[ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)

[Kelly Anderson]

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Mar 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>> I'd much rather be the US than Germany economically right now. Greece
>> and friends are dragging you down pretty heavy, and that's not pretty.
>> Solar or lack of it is the least of the problems Europe has at the
>> moment... at least according to the media reports I've heard.
>
> If we are at it, links, please? I am just interested, not challenging your
> POV.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/21/roundup-eurozone-approves-new-greek-bailout/?iref=allsearch

"Eurozone finance ministers agreed to a new $172 billion bailout
package (WSJ) for Greece early this morning, along with a 53 percent
write-down of Greek debt by the country's private sector creditors."

>> >> >> it is certainly less expensive than new nuclear,
>> >> >
>> >> > If you make the solar jump in the loops as you do with new nuclear
>> >> > plants it would be much more expensive than new nuclear.
>> >
>> > Er. New nuclear is expensive because of safety requirements.
>> > Obviously PV panels don't have corium as main failure mode and
>> > millions of pipe welds to control.
>>
>> Nuclear is expensive because it is caught between brain dead engineers
>> that think they need to design each plant from scratch, and brain dead
>> tree huggers on the other side that think it's dangerous, when it
>> clearly is not statistically, even when you take Chernobyl and
>> Fukashima into account. Yet people think bears are dangerous when they
>> kill relatively few people too... it's part of the human psychology to
>> be afraid of a strange form of death more than a familiar form of
>> death.
>
> There seem to be mixed reports (no time to analyse in depth) about coal
> power station producing quite some amounts of radioactivity - because coal
> is not pure, it contains lots of additional substances. Even if there is
> not radiation from coal burning, there is a lot of other stuff going into
> air, contributing to acid rains, smog etc etc.

Not to mention mention mine accidents, death from asthma, etc., etc.,
etc... Coal is just dangerous, even without considering possible
climate effects.

> But. A vision of fireplace full of burning wood, distributing nice heat in
> your room/house is so heart catching. Truly a coal power station is in the
> same league, and I would expect Snow White working there, too.

Burning wood is no less environmentally friendly than coal... it is
just older trees...

> This was a moment when I realized tree huggers are emotion-driven.

Ya think!?!

> Unfortunately, I expect good decision making to be based on facts,
> emotions have some place but not much (eradicating emotions is not good,
> humans are not robots, yet humans who only know emotions are IMHO closer
> to animals than to rational beings).

Yes, though emotions are one of the subconscious' way of trying to get
the attention of the conscious mind. As such, they should never be
completely ignored. Your subconscious may have something important it
is trying to bring to your attention. But yes, I prefer logic over
emotion in the long term.

> Since that time, whenever I hear tree huggers oppose something, in my mind
> I add one point in favour of this thing, even before I start gathering
> facts to judge it.

Yeah, that's my emotional response too. LOL.

> Questions remain. Like, who gives those guys money. From what I've heard,
> western Greens had been backed by Red money, but Red is long dead now.

I think that they give each other money mostly now. People donate to
the Sierra club, for example. Who supports Green Peace? I don't know,
idiots?

> People are idiots but the money says truth.

Come on... some people with lots of money are still idiots. Two words:
George Soros... nuff said.

> [...]
>> >> We don't have a huge problem right now. If we did, we would have $15 a
>> >> gallon gasoline.
>> >
>> > We have 1.70 EUR/l at the moment, FWIW.
>>
>> I have never truly understood why gasoline is so much more expensive
>> in Europe than in the US. I always assumed that it was because the
>> European governments were screwing up the free market or taxing the
>> hell out of it, but I don't know if that's the case or not. Maybe the
>> US government subsidizes the prices here somehow to keep them
>> artificially low. I don't understand that part. Wish I did.
>
> Oh, if you were a Pole, or (I guess) even better, a Russian, you would
> have had inborn understanding there is a theoretical economy (which says a
> lot about "better wins", or "mutual exchange of surplus goods") and a real
> economy, which is real.
>
> I am used to see, in the same news, talk about oil prices going down on
> "world markets" and oil going up here in PL. The first reasonable thought
> I had after hearing we would be fraking shale gas was "ok, we are going to
> have our own gas, so how much the price will increase this time". Indeed,
> fraking is yet to start and we already had two increases, if memory serves
> me.

Sucks to be you. This is a real shame.

> The real economy is not limited to old-style industry. Consider a
> software, for example, where a small business starts selling a half-baked
> software and goes into global domination, while at the same time kicking
> better alternatives out of the market. I could argue their soft is
> half-baked even now, but on the other hand, I admire those guys. Their
> understanding of reality is so good, I almost feel shivers on my back when
> I try to imagine it. Of course I stay away from their products, which
> doesn't diminish my fascination with their success.
>
> [...]
>> Do we really need to plan 30 years ahead in energy? What would that
>> long term a plan even look like? What would it even say?
>
> I guess it should start like this: "Those who don't plan their future will
> have none. Yes they may be alive, only spending their days in Ethernal
> Present, not remembering and not prospecting."

Nice quote. However, it side steps the main question. What would a
long term energy plan look like? What would it say? Would it say
things like "We want to have 20% of of the transportation sector's
energy to be solar photovoltaic by 2035."??? What would it say? How
would that affect decisions made today? Is it just an excuse for more
government meddling in the private sector?

-Kelly