Look, this horse has already been beaten to death. The day to day threads on peakoil.com tend to orient around reading the tea leaves. Remember the "how soon before oil reaches $xxx/bbl" topic where the topic title would be reset every time the upper threshold was reached? Now the topic is reversed downard, so it's how soon before oil reaches $50, 40, 30, 20, 10, etc... I think that pretty much says it all about what the mindset of peak oilers was on this recent runup. Those who were expecting a pullback never saw it going below $100/bbl. I saw the housing crisis coming years ago and I thought while the US would suffer, Chindia would continue to grow, and fields would continue to deplete, keeping oil prices high. I think that was the predominant feeling. Nobody knew that the credit crisis had become such a cancer across the entire global financial system and that it would basically draw the entire globe's GDP down so much as to cause oil prices to actually tank.
And I really don't think housing collapsed just because people no longer had enough money to commute in from the exurbs. Housing tanked because the interest rates on their mortgages reset and suddenly they were paying hundreds of dollars more per month than they were before, and since their house was already bought at inflated prices, there were no suckers left to buy at that price anymore. So to reduce everything to peak oil and peak oil alone is pure tunnel vision. I mean, if it was all about commuting costs, why are we not seeing the foreclosures stop in its tracks now that gas is half price? It's because even at its peak, gas was not the main budget expense, it was the mortgage.
PeakOil is You
I'm starting to feel lost on this forum.
Re: I'm starting to feel lost on this forum.
by Koyaanisqatsi » Sun 30 Nov 2008, 03:40:26
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('outcast', 'I') think part of the problem is that their sense of vindication when oil prices were high vanished when the price collapsed and it turned out to be an enormous speculative bubble.
Peak oil is fundamentally about production, not price. Given that light sweet crude peaked in 2005 and overall production is set to peak very soon, I think peak oilers are quite right to feel vindicated. The price itself is irrelevant as it will always be out of range for most people relative to their incomes, whether oil costs $100/barrel or $10/barrel.
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Koyaanisqatsi - Lignite
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Re: I'm starting to feel lost on this forum.
by TWilliam » Sun 30 Nov 2008, 04:18:27
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'L')ook, this horse has already been beaten to death. The day to day threads on peakoil.com tend to orient around reading the tea leaves. Remember the "how soon before oil reaches $xxx/bbl" topic where the topic title would be reset every time the upper threshold was reached? Now the topic is reversed downard, so it's how soon before oil reaches $50, 40, 30, 20, 10, etc... I think that pretty much says it all about what the mindset of peak oilers was on this recent runup. Those who were expecting a pullback never saw it going below $100/bbl. I saw the housing crisis coming years ago and I thought while the US would suffer, Chindia would continue to grow, and fields would continue to deplete, keeping oil prices high. I think that was the predominant feeling. Nobody knew that the credit crisis had become such a cancer across the entire global financial system and that it would basically draw the entire globe's GDP down so much as to cause oil prices to actually tank.
And I really don't think housing collapsed just because people no longer had enough money to commute in from the exurbs. Housing tanked because the interest rates on their mortgages reset and suddenly they were paying hundreds of dollars more per month than they were before, and since their house was already bought at inflated prices, there were no suckers left to buy at that price anymore. So to reduce everything to peak oil and peak oil alone is pure tunnel vision. I mean, if it was all about commuting costs, why are we not seeing the foreclosures stop in its tracks now that gas is half price? It's because even at its peak, gas was not the main budget expense, it was the mortgage.
And I really don't think housing collapsed just because people no longer had enough money to commute in from the exurbs. Housing tanked because the interest rates on their mortgages reset and suddenly they were paying hundreds of dollars more per month than they were before, and since their house was already bought at inflated prices, there were no suckers left to buy at that price anymore. So to reduce everything to peak oil and peak oil alone is pure tunnel vision. I mean, if it was all about commuting costs, why are we not seeing the foreclosures stop in its tracks now that gas is half price? It's because even at its peak, gas was not the main budget expense, it was the mortgage.
Mos, I never said it was solely a result of commuting expense. I used it merely as a point along one particular thread of the tapestry, one that happens to be significant. Did you miss the mention of 'other factors' in my illustration?
The fundamental point you seem to keep missing in all of this is that the entire cultural zeitgeist that produced this house of cards and its inevitable collapse is predicated on a fundamental assumption that energy, primarily in the form of hydrocarbon fuels, is, and shall ever remain, abundant and most importantly, inexpensive.
The buildout, the financial shystering, the big box stores with their endless supply of throwaway crap, the fast food, the entertainment, the dining out, the manicures, the pedicures, the NASCAR, the glass and steel towers, the vacations virtually anywhere on the globe... everything... EVERYTHING... in the human created sphere today exists and has until recently prospered because of that assumption. Now that said assumption is proving false, ALL of it is beginning to crumble.
We tease out the details of how that process might look here in this forum, for whatever reasons, but the bottom line is that once one knows that the fundamental assumption upon which everything is built is false, one inevitably reaches the unavoidable conclusion that the entire edifice will fall.
Diminishing energy input, diminishing production output. It is an unavoidable law, and it is the sine qua non of peak oil...
"It means buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, because Kansas? Is goin' bye-bye... "
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TWilliam - Expert
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Re: I'm starting to feel lost on this forum.
by Ludi » Sun 30 Nov 2008, 11:35:39
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '[')though sometimes fairly narrow in their thinking process.
Like you're clairvoyant or something. 
You completely miss my point (no surprise there).
I'm telling you, you do not know how other people think. You can not read their minds.
- Ludi
