Driver to drive?

To: mike
On Monday, December 8, 2014 7:36:41 AM UTC, mike wrote:

Got any statistics for:
How long the typical person lives in the same house?
How much of your investment can you get back when you
move and sell your house?

How much you get back at sale time very much depends. In UK the usual answer is
zero. And connecting to grid instead of going pv increases house value
massively.


NT

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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--- Synchronet 3.15b-Win32 NewsLink 1.92
SpaceSST BBS Usenet <> Fidonet Gateway

 

[Bill Sloman]

To: dca...@krl.org
On Tuesday, 9 December 2014 00:27:44 UTC+11, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:


[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are

digging it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up, the more
expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to
dig out before.

So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it

became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it killed
him (or her).

snip

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive.

They are more likely to die of starvation if fossil carbon doesn't become too
expensive to burn as fuel. This is an estimate based on the balance of
probabilities, but one less influenced by the Koch brother's short term
financial interests than most of
the ones you seem to have read.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

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To: Bill Sloman
On Monday, December 8, 2014 9:44:56 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive.

They are more likely to die of starvation if fossil carbon doesn't become too

expensive to burn as fuel. This is an estimate based on the balance of
probabilities, but one less influenced by the Koch brother's short term
financial interests than most
of the ones you seem to have read.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Starvation is extremely unlikely. CO2 is added to greenhouses to increase
vegetation growth.

Dan

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--- Synchronet 3.15b-Win32 NewsLink 1.92
SpaceSST BBS Usenet <> Fidonet Gateway

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

To: meow2222@care2.com
On Mon, 8 Dec 2014 11:26:52 -0800 (PST), meow2222@care2.com wrote:

On Monday, December 8, 2014 7:36:41 AM UTC, mike wrote:

Got any statistics for:
How long the typical person lives in the same house?
How much of your investment can you get back when you
move and sell your house?

How much you get back at sale time very much depends. In UK
the usual answer is zero. And connecting to grid instead
of going pv increases house value massively.
NT

Do homeowners in the UK take their solar panels with them when they
sell their house? If there's not cost recovery, it would make
financial sense to not give away the panels for free to the home
buyer, and instead move the panels to the new residence.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

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SpaceSST BBS Usenet <> Fidonet Gateway

 

[John Larkin]

On 9 Dec 2014 11:32:24 -0500, dcaster@krl.org.remove-cdt-this wrote:

To: Bill Sloman
On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:


[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are digging
it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up, the more
expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to
dig out before.


So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it
became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it killed
him (or her).

snip

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive.

Dan

"Peak oil" has been predicted for about a century by now. It hasn't
happened. We keep finding more oil, coal, and gas. The peaks are
hundreds of years out.

Some experts are expecting $60 a barrel next year. Some are predicting
$40. The US, especially the Rust Belt, is seeing an economic
resurgence driven by cheap energy. Europe isn't.

Nice planet, Earth. All those goodies, left for us to find and use.
That's another subject.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 7:26:40 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Apparently oil production peaked in 2010.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

So what are the numbers for world oil production in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013?
You made the assernion, so it is up to you to back up your statements or admit you made up the numbers.

Dan

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, 10 December 2014 13:21:52 UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 18:26:10 -0600, Les Cargill
lcargill99@comcast.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On 9 Dec 2014 11:32:24 -0500, dcaster@krl.org.remove-cdt-this wrote:
On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are
digging it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up,
the more expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that
nobody bothered to dig out before.

So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it
became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it
killed him (or her).

snip

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive.

"Peak oil" has been predicted for about a century by now. It hasn't
happened. We keep finding more oil, coal, and gas. The peaks are
hundreds of years out.

Some experts are expecting $60 a barrel next year. Some are predicting
$40.

This is a temporary phenomenon while the House of Saud has some sort of
temper fit.

The last time this happened, we ended up with the Savings and Loan
Crisis. Something similar could happen. A very rapid drop in oil
prices tends to be deflationary.

That is bad.

Number 10 here is especially pertinent:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Ten-Reasons-Why-A-Sustained-Drop-In-Oil-Prices-Could-Be-Catastrophic.html

"Issue 10. The drop in oil prices seems to reflect a basic underlying
problem: the world is reaching the limits of its debt expansion."

A good old debt crisis now is not what we want, folks.

Fracking, and not some systemic economic issue, has caused the oil
price drop. The price of unrelated stuff isn't dropping, except maybe
imports caused by the strong dollar.

Efficiency can always be declared to be deflationary. That's the
Luddite concept.

Fracking is more expensive than conventional oil extraction - it's not a "more efficient" way of extracting oil. You have to expend more money and effort per unit oil. Because the more easily extracted oil has been extracted, fracking becomes more attractive, but it's not "efficient".

The Saudis are hoping to destroy our incentive to frack, and that
works to the extent that equilibrium oil prices go low and stay that
way. At $40 a barrel, we'll just leave it in the ground for a while,
till the prices recover some.

Of course the CO2 level in the atmosphere will keep on rising in the meantime, and the US balance of payments deficit will keep on going up, but right-wing nitwits can't understand the significance of either problem - and won't until the problems create obvious side-effects that have to be dealt with immediately.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 9:33:36 PM UTC-5, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 7:26:40 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:


Apparently oil production peaked in 2010.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

So what are the numbers for world oil production in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013?
You made the assernion, so it is up to you to back up your statements or admit you made up the numbers.

Dan

P.S. Do not use this url for your numbers.


http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-crude-oil-production-geographical-area/


Dan

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, 10 December 2014 13:33:36 UTC+11, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 7:26:40 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Apparently oil production peaked in 2010.

So what are the numbers for world oil production in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013?
You made the assertion, so it is up to you to back up your statements or admit you made up the numbers.

Here are the US values for the world numbers

http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=53&aid=1

They now show a small rise between 2010 and 2011 - from 87,578,600 barrels per day to 87,869,700 per day. When the newspapers picked up on this a few years ago, not all of the data was in and the data that was in showed a small fall.

It got enough publicity at the time to lodge in my memory - something that I thought that I knew that wasn't so. I didn't make up any numbers but rather just quoted invalid information that I'd remembered correctly. There was certainly a drop in crude oil production from wells from about 2008 to 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#mediaviewer/File:World_Oil_Production..png

but that's probably the GFC.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Monday, July 21, 2014 10:50:45 AM UTC-7, Tim Wescott wrote:

On Mon, 21 Jul 2014 02:04:24 -0700, jrwalliker wrote:

On Monday, 25 November 1996 08:00:00 UTC, Thomas Pappano wrote:

Magnetrons are a specialized diode that operates in the influence of a
magnetic field and usually have integral resonant circuitry that
defines the frequency band they run in. They are used in pulsed
applications such as pulse radar and also in continuous wave
applications like microwave ovens.

Every microwave oven I have looked at (with an antenna and diode
detector) is pulsed. I think each pulse lasts around 100us with a
repetition rate of 100Hz (in the UK) at full power. In low-power modes
the pulse repetition rate is reduced but the peak power is unchanged.

The frequency is unstable, so as the turntable rotates with a slightly
asymmetric load the frequency drifts up and down (within the ISM band)

Can we hand out awards for most years elapsed between question and
answer? Nearly 18 years may not be a record, but it's pretty good, all
in all.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Tim,

I was going to say what you exactly said here: these answers are very interesting, damn good even after 18 years, no that the laws of physics has or the principles of K&M has changed since then. But I found them quite interesting. Thanks! I am working on a design concept and possibly an engineering spec on a magnetronic system for some special purpose heating applications. Would you know of a good reference for multi -ega Watt (dielectric) heating?

Thanks, Ali

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 9:54:31 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Here are the US values for the world numbers

http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=53&aid=1

They now show a small rise between 2010 and 2011 - from 87,578,600 barrels per day to 87,869,700 per day. When the newspapers picked up on this a few years ago, not all of the data was in and the data that was in showed a small fall.

It got enough publicity at the time to lodge in my memory - something that I thought that I knew that wasn't so. I didn't make up any numbers but rather just quoted invalid information that I'd remembered correctly. There was certainly a drop in crude oil production from wells from about 2008 to 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#mediaviewer/File:World_Oil_Production.png

but that's probably the GFC.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

I was pretty sure the world was using more oil, but when I first looked I did not find any data after 2010. It is not easy to find some information, and the newspapers are not always very accurate.

I did not really think you had made up data, but did think you were using inaccurate data.

Dan

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, 10 December 2014 14:26:59 UTC+11, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 9:54:31 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:


Here are the US values for the world numbers

http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=53&aid=1

They now show a small rise between 2010 and 2011 - from 87,578,600 barrels per day to 87,869,700 per day. When the newspapers picked up on this a few years ago, not all of the data was in and the data that was in showed a small fall.

It got enough publicity at the time to lodge in my memory - something that I thought that I knew that wasn't so. I didn't make up any numbers but rather just quoted invalid information that I'd remembered correctly. There was certainly a drop in crude oil production from wells from about 2008 to 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#mediaviewer/File:World_Oil_Production.png

but that's probably the GFC.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

I was pretty sure the world was using more oil, but when I first looked I did not find any data after 2010. It is not easy to find some information, and the newspapers are not always very accurate.

I did not really think you had made up data,

So why say so?

> but did think you were using inaccurate data.

It happens all the time - all data is to some extent inaccurate. Sadly, my data was not only inaccurate, but also misleading, which is a much worse fault.

The "peak oil" debate is a bit silly. There's always going to be some more oil in the ground, somewhere, but it's always going to be more expensive and difficult to dig out, so the size of anybody's oil reserves always depends on price they expect to get for the oil when they do dig it out.

There's loads of tin in Tasmania, but not in accessible deposits. For a while, a rise in the tin price would get the tin mines in Tasmania running again, but eventually the local miners realised that there were enough marginal tin mines around the world where the ore was more accessible than it was in Tasmania that the tin price was never going to stay high long enough to keep them in business.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Les Cargill]

John Larkin wrote:

On 9 Dec 2014 11:32:24 -0500, dcaster@krl.org.remove-cdt-this wrote:

To: Bill Sloman
On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:


[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are digging
it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up, the more
expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to
dig out before.


So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it
became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it killed
him (or her).

snip

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive.

Dan

"Peak oil" has been predicted for about a century by now. It hasn't
happened. We keep finding more oil, coal, and gas. The peaks are
hundreds of years out.

Some experts are expecting $60 a barrel next year. Some are predicting
$40.

This is a temporary phenomenon while the House of Saud has some sort of
temper fit.

The last time this happened, we ended up with the Savings and Loan
Crisis. Something similar could happen. A very rapid drop in oil
prices tends to be deflationary.

That is bad.

Number 10 here is especially pertinent:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Ten-Reasons-Why-A-Sustained-Drop-In-Oil-Prices-Could-Be-Catastrophic.html

"Issue 10. The drop in oil prices seems to reflect a basic underlying
problem: the world is reaching the limits of its debt expansion."

A good old debt crisis now is not what we want, folks.

The US, especially the Rust Belt, is seeing an economic
resurgence driven by cheap energy. Europe isn't.

Nice planet, Earth. All those goodies, left for us to find and use.
That's another subject.

--
Les Cargill

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 10/12/2014 4:32 AM, John Larkin wrote:

On 9 Dec 2014 11:32:24 -0500, dcaster@krl.org.remove-cdt-this wrote:
On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

<snip>

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are digging
it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up, the more
expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to
dig out before.

So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it
became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it killed
him (or her).

snip

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive

"Peak oil" has been predicted for about a century by now. It hasn't
happened.

Apparently oil production peaked in 2010.

> We keep finding more oil, coal, and gas.

But not as fast as we used, and it's all deeper and harder to extract
than it used to be.

> The peaks are hundreds of years out.

Dream on. If you were better-informed, you'd have noticed that it had
already happened.

Some experts are expecting $60 a barrel next year. Some are predicting
$40.

The free market is displaying it's enthusiasm for short term instability
- don't confuse the gyrations with a long term trend.

The US, especially the Rust Belt, is seeing an economic
resurgence driven by cheap energy. Europe isn't.

Obama managed to stick with Keynesian deficit-funded pump-priming -
qualitative easing - for long enough to get results.

Europe is stuck with the Euro, and a bunch of central bankers who are
scared silly of inflation and turned off the pump-priming a little too
early. "Austerity" was always a silly idea for an economy not growing as
fast as it should, but bankers are silly.

> Nice planet, Earth. All those goodies, left for us to find and use.

Right - catch all the cod, until there aren't any more left to catch.

Burn all the fossil carbon and bump up the greenhouse effect until the
place looks like Venus.

Some of those "goodies" are tests of insight and self-restraint. We are
in the process of failing one of those tests. We are already driving
lots of species to extinction - we fail the test when we drive ourselves
to extinction.

> That's another subject.

Where you get your usual failing grade.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 10/12/2014 3:32 AM, meow2222@care2.com.remove-cdt-this wrote:

To: Bill Sloman
On Monday, December 8, 2014 10:50:00 AM UTC, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Monday, 8 December 2014 17:31:38 UTC+11, meow...@care2.com wrote:
On Monday, December 8, 2014 6:14:23 AM UTC, Don Y wrote:
On 12/7/2014 10:22 PM, meow2222@care2.com wrote:

That misses the point completely. No sane person would buy a 100k PV
system sized to run an all electric house when they can spend 5k and
have gas heating and a well insulated fridge.

You're assuming you can *get* gas at your home. I can think of lots
of places that have electricity but no gas. I can't think of any
that have gas but no electricity!

gas, oil, pellets, random solid fuel, all far cheaper than electric runoff
solar.

[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are digging
it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up, the more
expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to
dig out before.

There is the point that anthropogenic global warming will probably destroy
advanced industrial society as we know it quite a bit before we've dug up and
burnt all the fossil carbon, so burning fossil carbon for fuel may remain
"relatively cheap" right up to the point where the side-effects make it
impractical to keep on doing it - in the sense that the climate will
have
gone west to the point where we can't grow food like we used to, or
extremeweather will have got to the point where we can't ship
the fossil carbon from where we dig it up to where we wanted to burn it.

So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it
became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it killed
him (or her).

There are so many holes in that idea I don't know where to begin.

In other words you don't like the ideas presented, but can't construct a
counter argument - probably because I'm right, and whenever you try to
construct one of your counter-arguments, you find yourself stuck with a
fallacy at the core of your response.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 10/12/2014 3:32 AM, meow2222@care2.com.remove-cdt-this wrote:

To: mike
On Monday, December 8, 2014 7:36:41 AM UTC, mike wrote:

Got any statistics for:
How long the typical person lives in the same house?

In the UK, when I lived there, the average was seven years.

How much of your investment can you get back when you
move and sell your house?

How much you get back at sale time very much depends. In UK the usual answer is
zero. And connecting to grid instead of going pv increases house value
massively.

Because, in the UK, if your house isn't connected to the grid, it's
because it is a long way out of town, and the grid connection charge -
for laying the cables - is large. There's no doubt that grid electricity
is more convenient than pv (which you've got to back up with your own
battery bank and almost certainly a domestic motor-generator.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Les Cargill]

Bill Sloman wrote:

On Wednesday, 10 December 2014 13:33:36 UTC+11, dca...@krl.org wrote:
On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 7:26:40 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Apparently oil production peaked in 2010.

So what are the numbers for world oil production in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013?
You made the assertion, so it is up to you to back up your statements or admit you made up the numbers.

Here are the US values for the world numbers

http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=53&aid=1

They now show a small rise between 2010 and 2011 - from 87,578,600 barrels per day to 87,869,700 per day. When the newspapers picked up on this a few years ago, not all of the data was in and the data that was in showed a small fall.

It got enough publicity at the time to lodge in my memory - something that I thought that I knew that wasn't so. I didn't make up any numbers but rather just quoted invalid information that I'd remembered correctly. There was certainly a drop in crude oil production from wells from about 2008 to 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#mediaviewer/File:World_Oil_Production.png

but that's probably the GFC.

Demand for petroleum in the US has leveled off.


--
Les Cargill

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 18:26:10 -0600, Les Cargill
<lcargill99@comcast.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On 9 Dec 2014 11:32:24 -0500, dcaster@krl.org.remove-cdt-this wrote:

To: Bill Sloman
On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:


[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are digging
it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up, the more
expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to
dig out before.


So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it
became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it killed
him (or her).

snip

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive.

Dan

"Peak oil" has been predicted for about a century by now. It hasn't
happened. We keep finding more oil, coal, and gas. The peaks are
hundreds of years out.

Some experts are expecting $60 a barrel next year. Some are predicting
$40.


This is a temporary phenomenon while the House of Saud has some sort of
temper fit.

The last time this happened, we ended up with the Savings and Loan
Crisis. Something similar could happen. A very rapid drop in oil
prices tends to be deflationary.

That is bad.

Number 10 here is especially pertinent:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Ten-Reasons-Why-A-Sustained-Drop-In-Oil-Prices-Could-Be-Catastrophic.html

"Issue 10. The drop in oil prices seems to reflect a basic underlying
problem: the world is reaching the limits of its debt expansion."

A good old debt crisis now is not what we want, folks.

Fracking, and not some systemic economic issue, has caused the oil
price drop. The price of unrelated stuff isn't dropping, except maybe
imports caused by the strong dollar.

Efficiency can always be declared to be deflationary. That's the
Luddite concept.

The Saudis are hoping to destroy our incentive to frack, and that
works to the extent that equilibrium oil prices go low and stay that
way. At $40 a barrel, we'll just leave it in the ground for a while,
till the prices recover some.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Les Cargill]

Bill Sloman wrote:

On Wednesday, 10 December 2014 13:21:52 UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 18:26:10 -0600, Les Cargill
lcargill99@comcast.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On 9 Dec 2014 11:32:24 -0500, dcaster@krl.org.remove-cdt-this
wrote:
On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman
wrote:

[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up,
and we are digging it up a lot faster than it fossilised.
And the more we dig up, the more expensive it gets to dig
out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to dig out
before.

So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs
of burning it became obvious to the most dim-witted
right-wing nitwit, just before it killed him (or her).

snip

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my
grandchildren will probably die of old age before fossil
fuels become expensive.

"Peak oil" has been predicted for about a century by now. It
hasn't happened. We keep finding more oil, coal, and gas. The
peaks are hundreds of years out.

Some experts are expecting $60 a barrel next year. Some are
predicting $40.

This is a temporary phenomenon while the House of Saud has some
sort of temper fit.

The last time this happened, we ended up with the Savings and
Loan Crisis. Something similar could happen. A very rapid drop in
oil prices tends to be deflationary.

That is bad.

Number 10 here is especially pertinent:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Ten-Reasons-Why-A-Sustained-Drop-In-Oil-Prices-Could-Be-Catastrophic.html



"Issue 10. The drop in oil prices seems to reflect a basic underlying
problem: the world is reaching the limits of its debt
expansion."

A good old debt crisis now is not what we want, folks.

Fracking, and not some systemic economic issue, has caused the oil
price drop. The price of unrelated stuff isn't dropping, except
maybe imports caused by the strong dollar.

Efficiency can always be declared to be deflationary. That's the
Luddite concept.

Fracking is more expensive than conventional oil extraction - it's
not a "more efficient" way of extracting oil.

Fracking *IS* conventional oil extraction. It's been used since the 1940s.

You have to expend more
money and effort per unit oil. Because the more easily extracted oil
has been extracted, fracking becomes more attractive, but it's not
"efficient".

It's been priced into production costs for a very long time now. The
media have just made it a curse word. energy inputs into fracking have
gone down over the last 10-20 years. Not by a whole lot, but
respectably so.

<snip>
>

--
Les Cargill

 

[Les Cargill]

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 18:26:10 -0600, Les Cargill
lcargill99@comcast.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On 9 Dec 2014 11:32:24 -0500, dcaster@krl.org.remove-cdt-this wrote:

To: Bill Sloman
On Monday, December 8, 2014 5:50:00 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:


[you're also assuming fossil fuel costs remain cheap]

no I'm not. But it will, relatively.

Not forever. There's only so much fossil carbon to dig up, and we are digging
it up a lot faster than it fossilised. And the more we dig up, the more
expensive it gets to dig out the deeply buried stuff that nobody bothered to
dig out before.


So it could remain "relatively cheap" until the real costs of burning it
became obvious to the most dim-witted right-wing nitwit, just before it killed
him (or her).

snip

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Fossil fuel will not stay cheap forever. However my grandchildren will
probably die of old age before fossil fuels become expensive.

Dan

"Peak oil" has been predicted for about a century by now. It hasn't
happened. We keep finding more oil, coal, and gas. The peaks are
hundreds of years out.

Some experts are expecting $60 a barrel next year. Some are predicting
$40.


This is a temporary phenomenon while the House of Saud has some sort of
temper fit.

The last time this happened, we ended up with the Savings and Loan
Crisis. Something similar could happen. A very rapid drop in oil
prices tends to be deflationary.

That is bad.

Number 10 here is especially pertinent:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Ten-Reasons-Why-A-Sustained-Drop-In-Oil-Prices-Could-Be-Catastrophic.html

"Issue 10. The drop in oil prices seems to reflect a basic underlying
problem: the world is reaching the limits of its debt expansion."

A good old debt crisis now is not what we want, folks.

Fracking, and not some systemic economic issue, has caused the oil
price drop.

First, demand rolled off and never recovered after the 2008 recession.
Second, fracking has had *some* effect in terms of transportation fuel,
although there's a significant refinery bottleneck.

The price of unrelated stuff isn't dropping, except maybe

imports caused by the strong dollar.

Fracking is more about shale oil and gas, neither of which are
particularly competitive with Saudi oil. Keragen costs much
more to refine, and we're not exactly adding refinery capacity.

Gas can be; people can turn old East Coast oil burners into gas burners,
but it takes running the pipes and all that. The NRE is
pretty high.

Continued declines in oil prices can bend things more towards deflation.
It won't be a primary cause, but it all adds up. And
again - the first move in the Savings and Loan crisis was the big drop
in oil price.

Efficiency can always be declared to be deflationary. That's the
Luddite concept.

Cheap oil isn't an efficiency. Using more oil can pretty much not be
"efficient". And the existing regime, in which less is used regardless
there's no reason to expect demand to actually respond.

It's a modest crutch. It does help out people who have low incomes, but
at a long-term cost in actual efficiency.

The Saudis are hoping to destroy our incentive to frack, and that
works to the extent that equilibrium oil prices go low and stay that
way. At $40 a barrel, we'll just leave it in the ground for a while,
till the prices recover some.

Assuming there's anybody in the oil business left after the price
goes back to an untampered-with equilibrium. I was in Oklahoma in 1983;
the result is that oil companies are populated with a lot of older
workers - people at retirement age now.

--
Les Cargill