by Pops » Thu 27 Feb 2014, 21:10:23
History seems to me like a pool with a bunch of kids splashing around making waves that converge from all directions. Sometimes the waves cancel each other out and what one might guess would be a momentous splash comes to nothing. But then sometimes several ripples from different directions amplify one another to make one rogue wave that with results much greater than the constituent ripples would indicate.
There are so many kids in the pool it's impossible for me to know their names or even grasp the wave patterns at any given moment, let alone forecast some future soaking.
I've mostly been a slow crasher nonetheless, overly optimistic I guess. Although on odd Tuesdays I think about converging ripples making a big splash. I am pretty convinced we've reached peak net energy in addition to peak conventional oil - much of the additions to what's now know as "All Liquids" are not as energetic as crude oil ("refinery gain" contains zero energy, LOL) and for that matter I don't believe some "liquids" even enter the crude oil stream at all, propane & propylene for example, and NGPLs come from . . . natural gas - not oil.
But no matter, if NOCs are finding investment as unprofitable as the IOCs seem to be (and I can't see how they could be any more efficient) then decline is just around the corner and the longer and deeper the lack of investment the sharper the drop off into the deep end.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)