Did you read the last few pages? Cheap oil is irreplaceable because nothing comes close when you consider the combination of ease of production and distribution of oil.
Peak Oil, Resource Depletion, deminishing EROEI and the long term implications for the continued development of China...
- Thread starter quantumlight
- Start date
This is one of the best selling telescopes on Amazon, I originally first bought the 8 inch back in 2015 for about $999 USD
I have since gave it away and just out of curiosity was seeing what telescopes were out there, not a lot of new models actually, but lo and behold to my surprise the exact same model (not updated with new features or anything) is now nearly TWICE the price after more than half a decade... It used to be everything else got more expensive cause inflation but technology stuff was cheaper over time, especially high tech... now that isn't the case anymore... a top GPU that costs $599 back in 2015 now costs $3500... a best selling scope that was $999 is now $1899 at exact same specs after all these years...
As oil gets more scarce and expensive so does the cost of petrochemicals rise... and plastic costs, manufacturing costs, shipping costs, etc etc all because energy inputs and raw materials are getting more and more economically expensive as global society approaches resource depletion, water crisis, peak oil, lower EROEI, etc etc
I can tell you this, the average American worker's wage sure as heck hasn't doubled in five years...
I have since gave it away and just out of curiosity was seeing what telescopes were out there, not a lot of new models actually, but lo and behold to my surprise the exact same model (not updated with new features or anything) is now nearly TWICE the price after more than half a decade... It used to be everything else got more expensive cause inflation but technology stuff was cheaper over time, especially high tech... now that isn't the case anymore... a top GPU that costs $599 back in 2015 now costs $3500... a best selling scope that was $999 is now $1899 at exact same specs after all these years...
As oil gets more scarce and expensive so does the cost of petrochemicals rise... and plastic costs, manufacturing costs, shipping costs, etc etc all because energy inputs and raw materials are getting more and more economically expensive as global society approaches resource depletion, water crisis, peak oil, lower EROEI, etc etc
I can tell you this, the average American worker's wage sure as heck hasn't doubled in five years...
There's probably enough energy rich natural reserves for the next century and that accounts for predicted trajectory of living standards being lifted globally. North Sea energy reserves, Russia has some unknown reserves undiscovered and everything known is still enough to carry for the meantime. It's just that we have no real superior alternative yet except all the various types of fission reactors that have been built and are being developed/tested. Hopefully wouldn't even need to only depend on Uranium in future.
That's the energy side of the problem. There is no question that hydrocarbons are the king of energy and energy economics. Renewables themselves have plenty of energy costs just in their development manufacturing and maintenance cycles.
Waste and pollution can't be effectively addressed yet. They also accumulate and are already starting to poison us as they leach back in through the walls of comfortable existence.
Overpopulation is a thing. There is no doubt. There is also no certainty in where it's at depending on how it's defined. But one things for certain, exponential increase is unsustainable at some point in time. Hitting fertility wall phenomenon is not guaranteed for all ethnicities and cultures or types of economies e.g. one that is wealthy and reached developed status may have rules for reproduction or depend on having more children because of the nature of dominant industries within that economy. Just because patterns are apparent doesn't mean the same patterns will always be observed for future cases.
I'm not condoning cutting people down or preventing them from attaining a certain wealth of life. It's just something to be mindful of. It's not some elite conspiracy to keep the plebs down. China participated and did as much as they could with international forum discussions and agreements but drew appropriate lines for themselves. China won't be bullied by those elites for their interests but does recognise the issue. One child policy, planting entire European country sized forests. Clean coal scrubbers and newer power stations. The same metrics you showed to prove China has dramatically improved efficiency for joule/watt input is prove that it cares and knows these things are real problems. It didn't do any of that to show off because it barely reported on those things. It gets the problem and works on it while giving those elites a big middle finger when it's clear they just want to use it as a pretense for their agendas. That's a false equivalency. Just because some asshats around the world are using this as some opportunity to deceive and get their way, doesn't mean the whole thing has zero merit and is worth ignoring.
And then there's the water problem. Unless planet earth goes globally socialist and the have water places share it with the dying from not having enough drinking water, there is a huge issue here for the mid to distant future. It's solvable by solving the energy problem but is there a solution there? Fission is evidently the best option but it's difficult and needs to be started in many more places on larger scales immediately. China's making great progress in its research not just in various fission tech and plant designs but the alternative ones too. Until the day solid solution come out from any place, this is still a pressing issue.
Resources are also finite. Either people cope with less consumption or market forces are going to adjust and they are adjusting as we can see. People unfortunately have very finite intellectual means so this is a lost hope. This is a problem for politicians to manage. How they manage violence and unrest and how they manage to find solutions to bring people towards median.
That's the energy side of the problem. There is no question that hydrocarbons are the king of energy and energy economics. Renewables themselves have plenty of energy costs just in their development manufacturing and maintenance cycles.
Waste and pollution can't be effectively addressed yet. They also accumulate and are already starting to poison us as they leach back in through the walls of comfortable existence.
Overpopulation is a thing. There is no doubt. There is also no certainty in where it's at depending on how it's defined. But one things for certain, exponential increase is unsustainable at some point in time. Hitting fertility wall phenomenon is not guaranteed for all ethnicities and cultures or types of economies e.g. one that is wealthy and reached developed status may have rules for reproduction or depend on having more children because of the nature of dominant industries within that economy. Just because patterns are apparent doesn't mean the same patterns will always be observed for future cases.
I'm not condoning cutting people down or preventing them from attaining a certain wealth of life. It's just something to be mindful of. It's not some elite conspiracy to keep the plebs down. China participated and did as much as they could with international forum discussions and agreements but drew appropriate lines for themselves. China won't be bullied by those elites for their interests but does recognise the issue. One child policy, planting entire European country sized forests. Clean coal scrubbers and newer power stations. The same metrics you showed to prove China has dramatically improved efficiency for joule/watt input is prove that it cares and knows these things are real problems. It didn't do any of that to show off because it barely reported on those things. It gets the problem and works on it while giving those elites a big middle finger when it's clear they just want to use it as a pretense for their agendas. That's a false equivalency. Just because some asshats around the world are using this as some opportunity to deceive and get their way, doesn't mean the whole thing has zero merit and is worth ignoring.
And then there's the water problem. Unless planet earth goes globally socialist and the have water places share it with the dying from not having enough drinking water, there is a huge issue here for the mid to distant future. It's solvable by solving the energy problem but is there a solution there? Fission is evidently the best option but it's difficult and needs to be started in many more places on larger scales immediately. China's making great progress in its research not just in various fission tech and plant designs but the alternative ones too. Until the day solid solution come out from any place, this is still a pressing issue.
Resources are also finite. Either people cope with less consumption or market forces are going to adjust and they are adjusting as we can see. People unfortunately have very finite intellectual means so this is a lost hope. This is a problem for politicians to manage. How they manage violence and unrest and how they manage to find solutions to bring people towards median.
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Don't blame nature for humanity's stupidity. We have all the technology required to live sustainably on this planet. But it's more profitable for our corporations to keep raping the ecosystem for 'free,' paying no taxes, while at the same time passing their costs off to 'consumers,' who enabled their rise in the first place, by agreeing to consume unconstrained, and funding their masters with subsidized R&D and infrastructure. This system wouldn't be sustainable even if you had 7 thousand people on the planet, let alone 7 billion. Welcome to Oligarchy.
solarz
Brigadier
Motor vehicles account for 35% of global oil usage. Electricity generation account for another 20%.
In both of the above usage sectors, oil can be easily replaced. Hydro, nuclear, natural gas can all generate electricity as efficiently, if not more, as oil. Electric vehicles make gasoline unnecessary for transportation.
So that's 55% of oil usage that is immediately replaceable in the very near future.
True but EVs will take time to replace gasoline vehicles even in countries like China where there is a timeframe aimed for. Removing the 55% is great but that will take time even in the most devoted of places and what about those places that don't have any intention or ability to convert wrt delivering the infrastructure and working out the economic mechanisms that allow for smooth transition? For both EVs and renewables/alternative power generation.
After all that work and time (which is cost some more hydrocarbons to pull of), we would have only doubled the time left. That could be the difference between comfortable thriving of humanity or extinction depending on how technology progresses on those other things though. Don't get me wrong, it's good and important to commit to this transition as quickly as reasonable. We know it's already slowly taking place and will take decades even for China to wean off just that 55%.
The only reason electric cars are anywhere near the price of combustion engine cars is because giant shipping vessels can burn all the cheap oil they want shipping expensive battery metals all over the world.
Also, for a huge portion of the world it is simply uneconmical to shift to EVs: you think a long haul trucker or tuk-tuk driver will have the money to buy an electric vehicle?
If it ever came to that you could power shipping vessels with nuclear power.
Right now the industry might change to powering transport ships with natural gas.
This also ignores massive improvements in efficiency that come with larger container ships and the current trend towards large bore engines for ships which operate at slower speeds to reduce fuel consumption.
Right now the industry might change to powering transport ships with natural gas.
This also ignores massive improvements in efficiency that come with larger container ships and the current trend towards large bore engines for ships which operate at slower speeds to reduce fuel consumption.
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solarz
Brigadier
As opposed to internal combustion cars that are manufactured from scratch in one location?
It doesn't matter, because trucking will be automated. Truckers won't have a job in the near future anyway.
So you think a cost change in shipping will collapse modern economy?