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Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

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General interest discussions, not necessarily related to depletion.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 01:27:19

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', 'S')o, this discussion was started with the hope that Oil-Finder might post some well argued points and MonteQuest would reply (and vice-versa). Oil-Finder opened with an unsubstantiated opinion plus an unrelated point about some grain production which didn't prove what he tried to show.

Surely we must all be on the edge of our seats with anticipation?

Tony, I already explained to you on the previous page why I started with what I started.

And please read Nicolai's first post:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nicolai', 'W')e've all been reading your (OF and MQ) respective arguments with great interest and haven't quite witnessed a clash. This is your chance to really sway some minds. Whomever would like to start should first choose a topic and present a thesis . . .

So, as I said before, I started off with something I had posted in response to MQ in a different thread. I'm sorry if you didn't like my choice of topic.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 01:30:31

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', 'N')o it doesn't. Even if the resource was 200 trillion barrels, if it takes more energy to extract it than is obtained from it, then there is a negative balance, and it is a waste of time (at least for wide-scale use). As one approaches an EROEI of 1, it may even become uneconomical, even if there is net energy (after all, we here about escalating costs in the tar sands delaying development).

So your lists of billions of barrels is largely irrelevant if we end up with low EROEI and low production rates.

Yes, it's true that if it took more than 200 billion barrels of oil to extract 200 billion barrels of oil, then it wouldn't be worth it. But none of the examples I've given so far remotely come close to that.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby TonyPrep » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 01:53:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', 'N')o it doesn't. Even if the resource was 200 trillion barrels, if it takes more energy to extract it than is obtained from it, then there is a negative balance, and it is a waste of time (at least for wide-scale use). As one approaches an EROEI of 1, it may even become uneconomical, even if there is net energy (after all, we here about escalating costs in the tar sands delaying development).

So your lists of billions of barrels is largely irrelevant if we end up with low EROEI and low production rates.

Yes, it's true that if it took more than 200 billion barrels of oil to extract 200 billion barrels of oil, then it wouldn't be worth it. But none of the examples I've given so far remotely come close to that.
I don't know about that. Most of your posts in the discoveries discussion have almost no information in them that could help determine URR, EROEI or flow rate. I don't deny that there are and will be some discoveries that will be worthwhile. However, your assertion:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'A')nd as I said above, the larger quantities of low-EROEI oil offsets the increased difficulty and expense of drilling it. It might be 3 times harder and more expensive to drill oil in low-EROEI areas than it is in high-EROEI areas, but since there is 3 times (or more) the amount of low-EROEI oil than there is high-EROEI oil, it balances it out.
is not borne out. The amount of oil is by no means the main factor and, in some cases (negative EROEI) irrelevant.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 02:02:43

Tony, read the link on Tupi I gave in response to DantesPeak above. Tupi is one of those deepwater finds which would supposedly have a low EROEI and the whole bit. The article has a ton of info on planned production flows, $$ flows, and the like. It should be a good example of what I'm talking about.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby TonyPrep » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 03:22:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'T')ony, read the link on Tupi I gave in response to DantesPeak above. Tupi is one of those deepwater finds which would supposedly have a low EROEI and the whole bit. The article has a ton of info on planned production flows, $$ flows, and the like. It should be a good example of what I'm talking about.
Well, you talked about "examples", not "an example". Tupi is one example only and so doesn't prove your point that none of your examples comes close to a negative EROEI. And that one example is all speculation currently (in terms of when it will produce, how much it will produce and what energy is required to produce it). The link you gave is full of ifs, mights and assumptions, because there is not enough data. Here are some quotes from the article (my bold):$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ill Likely Be Profitable ... which appears to be recoverable numbers of oil and natural gas equivalent ... 1M barrels per day of production is achievable, as a peak ... The salt layer needs to be understood ... construction of an effective wellbore may be difficult ... Wood MacKenzie has estimated that the total field will cost between $50 and $100Bn to produce ... Petrobras has not disclosed if this means 200,000 bpd or 1,000,000 bpd ... a very wide ranging payback period of between 2 and 35 years, depending on the assumptions [note, all scenarios assume a lifting cost of $20 per barrel] ... ranging from essentially uneconomic in the "Low Case Scenario"
There are a few other assumptions and, of course, there is some hopeful information in there. However, you seem to have read only the hopeful pieces, assumed it's all good and cite the article as an example of projects that are nowhere near negative, in terms of EROEI. Well, it's not an example because it hasn't started production and may not reach even 200,000 bpd for 15 years. So you'll have a long wait before you can cite it an an example of a positive EROEI (though remember that I'm not denying that positive EREOI projects will be implemented in future).
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby TonyPrep » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 03:29:53

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'S')o, as I said before, I started off with something I had posted in response to MQ in a different thread. I'm sorry if you didn't like my choice of topic.
Fine, but Nicholai started this discussion with the announcement: "This is your chance to really sway some minds." How do you think that an unsubstantiated opinion and a weak argument over grains would sway some minds?
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 03:31:09

Tony, Tupi is a classic example of the type of oil I was talking about, so I don't see what is wrong with using that particular one as an example. It might be nice to get similar data on 20 or 30 more fields like that one, but that's a lot of work to find all that. Since it's only recently been discovered, of course a lot of the numbers surrounding it are speculative, but at least enough is known about it to get a general sense right now.

If peakers are right and the price of oil will continue to skyrocket, all that will do is make that author's "base case" or "high case" more likely.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 03:39:52

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'S')o, as I said before, I started off with something I had posted in response to MQ in a different thread. I'm sorry if you didn't like my choice of topic.
Fine, but Nicholai started this discussion with the announcement: "This is your chance to really sway some minds." How do you think that an unsubstantiated opinion and a weak argument over grains would sway some minds?

???

Do you dispute the data I showed on grain production?

Once again, in the other thread MQ said that grain production was not increasing. All I did was to prove him wrong with charts and data. And I repeated it in this thread, as a starting point. Nicolai asked us to "First choose a topic and present a thesis," so I conveniently used the topic (grain production) that had arisen in the other thread.

Recall, also, in my first post in this thread, I presented a secondary thesis:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'I')n addition to non-renewable resources (which is what I was referring to in the paragraph above), other resources are made, such as agriculture. These resources, in particular, can rise in production as human demand warrants.

I then showed production of 4 different kinds of grain, 3 of which had outpaced population growth since 1981. This is one of the "made" resources I was referring to. I said that it can rise as human demand warrants, and the charts I showed demonstrated exactly that: 3 of the 4 kinds had not only risen in tandem with population growth, they had outstripped population growth. If you don't feel that supports my thesis, then you cannot be convinced of anything.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby TonyPrep » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 04:27:35

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'A')ll I did was to prove him wrong with charts and data.
And, as I pointed out, two of the charts show 2007 production was less that 2006 and 2005 production. In one case, production was less than 2005. The chart for corn was inflated by ethanol. So you didn't prove him wrong.$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'I') said that it can rise as human demand warrants
Indeed you did, but you haven't shown that this is possible now or in the future, only that it was possible in the past. If you think past performance is proof of future performance then you must think infinite growth is possible. Since you don't think that, you appear to be confused over what your charts show.$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'I')f you don't feel that supports my thesis, then you cannot be convinced of anything.
Of course I can but I have shown that your arguments and charts don't prove what you say they do. I haven't just ignored them, I've pointed out why they are wrong.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby s0cks » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 05:03:51

This isn't an OF vs MQ thread at all.

OF believes economic growth is sustainable on a finite planet.
MQ believes it is not.

OF believes humans have not passed the "natural" carrying capacity of the planet.
MQ believes we have.

Not really a debate in my mind. One is delusional and one is not.

The argument we have in this thread is how much land can we convert to gas tanks?
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby BigTex » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 12:30:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'Q')uestion 1: Does continued economic and population growth require non-renewable resources we extract from the earth?

Not always.


When does it not in our current world?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]Why overshoot?

Because populations don't just bump into the sustainable carrying capacity limit, especially the clever ones. The populations that are able to extend far into overshoot are those that are able to manipulate their environment for the purpose of converting sustainable carrying capacity to phantom carrying capacity. How do you know you are in phantom carrying capacity? Look at the inputs on which you rely. If they are non-renewable, that is strongly suggestive that you are in overshoot. That's where we have been for 150 years or so.

"Phantom carrying capacity" = a term invented by environmentalists to try to explain why their predictions have failed after 200 years.


Tell that to the people on Easter Island and all those poor dead bacteria in the petri dish.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]But what about our technology?

Technology aggravates overshoot in most cases, because enhancements in technology are only necessary when a population is bumping into the limits of its sustainable carrying capacity. Technology at the bottom of the development curve may enhance sustainable carrying capacity, but when the technology exists mostly to extract more efficiency from non-renewable resources, then the technology takes the population farther and farther into overshoot.
This says that the more efficient the technology is, the "worse" it is. This is such utter nonsense I can't believe it. If I use 20 units of a resource to accomplish X, but then increase my efficiency to 10 units of that resource to accomplish X, this is telling me I am closer to my eventual doom than when I had used 20 units! What if I increase that efficiency to only 1 unit? At this point I am hardly using any of that resource at all . . . and yet this theory is telling me I'm right at the brink of my own demise!

It's not that simple. Jevon's Paradox. In a non-renewable resource setting, efficiency is not the answer.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')But what about Malthus?

Malthus was not wrong, he just didn't appreciate the effect that phantom carrying capacity has on the point at which the effects of overshoot are felt. To Malthus, the point at which sustainable carrying capacity was exceeded SHOULD have been the point at which the effects of overshoot began to be felt. However, like living off of a credit card creates the illusion of adequate income, so too did the discovery of non-renewable resources that could be used to create phantom carrying capacity.
Another environmentalist attempt to explain away why their beloved theory has been wrong for 200 years.

The phantom carrying capacity revision to Malthus's theory hasn't been tested yet.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]But we're people. Doesn't overshoot just happen to dumb reindeer?

My opinion is that the smarter the species, the worse the overshoot problem will be. Here's why: There are several ways to aggravate overshoot. We talk here about fossil fuels and what their scarcity will do to the supportability of our species, but we also create phantom carrying capacity by the "takeover" method where we displace another species and use their resources for ourselves. We can also take renewable resources that are part of our underlying sustainable carrying capacity and convert them to phantom carrying capacity. Overfishing, deforestation, and soil depletion are examples. Additionally, there are cascading ecological failures that start with a "black swan" event like the bee die-off we are seeing that impact us directly, though the cause may be hard to trace.
1. Fossil fuels are not as "scarce" as environmentalists would like to believe.
2. See above replies about "phantom carrying capacity."

1. If they are scarce at all, then we have a problem. They need to be increasing, which obviously they are not, since they are a finite resource.
2. See above reply to your reply about "phantom carrying capacity."

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]Why isn't anyone talking about this?

Cognitive dissonance, double bind, plain old denial, no money to be made selling this truth. Take you pick.
No, no one is talking about this because it is nonsense.

Isn't "nonsense" what a person says who is experiencing cognitive dissonance? Isn't that what cognitive dissonance IS?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]If we're in overshoot, how come there seems to be plenty of everything?

If I make $50,000 per year and come into a one time lump sum of $1,000,000, I can do several things. I could calculate the income that $1,000,000 would generate on a sustainable basis. Assuming it is 6%, the lump sum would provide me with a sustainable stream of income of $60,000 per year, in addition to my $50,000 in wage income. Under this scenario, my sustainable carrying capacity would rise as a result of my windfall from $50,000 per year to $110,000 per year.

However, if I chose to spend my million dollars more aggressively so that it would not provide a sustainable stream of income, I would actually appear to be living better during the period in which I was spending the money. That's where we're at right now.
I've got a better analogy.

I make $50,000 per year but then one day I suddenly come into $1 million dollars. At first I think this $1 million is the only money left in the world, so for a short while I quit my job and live the high life and waste it away, and squander $100,000 of it in just one year. At this point I realize I had been wasting it, and realize at this rate I'd only have 9 more years of it left. So I then resolve to use it more wisely. However, during the year I had been living the high life, I got a few inklings that this $1 million wasn't the only money left in the world. Armed with this insight, I resolved to use my remaining $900,000 to discover, uncover and create even more money. The next year I spent $50,000 in the process of discovering an additional $50,000, which made me break even for the year. So I still had $900K. The next year, having gained some experience, I increased the efficiency of my operations, and only spending $25,000 I discovered $100,000, so at the end of this year I had $975K. The year after that, I increased my efficiency even more, and only spending $20,000 I discovered $150,000. So by the end of this year I was at $1.105 million, and realized my presumption from a few years ago that the only money left in the world was that original $1 million was fantastically mistaken. After several more years, I got to the point where I could spend only $5,000 or $10,000 to create hundreds of thousands of $$, and occasionally millions. So by now, I finally got a dose of reality and realized that the true amount of money in the world was in fact trillions of $$ if not more, and I would not need to worry about "running out" of it for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. I also steadily increased my efficiency of using it, which was multiplying by many times the amount of time these trillions of dollars would last, all while accomplishing the same thing, and even more.

The rest isn't worth it. Most replies to it would just be repeats of the above anyway.

Oil-Finder, you need to pow-wow with the other cornies and get your story straight. Is the world living within an infinite growth paradigm in a finite world or not? The response above sounds a lot like infinite growth paradigm to me.

Note, too, that in the example above, you chose to use your million dollars to find other accounts to drain. Using that approach, do you see the problems that you will run into when the number of accounts is finally depleted? Whether it is next week or in a thousand years, you are creating, BY DESIGN, a state of overshoot with that approach.

A lot of this stuff sounds like the fantastic rationalizations that a stone age hunter/gatherer might come up with if you gave him a credit card to a butcher shop.
:)
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby holmes » Mon 10 Mar 2008, 14:27:36

The most bizzare part of all of this is this:
The cult members do not even understand the dynamics of there manifesto, the neoclassical economic model. They swear by it and will sell their own family and country out for it yet when it comes to their "wants" they dismiss its theories. Yet we are all supposed to lock step with the model when it suits them. Never speak an ill will towards it or get labeled. No return on investment nothing gets done. Thats the ancient neo classical economic theory worshipped by capitalist cult. Buck up. thats the fact jack. Its funny how the basis of the cult is coming back to bite them in the ass in the face of resource depletion. Karma for sure. Now we all can be idiot communists. Great...
"To crush the Cornucopians, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Tue 11 Mar 2008, 00:23:36

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'A')ll I did was to prove him wrong with charts and data.
And, as I pointed out, two of the charts show 2007 production was less that 2006 and 2005 production. In one case, production was less than 2005. The chart for corn was inflated by ethanol. So you didn't prove him wrong.

Yes I did. He said grain production wasn't rising - nothing more. He was wrong, and I proved it. Your efforts to paint him as saying he was only talking about the past few years, and that corn-ethanol production doesn't count, has failed miserably, because he said absolutely nothing about those things in his post. Zero, zilch, nada.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'I') said that it can rise as human demand warrants
Indeed you did, but you haven't shown that this is possible now or in the future, only that it was possible in the past. If you think past performance is proof of future performance then you must think infinite growth is possible.

This is a straw man. I clearly said in my first post, "My thesis is that resources, while finite, are abundant in most cases." Now you are telling me I, "must think infinite growth is possible." You are contorting my claim of "abundant" into a misrepresentation as "infinite." Nothing on earth is "infinite." Even the universe itself may not be "infinite." But that does not mean things cannot be "abundant." For example, there is a "finite" amount of water on earth, but that finite amount is very large. Therefore I call it "abundant."

As for future performance of these grains I listed, I defer you to this, which makes a conclusion similar to what I would.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3702
The only difference I would make - and it is a somewhat technical one - was Stuart's characterization of the unused but suitable farm land in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa as being all "tropical rainforest," which it isn't. Most of the land the FAO is referring to is actually savanna type lands (I've done that research already). But that's a relative detail.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Tue 11 Mar 2008, 00:28:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'O')il-Finder is just another right-wing cornucopian product-addict who believes that human ingenuity, voodoo economics, and Christrian Faith(tm) will see us through to the promised land.

You are so utterly clueless it's laughable. All of a sudden, we learn that anyone who think resources are abundant must be a right-wing Christian fundamentalist. LOL!!! You have no idea about my political and religious beliefs - none. Zero, zippo, zilch, nada. In fact, you are so far off in your characterization of my religious and political beliefs, it's a joke.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby BigTex » Tue 11 Mar 2008, 00:36:34

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'I') clearly said in my first post, "My thesis is that resources, while finite, are abundant in most cases." Now you are telling me I, "must think infinite growth is possible." You are contorting my claim of "abundant" into a misrepresentation as "infinite." Nothing on earth is "infinite." Even the universe itself may not be "infinite." But that does not mean things cannot be "abundant." For example, there is a "finite" amount of water on earth, but that finite amount is very large. Therefore I call it "abundant."


"Abundant" is meaningless when you are talking about an economic system that is premised upon exponential growth, as ours is. If you are doubling the numbers several times every generation, anything that is "abundant" today will be scarce in, at most, a few generations.

Why deliberately drain non-renewable natural resource accounts if you KNOW they are non-renewable? Even if it's 1,000 years from now, do you see that by supporting this system today, you are screwing your descendants?

Do you see how industrial civilization is all about fiscal child abuse, except rather than abusing your children, you are abusing your children and their children and their children.......

Think about how many of our institutions are based upon a presumption of screwing posterity:

Social Security
Medicare
Government Debt
The Banking System
Fiat Currency
Property Taxes
Human Habitat Destruction

All of this passing the shit into the future started in the 20th century. Before that, for better or worse civilization was pretty much pay as you go, or--GASP--one generation would pass something useful on to the next generation.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Tue 11 Mar 2008, 00:57:58

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'Q')uestion 1: Does continued economic and population growth require non-renewable resources we extract from the earth?

Not always.


When does it not in our current world?

When we rely on renewable - as opposed to non-renewable - resources such as agriculture, trees, solar, wind, etc.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]Why overshoot?

Because populations don't just bump into the sustainable carrying capacity limit, especially the clever ones. The populations that are able to extend far into overshoot are those that are able to manipulate their environment for the purpose of converting sustainable carrying capacity to phantom carrying capacity. How do you know you are in phantom carrying capacity? Look at the inputs on which you rely. If they are non-renewable, that is strongly suggestive that you are in overshoot. That's where we have been for 150 years or so.

"Phantom carrying capacity" = a term invented by environmentalists to try to explain why their predictions have failed after 200 years.

Tell that to the people on Easter Island and all those poor dead bacteria in the petri dish.
Oh, so you're one of those, eh? Comparing Easter Island and a petri dish to the planet earth. Inconveniently for you, the story about the Easter Island ecocide is a myth.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]But what about our technology?

Technology aggravates overshoot in most cases, because enhancements in technology are only necessary when a population is bumping into the limits of its sustainable carrying capacity. Technology at the bottom of the development curve may enhance sustainable carrying capacity, but when the technology exists mostly to extract more efficiency from non-renewable resources, then the technology takes the population farther and farther into overshoot.
This says that the more efficient the technology is, the "worse" it is. This is such utter nonsense I can't believe it. If I use 20 units of a resource to accomplish X, but then increase my efficiency to 10 units of that resource to accomplish X, this is telling me I am closer to my eventual doom than when I had used 20 units! What if I increase that efficiency to only 1 unit? At this point I am hardly using any of that resource at all . . . and yet this theory is telling me I'm right at the brink of my own demise!

It's not that simple. Jevon's Paradox. In a non-renewable resource setting, efficiency is not the answer.
OK, so let's go back to using wood to heat our homes, drive 1930's cars, reduce crop yields to 1900's levels, and so on. It will save the planet, and forestall our imminent demise! :roll:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')But what about Malthus?

Malthus was not wrong, he just didn't appreciate the effect that phantom carrying capacity has on the point at which the effects of overshoot are felt. To Malthus, the point at which sustainable carrying capacity was exceeded SHOULD have been the point at which the effects of overshoot began to be felt. However, like living off of a credit card creates the illusion of adequate income, so too did the discovery of non-renewable resources that could be used to create phantom carrying capacity.
Another environmentalist attempt to explain away why their beloved theory has been wrong for 200 years.

The phantom carrying capacity revision to Malthus's theory hasn't been tested yet.
That much is obvious. And it seems likely to me it will never be testable.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]But we're people. Doesn't overshoot just happen to dumb reindeer?

My opinion is that the smarter the species, the worse the overshoot problem will be. Here's why: There are several ways to aggravate overshoot. We talk here about fossil fuels and what their scarcity will do to the supportability of our species, but we also create phantom carrying capacity by the "takeover" method where we displace another species and use their resources for ourselves. We can also take renewable resources that are part of our underlying sustainable carrying capacity and convert them to phantom carrying capacity. Overfishing, deforestation, and soil depletion are examples. Additionally, there are cascading ecological failures that start with a "black swan" event like the bee die-off we are seeing that impact us directly, though the cause may be hard to trace.
1. Fossil fuels are not as "scarce" as environmentalists would like to believe.
2. See above replies about "phantom carrying capacity."

1. If they are scarce at all, then we have a problem. They need to be increasing, which obviously they are not, since they are a finite resource.
2. See above reply to your reply about "phantom carrying capacity."
1. What is "scarce?" People like you like to throw around the words "scarce" and "finite" as a way of making it sound like the quantities of these resources are small. But what if they aren't "small?" I refer you to my last post above: Let's consider water. On earth, the amount of water is "finite," but that does not mean it is "scarce." The amount of salt on earth is "finite," but that does not mean it is "scarce." You automatically assume that any resource on earth must, almost by default, be "scarce" simply because the earth is "finite." This is utter nonsense. Do we ever need to worry about running out of water? No. Do we ever need to worry about running out of salt? No. Why not? Because, while they are "finite," they are not remotely "scarce." Now, I claim that other resources are like that, to varying degrees. Technically speaking, they may be "finite" in amount, but the quantities of them which exist on the earth are so large, we do not realistically need to worry about "running out" of them.
2. See reply above.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]Why isn't anyone talking about this?

Cognitive dissonance, double bind, plain old denial, no money to be made selling this truth. Take you pick.
No, no one is talking about this because it is nonsense.

Isn't "nonsense" what a person says who is experiencing cognitive dissonance? Isn't that what cognitive dissonance IS?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '[')b]If we're in overshoot, how come there seems to be plenty of everything?

If I make $50,000 per year and come into a one time lump sum of $1,000,000, I can do several things. I could calculate the income that $1,000,000 would generate on a sustainable basis. Assuming it is 6%, the lump sum would provide me with a sustainable stream of income of $60,000 per year, in addition to my $50,000 in wage income. Under this scenario, my sustainable carrying capacity would rise as a result of my windfall from $50,000 per year to $110,000 per year.

However, if I chose to spend my million dollars more aggressively so that it would not provide a sustainable stream of income, I would actually appear to be living better during the period in which I was spending the money. That's where we're at right now.
I've got a better analogy.

I make $50,000 per year but then one day I suddenly come into $1 million dollars. At first I think this $1 million is the only money left in the world, so for a short while I quit my job and live the high life and waste it away, and squander $100,000 of it in just one year. At this point I realize I had been wasting it, and realize at this rate I'd only have 9 more years of it left. So I then resolve to use it more wisely. However, during the year I had been living the high life, I got a few inklings that this $1 million wasn't the only money left in the world. Armed with this insight, I resolved to use my remaining $900,000 to discover, uncover and create even more money. The next year I spent $50,000 in the process of discovering an additional $50,000, which made me break even for the year. So I still had $900K. The next year, having gained some experience, I increased the efficiency of my operations, and only spending $25,000 I discovered $100,000, so at the end of this year I had $975K. The year after that, I increased my efficiency even more, and only spending $20,000 I discovered $150,000. So by the end of this year I was at $1.105 million, and realized my presumption from a few years ago that the only money left in the world was that original $1 million was fantastically mistaken. After several more years, I got to the point where I could spend only $5,000 or $10,000 to create hundreds of thousands of $$, and occasionally millions. So by now, I finally got a dose of reality and realized that the true amount of money in the world was in fact trillions of $$ if not more, and I would not need to worry about "running out" of it for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. I also steadily increased my efficiency of using it, which was multiplying by many times the amount of time these trillions of dollars would last, all while accomplishing the same thing, and even more.

The rest isn't worth it. Most replies to it would just be repeats of the above anyway.

Oil-Finder, you need to pow-wow with the other cornies and get your story straight. Is the world living within an infinite growth paradigm in a finite world or not? The response above sounds a lot like infinite growth paradigm to me.

Note, too, that in the example above, you chose to use your million dollars to find other accounts to drain. Using that approach, do you see the problems that you will run into when the number of accounts is finally depleted? Whether it is next week or in a thousand years, you are creating, BY DESIGN, a state of overshoot with that approach.

A lot of this stuff sounds like the fantastic rationalizations that a stone age hunter/gatherer might come up with if you gave him a credit card to a butcher shop.
Here we go again, the "infinite" straw man. Even the universe itself may not be infinite, and yet you insist on putting words into my mouth claiming that it is.

I'll repeat from my first post:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '[')b]My thesis is that resources, while finite, are abundant in most cases.
Last edited by Oil-Finder on Tue 11 Mar 2008, 01:36:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Oil-Finder » Tue 11 Mar 2008, 01:07:04

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')"Abundant" is meaningless when you are talking about an economic system that is premised upon exponential growth, as ours is. If you are doubling the numbers several times every generation,

Doubling what numbers??

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'a')nything that is "abundant" today will be scarce in, at most, a few generations.

That's what they've been saying for 200 years!!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'W')hy deliberately drain non-renewable natural resource accounts if you KNOW they are non-renewable? Even if it's 1,000 years from now, do you see that by supporting this system today, you are screwing your descendants?

Because it's impossible to plan for 1,000 years ahead. We have no inkling whatsover that the people 1,000 years from now will even need or use iron ore, oil, coal, etc. at all! We have no idea whatsoever what the human population will be at that time, or if humans will even exist at all. Imagine the cave men of Europe 8,000 years ago pondering, "Oh, we must not eat too many root grubs, because we need to save some for future generations 8,000 years from now." Uhhh . . . yeah right. It's impossible to plan for that far ahead, because it's impossible for us to know what things will be like that far ahead.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'D')o you see how industrial civilization is all about fiscal child abuse, except rather than abusing your children, you are abusing your children and their children and their children.......

Think about how many of our institutions are based upon a presumption of screwing posterity:

Social Security
Medicare
Government Debt
The Banking System
Fiat Currency
Property Taxes
Human Habitat Destruction

All of this passing the shit into the future started in the 20th century. Before that, for better or worse civilization was pretty much pay as you go, or--GASP--one generation would pass something useful on to the next generation.

Oh please, spare me with the financial doomsday nonsense. This was supposed to be a thread about natural resources anyway.
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Re: Monte Quest vs Oil-Finder

Unread postby Plantagenet » Tue 11 Mar 2008, 01:18:31

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '
')OK, so let's go back to using wood to heat our homes, drive 1930's cars, reduce crop yields to 1900's levels, and so on. It will save the planet, and forestall our imminent demise!


Actually, no.

Reduction of crop yields to early 1900s levels likely means a return to the kinds of famines that were common in the early 1900s.

Famines are a classical symptom of populations that are in overshoot. :)
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