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I am not an expert, and so I ask that you read the below comment and let me know how (and where, that's important too) I'm wrong. Honestly, I realize below migh

I am not an expert, and so I ask that you read the below comment and let me know how (and where, that's important too) I'm wrong. Honestly, I realize below might be ignorant/controversial/silly, but please help me learn if you know the field/explanation. Admittedly, I'm making numbers up, but I can really only see a gov't skewing by 10-200% before unsustainability. In a free society, lower bound. Higher end, something like Venezuela. That doesn't seem like the kind of range that would be a practical concern. Suppose we solve AGW, we face petroleum shortage in the medium term, it's probably going to require a different scale in change of emissions and petroleum extraction to matter. Governments are inefficient, but those as inefficient as the orders-of-magnitude difference we're talking... those we call revolutions! [/dramatic effect] Apologies for the comedy if that's not your style, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

fleitz 11y ago
I don't see a free market situation in which we'd ever have a shortage of petroleum... I mean we're well past 'peak oil' and we have the cheapest oil in a decade Solving AGW doesn't solve the next ice age...
- Retric 11y ago
  Depends on what you mean by cheap. Oil costs less than 1/2 as much in 1998, sure it's down from the 9x spike, but it's much higher than inflation adjusted prices from say 1940 -1970, and it seems unlikely to stay even this low for the next 5 years as some producers are flooding the market for political reasons. We are not going to be extracting oil at the current rate for the next 10,000 years or even the next 200. We, could start manufacturing it because from an energy standpoint refining, transport, and extraction cost so much oil is basically just a battery at this point. (See: Canada's oil sands.)
  - fleitz 11y ago
    That doesn't mean we'll face shortages... Oil will increase in price until we stop using it.
    - Retric 11y ago
      That's a pedantic definition of shortage. Abundance does not mean you can get something if your willing to pay enough money.
      - fleitz 11y ago
        Funny, I don't see any articles in the papers about whale oil shortages... Did you know it's virtually impossible to get whale oil these days? Do you care? Or do you just use a whale oil substitute? The ironic thing is increasing price actually increases supply.
        Retric 11y ago
        Increasing prices did not bring an extinct species back. ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon As to whale oil, the Inuit still have access to whale oil. And there was a clear shortage in 1861, but there where also existing substitutes before modern whaling become so efficient. 'Oil' showed up after the fact, it's only after the fact people think 'Oil' showed up in time to save people from the whale oil crash.

fleitz 11y ago

I don't see a free market situation in which we'd ever have a shortage of petroleum... I mean we're well past 'peak oil' and we have the cheapest oil in a decade Solving AGW doesn't solve the next ice age...

Retric 11y ago
Depends on what you mean by cheap. Oil costs less than 1/2 as much in 1998, sure it's down from the 9x spike, but it's much higher than inflation adjusted prices from say 1940 -1970, and it seems unlikely to stay even this low for the next 5 years as some producers are flooding the market for political reasons. We are not going to be extracting oil at the current rate for the next 10,000 years or even the next 200. We, could start manufacturing it because from an energy standpoint refining, transport, and extraction cost so much oil is basically just a battery at this point. (See: Canada's oil sands.)
- fleitz 11y ago
  That doesn't mean we'll face shortages... Oil will increase in price until we stop using it.
  - Retric 11y ago
    That's a pedantic definition of shortage. Abundance does not mean you can get something if your willing to pay enough money.
    - fleitz 11y ago
      Funny, I don't see any articles in the papers about whale oil shortages... Did you know it's virtually impossible to get whale oil these days? Do you care? Or do you just use a whale oil substitute? The ironic thing is increasing price actually increases supply.
      - Retric 11y ago
        Increasing prices did not bring an extinct species back. ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon As to whale oil, the Inuit still have access to whale oil. And there was a clear shortage in 1861, but there where also existing substitutes before modern whaling become so efficient. 'Oil' showed up after the fact, it's only after the fact people think 'Oil' showed up in time to save people from the whale oil crash.