In many ways, the folks who say we a have lots of oil are correct. All one has to do is include the oil which is extremely expensive and slow to extract. Much of the cheap, easy-to-extract oil has already been removed. Economic theory says if/when prices rise our pocketbooks will dictate finding an alternative. The alternative will relieve price pressure on the oil causing the price of oil to drop. When oil prices rose, we found substitutes, but they were poor substitutes. Biofuels interfered with food supply; wind is a substitute for natural gas and coal in electricity production, but it is not as a transportation fuel, which is one of the things that we specifically expect to be short of.
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Friday, September 16, 2011
Peak oil and four principles of PR By Kurt Cobb :: ASPO-USA: Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas
Robert Hirsch presented an impactful paper at the October 2007 ASPO conference that went over the impact on economy and society. Peak oil activists and mass media have had a rocky relationship, and don't quite communicate on the same page. Four principles for peak oil activists to better work with the mass media: a) don't criticize the media pubicly. It'll just offput them and they can buy ink by the barrels or megapixel, depending on your unit of measure. b) "Fear triumphs over hope".. so it's more effective to weild fear to goad your audience into action? Reporters seem to like to print fear stories? Sigh. c) Keep it short and simple rather than go into long explanations. Unfortunately peak oil is full of long explanations, but those tend to lose the audience about halfway through. d) Focus on the cover-ups that exist, like the varying claims over oil reserves.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Classical Economics is driving us off the cliff because it ignores zero-cost stuff like water and air?
KMO (host of the C-Realm Podcast) has a kick-ass episode titled 234: It's About Stuff where he chats with Charles A. S. Hall about biophysical economics. About, what? The Wikipedia has this to say: "Thermoeconomics, also referred to as biophysical economics, is a school of heterodox economics that applies the laws of thermodynamics to economic theory." Which means, that it takes into account physical things about the environment.
What an astonishing concept. Astonishing, that is, in its absence in normal economic theory. And astonishing that I hadn't thought about this simple concept in this way.
The problem explained in the podcast is that normal economics ignores things like air because there's no cost for it. It ends up ignoring the physical world. Normal economics is based on models that are essentially perpetual motion machines, as described in the podcast. Goods and materials flow through the economic system with no "friction" in the form of diminishment of resources or environmental quality. But here in the real world mining stuff like oil or coal or iron ore diminishes the reservoir, and eventually there will be a peak in the supply of that resource.
As they say in the podcast, perpetual motion machines simply are impossible by the known laws of physics. However as they also say in the podcast, science has grown accustomed to occasionally having to rethink its model of the material world because of new information which discredits the old models.
Wikipedia: "Thermoeconomists claim that human economic systems can be modeled as thermodynamic systems. Then, based on this premise, they attempt to develop theoretical economic analogs of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Thermoeconomists argue that economic systems always involve matter, energy, entropy, and information."
The links below have lots of papers you can read to learn more.
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Monday, December 14, 2009
The Oil Drum | There is plenty of oil but . . .
In many ways, the folks who say we a have lots of oil are correct. All one has to do is include the oil which is extremely expensive and slow to extract. Much of the cheap, easy-to-extract oil has already been removed. Economic theory says if/when prices rise our pocketbooks will dictate finding an alternative. The alternative will relieve price pressure on the oil causing the price of oil to drop. When oil prices rose, we found substitutes, but they were poor substitutes. Biofuels interfered with food supply; wind is a substitute for natural gas and coal in electricity production, but it is not as a transportation fuel, which is one of the things that we specifically expect to be short of.
Article Reference:
Monday, November 30, 2009
The knock-on effects of peak oil | Business | The Observer
High oil prices generally cause economic recessions. The trouble in Dubai is due to decrease in oil consumption due to the current economic recession likely triggered by the high oil prices in 2007-8. What's keeping oil prices in check currently is the recession causing lowered demand. If/as the recession lifts and economic activity returns to "normal" oil demand should rise again. Since it seems oil production cannot return to meeting rising demand, then high oil prices should result, again. Which would cause another recession.
Article Reference:
Thursday, November 19, 2009
TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume
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What is the extent of responsibility we have when we buy a thing? In this podcast I suggest we have a lot of responsibility over the cradle-to-grave effects over the thing we buy, as well as the packaging that comes with the thing. Our purchases set in motion a bewildering array of activities aimed at fulfilling the desire we expressed through that purchase. Bags are made so we can carry home the purchase, the gizmo is made, the packaging to hold the gizmo is made, trucks and airplanes and cargo ships are made, forests are cut down, minerals mined, and on and on, all so we can have a plethora of stuff in the stores to buy.
This evening I went to the store to buy a few kitchen gizmos. Each were packaged primarily in cardboard boxes but then came the question at the counter, "Do you want this in a bag?" At least he asked, often the clerks don't ask and just start getting a bag ready causing me to say "I don't need a bag" but this time the number of items was enough to actually need a bag. But the whole situation brought my mind back to a common line of thinking. I'm responsible, now, for the existence of that bag, and what the heck do I do with that bag once I've used it to carry things home?
Maybe this seems overly anal to think that, hey, I'm responsible for the manufacture of this bag. But if I hadn't allowed the clerk to put those gizmos into the bag, then the store would have used one fewer bag that day, and their weekly purchase of bags would have been smaller. In other words because the gizmos were put in a plastic bag the store had to buy another bag to replace the one I used, something for which I am clearly directly responsible.
And, it doesn't stop there. It's of course not just the bag but also the gizmos I bought as well as the packaging the gizmos were contained in.
The responsibility includes the full lifetime of the gizmo, the packaging, the bags, and all the materials that went into making all those things. The gizmo you buy in the store would not exist unless all those materials were mined and manufactured into gizmos, packaging and bags.
The gizmo, the packaging and the bag, they all will eventually be disposed somewhere. They'll wear out or something and you'll want to throw the thing away. For example the plastic bag isn't terribly useful so most people wad up their bags and throw them in the trash. I tend to use whatever plastic bags I receive as trash can liners instead of buying normal trash bags.
The plastic bag is an interesting artifact. The plastic doesn't break down readily so assuming it ends up in a landfill it'll stay in that form for who knows how many thousands of years. Ponder that for a moment .. the bag I received tonight, I used it once to carry those gizmos home, I'll use it again as a trash can liner, and then it'll be taking up space in a landfull for a thousand years or more. How completely NUTS is that???
TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume
TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
What is the extent of responsibility we have when we buy a thing? In this podcast I suggest we have a lot of responsibility over the cradle-to-grave effects over the thing we buy, as well as the packaging that comes with the thing. Our purchases set in motion a bewildering array of activities aimed at fulfilling the desire we expressed through that purchase. Bags are made so we can carry home the purchase, the gizmo is made, the packaging to hold the gizmo is made, trucks and airplanes and cargo ships are made, forests are cut down, minerals mined, and on and on, all so we can have a plethora of stuff in the stores to buy.
This evening I went to the store to buy a few kitchen gizmos. Each were packaged primarily in cardboard boxes but then came the question at the counter, "Do you want this in a bag?" At least he asked, often the clerks don't ask and just start getting a bag ready causing me to say "I don't need a bag" but this time the number of items was enough to actually need a bag. But the whole situation brought my mind back to a common line of thinking. I'm responsible, now, for the existence of that bag, and what the heck do I do with that bag once I've used it to carry things home?
Maybe this seems overly anal to think that, hey, I'm responsible for the manufacture of this bag. But if I hadn't allowed the clerk to put those gizmos into the bag, then the store would have used one fewer bag that day, and their weekly purchase of bags would have been smaller. In other words because the gizmos were put in a plastic bag the store had to buy another bag to replace the one I used, something for which I am clearly directly responsible.
And, it doesn't stop there. It's of course not just the bag but also the gizmos I bought as well as the packaging the gizmos were contained in.
The responsibility includes the full lifetime of the gizmo, the packaging, the bags, and all the materials that went into making all those things. The gizmo you buy in the store would not exist unless all those materials were mined and manufactured into gizmos, packaging and bags.
The gizmo, the packaging and the bag, they all will eventually be disposed somewhere. They'll wear out or something and you'll want to throw the thing away. For example the plastic bag isn't terribly useful so most people wad up their bags and throw them in the trash. I tend to use whatever plastic bags I receive as trash can liners instead of buying normal trash bags.
The plastic bag is an interesting artifact. The plastic doesn't break down readily so assuming it ends up in a landfill it'll stay in that form for who knows how many thousands of years. Ponder that for a moment .. the bag I received tonight, I used it once to carry those gizmos home, I'll use it again as a trash can liner, and then it'll be taking up space in a landfull for a thousand years or more. How completely NUTS is that???
TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy
The average wage in the United States is less now, in real dollars, than it was 30 years ago. Even for those with college degrees, and though productivity was growing faster than it had for decades, between 2000 and 2004 earnings fell 5.2 percent when adjusted for inflation, according to the most recent data from White House economists.
...The median predictions of the world's climatologists -- by no means the worst-case scenario -- show that unless we take truly enormous steps to rein in our use of fossil fuels, we can expect average temperatures to rise another four or five degrees before the century is out, making the globe warmer than it's been since long before primates appeared.
...During the same decades when our lives grew busier and more isolated, we've gone from having three confidants on average to only two, and the number of people saying they have no one to discuss important matters with has nearly tripled.
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