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

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> 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."

Thanks, will read.

> > 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.

I'm not sure about this. My understanding of idiocy is such that rich 
idiots become poor idiots very quickly. So, to judge where this particular 
guy is heading, I would need some data on his finances. OTOH, if he is an 
idiot but has good advisors... Yep, complicated.

[...]
> Sucks to be you. This is a real shame.

Really depends. If after all I land on top of this, maybe it will suck 
less, maybe I will even like it :-). Life is a process.

> >> 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.

You can cite me any way you want :-).

> 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?

I guess there can be both "theoretic" plans and real plans. The real ones 
are backed by real numbers. Unfortunately, access to real numbers might be 
hard. For example, is it possible to have prognosis of oil available in 
the next 50 years, 100% certain? No, if for nothing else, two reasons: 
there are companies who could loose value if real numbers made them look 
ugly and twice, to be even close to "absolutely certain" would require 
doing much more research. I might be wrong, but I don't think process of 
oil making had been replicated in lab. Synfuel is not oil.

Besides, it is somewhat hard to prognose about progress. Hundred+ years 
ago, prognosis was that London would be inevitably covered by horse 
manure, based on city/population growth speed and their expected 
transportation needs.

The prognosis was ok, it just didn't mention cars.

Fifty+ years ago, there was much talking about Moon/Mars/Jupiter bases and 
other such fancy stuff (energy, food, illnesses - all solved).

Those prognoses were ok, too. They just forgot that people really don't 
care about this more than they care about some boysband breaking up. Or 
they care about being cool and up to date, and space missions don't look 
cool anymore (apart from space shooters for PS3).

So... so much about long term planning. I suspect most of this is some 
form of masturbation. Unless you can put your hand on real numbers. I 
suspect 50 years ago there were some thinkers who realized space age 
required commitment hard to find in human race. Their voice was not good 
enough masterbator, so it was lost in noise (assuming they wanted to talk 
about it).

With real numbers and with lots of simplification, it is possible to make 
some simulation and based on them, some plans. Like World3 model from 
"Limits to growth"/"Beyond the limits". Problem is, again, that such 
simulations are not cool.

Do we need any transportation after 2035?

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **