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Love this. Ehrlich acted from good intent but with a bad case. I like this analysis saying the short term could have had Simons lose if the decade is chosen wro
by ggm 2y ago
Love this. Ehrlich acted from good intent but with a bad case. I like this analysis saying the short term could have had Simons lose if the decade is chosen wrong, but the trend is with Simons.
A lot of battery related FUD recapitulates this, people mistake active mines for available reserves and available reserves for worldwide geology. We aren't running out of the inputs to make batteries we're in supply chain shock not resource limits.
Same with oil and peak oil. We'll never run out of oil.
- chii 2y agothings never really "run out", they just get expensive as availability becomes lower. But some people consider this the same as running out, because it is indistinguishable from running out if you could not afford it.
- ggm 2y agoI think Simons point was that afford and need equipoise. There's also substitution going on all the time, and innovation. Battery chemistry has changed massively over the life of batteries for EV (the thing most often cited as a modern day Ehrlich/Simons bet) Ehrlich thought need would exceed afford at scale. And that it would have massive societal repercussions. Well, it just didn't historically, and there's no reason to believe the (misnamed) rare earths and metallic ores are limiting things for any reason other than price motivation. This last decade we had a temporary chip shortage affect car production rates worldwide. Localised supply chains for Diesel additive have been a problem. There were discussions about ring fencing nitrate fertiliser as a strategic supply. None of these are "limits to growth" stories. Capital investment followed. That said, the price of copper spiked enough to make people start stealing it again worldwide.
- selimthegrim 2y agoWhich diesel additive?
- dredmorbius 2y agoLikely diesel exhaust fluid, comprised largely of urea, used to mitigate NOx emissions which are a consequence of diesel engine's high compression and combustion temperatures. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid>
- dredmorbius 2y agoAnd some quick DDG'ing confirms: "Australia’s shortage of diesel additive Adblue is serious, but we can stop it going critical" (December 12, 2021) <https://theconversation.com/australias-shortage-of-diesel-additive-adblue-is-serious-but-we-can-stop-it-going-critical-173588 https://theconversation.com/australias-shortage-of-diesel-ad...>
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- cowsandmilk 2y agoYou’re veering onto a common misinterpretation of the debate which is that we don’t need to respond to resource shortages. Simon didn’t argue against peak oil, he argued that we as society would move away from oil as the prices rose in response to the resource becoming more scarce.
- ggm 2y agoNot to dispute, could you post a link because I would love to see how he expressed this, and work out how I feel about it. At one level it's a truism, if you wind up with price the main constraint on something, if it is substitutable you will go to a cheaper substitute, when price exceeds some threshold but that threshold is variant to circumstance, and the consequences of substitution also come to play.
- eulgro 2y agoSure, we'll never run out of fossil fuels, because as they get more scarce, the price will go up and some reserves that used to be unprofitable will now be. But then, we definitely don't want to burn all fossil fuels there are, because that would be catastrophic for the climate. Nevertheless, as long as it is profitable to do so we will. So we'll never run out of oil, and that is, in truth, unfortunate. In the same manner, we'll never run out of minerals, which is also pretty unfortunate because mining is somewhat environmentally damaging.