures as was beginning to be done. (I'll have to check that out -- working from memory here.)
Also, today's economic system might best be called "Global Corrupt Crony Corporatism" with a distinct emphasis on each word.
Real global capitalists would take a careful inventory of the "capital" that is our planet and plan how to live off the ecological "interest" rather than destroying the very things we neede to survive.
"Capitalist" as used today is somewhat synonymous with "pirate" or "plunderer."
I have my own small business. I like to keep it face-to-face with a small pool of clients. I am a "sustainable household helper" who humbly does whatever cleaning, fixing, repairing, yard work, or gardening my clients ask of me. It works well because we have real human relationships and so we work out the money thing as we go. How much do I make an hour? I have no idea.
I enjoy riding my cargo trikes and doing business as sustainably as possible. Most of today's "capitalists" and worker-bees would be afraid to risk such a venture. I did some work for the CFO of a big corporation who laughed and told me that he would love to be able to work like me. But that darn paycut!
Tongue-in-cheek comments follow....
Some things our species ought to try to see how they work are:
1. civilization
2. capitalism
3. communism
4. socialism
5. peace
Why do our efforts at these become so easily corrupted and subverted?
AMPOD good one on the brain hardware. I think I'd up the age to puberty, past that if things have been good, the person will have an incurable optimism - no matter what the facts. Experience a good amount of malnutrition as a kid and you'll be aware of the basic facts of our social/econmic system.
A guy made a flippant remark to me once, that wherever you see a lot of rich people, there will be a lot of poor people too. I think I'd commented on the richness of Newport Beach and the poorness of the near-slums a walk or short bike ride away. That comment bugged me because I thought it was too pat, but it's really true, isn't it? We in the US are not making our clothes or the cloth our clothes are made out of, we're not building the radios and computers and now, hardly our cars, I did not have to sit down and sew the zillion stitches in my shoes.
You are so right that beggar is not a capitalist. Now think (you probably already have) of a country where millions of workers instinctively identify with the interests of capitalists. Where everyone is middle class. Where class does not exist because (!!!) everyone owns a few fractional shares of stock. A capitalist paradise.
That is exactly it. Every rich - or even middle class person - is supported by a lot of poor people. We don't see them. In many cases, they aren't even in this country.
We tell ourselves that this is okay because one day, those people will be middle class or wealthy. If they work hard, play the game right, etc. And they'll be supported by an even larger crowd of poor people.
But without that constant growth, we lose that rationalization.
Good point. Not much different than the concept of every citizen of the Roman Empire being supported by dozens of slaves.
If you want to understand it more clearly, consider first a cattle rancher who has 1000 head of beef on the hoof and sets them out to free pasture everyday. He doesn't have to worry about about which individual cow will find good grass and water that day and which won't. That's their headache. He externalizes to the cows (the lower animals) the costs of survival and prospering through another day, the anguish of competing with other cattle for the grassy knoll. He internalizes for himself the profit that comes from slaughtering the surviving 900 critters with hardly a whimper for the anguish suffered by those that didn't make it.
Well, our Globalized New Economy is kind of like that. Think of it as a Predatory Pyramid. At each level we externalize the headaches of survival and of inter-class competiton to the class below us. It's their worry about where to feed, how to fight off competitors in their ranks and find enough to eek out a living. People in the higher social class "externalize" the costs and "internalize" the profits. As you move down the hierarchy of the Predatory Pyramid, life gets tougher and tougher. As you move up, it gets cushier and more insulated from what happens below.
So when you finally get to Fashion Island in Newport Beach California you will hardly have a hint of the thousands of poor slobs that wash the toilets at night and take out the garbage. That's their headache. And as for the gardner who mows the lawn every week, why should I care what his name is or how many children he has or whether his wife has a dress. That's their headache. My headache is to make sure my lawn is greener than Jonesie's next door and my SUV has more horsepower. ;-)
Our economies are based upon confidence. When confidence falls, the economy will fall.
Rick DeZeeuw
I think that's actually a result of our sloppy brain design. We all (me too) have a hard time distinguishing between a "shortage" and "having none."
For a few million years of evolution, a shortage was having none.
Instead, you charge $6000. That means you will cover the cost, the principal, in 16 years. Which leaves you with 84x$6000 more than you spent on the house, or $504.000. That is the interest you charge. No growth, you said?
Now figure out where the extra $504.000 will come from.
Hint: your renter can't print it.
But you've reframed the argument from "can you own an asset and live off the income without needing growth" to "has your yearly income from the asset exceeded the cost of the asset over its useful life."
These are two totally different points. One is raping, the other is husbanding. Again, if I own an asset, such as a five acre tract of land, I can receive income based on that investment. The return on investment for the 5 acre plot of land is the solar income gained on that land's exposure to the sun. The capital is the soil.
Now, if I rape my land (i.e. increase income by depleting capital instead of simply taking the return on investment) I will eventually have shrinking returns on investment as less of my soil will be able to capture the solar income leading to a bigger need of depletion of capital leading eventually to collapse and death.
Your example simply points out that this investment COULD be this type of situation--i.e. one where I am actually depleting societal capital instead of just taking my return.
However, if I husband my land (i.e. return capital in the form of poo, compost, ash) the solar income available to that plot of land will stay constant and therefore sustain me.
So, again, one can own capital, receive income, not have growth and sustain. This was my point--that our current economic system might be able to be retooled to better lead us toward drawing only on our return--not depleting capital thereby requiring growth.
Our current economic system is based on drawing from a saved solar income in the form of fossil fuels. So, obviously yes, we are depleting our capital and quite rapidly.
Can we stop depleting our capital to increase present income? Or can we reinvest our saved solar income into capital that will produce an return on investment from the free solar income hitting our planet each day without needing to further deplete (or at least a hell of a lot more slowly) our stored solar energy capital? Is it even possible? I guess these are the trillion dollar questions that we spend so much time talking about.
Try politics. I'm in one of those fruitfuls as we speak:
Canada's Green Party can't read
The $6,000 income from the asset (1st argument above) IS GROWTH if the yearly income from the asset exceeds the cost of the asset over its useful life (2nd argument above).
Though I am a no-growth advocate I disagree with this.
The $6,000 income is growth only if you consistently HOARD IT or at least a part of it.
If this income is consumed on average within some length of time, then there is no growth.
This may happen if this income actually comes from a RENEWABLE source.
It still leaves much leeway for many zero-sum "capitalist games" among various players.
Who here thinks the economy can gently wind down by 30% per capita without great social strife - because this would be worse than the depression of the 1930S?
To back some of it up I am placing two links to ag commodities charts(as well as the commentary on those sites) which clearly show the last two years declining grain production and ending stocks.
http://www.dailyfutures.com/grains/
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/2006_data.htm#fig4
Here in the 'heartland' I have been over several fields where we are starting to combine corn and some soybeans. We had good rains and temperatures yet I am not seeing that great of a harvest. Yesterday I saw many small ears, lots of weeds(called dirty where the chemicals failed to burn down the grass/weeds) and a lot of combine losses(reel losses).
Yet some are bringing in maybe 150 bu/ac.
In any event we won't know for sure until 'its in the bins' but the future looks like we will do worse than the previous year. Remember I see only a very small area but I do hear what the local grain elevators are saying(ADM,CGB,BUNGE..) and will pass that along as I hear of it.
It then appears that total world production is dropping as well , according to the charts and we are looking at possibly some bad upcoming results in the food situation, just when everyone is touting ethanol and biodiesel.
I think we are on the cusp of the event. We have a low gas price and a slight reprieve. The tea leaves are mixed but smart money indicates bad things coming this way.
BTW the Mississippi has plenty of water and the barges are moving right along. The corn reached 15 % moisture so what is coming in now is going into barges instead of the elevators, mostly. The early corn is still sitting in huge outdoor piles, mountains more like.
The rats are having a field day. The hoist operator told me yesterday he saw twenty and more go down the grain chutes to the river and who knows how many he doesn't see.
This was posted on another forum and it's the first mention I've seen of using HL for other depleatable resources. In this case, it's gold.
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1157900520.php
One obvious difference with gold is that it doesn't end up in the atmosphere. I don't know the fraction of the mined gold ends up in landfills, but that just becomes "reserves", right? Also, hoarding oil doesn't seem to be as popular (yet).
In any event, I understand HL as an empirical observation based on the way that individual oil fields are discovered, drilled, and depleted, and that extending that to collections of fields. Is it general for all resource depletion? Some minerals seem to occur in seams, and one mines a seam until it ends. This would be more like a square wave. Maybe the sum of many seams would tend towards a more HL-like growth and decline, but I don's see why it is necessarily so.
Uranium mining has such a dominant political angle (how many bombs do we need this year) that Hubbert's peak isn't very useful for now.
Along that line of thinking, the curves should, in principle, be applicable to all exponential growth processes.
Decline rates will not be smooth in most cases, but then again, that's the case for natural gas as well. A good thought experiment perhaps, a cross between Hubbert and the Olduvai Gorge
Everything I look at today is deeper, much more challanging to drill, and much more expensive...like an order of magnitude (or two) in some cases. Frankly, the author's assertion that fuel prices are a minor consideration in the cost of mining is wrong. Newmont's president said earlier this year that energy costs were approximately 30% of operating costs at their Carlin Trend mines.
That guy's paper, Poor White And Pissed is Pulitzer material. This is what I talk about when I talk about the liberals being too busy nibbling cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off to give a damn about anyone poor in their own continent.
I'm not religious but this guy is doing the Lord's work.
But I still wonder about the whole timing of this sudden price decline, to levels which were considered unimaginably high back in those heady days of 2003, where a sustained price of over 60 dollars a barrel was considered an alarmist fantasy.
But I don't think the price of oil has too much to do with how much oil remains to be pumped in the millions of barrel per day range in Mexico or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Iran.
Personally, I think the race is on between a declining world economy cutting into oil demand against declining oil production cutting into the world's economy.
Since OPEC plans to keep the oil spigot as open as possible, in the face of declining prices, and there is apparently a flood of oil just waiting to be pumped, I guess price is the true factor, not the amount of oil actually available - just buy more later at bargain prices would be so logical, especially for people used to paying for everything with a credit card.
Surprisingly, this revelation doesn't seem to have reached the upper levels of China's Communist Party, who seem to feel that oil is just too important a resource to be left in the hands of a free market which will provide for all. Or the Germans, who love long term contracts for their energy supplies, since their love of reliability seems to weigh more heavily than mere price concerns.
Looks like a great time to buy a house in the exurbs, with a Hummer thrown in for free - let's just party like it is 1999 - after all, stocks can only go up, real estate can only go up, and oil prices can only go down.
I'm sure you'd like to meet her
She promises me gasoline
too cheap to meter
She's a real American gal
She's everybody's pal
She's the Princess
of the American Dream
She's really quite a scream
She's the Queen of De'Nile
She's Everyman's True Love
She's driving full speed
to the very last mile
She's traveling in style
Yeah
My baby is a Believer
I'm sure you'd like to meet her
She promises me gasoline
too cheap to meter
--poem courtesy of Gary, "Beggar"
I agree.
On one level, the media's resistance to covering the Peak Oil story is very understandable, because they fully understand where a large part of their salaries come from--from advertising by the home/auto/finance industries.
This week, the Dallas Morning News is going to announce newsroom cutbacks of up to 20%.
Yeah, that's scary.
And we tend to believe what we are paid to believe, and to disbelieve anything that would challenge the system that feeds us.
The media has been cutting back on investigative reporting for some time now. Furthermore, "investigative reporting" focuses more and more on "fluff" -- consumer "best deals" and celebrity crime and gossip.
This cuts the need to budget for real reporters who might investigate real issues.
This also makes it easier to manage "the news."
Thom Hartmann wrote a second column with primary reference to former Vice President Henry Wallace's 1944 NYT guest editorial essay on american Fascism. Hartmann's article is an essential read, in my view.
Former Vice President (under FDR) Henry Wallace saw the threat of fascism arising in the world again, and within the USA. He stated that consolidation of power in the media and manipulation of "news to decieve the public" and "poison the stream of information."
Here's another quote from Wallace:
>>>
"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."
Finally, Wallace said, "The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. ... Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels."
<<<
The above was written in 1944. The Hartmann article is here:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0828-23.htm
We must appeal to reason and decency, as Wallace encouraged us to do, in order to persuade others to prepare wisely for the future.
Meanwhile, the corporatist empire rolls along while using the American professional "managerial class" as compliant sheep who are conveniently and intentionally ignorant. This class will shrink in the future, but the lower classes will be useful as cannon fodder and cheap labor. The "useless eaters" and non-compliant will simply not make the cut.
"It Can't Happen Here" is now "It Has Happened Here."
Probable real future scenarios? All quite bleak: increasing class polarity as the gap between rich and poor widens; increasing domestic and global violence to keep the rabble in line and the supplies of commodities flowing; even more control of media and education as a means of seducing and manipulating people into compliance.
Suprises do happen, however. The fundamental flaw in any empire is the notion that it is possible to know enough and wield enough power in the right places at the right time to maintain control for an indefinite period of time. Always, the premises are wrong somewhere, and a system failure occurs that brings the empire down.
Physical reality will trump "economic reality" and "imperial reality" every time.
But how this will play out remains to be seen. Looks like a rough ride, though.
This has been and will be a continuing theme, to-wit, that oil production declines are due to mismanagement of oil reserves by National Oil Companies.
Info on Jerry Taylor: http://www.cato.org/people/taylor.html
It's a message with a real political dark side. Consciously or not, it lays the groundwork to justify future hostilities against the like of Venezuela and Iran.
That front-page story in the WSJ about Chavez and PDVSA last month typified this. The underlying assumption is that the oil really belongs to "the market" (aka, Americans) and that the supposed inefficiencies of a regime that differs from our own or excludes our multi-national corporations from unfettered control of production and profits is tantamount to an act of aggression against us.
We've been slinging mud at Chavez for years now--that he supports terrorists and FARC drug-smugglers, that the Cuban doctors he brings in are some nefarious secret agents, etc. But the greatest outrage, aside from the fact that he now levies ConocoPhillips and Chevron 50% with income taxes, is that he doesn't produce as much oil as he should.
I quite literally think that within 8 years or so we will make a military intervention in Venezuela on precisely these grounds -- perhaps dressed up with some trumped up "WMD" charges.
Imagine the political pressure on Kuwait if they decide to cut production to 1% of reserves. Or on Mexico (PEMEX being a nationalized operation, of course) if Cantarell really falls off a cliff in the next few years.
Rather than dealing with our own imbalances, we start to gin up outrage that the other societies are not giving us oil fast enough. When sh*t goes sour, if oil prices are very high, that leads straight to military action.
A few weeks ago, one of the talking heads on Fox asked whether Chavez was using oil as a weapon of mass destruction against the US.
Watching pure propaganda in real time was truly eye opening for someone who hadn't been in the U.S. since 2000.
And I think the pain of looking at our own part in this mess is what is causing the majority of our citizens to lose themselves in the hypnotic pablum of the television.
I despise George W. Bush, but he was exactly right when he called our fossil fuel dependency an addiction. And I think that we need to treat it in the same way that people treat other addictions 1. admit we have a problem 2. take stock of ourselves including our part in it 3. change and 4. guard against returning to the habit.
"A few weeks ago, one of the talking heads on Fox asked whether Chavez was using oil as a weapon of mass destruction against the US. "
" And I think the pain of looking at our own part in this mess is what is causing the majority of our citizens to lose themselves in the hypnotic pablum of the television.
"
You're not saying that MSM (best example is Faux News), is using their power to "Shape/Color" the way people look at situations are you?
"Fox asked if Chevez is using oil as a WMD" Careful linking of emotionally charged words to shape the populace's opinion without them even knowing that they have been "Managed" ???
It is alot easier to blame someone else, especially when you have been spoon fed the What,who,why of your displaced aggression isn't it. Faux DIDN'T say that "We are partly to blame thru our lifestyle". NO, It's that Leftest Chevez, keeping YOUR OIL America.
That is EXACTLY what I was saying in another thread.
"They are doing THEIR Job"
john
However it is "somewhat" accurate even is there are deliberate constraints. This especially true in the case of the US and OPEC where the amount of production depends, or did depend in the case of the US, on how much oil you have in the ground. Otherwise Hubbert could not have predicted the date of the Lower 48 peak. But all this is now academic because all OPEC, as well as everyone else in the world is producing all they can possibly produce. The exception to this would of course be Nigeria and a couple of other places where civil conflict is causing production problems.
I do find it amazing that the Middle East is supposed to have two thirds of all the reserves yet they are producing less than 40% of all production. And all this while they are producing all the oil they possibly can, even to the point of drilling more wells in tired old fields in order to try to increase production.
Is 3% a meaningful estimate. Good question but I would imagine that figure would vary before peak and after peak. That is it would be a much lower percentage before peak and a much larger percentage after peak. So again, we are back to the HL method of determining the size of the reserves.
Ron Patterson
Please lend a hand by reading, commenting if you choose and spreading the word. This should be Front Page News in my opinion, especially considering the misleading stuff I've seen in the last week.
-- Dave
And I'm not talking about the mainstream and oil, but about The Oil Drum and Storen.
I've been away and just come back to accidentally come across a post referencing it. And now I have checked back here and found only a few comments about it and nearly all of them universally negative.
For those that don't know, Storen are a technology company that are claiming to have stumbled across a device that appears to `create' energy; `create' in that they cannot find where the excess energy is coming from.
This is the kind of scale of technology break through that in my opinion we need in order for the modern world to survive peak oil and yet no one here seems to have really even looked into their claim.
Yes they seem to be breaking fundamental laws of physics but there are many factors that make Storn stand out from any previous scams.
These people are an established company; they are putting a lot on the line by making this claim. I can think of no reason for this to be scam, they are going about it the wrong way to maximise profits from that. They are far too public in their claim that they will not accept any form of investment until the results are published. They are asking for the science world to check out what they are doing independently and even funding that research.
The only way that I can see this being wrong is that they have made a mistake themselves. Which they may well have done, but they have been researching it themselves for three years, so we should at least grant them the possibility of having stumbled upon something unforeseen.
As I have stated before, human intelligence is very limited, true insight rare and even rarer the ability to see past our social bounds and recognise the possibility of insight in others. This whole forum is dedicated to waking up the mainstream to the event of peak oil... expecting others to step outside their own bounds to consider possibilities they hadn't entertained, yet I do not see that attitude being modelled.
Not that it really matters... once the testing is done we will know one way or another anyway.
Check out these links to find out more.
Storen website
http://www.steorn.net
Brief article in Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1854394,00.html
long audio interview
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2006/8/25/164733/819
Long video interview with CEO on Sky http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-steorn_interview,00.html
Sounds like a perpetual motion scam to me. Of the "magnet" persuasion.
But perhaps it;'s just more religion trumping physics.
What is left to say?
Gas Line Broad Band-a Pipe Dream?
If this technolgy eventually proves itself it could have drilling rig and
oil field applications.
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2006/09/scamwatch-steorn.html
I have lost count of how many scams of this nature I have seen over the years. One of my assignments in a grad school thermodynamics class was to evaluate just such an invention and point out exactly what the problem was. It was not difficult to see where the inventor had gone wrong.
Steorn is discussing a fundamental violation of what we currently understand about physics. This is major and just cannot be accepted without serious validation, which has not yet occurred.
Now I grant you that IF such a thing were proven, it would revolutionize the world. But the key is that it remains to be proven. And further, given the number of perpetual motion magnetic scams that have occurred throughout industrial history, it appears to be just a replay of an old scam, at least at first glance.
I am not going to condemn Steorn but I am not going to pay them any attention unless or until peer reviewed research validates their claims. If peer reviewed research is never done to validate their claims, then I refuse to believe what smells much like snake oil.
Part of me hopes this could be true. We still have to grapple with and contain the population explosion before its other effects overwhelm us, but getting the energy monkey off our back would be good (if we can stop population growth soon). But realistically, it just looks too good to be true.
Feel free to keep us informed of any real research being done to validate Steorn's claims but don't expect most of us to take it seriously until then, ok?
Of all the comments, yours is the only one that had an ounce of sense in it.
Fine, it matters not. I was just trying to make a point about open mindedness. Peer review is exactly what they claim to be looking for. We will have it soon enough.
Folderol. If they really wanted peer review, they'd publish the specs. Instead, they're keeping it secret, and want to hand-pick twelve people to do the review. That's not how peer reviews are done.
-attr. Heywood Broun
They seem to be claiming a fairly simple magnetic perpetual motion machine. Fine, just put it out in the open where anyone can see it, and let it rip. They claim a lot of excess energy, so one certainly shouldn't need a fancy computer console to determine that it functions.
All the cloak and dagger secrecy and nonsense shouts, "scam!". And life is far too short to waste much of it trying to debunk in great detail every self-deceiver and scam artist who comes along.
By the way, meaningful scientific review is not sending a committee into a secret chamber to examine a closed black box and having them emerge saying "trust us". That's just flimflam. It's notorious (and much written about by Randi) that scientists are easy to fool under circumstances of that sort.
Proper review of anything as momentous as this (if it were true) would start with publication of diagrams (etc.) of a working device. Then others could replicate it and confirm that it works. That's how science is normally done. In the meantime, it's a waste of anyone's time to give it much attention.
My bet is that such diagrams never will be published, because a working device simply does not exist.
The need for the cloak-and-dagger nonsense arises, of course, because I have to be prevented from cutting off the wires (etc.) After all, if I am so churlish as to do that, the damned thing won't work.
yes, well the battery of Blacklight power would be nice
http://www.evworld.com/archives/interviews2/mallove1.html
(yet its 2006.....where's my battery for my flying car?)
And you have the peredev magnetic motor supported by a canidate for The Presidancy of the United States.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Perendev_Power_Developments_Pty_(Ltd)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Sterling+D.+Allan+president&btnG=Search
Rather hard to debate the sociological/economic impacts of a technology in relation to Peak Oil when you're not allowed to know what that technology is wouldn't you say?
No worries though... TOD will surely investigate the scientific merits when released.
Steorn has developed perpetual motion with permanent magnents.
They would most likely certainly not the first to have done it. People have been messing around with magnents for a long time in all sorts of different configurations trying to do the same thing. This means that free energy has been successfully supressed hundreds of times. Scientific progress is an extremely fragile process that is easily and effectively disrupted with just a little work that's practically trivial for a national intelligence agency. So my analysis is that unless Steorn is miraculously clever and paranoid with their release strategy they will be supressed and the skeptics will bask in self satisfaction at having their hoax theory confirmed.
Then bet some of your money on this, invest in Steorn, if you don't have enough big $ create a fund.
If you win the return will be fantastic!
Why wouldn't the Japanese or the Israelis make these things by the millions? They aren't dumb, they're both highly dependent on imported energy and would be liberated by such a device.
The Israelis have another reason to do it: if it works as a mobile power source, they could destroy the market for oil-based transportation fuels overnight and put their major antagonists into starvation.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52642?utm_source=onion_rss_daily
Why does this matter? Because if we adopt the former definition, we focus on the social relations of production, which is what really changed with modernity and that led to the burst of inventions, mechanization and institutional transformation we associate with industrialization and the XIX century. I mean to go in 29 years from the invention of the telegraph to spanning the oceans and continents with instantaneous communication is simply stunning. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph>
I'm basically a Weberian, but many people will know Marx's eloquent and appreciative depiction in the Manifesto of the early capitalists. "[The Bourgeoisie] has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades... Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." Oil pushed this system into high gear by the XX century.
Though it has some holes, Eric Wolf's 1982 Europe and the People Without History remains one of the best anthropology books ever written, IMHO.
I love the [mostly] informed, wide-ranging nature of The Oil Drum. Keep it up folks.
Marx remains useful simply because he worked in all the above fields, worked his butt off, read 30 or so lamguages, corresponded with and took seriously a wide range of scholars.
But if you want history of capitalism go to history, not economists or theoreticians.
As "capitalism" (production view) developed, Economics was the first field to spin off and define itself more narrowly as the study of the origin and nature of wealth as this worked itself out in the rapidly growing markets of the age. Sociology spun off mid-century as the study of the non-economic parts of industrializing societies (Britain), especially the "social problems" associated with growing urban working classes in industrializing factory towns (family, crime, urbanization, social work). Anthropology, I would argue, as the last-to-develop, smallest and most sprawling of the recognized social science fields, is the one which has (rather inadertently) most preserved Enlightenment wholism.
Again, I don't care what we name it. The converging crises ahead cry out for wholistic thinking. That's why TOD is such a refreshing site - people across the intellectual landscape are discovering and engaging the most pressing questions of our time. We need more social science people, more humanities people. I quoted Marx precisely because he held out as a very big-picture, wholistical social analyst and critic even as philosophy, economics, etc. were specializing/consolidating as narrower fields of study too often divorced from the whole.
The point I did not (and still don't) have time to develop is that the understanding of "capitalism" one adopts then affects your understanding of solutions to problems. People are already sensing that "class" is going to come roaring back in as these converging crises deepen. People in the poorest societies, about which Leanan posts regularly, are increasingly feeling oil-related stresses on top of the ongoing marginalization they've experienced from the get-go. And now we in the comfortable middle (and on up) in the US, Europe, Asia, Latin America, elsewhere, are becoming aware of how people on the bottom of the class structure in our own wealthy societies are feeling the pinch.
I'm starting to work with a grad. student at UCSD toward developing a long-term, fine-grained ethnographic project to get a handle on how people in the US suburbs frame and come to understand their situations as PO and these converging crises deepen. Comments welcome!
Wow. A fascinating topic. And also a great post by the way.
As a denizen of the burbs myself, I would observe that most inhabitants of the suburbs are self-centered, self-absorbed and cannot see beyond the plow-horse blinders that stay on 24/7.
If things go badly for themselves (say they get a pink slip from Intel or IBM after 20 years of service), then they blame it entirely on themselves. If only they had pulled the plow a little harder, worked more overtime on weekends, then maybe the boss wouldn't have singled them out as the bottom 10% that is to be "weeded out" from the ranks in this re-engineering and right-sizing cycle. They would have remained as "winners" rather than becoming "losers".
On that note, an interstng movie that I saw over the weekend: Little Miss Sunshine. It's about a dysfunctional suburban family. One of the memes is that of dividing the world into winners and losers. According to the dysfunctional Dad in the movie, everyone has free choice to decide if they're gonna be the winner or the loser. Very interesting stuff. Of course, you have to like that kind of deep heady entertainment.
Holistic too often seems simply another word for credulous. I like historians who do the hard work, not the ones who synthesize what the market is ready to buy. Marx still gets credit with me because he did hard antiquarian research before he synthesized. You want to see what antiquarian means these days try reading Richard Cobb's Police and The People. Then tell me if you can even follow his other work as he footnotes in multiple historical dialects that have no lexicons. Watch him follow the peregrinations of prostitutes and beggars and get an idea of how hard historians work. Then reconsider those who work with feelgood synthesis.
Should I buy gold? Or should I invest in a solar water heater? Which investment will be better over the next 10 years?
Thanks,
Tom Anderson-Brown
Beyond that, you need to know where you live (far north, far south, high elevation, somewhere in the middle, under trees, etc) and how much you plan to pay for the system you would get, as well as the type of system (maintenance).
The 5th anniversary of the start of the modern phase of the worldwide energy wars.
How's that?? ;-)
Was it the event that provided cover (intentionally or not) for a new phase of nationalist aggression which served the interests of a relatively small group of corrupt corporatists?
Will these same corporatists ride the USA like a HumVee that they know will be wrecked in the process of consolidating full-spectrum global military dominance?
Will we see a new world order emerge which involves the "kill-off" and "die-off" of much of the world's species, and many of the world's people?
Has the long process of pursuing "Resource War" already gone so askew that we will have rendered our planet largely uninhabitable by humans?
As editorial pages from around the world admit, the current establishment has tried to use the tragedy of 9-11 to justify nationalistic agression. In doing this, much of the world's population has become enraged and even more afraid of the USA. Even many people in the USA are alienated from the current establishment.
The stark declarations of the need to control oil and the need for global full-spectrum military dominance (Rumsfeld's phrase?) that often significantly pre-date 9-11 give us a picture of a regime that chooses not to be accountable to anyone but rather to set the stage for further aggression and violence.
Pronouncements about Iran, Syria, and Venezuela only lend credence to the notion that 9-11 has become a cheap tool for propaganistic manipulation, bought with the blood of many people on that day and since.
The question here is whther or not this is primarily a resource war disguised as another "Fight for civilization" (the latest propaganda throw-away line, I believe).
Wars are always disguised in patriotic, noble, and even religious terms. This latest round in the resource wars may cost far more than anyone yet guesses.
I'd say that the Loose Change guys, Dylan and Jason, came off fairly well in the Democracy Now! segment, but they hurt themselves here and there. Noting that Popular Mechanics was owned by Hearst Corporation was fair enough, but Jason calling them "yellow journalists" was a crude ad hominem attack. The film clips that Democracy Now! showed were to their advantage, but they didn't have the expertise to debate the technical responses from the PM editors, and resorted to calling them "liars." However, Dylan and Jason did make it clear that the government is still holding back much information, "cherry-picking what they do release" and
probably struck more emotional chords with viewers than the suits from Popular Mechanics.
Popular Mechanics team scored points shooting down the cell phone issue, which LC admitted was their weakest argument. Meigs scored a cheap point when Dylan confused UL with ASTM. But while the editors of Popular Mechanics had several sound responses, they too often invoked the dodge that, "this is the sort of thing you always see in conspiracy theories," instead of answering tough questions. I also found their contention that early reports should simply be disregarded unsatisfying, given that so much information is being withheld. So, who are you going to believe: Popular Mechanics or your lying eyes?
Loose Change's best graphic was superimposing the profile of a 757 over the hole in the Pentagon. PM's editors claimed the hole was really much larger, but really had no good response to the question of why the engines hadn't left two additional holes, or a much larger hole, or hadn't even damaged the windows on either side of the hole. I could accept that wings and tail fins had shattered, or "vaporized" on impact, but not two six-ton steel & titanium jet engines. Do I believe in the 'cruise missile' scenario? No, but something isn't quite right.
I found LC's weakest point to be insisting that the WTC collapses must have been controlled demolitions. Watching the top dozen floors of the first tower lean five degrees while falling into the intact floors below makes it clear that the failure was where the aircraft struck, not at carefully selected lower floors.
Editor Meigs claimed that his team were responsible journalists that were continuing to seek the truth, but they seemed more interested in defending the status quo against outsiders. Given the extent to which 9/11 delivered power to the party in power, it behooves people like Dylan and Jason to question the official explanations, even if they propose far more conspiracy than necessary to explain the events.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/11/1345203
Regarding the tilting of the top floors of the tower being a clear indication of a structural failure at the impact site, it's worth noting in the video footage that the tilting section of the building self-destructs after it begins tilting (in other words, it explodes). I'm no physicist and I'm not yet a conspiracy theorist about 9/11, but something doesn't add up with that. That section of building had some rotational momentum which should have sent it tumbling off to the side somewhat. Instead it ended up as dust and fragments of steel.
There's plenty that's been written on this, but if you watch the videos again and try to determine what mechanism could have ejected so much dust outwards from the buildings during the collapse, it's hard to come up with anything other than explosives. Floors collapsing one on top of another ("pancaking"), couldn't have ejected much more than just the air between them...
Or maybe I'm just missing something.
I taped the sequence, and will look again, but there's a lot of softer stuff in an office building, like gypsum board, ceiling tiles, fireproofing, duct insulation, acoustic insulation and paper, that could create all that dust. Even crumbling concrete would release some dust.
I've been arguing this with my wife today. Applying Ockham's razor, I don't see any reason to expand the conspiracy to include dynamiting the buildings. I could see BCR "letting" OBL attack the WTC, etc., but to have them assigning a dynamite team just gets all sorts of extra people involved, and for what? Does the WTC have to be flattened to arouse the public? Wouldn't we be plenty aroused by the WTC towers with huge burning gouges?
That's how I see it anyway.
It doesn't seem plausible that the air getting pushed out when a floor falls to the one below could possibly eject that much material (regardless of what the material was). Obviously, there was some wind that day, as evidenced by the smoke plumes, but there is so much stuff that got pushed out and no clear mechanism for it. The buildings were dead still for a good while before collapsing, so the majority of the forces involved in the collapse, should have been straight down, no?
When the collapse began, the top segment of the tower tilted because the supports on one side yielded before the supports on the otehr. That already gave some of the debris some sideways momentum. Then as the collapse continued the debris had plenty of collisions to be in, each of which would give it more and more sideways momentum, especially for pieces on the outside of the cloud. That's when when any building collapses the result is a mound.
I don't pretend to know, but the success of the likely multitude of "False Flag" operations that we are seeing, without realizing it of course, leads me to conclude that more of that sort of thing is likely.
Ten years after the publication of his book, he lays out the major arguments against it, and responds to them.
Curiously, some of the arguments against his thesis are quite similar to the arguments against peak oil. (For example: Predictions that science is ending have been made numerous times before, and have always been wrong.)
He starts with this bit:
Now that's an interesting way to separate science from religion. Hard to imagine a priest seriously considering that the end of religion may be nigh...
Anyway, he feels his work, rather than being disproved over the past ten years, has been validated.
OPEC to leave production targets unchanged
has this quote from the OPEC president:
I thought KSA was the big swing producer, and that they could only offer up sour stuff recently.
Caspian? Is this the BTC opening? Uhmmmm...
ACG Ph2 East Azeri Azerbaijan BP +300/kbd (2007/2008)
Sakhalin 2 Russian Far East Shell +120/kbd
Vankorskoye 2 fields Russia Siberia Shell/TFE PSA 216/kbd
I see 636/kbd from the FSU Caspian and Russia, perhaps a bit more from ACG Phase 2. Large volumes of fresh oil supplies? I'm starting to get a bit paranoid and I'm certainly sick and tired of being lied to.
Imagine you are on "their" side, what would you do?
Their being GOP, OPEC, Saudi.
How would you do damage control? Truthiness or spin?
Dave Cohen said, "I'm starting to get a bit paranoid and I'm certainly sick and tired of being lied to."
Well, I hate to say this, but in the energy trade, get used to it. I hope you see why I have made the case that we are "running blind". This is far, far, more dangerous than Peak itself. Peak can be planned for in some ways, mitigation can be implemented, and a seemingly "rational" set of projections laid out.
What we have though are a blizzard of conflicting and non-sensical statistics from all sides, rumors, stories that are married to agendas without the agendas being given. This is what we have to tell the American people, even more that peak (whatever that means) is coming (when? Depends on who you talk to) because we have used half the worlds oil (how much is half, based on what total? That changes daily), and production is going up (well, maybe) or going down (maybe) or holding flat, (maybe) which is a new thing (well, actually it's not) and we cannot ever sustain year on year declines (well, actually, we have before) and a couple of years of production decline will prove peak (well, actually it didn't the last time)....
America, DIVERSIFY, STRATEGIC STORAGE AND PLANNING, DECENTRALIZE, CONSERVE, AND LOOK FOR THE VALID DO-ABLE ALTERNATIVES WITHOUT DESTROYING YOUR CURRENT LIFE BASED ON RUMORS.
Build as though all information is suspect or even completely bogus, no matter where it comes from. In fact, build and plan as though you had NO information. GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) means you essentially don't.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
And this is the best advice I've heard today, much better than G.W.'s rant!