Peak everything...

[flintlock]

Re: Peak everything...

Great chart Halcyon - and this runaway depletion of E V E R Y T H I N G leaves me totally perplexed hearing (apparently overly sophisticated) economic analysts talking about our future and deflation in the same breath.

Real resource scarcity's arrival will cause massive inflation. Forget the demise of the fiat dollar. This is where the real, terminal inflation will come from. And what to make of the academic thinking of anyone insisting that under a gold standard or a hard money standard, critical depletion of all the strategic commodities "cannot cause inflation".

They are going to witness the stale and academic falsity of that assertion when the real scarcities begin to bite in hard.

This appointment - where these lines of consumption go near vertical in a final **parabolic** blow-off of consumption, is where the financialized theory of commodity price action is scheduled to fall flat on it's face. At least that much clarification in the middle of growing scarcities, will be a relief.

*T*'s signature byline then comes wonderfully into play. "Thermodynamics is never and nowhere a monetary phenomenon". When the "stuff" (critical resources) that fuels industrial society runs out, the "stuff" holds sway over the "money" not the other way around.

What do you mean great chart? I don't see any numbers on the Y axis. Those horizontal lines could represent 1/10% for all you know.

[Guest]

Re: Peak everything...

Flintlock - well, I'm not sure if you are trying to be cute, or if this was offered tongue in cheek - but if on any remote chance it was intended as a serious caution against drawing "undue inferences": - The charts components refer to global consumption so any suggestion that the Y axis could just as easily have been expressing "unremarkable fractions" would have to accomodate some rather large 1/10 units to encompass feeding the world. The ... uhm ... global population growth trajectory line, with commodities tracking it, and expressed as net consumption of that global population ... a population which grows from 1 billion to 7 billion across the chart's (very short) time span ... it's just possible that an observer of even average intelligence might figure out the Y axis expressed something more than "fractional increments"?

In fact, you don't even need any of those commodity consumption lines to see the issue. The population line alone is sufficient. It refers implicitly to the incremented feeding , industrialising and watering of a population which traveled from 1 billion to 7 billion in a period of time equivalent to one fortieth (1/40 = 6000 years / 150 years industrialisation) of their "modern" evolutionary timeline. Or would all these inferences be just too liberal here? :rolleyes:

I am slightly to the right of center. A moderate conservative. But I find this "politicization" of the resource depletion story tiresome. I regularly cross "party lines" to vote on issues based on each issues merit, and could care less whether my opinion fits in well with a conservative agenda. How about you? Here's a handy way to check. Figure out which political side you consider yourself on. Then look at their platform and make a list of all it's components. If your opinions on everything from global warming, to resource depletion, to peak oil, to overpopulation, etc etc. all fit perfectly into your party's positions then you are a "party animal". I personally take great reassurance in having views on these issues which are all over the map. Enough to drive a Democrat or a Republican barmy.

Resource depletion is very real indeed and is on the cusp of becoming the biggest single story of not just the next decade, but this entire century. Mn_Mark's refutation and arguments are shallow, to this reader. Anyone who thinks the world is a bottomless cookie jar is today, (in 2009 of all years!!) is quite remarkably uninformed.

What do you mean great chart? I don't see any numbers on the Y axis. Those horizontal lines could represent 1/10% for all you know.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Peak everything...

Flintlock - well, I'm not sure if you are trying to be cute, but if so, there is such a thing as too cute for your own good. The charts components (presumably?) refer to global consumption so if you wish to float the idea that this is expressed in "1/10'ths" go right ahead - but the assertion would be a little silly, wouldn't it?

Well .. I really didn't think that Flintlock was too cute. He has a point. The units and zero base of the resource curves on that chart are not clear.

Consider this example. When humans walk outside in the daytime, they cast a shadow, reducing the amount of sunlight that gets to the grass. If enough humans cast enough such shadows, all grass on this planet would die. One could easily add another curve to that fine chart of the amount of sunlight absorbed by humans. One could scale that curve to be just as exponential and scary as the curves already there.

I would not short the lawn mower business or even grazing cows, on that account. Until a given resouce usage is compared, properly scaled, with its availability, it means almost nothing. Even when so compared, as with firewood in England or (when I was a child) live telephone operators as a percentage of the adult human population, it doesn't mean much. Only when we hit a non-substitutable resource, such as perhaps firewood on Easter Island, are we in serious trouble. Such curves do not help to predict such catastrophes.

Such curves, with inadequately annotated scales and possibly deceptive zero basing (can't tell in this case) are a well known, even notorious, tool for inciting the masses to some desired precipitous action. They are not a useful analytic tool outside of limited conversations within which both parties can be trusted to have agreement on all the essential but unstated details behind the curves.

[Guest]

Re: Peak everything...

Such curves, with inadequately annotated scales and possibly deceptive zero basing (can't tell in this case) are a well known, even notorious, tool for inciting the masses to some desired precipitous action. .

Yes, I refer you back to the comments above. The population trend line gives the scale. Simple. The other components are all factors of consumption of that population trendline, which is a known quantity. Otherwise we can sit around all day and engage in academic exercises, no doubt.

I guess you guys really don't get the implications to agricultural productivity of the waning of oil. Affordable petroleum is the only thing sustaining global agricultural production at present levels, while that agricultural production needs to grow instead robustly to accomodate mid-century's population. Alt-energy ramped out to the maximum in 15 years will not cover more than 5% of global energy needs (you can get this forecast from a dozen different sources).

The agricultural productivity explosion of the last century - no question about it - was built on the back of the combine harvester, the tractor, and the mechanized farm. You don't run a combine harvester on the energy stored from solar cells, nor wind, nor tide, nor hot air hype. You run that heavy equipment on hydrocarbons. How are you cornucopians going to feed 8 billion when oil costs $300 a barrel ***in today's dollars***?

That's not even going into what's happening to the world's water tables. Why is Mexico City sinking?

What are you cornucopians gonna do, strap a mini nuclear reactor onto the back of each combine harvester and send them fanning out across the world to produce the new agricultural paradigm, while the fresh water tables are collapsing too? The willfull ingenuousness is astonishing. And making quips about "the comically reflexive assumptions of Ehrlichian liberals" who read all sorts of presumably fatuous implications into such charts, is just nonsense in response to these issues.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Peak everything...

Yes, I refer you back to the comments above. The population trend line gives the scale. Simple. The other components are all factors of consumption of that population trendline, which is a known quantity.

If we generously stipulate that the other curves are all zero based, then we can see the proportion change in each resource curve. But by "scale" on a graph, I mean not just percentage change, but absolute quantitative values, which is what good graph scales usually provide.

Given these, we could then compare the amounts consumed of a given resource with our estimates of the amounts available and guesstimate how soon and how devastating the shortage if any will be.

Only by such quantitative comparisons can we predict whether we are in the harmless situation such as my sunlight example threatening the worlds grass, or the riskier (that I'll agree to, Lukester) situation with petro.

I guess you guys really don't get the implications to agricultural productivity of the waning of oil.

How in tarnations Lukester do you confuse our pointing out the weaknesses in that graph with our being "global petro-caust deniers?"

Just because we denounce one graph as being weak does not mean we denounce all positions similar to what that graph seemed to justify.

Do they not teach rhetoric in the schools anymore?

I too have a concern with oil, but it is a different concern. I have seen the enviro-whackos encouraged for three decades to decimate the oil production and refining capacity of the United States, apparently preferring to increase the degree of global intedependence involving oil, as has been done with manufacturing and finance. This Great Tower of Basil (BIS) is now undergoing a crisis which will provide the insiders with an "opportunity" to increase their feudal power over the worlds finances, hence over its governments.

In particular, the dollar is losing its priviledged status as the worlds sole Reserve Currency and as the currency in which oil contracts are written.

When this currency crisis peaks, we will see a greater proportion of the (likely overall declining) oil tanker traffic out of the middle east traveling to China, and less to the United States.

At that point, given it would take five or ten years for the United States to access its own untapped oil reserves, we Americans will be in a world of hurt. That includes being hungry, which is one of the better ways to incite riot and anarchy.

Yes, our food depends on oil, and our oil supply is threatened. Some of us will starve to death, and others of us will die premature, violent deaths. :eek::eek::eek:

[jandkmeyer]

Re: Peak everything...

I see Lucille Ball on the cover of LZ II, but not Oscar Wilde.

And I was so sure I never even checked. My memory immediately associated that image with Led Leppelin. Anyone have an answer as to why? Metalman?

[Andreuccio]

Re: Peak everything...

Consider this example. When humans walk outside in the daytime, they cast a shadow, reducing the amount of sunlight that gets to the grass. If enough humans cast enough such shadows, all grass on this planet would die. One could easily add another curve to that fine chart of the amount of sunlight absorbed by humans. One could scale that curve to be just as exponential and scary as the curves already there.

Oh, great. One more thing to worry about. Thanks a lot, PCow. Now I have to think about hording lawn space. :mad:

[Guest]

Re: Peak everything...

OK I guess I missed that Flintlock was just kidding around then. Bad on me for the temporary loss of the appropriate sense of humor and play.

Yeah, and I do take the point. Without any numbering on the chart's "Y" axis, and as I was drawing emphatic conclusions from it without a moment's further reflection, :rolleyes: I was wandering over perilously to the "Ehrlichian Cliff".

Bad Lukester. Go stand in the corner and recite 20 times: "I will not be a pedantic bore again" (catcall from the other side of the classroom may be heard calling: "easier said than done Lukester"!).

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Peak everything...

... (catcall from the other side of the classroom may be heard calling: "easier said than done Lukester"!).

Dang - you stole my line (if only I would have been quick enough to think of it.)

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Peak everything...

Oh, great. One more thing to worry about. Thanks a lot, PCow. Now I have to think about hording lawn space. :mad:

Nah you don't -- us cows get first nibbles on grass :rolleyes:.

[Guest]

Re: Peak everything...

Um, where did you say you lived in El Paso? Maybe I'll come pay an unannounced visit (at night, with a can of sugar for your car's gas-tank). ;)

Dang - you stole my line (if only I would have been quick enough to think of it.)

BTW where's that slacker ASH got to?

[jtabeb]

Re: Peak everything...

What did he do to the officer corp?

He called it "re-asserting civilian control over the military" I call it dumping people who will give you an unvarnished and objective opinion and putting "yes" men in their places.

Notice how Iraq didn't start to improve till Dumbsfield was gone, there is a reason for that. He like Robert Macknamera was SO SURE that what he was doing was working that he DIDN"T need FACTUAL CONFIRMATION TO PROVE IT.

(and of course, guess which way most of the evidence was pointing).

I will credit Bush with ONE THING, at least he took Condi Rice's advice and "changed course".

We may still have a disaster over there, but with Dumbsfield in charge WE WERE ASSURED OF ONE.

(some of us called it "Faith-Based" military policy making)

[metalman]

Re: Peak everything...

Notice how Iraq didn't start to improve till Dumbsfield was gone, there is a reason for that. He like Robert Macknamera was SO SURE that what he was doing was working that he DIDN"T need FACTUAL CONFIRMATION TO PROVE IT.

(and of course, guess which way most of the evidence was pointing).

I will credit Bush with ONE THING, at least he took Condi Rice's advice and "changed course".

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Peak everything...

Um, where did you say you lived in El Paso? Maybe I'll come pay an unannounced visit (at night, with a can of sugar for your car's gas-tank). ;)

No - not El Paso. That was someone else's guess. I live somewhere else in North Texas (that should pin it down .)

[Andreuccio]

Re: Peak everything...

LOL. That's really well done. :cool: