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The thing is that the human kind has been feasting the last 150 years on energy that is sort of a compressed accumulation of solar energy from the preceding mil
by yason 16y ago
The thing is that the human kind has been feasting the last 150 years on energy that is sort of a compressed accumulation of solar energy from the preceding millions of years. Further, it's been so cheap to dig coal and pump oil that the cost of energy hasn't had the time to really be an issue yet.
For any imaginable scale of human history, consider that a one-time opportunity.
It has been observed that the global oil peak was apparently reached a few years ago which means that from now on each year will see slightly less oil produced than the previous year. That gives the tangents of monotonically but slowly diminishing supply and monotonically but perhaps not so slowly rising price.
Natural gas is running out as well. Known alternatives, such as hydrogen fuels, electric cars, solar energy, nuclear power, are and remain alternatives. They're either energy containers (such as hydrogen) or represent energy production that just doesn't scale to replace the humongous amount of W/h that we've so far been able to extract from oil almost too easily.
It's out of the scope of this rant to even start about the countless things made possible by oil, but I think I should mention industrialized mass-production of food which is prevalent in modern countries. Fertilizers and pesticides are mostly made of oil and natural gas. Take away food from people and bad things start happening.
That means that the standard of living, for better and worse, is going to radically change in the coming decades. It doesn't take much more than a pike in the price of oil to cause financial and social havoc, such as the one in the 1970's. Maybe we'll get fusion reactors up and running in 2050 but by then I suspect the world has changed already.
We should start taking this into slow but very serious consideration instead of wearing blindfolds and waiting for some scientific research centre to hand over to us the alternative energy source that is the silver bullet which allows us to continue living like the way we do now.
- barrkel 16y agoThis is how capitalism works. As oil's price rises, the expected return to investing in alternatives increases. That's what drives research ultimately, not "blindfolds". If you think oil is running out faster than its price warrants (ie you think serious work on alternatives isn't being done), you're free to buy oil futures, since it seems you think oil doesn't have its future scarcity priced in sufficiently today.
- _delirium 16y ago> you're free to buy oil futures If you think oil's near-term value is mispriced, then oil futures are a solution, yes. But oil futures basically don't trade past the 5-year contract, and contracts longer than 10 years don't even exist. So if you think oil is mispriced in the 20-year timeframe, oil futures don't do you any good. There seems to be a persistent misbelief that futures markets are a way of hedging or speculating on long-term price movements, but they're really a way of hedging or speculating on short-term price movements, e.g. for airlines to hedge against near-term supply shocks. By far the largest volume is for less-than-a-year contracts, and there is virtually nothing out past 5 years, so they're not really useful or intended for long-term planning.
- barrkel 16y agoYou don't need to go with a standard contract if you really believe this, though; you could go with forward contracts, or - ultimately - by stockpiling oil.
- yason 16y agoI do think that oil doesn't have its future scarcity sufficiently priced in today's numbers because for most people and especially oil companies and oil-based economies it would be too scary to think about it. The root of the problem itself is not at all related to capitalism or other economic models. Capitalist countries are no better off with regard to this than other economies. The problem is related to the fact that in the coming decades the energy needed to pump a barrel of oil will increase, up until the threshold in the far future where it costs a barrel of oil to pump a barrel of oil. And because modern economies are based on the availability of cheap oil, this change will transform or shatter these economies. It's an universal cost. If it's not about the price of pumping and buying oil in dollars, it will be the time, effort, and availability of oil. Like you said, serious work on alternatives is only as serious as dictated by the lack of availability of cheap oil. I call exactly that wearing blindfolds because it is about betting entires nations on the possibility that we'll find an alternative energy store or energy source, in time, that allows us to maintain roughly today's standard of living. I would like to see it happen, too, but from the viewpoint of a contemporary man we'll be just totally and ultimately screwed if it doesn't. What I suggested is that we should take this into account already and not after 50 years when it might not be possible to do really serious work on alternatives. It's really about taking the hit slowly and adaptively or getting it slammed on your face at once.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gizmomagico 16y ago> Fertilizers and pesticides are mostly made of oil and natural gas. I think you're talking about "artificial nitrogen fertilizers" specifically: Wikipedia ("Fertilizer"): Artificial nitrogen fertilizers are typically synthesized using fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal, which are limited resources.
- jacques_chester 16y ago> Fertilizers and pesticides are mostly made of oil and natural gas. Because these are the cheapest sources of the relevant hydrocarbons. If necessary, coal can be cracked down to the right length. Or wood. Or hemp. Anything organic, really, so long as you have the energy input. It's just that it's cheaper and easier to get it from oil and gas.