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

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>> 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.

George Soros is not a financial idiot. He is a financial genius.
According to some, he is sitting on an extremely large cache of
physical gold. If he manages to melt down the world economy, he could
easily end up being the richest man on earth. The policies that he
promotes would seem to be pushing us in that direction, so no, I do
not think he is a financial idiot, I think he is willing to flush the
world down the toilet to end up being the richest man on earth. Aside
from that, I also think that he really does want a one world
government, and melting down all of the sovereign nations is the
shortest path to achieving that dubious goal.

> [...]
>> 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.

Hey, life sucks for me too some days and in some ways. Can happen in
the greatest country in the world.

>> >> 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.

Synfuel is equivalent to oil in most important ways... It lacks some
of the longer chain exotics, but most refining removes those anyway.
Pure hexane and octane would be just fine for running your ape around
in a rolling can.

> 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.

And in 1850 there was great concern over the shortage of whale oil too...

> 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).

There were people listening to Arthur C. Clarke in the 40s, they just
weren't spending money.

> 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.

Again, you started this conversation saying that only government is
long term thinking enough to solve the energy problem. First, I don't
think government usually solves problems, at least not without a LOT
of bad unintended consequences. Second, most governments think more
short term than most good established corporations. Intel is working
at least ten years ahead of production in their research. What's the
government doing that reaches that far into the future? The only
examples I can think of are military.

I doubt there is ONE government employee reading this list (other than
the bots at the NSA, hi bots!)

> Do we need any transportation after 2035?

I predict that there will be more transportation then than there is now.

-Kelly