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Nativebronxite, I do actually think that I've already addressed everything you've said. And I agree with most of your last post RE denial and cycles. However, things do feel different this time. For one thing there is a much greater understanding of the global climate crisis, and for two we now have the technology to make things better. So I believe that the adaptations you seem to think won't happen will indeed be made. And again, what might not work in the great sprawl out west will indeed work in the burbs of NYC--even those more rural ones (like where I live). We are all a few miles from light rail to the city, less than 20 miles from major centers of employment, and a few miles from every possible amenity.
As for the current and near-future situation, I will repeat a few things:
Gas has doubled but is still quite cheap. My monthly gas expenses are an insignificant amount--and I live in a totally car-dependent burb, and I have not reduced my driving at all. If those expenses double or triple it won't have a serious impact on my budget. And as I said before, my income is average for my middle-class town. Alternative cars will be available in the near future and even if that takes 10 years (and gas keeps going up) the economic ramifications will be negligible.
Heating costs are not that much higher for a house in the burbs than for one in the city--in some cases lower. We all pay for them, directly or through rent or monthly fees. Mine were quite manageable, but I put in a pellet stove for $2,500 (total costs) and cut my bills by 2/3's. And I know people who use nothing but the stove. Solar technology is much cheaper than it was, and is offset by tax incentives. My neighbor fully supplies his house with solar, and I see more houses adding panels. Again, the current costs are totally manageable and suburbanites already have easily affordable ways to greatly reduce them.
So no, I do not dismiss the fact that I have to drive everywhere while you, for example, can walk. But I pay the bills and I know that it is now an insignificant expense and that even if the expense quadruples it still will not be a problem. You can call that denial, but it is actually the result of detailed, cold analysis.
OK, now I'm leaving the burb-haters to chat amongst themselves!
Well, denial is very powerful. As the evidence mounts that this energy crisis is not going away and it's going to change the way we live in ways we don't want it to, you're going to see even greater refusals to see the truth. Americans have shown time and again that they will only be taken to conservation kicking and screaming when circumstances compel them to.
And we've been here before with the oil crisis in the 70's. If oil prices collapse (which is actually a possibility) I'm certain we'd see a repeat of the same thing. Just as quickly as hybrid cars and conservation have become fashionable, if gas went back to $1 a gallon you'd see Americans collectively say "Whew! Glad that scare is over. Now off to go buy that Hummer I've always wanted...."
We could see the price of oil collapse if its high price puts the global economy into a significant recession (or even depression). If the economy goes down, so too will demand for oil. Then the price will fall, giving the false signal that the problem is solved. But it wouldn't be, because as soon as the economy begins to recover and oil demand picks up again we'd soon hit the ceiling of production and prices would have to spike again. It would be a roller coaster, where the economy goes into a recession, oil prices dip, the economy picks up, and oil prices spike again. A series of recessions, where each successive recession is a little bit worse, and each "recovery" is weaker...
EDIT: I can only imagine how bad it was for people who have known about this for decades. The man who created the Peak Oil theory correctly predicted the peak in US production in the 1950's. At the time he was one of the most respected geologists in the US, but when he said oil would peak for us sometime between 1966 - 1971, he was universally ridiculed. His reasoning was relatively simple though. He noticed we'd been finding less and less oil since the 1930's, and we'd explored all the major oil regions in the lower 48 states already. So, eventually production had to have its own decline. And then, right on time production in the US peaked in 1970.
He also predicted when the global peak would happen. Sometime between 2000 - 2010....
That is not the problem, the demand for oil is not up..
The price of oil is not as simply as supply and demand...
If that was true, then who is the responsible for demanding more in the last year..
Everybody is saying China... but China has not double his demand for oil in the last year. And China has build 5 nuclear plants in the last 8 years..
We havent build one since the 80's.
A few months ago, Saudi Arabia injected THOUSANDS of oil barrels to the market and the price went even higher.
Now for King Hubbert, saying about the Peak of Oil, is not correct,,
Since the E.U. has more oil compared to Saudi but we are not using it.. the COMBINE AMOUNT OF OIL IN CALIFORNIA, FLORIDA AND ALASKA MAKES US THE LARGES OWNERS OF OIL IN THE WORLD... but we dont drill since the 80's, what we do is give our money away to other countries, and what they do with billions of american dollars.. well easy
Since we are there number one client, we pay for 50% of all this...
http://www.treehugger.com/2008-01-28_092039-TreeHugger-falcon1.jpg (broken link)
"I pay the bills and I know that it is now an insignificant expense and that even if it (gas/oil prices) quadruples it still will not be a problem."
Enough said with this one...she is a nutjob.
I know, I know, I promised to leave. And I will...
A. I'm a guy.
B. What is nutty? Based on my own expenses and those of friends, I'd say the average monthly gas costs for most people in the NYC burbs is $150/month. That's less than I put into my 401K each month, less than I spend on take-out and a gazillion other non-essential things. Lets say the price of gas triples--that's an extra $300/month. If your rent increases by $300 a month will that be a serious problem for you? Probably not. If it increases by $450 you may have to start cutting back on other things (less take-out, fewer movies, etc), but will you have to move? I seriously doubt it. I certainly wouldn't. So if the price of gas quadruples (to almost $20/gallon), I'll have to eat in more often and cut back on some other extras, but will it be a real problem? No.
I really am going now--at least until I have anything new to say.
That is not the problem, the demand for oil is not up..
The price of oil is not as simply as supply and demand...
If that was true, then who is the responsible for demanding more in the last year..
Everybody is saying China... but China has not double his demand for oil in the last year.
No, China's demand for oil has not doubled in the last year. However, the demand for oil is inelastic. Globally people need their oil. So demand does not have to double for prices to double. A supply shortfall of as little as 3% can cause oil prices to soar. Here is a little story of inelastic demand used in peak oil circles to illustrate the point.
Imagine you have the first spacecraft for tourists into space. It is populated by the 100 of the richest people on the planet. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc. These people are billionaires. The spaceship escapes Earth's atmosphere, and after a couple of minutes the pilots get on the PA system.
"We have good news and bad news. The bad news is we're encountering a problem with our oxygen supply. We're going to run out in a couple of minutes. The good news is we have oxygen tanks on board. But we only have 97 of them, and there are two pilots. So five of you are going to have to die. We're going to auction off the 95 remaining oxygen tanks. Bidding starts in 2 minutes."
How high is the bidding going to go? Into the billions.
This is what's happening globally right now with oil supply. We have a supply shortfall of only about 2 million barrels (with 85 being used) but because the world is so dependent on oil for everything that it does, the price of oil has to rise exponentially to the point that people cannot afford it. As supply continues to fall further, the corresponding price increases in oil are going to be even more dramatic.
Quote:
A few months ago, Saudi Arabia injected THOUSANDS of oil barrels to the market and the price went even higher.
No, a few months ago Saudi Arabia claimed they were going to inject thousands of barrels onto the market. Fun fact about oil in Saudi Arabia: the details of production are state secrets. They don't even let people independently verify how much oil they are exporting exactly. The "sophisticated" method used to track Saudi oil exports is for a spy with a pair of binoculars to keep track of the oil tankers coming and going from Saudi Arabia, and estimate how much oil is going out. Seriously. I'm not making that up. It's pathetic. Read Matt Simons' book from a few years back, Twilight in the Desert.
In recent years Saudi Arabia has been fond of claiming that they are going to inject more oil into the markets to help meet demand, but there is very little evidence that they have actually done so. And even if you accept that they are putting out the extra oil they claim they are, take into account the amount of oil we are losing globally every day to depletion from existing fields that have already passed their peak and the extra oil Saudi Arabia is putting out is a moot point. It's not enough. The market is telling Saudi Arabia "Show me the money" and they're not doing that. Because they can't. Their largest oil field (which happens to be the world's largest oil field), Ghawar, is at or past peak.
Quote:
Now for King Hubbert, saying about the Peak of Oil, is not correct,
What's not correct about it? The basic thesis is simple. You have to find the oil before you can pump it out of the ground. When discovery of oil fields peaks and you've already explored all the likely regions to find oil, the production of oil is inevitably going to fall also as old fields go into decline and new fields coming online aren't enough to offset that loss in production. Hubbert correctly predicted the US peak in production, and since then we have seen country after country also meet their individual peak in oil production.
Russia, Kuwait, Mexico, Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, England...the list goes on and on. These are all nations that have passed their peak in production and pump less and less oil out of the ground every year no matter how much technology they invest. The list of countries capable of actually increasing oil production gets smaller and smaller. Primarily they are located in the middle east. Iraq is one of them.
Just as all of these individual countries have reached a maximum point in how much oil they can pump out of the ground, so too will the world one day reach this point.
Peak oil is a theory in so much that the theory of relativity is a theory. Or atomic theory is a theory. Basically no major geologists with half a brain dispute the peak oil theory. They do argue about when we will reach the peak exactly, what the decline rate will be, and what the implications for our society will be. But saying the theory as a whole is wrong? Nope.
What is it about peak oil that you dispute?
Quote:
Since the E.U. has more oil compared to Saudi but we are not using it.. the COMBINE AMOUNT OF OIL IN CALIFORNIA, FLORIDA AND ALASKA MAKES US THE LARGES OWNERS OF OIL IN THE WORLD... but we dont drill since the 80's, what we do is give our money away to other countries, and what they do with billions of american dollars.. well easy
Wait....wait....what???
I haven't a clue what you mean. You mean the countries in the European Union have greater oil reserves than Saudi arabia does? Figures please?
Off the top of my head I'm not sure if that's true or not, but even if it is it would be irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much oil you have in the ground. What matters is how quickly you can pump up out of the ground. This is exactly the problem with the tar sands and oil shale you will see some idiots get hysterical about. There is thousands of years worth of supply available, but the potential rates of extraction are only a couple of million barrels a year after heroic levels of investment.
That's like saying you have billions of dollars in the bank, but you're only allowed to withdraw a couple of hundred dollars of that per year. In that situation are you really rich?
Great Britain has plenty of oil too. The North Sea was one of the largest oil finds after a great effort on exploration after the oil problems of the 70's. But production of that oil peaked a few years ago, and now it's fallen off a cliff. Now Great Britain is a net importer.
When individual countries peak in production, they can import oil from other countries that haven't peaked yet. But when we peak globally, we wont be able to import more oil from other planets.
For one thing there is a much greater understanding of the global climate crisis, and for two we now have the technology to make things better.
Are we even talking about the same thing? I was talking about an energy crisis. Why are you bringing a climate crisis into this now?
And as for technology, you're still speaking about it as if technology will be able to solve all of our problems immediately if we have a sudden major supply shortfall on oil. Do you have some magic beans that will grow enough solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars?
Short of that, it will take decades to scale up our capacity for those technologies, and in the meantime oil shortages are going to wreck havoc on our civilization.
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