Rising oil prices.

There are 11 OPEC countries, 10 of them are Muslim, one is Roman Catholic.
I'm suggesting that these rising prices are more than just demand and
supply. I think they are connected with the Muslim dislike of the West.

Many say that the Muslim religion condemns what the terrorist are doing and
I'm sure that some do. I've heard it said that the Koran forbids what the
terrorists are doing but I have never read the book. That said, I can still
see them cheering and dancing in the streets as CNN took us to many of these
countries on 9/11 to see the reactions of the people.

Oil prices are having an impact on the economy and as they rise the impact
will become more meaningful.

The latest talk is of jet fuel shortages. Jet fuel is approximately
$0.80/gal cheaper than gasoline. If you were a refiner at full capacity
which grade would you be pushing out?

I posted a similar message on a moderated board and it was deleted as off
topic. I guess because of the religious/politic nature of the post. Some saw
the post and commented. One said we get oil from many places like Canada and
Mexico, these aren't Muslim countries. It's true, we do get oil from
non-Muslim countries, but they don't set prices, Muslim countries do.
Another said that these countries were Muslim for a long time and that had
no effect on oil prices in the past so it probably doesn't now. Well,
nothing happens until it happens, I think it's happening now.

As the high prices become more burdensome, people will cut back on spending
in other areas. Some people already have and the list will be growing.

It could be just a supply/demand thing, I could be way off on this but it's
just something that I was thinking about.

Re: Rising oil prices.

I bought oil stocks when an oil man was elected as our pres. I have done
very good!! To me it's simple what oil prices would do if an oil man was
pres.

In article <>,
"Ed" <> wrote:

> There are 11 OPEC countries, 10 of them are Muslim, one is Roman Catholic.
> I'm suggesting that these rising prices are more than just demand and
> supply. I think they are connected with the Muslim dislike of the West.
> Many say that the Muslim religion condemns what the terrorist are doing and
> I'm sure that some do. I've heard it said that the Koran forbids what the
> terrorists are doing but I have never read the book. That said, I can still
> see them cheering and dancing in the streets as CNN took us to many of these
> countries on 9/11 to see the reactions of the people.
>
> Oil prices are having an impact on the economy and as they rise the impact
> will become more meaningful.
>
> The latest talk is of jet fuel shortages. Jet fuel is approximately
> $0.80/gal cheaper than gasoline. If you were a refiner at full capacity
> which grade would you be pushing out?
>
> I posted a similar message on a moderated board and it was deleted as off
> topic. I guess because of the religious/politic nature of the post. Some saw
> the post and commented. One said we get oil from many places like Canada and
> Mexico, these aren't Muslim countries. It's true, we do get oil from
> non-Muslim countries, but they don't set prices, Muslim countries do.
> Another said that these countries were Muslim for a long time and that had
> no effect on oil prices in the past so it probably doesn't now. Well,
> nothing happens until it happens, I think it's happening now.
>
> As the high prices become more burdensome, people will cut back on spending
> in other areas. Some people already have and the list will be growing.
>
> It could be just a supply/demand thing, I could be way off on this but it's
> just something that I was thinking about.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Ed wrote:
> There are 11 OPEC countries, 10 of them are Muslim, one is Roman Catholic.
> I'm suggesting that these rising prices are more than just demand and
> supply. I think they are connected with the Muslim dislike of the West.

"Muslim dislike of the West," which is all too real, still cannot negate
the law of supply and demand. Even if all those Muslim nations were run
by Osama bin Laden himself, they couldn't jack up the price of oil to
the point that no one would buy it, because then their own economies
would suffer.

In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gasoline is LOWER now than it
was in the late 1970's. The price of gasoline then was a dollar a
gallon. Since the Consumer Price Index has tripled since then, that
would make the pump price of gasoline today around $3.20 a gallon. So
all we're seeing is the price of gasoline finally catching up with the
way the price of all other necessities have risen over the last 30 years.

The bottom line is that oil prices are NOT high in real terms. It's
true that in 1976, gasoline only cost $0.70. But back then, I also
bought a fully loaded Buick Regal for under $7,000.


> Many say that the Muslim religion condemns what the terrorist are doing and
> I'm sure that some do. I've heard it said that the Koran forbids what the
> terrorists are doing but I have never read the book.

This is off-topic for this NG, and I really don't think it has anything
to do with oil prices. But since you raised it:
I have read the Quran, and other religious pronouncements too. I and
others have discussed this at length in the alt.politics.* NG. I'll
just make these few summary points for your edification:

1. The Quran indeed forbids the "killing of innocents." But what
Islamic spokespersons carefully avoid mentioning, is that in Islam,
adult infidels are NOT "innocent"--because they have rejected Mohammed.
"Innocent" people are Muslim people.

2. What about young children, too young to know about Mohammed, who are
born to "infidel" parents? The massacre of young children by Muslim
terrorists in Beslan Russia last year, caused a lot of debate among
Muslim clerics. In the end, they came up with this ruling: It is
unacceptable for Muslims to deliberately murder the young children of
infidels. But if Muslims get into a firefight with infidels, and the
children get killed in the crossfire, that's OK.

3. Muslim spokespersons, as you can see, keep two sets of books. They
are very careful to talk of peace and goodwill when they're speaking to
Western news media. But they say different things amongst each other.
What makes this possible, is that Islam may be unique among all
religions, in that it actually lays down specific rules as to when it is
acceptable for a Muslim to lie to others and to break his promises to
others. It is unacceptable for a Muslim to lie to other Muslims. But
Islam allows Muslims to lie to infidels as a tactic to confuse the
enemy. So even the most religious, most devout Muslim imams and clerics
are specifically allowed to lie to us. Furthermore, IIRC, the Quran
says Muslims are required to keep their word to other Muslims but not to
infidels.
Thus when Islamic terrorists say to us things like "Get out of Iraq and
we'll stop the terrorism," or they say to Israel "Get out of Palestine
and we'll stop the terrorism," their promises are utterly worthless
because the Quran gives them sanction to break their word to infidels.
The Quran specifically allows Muslims, after having negotiated a truce
with infidels, to break that truce and resume fighting. And we've seen
them do that, in Palestine, and in Spain, where al-Qaeda resumed their
terrorist plots against Spain soon *after* Spain withdrew her troops
from Iraq.

4. Which brings us to the issue of jihad. Jihad literally means
"struggle." And there are many kinds of struggle--internal and
external, peaceful and violent. But to this day, no Muslim sect, not
the Shi'a, not the Sunni, not even the Sufi--has ever formally rejected
the violent form of jihad against infidels. It remains an option for
all Muslims, even when they are citizens of a democracy.


I heartily recommend that you read the Quran. Parts of it are indeed
beautiful and even enlightened for their time. But other parts of it
read like a combination of Machiavelli and an Army field manual.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Steven L. <> wrote:

> In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gasoline is LOWER now than it
> was in the late 1970's. The price of gasoline then was a dollar a

Oil was plummeting in the 1990's, especially when it looked like Clinton
was making progress on the middle-east peace process. People have that
as their frame of reference.

I think this is why many think we're in the midst of a bear market right
now. Their frame of reference is the 90's.

> The bottom line is that oil prices are NOT high in real terms. It's
> true that in 1976, gasoline only cost $0.70. But back then, I also
> bought a fully loaded Buick Regal for under $7,000.

Oil prices place pressure on the trade deficit wich has has been
devaluing the dollar. All in all, oil seems to be climbing steadily
up and at $120 a barrell (which most are estimating) it will be
the highest it's ever been.

I agree that supply and demand are at play in oil prices but most
analyses I've say oil should only be at about $40 a barrel. The
rest of it is due to fear over the situatoin in the middle east.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Steven L." <> wrote

> The bottom line is that oil prices are NOT high in real terms. It's true
> that in 1976, gasoline only cost $0.70. But back then, I also bought a
> fully loaded Buick Regal for under $7,000.

I tried to find median household incomes for 1976 but the best I could come
up with was 1984.
The median household income then was $37,767.00

Using an inflation calculator, median household income would have to be
$70,735.88 now just to stay flat. The table only went to 2003 but the median
income then was $43,318, a long way from $70,336.

Using the same calculator, the $7,000 Buick would cost $35,108.25 now.

I looked for historical gasoline prices and could only come up with 1987 and
later. In 1987 the average price for 1 gallon of unleaded regular was $0.65.
Adjusted for inflation, it should be $1.11 now. It's $2.41 and that's well
ahead of inflation. The problem seems to be double edged. Falling real
incomes and rapidly rising oil prices.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Steven L." <> wrote in message news:7vnLe.5363
>
> The bottom line is that oil prices are NOT high in real terms. It's true
> that in 1976, gasoline only cost $0.70. But back then, I also bought a
> fully loaded Buick Regal for under $7,000.

I think you're prices are a little high, like our current prices.

In December 1975, I rolled off the floor with a brand new Ford Pinto.
I emptied my paper route savings of $2,200.00. My father complained
that I would never be able to afford to operate it now, being broke.

Minimum wage was $1.85. News papers were 15 cents each and they
cost me 11.5 cents. I had 90 customers. All I had to do was deliver
my papers or work an hour and a half at Kentucky Fried Chicken,
and I was set to cruise the night away.

With two bucks in my pocket, I was cool.
3 gallons of gas @ 49.9 cents and a pack of cigarettes at 53 cents.

And that Regal you bought, must have been a 454 GS model.
My father bought a 1977 Chrysler New Yorker, fully loaded,
for $7200 with tax. A full size luxury car for only $200 more than
a mid sized Buick?

Re: Rising oil prices.

Ed,

OPEC doesn't set the price directly. They do control the amount produced. If
that affects price then it is the result of supply/demand economics.

Did you know that the US only imports 25% of the oil it uses, but that the
oil produced in the US is 1000% more expensive to bring to the refinery???
As long as this is true, we are screwed!

Kevin

"Ed" <> wrote in message
news:
> There are 11 OPEC countries, 10 of them are Muslim, one is Roman Catholic.
> I'm suggesting that these rising prices are more than just demand and
> supply. I think they are connected with the Muslim dislike of the West.
>
> Many say that the Muslim religion condemns what the terrorist are doing
and
> I'm sure that some do. I've heard it said that the Koran forbids what the
> terrorists are doing but I have never read the book. That said, I can
still
> see them cheering and dancing in the streets as CNN took us to many of
these
> countries on 9/11 to see the reactions of the people.
>
> Oil prices are having an impact on the economy and as they rise the impact
> will become more meaningful.
>
> The latest talk is of jet fuel shortages. Jet fuel is approximately
> $0.80/gal cheaper than gasoline. If you were a refiner at full capacity
> which grade would you be pushing out?
>
> I posted a similar message on a moderated board and it was deleted as off
> topic. I guess because of the religious/politic nature of the post. Some
saw
> the post and commented. One said we get oil from many places like Canada
and
> Mexico, these aren't Muslim countries. It's true, we do get oil from
> non-Muslim countries, but they don't set prices, Muslim countries do.
> Another said that these countries were Muslim for a long time and that had
> no effect on oil prices in the past so it probably doesn't now. Well,
> nothing happens until it happens, I think it's happening now.
>
> As the high prices become more burdensome, people will cut back on
spending
> in other areas. Some people already have and the list will be growing.
>
> It could be just a supply/demand thing, I could be way off on this but
it's
> just something that I was thinking about.
>
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

OPEC no longer controls the amount produced. Every OPEC nation is
producing at its max physical capacity (pace Iraq and Venezuela where
there are political problems). If the Saudis could bring down the
price of oil, they would-- it has always been Saudi policy never to
encourage long term switches away from oil, by keeping the price within
a target band.

US imports about 11m b/d out of 18m b/d consumed, I believe. It does
import some petrol (gas) because there have been refinery outages and
new refinery capacity has not kept pace with growth in gasoline demand
(transport is 60% of US consumption). Conversely Europe is short of
diesel fuel because half of new cars sold here are diesel and the
refineries are configured to produce more petrol/ barrel.

Re: Rising oil prices.

2 Roman Catholic countries in OPEC: Mexico and Venezuela?

Re: Rising oil prices.

In article
<>,
"darkness39" <> wrote:

> OPEC no longer controls the amount produced. Every OPEC nation is
> producing at its max physical capacity (pace Iraq and Venezuela where
> there are political problems). If the Saudis could bring down the
> price of oil, they would-- it has always been Saudi policy never to
> encourage long term switches away from oil, by keeping the price within
> a target band.
>
> US imports about 11m b/d out of 18m b/d consumed, I believe. It does
> import some petrol (gas) because there have been refinery outages and
> new refinery capacity has not kept pace with growth in gasoline demand
> (transport is 60% of US consumption). Conversely Europe is short of
> diesel fuel because half of new cars sold here are diesel and the
> refineries are configured to produce more petrol/ barrel.

Well, that sounds knowledgeable. So why is the price of oil so
high?

--

"Did you notice that [Candaq and Gardner] never miss one of my posts and I
never read theirs, I have to wonder just who it is that's envious." -Ed, in
news:<9cn26l$6di6$>.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Mexico is not a member.
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members include
Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.




"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
>2 Roman Catholic countries in OPEC: Mexico and Venezuela?
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

sam grey <> wrote:
>
> Well, that sounds knowledgeable. So why is the price of oil so
> high?

Here's an interesting take:

Re: Rising oil prices.

sam grey wrote:

> Well, that sounds knowledgeable. So why is the price of oil so
> high?

Supply and demand.

Re: Rising oil prices.

sam grey wrote:
> In article
> <>,
> "darkness39" <> wrote:
>

>
> Well, that sounds knowledgeable. So why is the price of oil so
> high?

Because demand in China, India and other South East Asian countries has
been surging and because US demand has been strong.

On top of that there are worldwide refining capacity shortages
especially for petrol.

Supply of crude oil by contrast has not been increasing. There isn't
anyone in the world market who can pump more oil than they already do
without major capital investments. The 'peak oil' brigade believes
that world production has reached or is about to reach its all time
peak due to geologic exhaustion (google peak oil).

In addition, there is a fair bit of speculative demand from hedge
funds, etc., riding the upward momentum. This might be worth $15/bl on
the supply-demand situation at the moment. I don't believe the
fundamentals justify more than $50/bl: US oil inventories are actually
quite high. If we get a mild winter we may well see oil drop back
sharply.

Re: Rising oil prices.

When oil seemed to become short in supply in the 1970s, free market
economists said that the situation would right itself and that higher
prices would lead to increased supply, and libertarian philosopher Ayn
Rand said we'd be "up to our ears in oil" if the price rose enough..
But as oil continued its longterm upward price trend, the amount of new
oil discovered each year has instead steadily fallen. So what's going
on?

Re: Rising oil prices.

larry moe 'n curly wrote:
> When oil seemed to become short in supply in the 1970s, free market
> economists said that the situation would right itself and that higher
> prices would lead to increased supply, and libertarian philosopher Ayn
> Rand said we'd be "up to our ears in oil" if the price rose enough..
> But as oil continued its longterm upward price trend, the amount of new
> oil discovered each year has instead steadily fallen. So what's going
> on?
>
The answer is so obvious, as other posters have said, that I am not sure
why you are asking. There is only a limited, finite amount of oil in the
ground. Demand for oil is increasing rapidly in China, India, the US,
Europe, all over the world, in fact. Existing wells are producing at or
near their maximum rates and new oil is not being discovered fast enough
to keep up with demand, so the price is rising and will keep on rising.

When prices get high enough and conventional crude oil still cannot meet
demand then other sources like tar sands, oil shale and presumably
conversion of coal to oil will contribute to a larger extent but all are
finite.

Even if they were not finite there is the associated problem of waste
products, which for oil and hydrocarbons generally is carbon dioxide.
This is already causing global warming. If we burn all the hydrocarbons
will this lead to a runaway temperature rise so we end up with an
atmospheric temperature of hundreds of degrees like the planet Venus?
Possibly not as hundreds of millions of years ago before plant life
developed, most of the carbon was probably in the atmosphere as CO2 and
we came out of that again as plants converted the CO2 to oxygen.

Otherwise we could just carry on and hope something will turn up to cure
the problem. In Victorian times people noted the ever-increasing number
of horses and carriages in London streets and estimated that if the
trend continued then in 50 years the streets would be three feet deep in
horse manure. The car was unexpectedly developed and saved us from that
so now we need something else to save us from oil depletion problems.

Of course the main problem is excess population growth, which could
eventually deplete all resources on the planet and fill it with waste
products. The so-called club of Rome wrote a book about this called
"Limits to Growth" a long time ago predicting all sorts of doom but
politicians generally have ignored it. The Chinese are trying,
belatedly, to limit their population growth with one child per family
but no other country seems to worry about it.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"David Wilkinson" <> wrote in message
news:ddukd7$1ju$
> larry moe 'n curly wrote:
> > When oil seemed to become short in supply in the 1970s, free market
> > economists said that the situation would right itself and that higher
> > prices would lead to increased supply, and libertarian philosopher Ayn
> > Rand said we'd be "up to our ears in oil" if the price rose enough..
> > But as oil continued its longterm upward price trend, the amount of new
> > oil discovered each year has instead steadily fallen. So what's going
> > on?
> >

[snip "obvious" reasons oil will go up and up forevermore]

If everyone is so cocksure that oil is in a "long term upward price trend"
then why aren't they all in oil futures? You'd best get in before the
shoeshine boys are recommending it to everyone else.

As far as I can tell, oil has shown no long-term trend (in real terms) and
is not reliably cyclical.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

But world population growth rates have fallen dramatically.

As each nation industrialises, the same thing happens. Fertility rises
dramatically (because of better healthcare of mums) and then it falls.
This has even happened in muslim countries like Malaysia.

Japan once had one of the world's highest birth rates, now it has one
of the world's lowest.

The lowest birth rates in the world are in Catholic countries: Italy
and Spain-- population in those countries will actually begin to shrink
about 2020 ex immigration. It is already almost shrinking in Japan.
Birth rates in Eastern Europe are similarly low: Russia will shortly
have falling population. And the fall in birth rates is happening in
developing countries like Mexico and in India. And it has done so in
Ireland.

The only big rise in fertility rates of which I am aware is in the
'colonial' anglo saxon countries after WWII: US, Canada, Australia, NZ.
But this came after a very large *fall* in birth rates associated with
the Great Depression of 1929-39, and WWII. And after 1965, birth rates
resumed their normal downward trend.

So in the end, world population is very likely to stabilise albeit at
about 12-14 billion, in the middle of the century. Exponential growth
is rare in biology (or anything else) what you typically get is an 'S
Curve' where there is exponential growth for a while, and then it
flattens out. All the evidence is this is happening in the world
population.

The problem is one of sustaining the standard of living that is being
reached as different countries reach higher levels of consumption, and
the consequent environmental damage.

On energy, technology change will eventually occur. The long run
source of our energy is the sun (even uranium runs out eventually)--
how we transition from the current civilisation based on exhausting
resources (oil, gas, coal) to solar-based essentially infinite ones
(photovoltaic, photo thermal, biomass, wind, tides etc.) will determine
whether our civilisation survives or not. In 100 years time, we will
drive hydrogen powered vehicles, most likely, said hydrogen generated
by electricity from solar sources. But *getting there* is the tricky
part.

I'm not a big bull of nuclear fusion. It is an interesting 'backstop'
or 'long bet' technology but the problems of practical deployment
remain very very great.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Or the cycle is much bigger than we think.

There is a model called the Hotelling Model of an Exhaustible Resource.
Basically if the X axis is time and the Y axis is price, an
exhaustible resource will rise from 0 to infinity in price over time.

Empirically of course oil has not followed that predicted pattern (the
usual one in economics). However just about everyone agrees that
Hubbert's Peak will come either now (extreme pessimism) or in 15-20
years time (International Energy Agency forecasts)-- after that peak
production point, prices will have to rise to encourage new supplies
and conservation*. In either case, Saudi Arabia will be an increasing
proportion of world oil production. If you read Matt Simmons (energy
adviser to Bush -- see Simmons & Co. website) then the Saudis don't
actually have that additional oil (see 'Twilight in the Desert')--
geological data of that nature is a state secret in Saudi Arabia.

* every oil field in history passes through Hubbert's Peak-- East Texas
did so in 1970, the North Sea is doing so now, ditto the Alaska slope.
Pennsylvania used to be the largest oil producer in the world. All
Hubbert was doing was making a prediction on that basis about all oil
fields in the world.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

> As each nation industrialises, the same thing happens. Fertility rises
> dramatically (because of better healthcare of mums)

That's interesting. It seems the poorest women have the most children.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Children have always been seen as a 'retirement plan' for people in poor
countries. Even in our country, they are seen as a form of wealth.... if you
go to a high school reunion, especially as the class ages, the primary topic
of conversation is children... and as time passes, grandchildren. And in my
case, the person with the most grandchildren (23), was among the least
successful/wealthy in the group.

Also, if you don't have many resources, sex becomes cheap recreation.

I have a relative who no longer speaks to me after I mentioned that we have
plenty of people already, plowing through the world's resources, and no
family should have more than 2 kids. His take was people should be able to
have as many kids as they want and can afford. I asked him, how many kids
can society afford?

Then of course, we have the 'feed the kids in a poverty stricken country'
ads on TV. Most of them are in countries which can not feed the population
they already have and by keeping more alive, the population continues to
grow, thereby having even more starving children down the road, requiring
even more aid.

So, it seems we will populate ourselves into extinction. Or at the very
least, warring over limited resources.... Oh, sorry, we are already doing
that, aren't we?

All those 'bundles from heaven' that were born 25 years ago are the same
ones we sit in traffic jams with today. I am 65 years old. I can remember
when the USA had a population of 150 million people. We are now over 300
million. My assumption is, in another 60 years, the population will be
noticeably larger than today. And we are already suffering from the "too
many rats in a cage" syndrome....

Oh, I went to Stowe, VT, over the past weekend. It used to be a nice little
VT town. It is now and endless string of chocolate shops and pizza places.

Arne
..
..
"Ed" <> wrote in message
news:
>
> "darkness39" <> wrote
>
>> As each nation industrialises, the same thing happens. Fertility rises
>> dramatically (because of better healthcare of mums)
>
> That's interesting. It seems the poorest women have the most children.
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

Arne wrote:
> Children have always been seen as a 'retirement plan' for people in poor
> countries. Even in our country, they are seen as a form of wealth.... if you
> go to a high school reunion, especially as the class ages, the primary topic
> of conversation is children... and as time passes, grandchildren. And in my
> case, the person with the most grandchildren (23), was among the least
> successful/wealthy in the group.
>
> Also, if you don't have many resources, sex becomes cheap recreation.

Actually people without kids probably have more sex ;-). Comparing my
friends and siblings with kids to those who do not.

>
> I have a relative who no longer speaks to me after I mentioned that we have
> plenty of people already, plowing through the world's resources, and no
> family should have more than 2 kids.

American women are (almost) already there: 2.2 kids on average in their
lifetime. European women are below 2.0 in most countries (except
Scandinavia). Italy and Spain it is something like 1.2 on average.
Japanese women are well below 2.0.

In Israel Ashkenazic Jews don't replace themselves. The population
growth comes from Arabs (who are Israeli citizens), Sephardim and very
religious Jews.

We are about to suffer, in the developed world, from a child shortage,
not a child surplus.


His take was people should be able to
> have as many kids as they want and can afford. I asked him, how many kids
> can society afford?
>
> Then of course, we have the 'feed the kids in a poverty stricken country'
> ads on TV. Most of them are in countries which can not feed the population
> they already have and by keeping more alive, the population continues to
> grow, thereby having even more starving children down the road, requiring
> even more aid.
>
> So, it seems we will populate ourselves into extinction. Or at the very
> least, warring over limited resources.... Oh, sorry, we are already doing
> that, aren't we?
>
> All those 'bundles from heaven' that were born 25 years ago are the same
> ones we sit in traffic jams with today.

That's because the number of cars per 1000 people has more than doubled
in 50 years.. when I grew up it was rare to have more than one car per
home. The problem is as much number of cars and people driving them
more as it is people per se. The US is not densely populated by any
measure and in fact population density has been falling as people move
from the City to the suburbs and the suburbs to the exurbs. Lower
population density implies more driving: think living in Manhattan v.
living in Denver.


I am 65 years old. I can remember
> when the USA had a population of 150 million people. We are now over 300
> million.

My thought was it was about 280m? Is that the latest census?

My assumption is, in another 60 years, the population will be
> noticeably larger than today.

c. 450m is the projection assuming current levels of immigration.


And we are already suffering from the "too
> many rats in a cage" syndrome....
>
> Oh, I went to Stowe, VT, over the past weekend. It used to be a nice little
> VT town. It is now and endless string of chocolate shops and pizza places.

Which is a sign of wealth, and commercialisation. People have more
money and drive to VT to spend it. Vermont is fighting very hard to
hold off WalMart (big parking lots and lots of driving, death of small
main street merchants).

>

Re: Rising oil prices.

PS 25 years ago was a very low year for birthrate. Something like
twice as many were born in 1963, the last year of the Baby Boom.

The 1965-85 cohort is small relative to the 1945-64 cohort which was
huge.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Ed wrote:
> "darkness39" <> wrote
>
> > As each nation industrialises, the same thing happens. Fertility rises
> > dramatically (because of better healthcare of mums)
>
> That's interesting. It seems the poorest women have the most children.

An interesting economic conundrum (why middle class women have fewer
children when they are more able to afford them than poor women. And
the rich have very few children indeed). Gary Becker won the Nobel
prize for this one, amongst others. The answer is children are an
opportunity cost, just like anything else, and middle class women have
higher opportunity costs.

As a country gets richer, the infant mortality rate drops. Big
increase in the number of live children per woman-- this is true of all
social groups and classes. Then the number of conceptions starts to
drop: even in Catholic countries.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Arne <> wrote:
>
> So, it seems we will populate ourselves into extinction. Or at the very
> least, warring over limited resources.... Oh, sorry, we are already doing
> that, aren't we?

Actually, if the US continues on it's trend, it will end up having stagnating
population numbers and an eventual decline like we see in parts of Europe right
now.

The populatoin problem we'll have in the world is one of too few people.

Re: Rising oil prices.

darkness39 <> wrote:
>
> As a country gets richer, the infant mortality rate drops. Big
> increase in the number of live children per woman-- this is true of all
> social groups and classes. Then the number of conceptions starts to
> drop: even in Catholic countries.

That's right. We see it already in the US. Population continues to grow
in poorer states while it looks like it will decline in the more affluent
states (Massachusetts, New York).

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

> Arne wrote:
>> Children have always been seen as a 'retirement plan' for people in poor
>> countries. Even in our country, they are seen as a form of wealth.... if
>> you
>> go to a high school reunion, especially as the class ages, the primary
>> topic
>> of conversation is children... and as time passes, grandchildren. And in
>> my
>> case, the person with the most grandchildren (23), was among the least
>> successful/wealthy in the group.
>>
>> Also, if you don't have many resources, sex becomes cheap recreation.
>
> Actually people without kids probably have more sex ;-). Comparing my
> friends and siblings with kids to those who do not.

I'm amazed that they report to you. Maybe you're a participant?

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Arne" <> wrote

> Oh, I went to Stowe, VT, over the past weekend. It used to be a nice
> little
> VT town. It is now and endless string of chocolate shops and pizza places.
>
> Arne

I visited the Caribbean many times in the 1960's and was always amazed at
the beauty of the place. The bottom could be seen in 100 feet of water,
maybe more.

I went there this past spring and all of the others on the ship couldn't get
over how beautiful the water was. It was a nice color but you couldn't see
the bottom in 20 feet of water, not 10 feet. It wasn't the same place. The
islands are so built up I couldn't believe it and taxi drivers outnumbered
tourists 3 to 1. You couldn't walk 5 feet without someone asking you if you
wanted a ride. Not the same place at all.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Mike Stone wrote:
> Arne <> wrote:
>
>>So, it seems we will populate ourselves into extinction. Or at the very
>>least, warring over limited resources.... Oh, sorry, we are already doing
>>that, aren't we?
>
>
> Actually, if the US continues on it's trend, it will end up having stagnating
> population numbers and an eventual decline like we see in parts of Europe right
> now.
>
> The populatoin problem we'll have in the world is one of too few people.

The population may eventually come to a limit but Darko estimated 12-14
billion, which is twice what it is today. If they all want to come up to
US standards of consumption, including one or more cars per adult, and
of food, energy, water, etc. then there will be big problems.

They are not making land anymore, fresh water is limited and oil is a
finite and depleting resource. Rain forests are being cut down at an
alarming rate and a lot of people are already starving and suffering
from water shortages in Africa. We almost certainly already have too
many people to sustain a western standard of living for them all. There
is no way we will ever have too few.

Re: Rising oil prices.

You really are an irritating asshole. I was warned of such but ignored
that warning.

Basically you provoke people until they lash out, then feel good about
being kicked.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Since the richest half of people in Alabama, say, are a lot better off
than the poorest 20% in New York City, say, the effect is more
localised than that.

The big population shifts in the US are:

- migration north to south especially by retirees
- high population growth in those areas that get a lot of immigrants,
especially Hispanic immigrants
- relatively high birth rates amongst particular religious groups eg
Mormons

Re: Rising oil prices.

The key is what standard of living and with what resources more than
absolute numbers.

12 billion may be too high. If you look at a (moslem) country like
Bangladesh, the birthrate has dropped astonishingly since the 1970s
(from over 6 children/ woman down to less than 4). The key appears to
be the level of attained education by women.

Re: Rising oil prices.

If US fertility continues at its current level, the population will
continue to grow.

Given the likely levels of immigration the US population is likely to
grow for the foreseeable future.

Re: Rising oil prices.

I guess that response was in response to:

> Actually people without kids probably have more sex ;-). Comparing my
> friends and siblings with kids to those who do not.

I'm amazed that they report to you. Maybe you're a participant?

Sorry you don't appreciate my humor.
So, you are saying that your claim/guess isn't based on fact?
I didn't think so, that's not the first time.


"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> You really are an irritating asshole. I was warned of such but ignored
> that warning.
>
> Basically you provoke people until they lash out, then feel good about
> being kicked.
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

darkness39 wrote:
> The key is what standard of living and with what resources more than
> absolute numbers.
>
> 12 billion may be too high. If you look at a (moslem) country like
> Bangladesh, the birthrate has dropped astonishingly since the 1970s
> (from over 6 children/ woman down to less than 4). The key appears to
> be the level of attained education by women.
>
A couple of references I looked up on Google seem to come up with a
central estimate of about 9 billion people by 2050 with perhaps a
decline after that. But it all depends on the assumptions about
fertility and mortality rates and could be higher or lower depending on
how these turn out. The central estimate includes the best current
estimate of how these will change with growing prosperity and health care.

It seems inevitable that with the decline of unproductive systems, like
communism and dictators, their replacement by capitalism and democracy
and the reduction in major conflicts, like world wars, prosperity will
increase and demand for resources will increase with it, even with a
static population.

If we estimate about a billion out of six billion currently enjoy a
western standard of living then, as the other five to eight billion
strive to attain the same standard of living, the demand for oil and
other resources will increase by a factor of 6 to 9 and the stuff is
just not there in that quantity, so prices have to rise in real terms to
choke off demand.

Re: Rising oil prices.

One of my favorite sayings, prompted by the developing going on around me,
is: There are too many people.

The best way to find unpopulated areas to enjoy is pick those with few
creature comforts, no paving, electricity, etc.
VT swimming holes have escaped the maddening hordes simply because you have
to walk down rutted, dirt paths to get to them. If there were pave paths and
Good Humor men on the beach, they would be overrun.

You will find the real shoppers at Basketville, Yankee Candle, etc.....

Arne
..
..
"Ed" <> wrote in message
news:
>
> "Arne" <> wrote
>
>> Oh, I went to Stowe, VT, over the past weekend. It used to be a nice
>> little
>> VT town. It is now and endless string of chocolate shops and pizza
>> places.
>>
>> Arne
>
> I visited the Caribbean many times in the 1960's and was always amazed at
> the beauty of the place. The bottom could be seen in 100 feet of water,
> maybe more.
>
> I went there this past spring and all of the others on the ship couldn't
> get over how beautiful the water was. It was a nice color but you couldn't
> see the bottom in 20 feet of water, not 10 feet. It wasn't the same place.
> The islands are so built up I couldn't believe it and taxi drivers
> outnumbered tourists 3 to 1. You couldn't walk 5 feet without someone
> asking you if you wanted a ride. Not the same place at all.
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> Or the cycle is much bigger than we think.
>
> There is a model called the Hotelling Model of an Exhaustible Resource.
> Basically if the X axis is time and the Y axis is price, an
> exhaustible resource will rise from 0 to infinity in price over time.
>
> Empirically of course oil has not followed that predicted pattern (the
> usual one in economics). However just about everyone agrees that
> Hubbert's Peak will come either now (extreme pessimism) or in 15-20
> years time (International Energy Agency forecasts)-- after that peak
> production point, prices will have to rise to encourage new supplies
> and conservation*. In either case, Saudi Arabia will be an increasing
> proportion of world oil production. If you read Matt Simmons (energy
> adviser to Bush -- see Simmons & Co. website) then the Saudis don't
> actually have that additional oil (see 'Twilight in the Desert')--
> geological data of that nature is a state secret in Saudi Arabia.
>
> * every oil field in history passes through Hubbert's Peak-- East Texas
> did so in 1970, the North Sea is doing so now, ditto the Alaska slope.
> Pennsylvania used to be the largest oil producer in the world. All
> Hubbert was doing was making a prediction on that basis about all oil
> fields in the world.

Yet, it is my understanding that, as we "deplete" this limited resource, the
amount of proven reserves in the world continues to rise. I have no doubt
that any limited resource will have a "peak" if you continue to use it. It
remains questionable, however, where that peak will be and what "unexpected"
discoveries will happen beforehand.

I'm sure, at some point, it seemed clear that coal or the number of horses
that could be supported would similarly reach a peak but then along came
internal combustion... For all we know, burning oil will seem quaint in 50
years time.

-herb
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Mike Stone" <> wrote in message
news:lAHMe.96648$
> darkness39 <> wrote:
> >
> > As a country gets richer, the infant mortality rate drops. Big
> > increase in the number of live children per woman-- this is true of all
> > social groups and classes. Then the number of conceptions starts to
> > drop: even in Catholic countries.
>
> That's right. We see it already in the US. Population continues to grow
> in poorer states while it looks like it will decline in the more affluent
> states (Massachusetts, New York).

I don't get it. Everywhere you look in this state (Massachusetts) they are
building more housing, yet the population is declining. Something or
someone isn't being counted correctly.

-herb
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

In underdeveloped countries, some running amok with AIDS, sex seems to be
the entertainment of choice. They also have a pretty high mortality rate, so
if you want 5 kids, you'd better have 7 or 8 to be sure. Then look to
America to feed them because the water is crap and crop production is low.

Good to see my first reply got things rolling again...<G>..

Arne
..

Re: Rising oil prices.

Oh, no.. I didn't mention it... They gave a prize to the person who had done
the most (in our class) to help over populate the world.... everyone
applauded, etc., then sat down and complained about the traffic jams they
encountered getting to dinner....

Some people are dumber than stumps.

Arne
..
..

Re: Rising oil prices.

We have a similar problem. Electric boat might close, jobs are moving out of
state.... and McMansions keep going up, encroaching on us as the surrounding
farm land disappears.

And, I do not see any houses being torn down..... something is amiss.

Arne
..
..
"Herb" <>
> I don't get it. Everywhere you look in this state (Massachusetts) they
> are
> building more housing, yet the population is declining. Something or
> someone isn't being counted correctly.
>
> -herb
>>
>
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

Arne wrote:
> In underdeveloped countries, some running amok with AIDS, sex seems to be
> the entertainment of choice.

I don't know of any evidence for that.




They also have a pretty high mortality rate, so
> if you want 5 kids, you'd better have 7 or 8 to be sure.

But that number starts to drop as the economy develops. My great
grandparents were each members of families with 8 or 9 kids who lived
to adulthood (they were also, by the standards of Victorian England,
wealthy). Family size now is 3-4 amongst their descendants.


Then look to
> America to feed them because the water is crap and crop production is low.

So the US should not export food? Just because US farmers are
efficient.

US foreign aid is the lowest proportionately of any of the G8.

Re: Rising oil prices.

1. number of people per household *falls* over time

2. maybe there is overbuilding out there. I have long argued that the
US, UK, Australia are in unsustainable housing bubbles

Re: Rising oil prices.

Agreed. The nature of what makes up GDP will shift and price movements
will be how that is achieved.

It is not possible for the world to have as many cars per head as the
US does especially not with petroleum fuel.

If we could efficiently mass produce hydrogen then perhaps, but even
then a China with 500 million cars is going to have gridlock.

Re: Rising oil prices.

You are a cunt. Really I don't say that about many people. But you
like shit disturbing to get a rise out of people.

What I said was, complete with smiley, was that I reckoned *probably*
that having children was an impediment to having sex. I don't know
what kind of friends and siblings you have but amongst mine it is a
pretty common joke (sleep is another commodity that children reduce).

So this time you little fuckwit I have risen to the bait. Next time, I
shall call you on it. It's normally the case that those who dish it
out cannot take it.

Prick.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Agreed the right technology change bails you out. But it is very
unclear what that will be (or rather you can see the endpoint which is
hydrogen sourced from solar power, but not how to get there).

New discoveries of oil have not kept pace with consumption since the
late 1970s. There was a (very dodgy) OPEC inspired uplift in reserves
(associated with a linking of production quotas to size of reserves).

The new information out there is that Saudi Arabia might *not* have as
much oil as we think. Even the optimists think that the bulk of the
world's new oil supplies will come from the Middle East.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Good to see so many posts. Of course, could have done without the name
calling, but a post is a post... and they all add up.

Arne
..

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

> Then look to
>> America to feed them because the water is crap and crop production is
>> low.
>
> So the US should not export food? Just because US farmers are
> efficient.

Sure, they should SELL it to anyone that wants to buy it at market prices.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

> What I said was, complete with smiley, was that I reckoned *probably*
> that having children was an impediment to having sex. I don't know
> what kind of friends and siblings you have but amongst mine it is a
> pretty common joke (sleep is another commodity that children reduce).

I understand. You make a joke, we are supposed to laugh.
I make a joke and I'm a cunt, asshole, fuckwit.
Interesting.

Where did you pick up that language?

Re: Rising oil prices.

The language on that guy, I couldn't believe it.
I thought he was educated and had a little class, wrong again.
His Mom should wash his mouth out with soap.


"Arne" <> wrote in message
news:K7LMe.20593$
> Good to see so many posts. Of course, could have done without the name
> calling, but a post is a post... and they all add up.
>
> Arne

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:

> Yet, it is my understanding that, as we "deplete" this limited resource, the
> amount of proven reserves in the world continues to rise.

I don't think that helps as the problem is that the production of oil
is going to peak, unless we discover a big bunch of megafields.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Interesting, and lots of colors too!





"Arne" <> wrote in message
news:K7LMe.20593$
> Good to see so many posts. Of course, could have done without the name
> calling, but a post is a post... and they all add up.
>
> Arne
> .
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> 1. number of people per household *falls* over time
>
> 2. maybe there is overbuilding out there. I have long argued that the
> US, UK, Australia are in unsustainable housing bubbles

I too have been arguing this (about the local market, anyway) but I have
been doing so for so long I don't even listen to myself, anymore. I was
right in 1988 (house prices plummeted that year) but a stopped watch...

I assume you are right about household size but I also wonder if many of the
expatriots who come to Boston for a few years to start their careers bother
to fill out the state census forms. The parking lot in my complex has lots
of out-of-state plates that have been around more than the 30 days permitted
by law.

-herb
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> You are a cunt. Really I don't say that about many people. But you
> like shit disturbing to get a rise out of people.
>
> What I said was, complete with smiley, was that I reckoned *probably*
> that having children was an impediment to having sex. I don't know
> what kind of friends and siblings you have but amongst mine it is a
> pretty common joke (sleep is another commodity that children reduce).
>
> So this time you little fuckwit I have risen to the bait. Next time, I
> shall call you on it. It's normally the case that those who dish it
> out cannot take it.
>
> Prick.

I guess it is good that you don't quote trolls but my paranoia makes me hope
it was nothing I said. ;-)

-herb
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> Agreed the right technology change bails you out. But it is very
> unclear what that will be (or rather you can see the endpoint which is
> hydrogen sourced from solar power, but not how to get there).
>
> New discoveries of oil have not kept pace with consumption since the
> late 1970s. There was a (very dodgy) OPEC inspired uplift in reserves
> (associated with a linking of production quotas to size of reserves).
>
> The new information out there is that Saudi Arabia might *not* have as
> much oil as we think. Even the optimists think that the bulk of the
> world's new oil supplies will come from the Middle East.

According to a PBS documentary I saw recently, the discovery of oil in Saudi
Arabia was a complete surprise. Who is to say where the next surprise will
be? I actually hope the naysayers are right for the sake of the
environment.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
news:
> Herb wrote:
>
> > Yet, it is my understanding that, as we "deplete" this limited resource,
the
> > amount of proven reserves in the world continues to rise.
>
> I don't think that helps as the problem is that the production of oil
> is going to peak, unless we discover a big bunch of megafields.

I agree. The output of the sun is also going to peak, someday. The
question is whether or not that peak will be soon enough to be relevent to
us, today. I don't think anyone knows the answer (to oil, I think they know
about the sun).

I'm always wary about projecting current trends into the future. Current
trends never continue. Natural forces prevent this, generally.

-herb

>

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Herb" <> wrote

> I guess it is good that you don't quote trolls but my paranoia makes me
> hope
> it was nothing I said. ;-)
>
> -herb

How could it have been?

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:
> "Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
> news:
>
>>Herb wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Yet, it is my understanding that, as we "deplete" this limited resource,
>
> the
>
>>>amount of proven reserves in the world continues to rise.
>>
>>I don't think that helps as the problem is that the production of oil
>>is going to peak, unless we discover a big bunch of megafields.
>
>
> I agree. The output of the sun is also going to peak, someday. The
> question is whether or not that peak will be soon enough to be relevent to
> us, today. I don't think anyone knows the answer (to oil, I think they know
> about the sun).
>
> I'm always wary about projecting current trends into the future. Current
> trends never continue. Natural forces prevent this, generally.
>
> -herb
>
>
>
>
You are still in qualitative mode, Herb. Look at the numbers. I
estimated very roughly that demand for oil would increase by a factor of
6 to 9 by 2050 due to increasing population, 6 billion to 9 billion,
and, more importantly, the non-western world aspiring to western living
standards, like one or more cars per adult. While some new oil will
probably be found it is highly unlikely that supply will increase to 6
times what it is today. It is more likely that production will peak
before 2050 and production will actually be LESS than it is today by then.

What happens to the price if production falls and demand increases to 6
times? Even economists can draw little graphs and show that the price
goes up a long way.

The Sun will probably last another 6 billion years before it turns into
a red giant, which should see us and the whole human race out. The oil
may not last another 60 years.

How about prices of copper, zinc, platinum, iron ore, coal, water, wood,
etc. and profits from them? I think you only need one guess as to which
way they will go.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"David Wilkinson" <> wrote in message
news:de19ki$qfb$
> Herb wrote:
> > "Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
> > news:
> >
> >>Herb wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Yet, it is my understanding that, as we "deplete" this limited
resource,
> >
> > the
> >
> >>>amount of proven reserves in the world continues to rise.
> >>
> >>I don't think that helps as the problem is that the production of oil
> >>is going to peak, unless we discover a big bunch of megafields.
> >
> >
> > I agree. The output of the sun is also going to peak, someday. The
> > question is whether or not that peak will be soon enough to be relevent
to
> > us, today. I don't think anyone knows the answer (to oil, I think they
know
> > about the sun).
> >
> > I'm always wary about projecting current trends into the future.
Current
> > trends never continue. Natural forces prevent this, generally.
> >
> > -herb
> >
> >
> >
> >
> You are still in qualitative mode, Herb. Look at the numbers. I
> estimated very roughly that demand for oil would increase by a factor of
> 6 to 9 by 2050 due to increasing population, 6 billion to 9 billion,
> and, more importantly, the non-western world aspiring to western living
> standards, like one or more cars per adult. While some new oil will
> probably be found it is highly unlikely that supply will increase to 6
> times what it is today. It is more likely that production will peak
> before 2050 and production will actually be LESS than it is today by then.
>
> What happens to the price if production falls and demand increases to 6
> times? Even economists can draw little graphs and show that the price
> goes up a long way.
>
> The Sun will probably last another 6 billion years before it turns into
> a red giant, which should see us and the whole human race out. The oil
> may not last another 60 years.
>
> How about prices of copper, zinc, platinum, iron ore, coal, water, wood,
> etc. and profits from them? I think you only need one guess as to which
> way they will go.

Well then. I guess you know what to invest in. If you believe this stuff,
why not go long? Mortgage the house.

I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years. You do realize
that people like you have been calling this peak since early in the last
century. I do suppose, sooner or later, one of you is bound to be right but
I'm not at all sure the sun won't burn out first.

If you really believed in what you say, you would invest accordingly.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

Back to Deffyes. Apparently most of the world's likely oil formations
have been very thoroughly mapped. It is not the case, for example,
that there are vast oil formations out there in the Arabian desert that
no one has looked for.

The one exception is the South China Sea, where political disputes over
sovereignty have prevented serious exploration (not to mention the odd
typhoon ;-).

But oil apparently only occurs in very specific geologic formations and
most of those in the world have been mapped.

The odds of another Al Gawar are low (perhaps: Antarctica?). It is
likely that we were gifted with about 2 trillion barrels of oil by the
Juraissic (?) era, and that we have almost burned through half of that.
And our pace of consumption is high-- the consequence of compound
growth. An Al Gawar field is 200bn barrels (and there have only been 2
in history: East Texas and AG itself) and takes about 70 years to
extract half (in the case of the North Sea only 30). But the US alone
burns 2 bn barrels in 4 months.

The oil services industry has consistently had one of the highest
returns on equity of any S&P subsector. It is very profitable to
introduce new technology into oil: eg horizontal drilling and 3D real
time imaging in the 90s were the big breakthroughs-- but they did not
produce huge new finds. The Gulf of Mexico has been described as
'disappointing' (I think it was about 5 bn bls) and West Siberia turned
out to have gas, not oil.

The model that has been expressed to me is one of a series of
accelerated reservoir depletions: when we do find new oil, it will
likely be in 0.5-5bn bl fields, and we will burn through them very
fast. That will mean volatility in oil prices.

Given where supply and demand are right now, you can see a very fast
drop in oil back to $45-- a bit more supply, a bit of stability in
Venezuala and Iraq, a bit of demand reduction, US inventories are high,
Chinese demand growth is unsustainable-- this is an industry where
supply and demand are short run insensitive to price.

But looking out beyond 2010, pace that discovery of another Al Gawar,
it is very hard to see that we are going to have a lot of oil (relative
to demand): $100/bl must be a real possibility.

Re: Rising oil prices.

On other metals, there is a long history of substitutes being found.
For example, all wiring used to be copper, but more recently aluminum
has been proven to be safe enough.

Water we basically squander most of what we use. We could improve
efficiency of use by as much as 90%. The problem is the places (like
Palestine/Israel) where there are people but not enough water: Israel
is essentially unviable without a significant importation of water from
the West Bank, for example.

Oil there is an absence of good, easy substitutes. Natural gas to a
point (and you can make petrol from natural gas: Shell is building a
plant in Qatar to do just that) but natural gas supplies are not
infinite.

The real problem with oil, besides the potential for exhaustion (my own
thought is we are far more likely to cross Hubbert's Peak in 2015 than
2005) is that even the optimists acknowledge that the vast majority of
future production growth and increasing percentage of future reserves
will come from a handful of politically unstable desert countries.

We know the hurricane is coming: it's time to start building shelters.

Re: Rising oil prices.

No I lost my rag.

Which I regret and also the abusive language. But I meant the
sentiment.

But I've fallen into his trap before. My bad, as the youth of today
are prone to say.

Re: Rising oil prices.

That language old bean is what most men know, we just don't use it day
to day. I learned it on parade ground as a student, in fact.

You are someone who likes to wind people up. I fell for it. I was
seriously interested in the conversation at hand you wanted to stick a
needle in me.

Mea culpa. That's twice I've fallen for your tricks.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

> But I've fallen into his trap before. My bad, as the youth of today
> are prone to say.

There was no trap you shithead.

"My bad" is repulsive, I have yet to hear it used by "the youth of today"
but Sam, Herb, and you seem to be fond of it.

Re: Rising oil prices.

No trick, it was an attempt at humor. Looks like we both failed. I didn't
realize your skin was so thin but that's not my problem.

Don't confuse this with an apology, you don't deserve one, quite the
opposite actually.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> That language old bean is what most men know, we just don't use it day
> to day. I learned it on parade ground as a student, in fact.
>
> You are someone who likes to wind people up. I fell for it. I was
> seriously interested in the conversation at hand you wanted to stick a
> needle in me.
>
> Mea culpa. That's twice I've fallen for your tricks.
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

At least we agree on each other's fundamental personality, or at least
our opinion of it ;-).

You like laying into people and getting a reaction out of them, and for
some reason I was 'gettable' at. Which is a loss of self control I
regret.

I was laughing at myself re 'muy bad'-- it's crept into North American
english post my departure from those shores, (a sign of the
cross-cultural fertilisation that is going on with regard to your
growing Hispanic population), cultural is so trans Altantic now that we
are expected to understand what you Yankees are blithering on about
;-). Just as North American English has taken on, in its time, Yiddish
influences, and black ones, now it is taking on Hispanic ones. That
this change has left me behind is another way of acknowledging middle
age ;-).

Now, what are your thoughts about oil prices? Make a constructive
argument rather than deconstructing someone elses ;-).

Re: Rising oil prices.

I wouldn't dream of confusing it with an apology, mon ami ;-).

It's bad karma to lose your rag with someone and I dislike incurring
bad karma. But it is very educational to see what will will set me
off, and for that learning I thank you ;-).

Re: Rising oil prices.

You worry too much about the number of people and too little about how
those people live.

The US is in a position where the number of people over 65 is going to
rise sharply as a percentage of the population (but less so than other
developed countries) -- what's going to be striking is how many old
people there are, and how few young people. Old people cost far more
to look after than young people, even given the costs of education.

If the US had as many cars/head as Britain (350/1000) rather than as
many cars as it does (AFAIK 550/ 1000) then there would be less
traffic. The crowding and transformation you see is a consequence of
prosperity not population growth per se (population of New England is
not, AFAIK, growing (or not by much ie sub 1% pa) and certainly not in
the way it is in the southern tier of states).

Re: Rising oil prices.

My understanding is its all about car insurance? People who live in
NYC register their cars in other states for example. Boston would I
imagine have very high car insurance rates relative to some midwestern
states?

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:

> I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
> information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.

I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?

> You do realize
> that people like you have been calling this peak since early in the last
> century.

That's irrelevant.

> I do suppose, sooner or later, one of you is bound to be right but
> I'm not at all sure the sun won't burn out first.

So do you think that Saudi-Arabia can meet any possible rise in demand?
It seems that oil-production outside the Middle East has largely peaked
already.

> If you really believed in what you say, you would invest accordingly.

Yes.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

>I wouldn't dream of confusing it with an apology, mon ami ;-).
>
> It's bad karma to lose your rag with someone and I dislike incurring
> bad karma. But it is very educational to see what will will set me
> off, and for that learning I thank you ;-).

Don't thank me, you did that all by yourself.

Re: Rising oil prices.

David Wilkinson wrote:
> larry moe 'n curly wrote:

> > When oil seemed to become short in supply in the 1970s, free market
> > economists said that the situation would right itself and that higher
> > prices would lead to increased supply, and libertarian philosopher Ayn
> > Rand said we'd be "up to our ears in oil" if the price rose enough..
> > But as oil continued its longterm upward price trend, the amount of new
> > oil discovered each year has instead steadily fallen. So what's going
> > on?
> >
> The answer is so obvious, as other posters have said, that I am not sure
> why you are asking.

What is the answer to why those free marketeers have been wrong about
oil supplies increasing with prices?

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

> Now, what are your thoughts about oil prices? Make a constructive
> argument rather than deconstructing someone elses ;-).

I thought I did. To summarize, the trend is up. One thing I'm tired of
hearing is that in inflation adjusted dollars oil is not yet as expensive as
it was in the 1970's.

Two things to say about that:
1. Wasn't the oil embargo in the 1970's (1973)?
2. Yes, it is more expensive.

Re: Rising oil prices.

larry moe 'n curly wrote:
> David Wilkinson wrote:
>
>>larry moe 'n curly wrote:
>
>
>>>When oil seemed to become short in supply in the 1970s, free market
>>>economists said that the situation would right itself and that higher
>>>prices would lead to increased supply, and libertarian philosopher Ayn
>>>Rand said we'd be "up to our ears in oil" if the price rose enough..
>>>But as oil continued its longterm upward price trend, the amount of new
>>>oil discovered each year has instead steadily fallen. So what's going
>>>on?
>>>
>>
>>The answer is so obvious, as other posters have said, that I am not sure
>>why you are asking.
>
>
> What is the answer to why those free marketeers have been wrong about
> oil supplies increasing with prices?
>
That they were not wrong. They were right, qualitatively. Increasing
prices do and have increased supply. It's just that the numbers don't
tie up. They have found some new oil and will no doubt find some more
but almost certainly not enough to meet the likely increase in demand.

Oil geology and exploration is not a new subject. Oil companies have
been at it for a long time and most of the likely oil sources have been
looked at. Major new finds of the size of those in Saudi Arabia or Iran
are unlikely. We are probably into the law of diminishing returns on oil
prospecting as oil is only a finite resource.

Presumably in the 1970s less prospecting had been done and there was
more optimism about what might still be out there. Also oil demand was
lower and it was easier to expect that increases in supply would keep
pace with demand. 30 years later the position has changed.

In the 70s, roughly, North Sea oil and gas were coming in and the UK
became a net oil exporter. However it is running out now and we are back
to being an importer. There is not another lot of North Sea oil to find.
We have explored that, extracted it and burnt it. When it's gone, it's gone!

Re: Rising oil prices.

The big oil spike was in 1979-80, at the time of the Iranian
Revolution. That was the all time high in oil prices.

Just finishing Daniel Yergin's The Prize which is a rivetting read.

Re: Rising oil prices.

That data you showed is not price per barrel of oil, it is price of
gasoline?

And there is the problem of apples and oranges. We don't have
comparable grades of leaded and unleaded for 1973 and 1980 and 2005.

Re: Rising oil prices.

I always think it is worth remembering that the biggest oil producers
in the world were once Pennsylvania and Romania (or Rumania as they
wrote it then).

They still both produce oil in fact. Rumania it might even be a few
thousand barrels/day.

No big oil field has previously been exhausted as fast as the North Sea
ones. Peak was in 1999, only 27 years after first extraction.
Normally the peak is about 50 years: East Texas was cracked in the
1920s I think, and only peaked in 1970.

All Hubbert is saying is that just as the world's oil fields
individually show a predictable pattern of extraction and exhaustion,
with extraction rising to a peak and then slowly declining, so too will
the world's oil fields collectively. The optimists reckon that date is
2020ish, the pessimists reckon it was 2005.

One of the striking things if you look at the world's big oil fields on
a map (even the Gawar one in Saudi, the largest ever found) is how
*small* they are: less than 200 miles long and 100 miles wide in most
cases.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Talk about being confused.

--He is not your friend.

--I don't know what 'lose your rag' means, and I'm fairly certain I don't
want to know.

--You like to 'incur bad karma' judging from your notes. You just want us to
believe you don't.

--As far as being educational, you don't seem to be learning much, though
you claim to be.

--finally, it does not take much 'to set you off'. Or, 'lose your rag'....
or, seems like you are 'on the rag'.

Arne
..
..

> "darkness39" <> wrote
>
>>I wouldn't dream of confusing it with an apology, mon ami ;-).
>>
>> It's bad karma to lose your rag with someone and I dislike incurring
>> bad karma. But it is very educational to see what will will set me
>> off, and for that learning I thank you ;-).

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

> That data you showed is not price per barrel of oil, it is price of
> gasoline?
>
> And there is the problem of apples and oranges. We don't have
> comparable grades of leaded and unleaded for 1973 and 1980 and 2005.

Yes, this thread was started with the thought of how gasoline prices will
hurt the economy. Although they are not parallel, oil and gasoline prices
usually move in the same direction. Consumer spending and growth in consumer
spending is key to the economy. Higher gasoline prices are eating into money
that was once marked for discretionary spending.

It was yesterday or the day before that Walmart said sales were below
expectations and they blamed higher gasoline prices as the main problem. I
agree with them.

With the exception of food, energy, and health care insurance, I haven't
seen noticeable increases in the cost of most things. They are coming. Add
these increases to the cost of the goods and services and the problem only
gets worse. Real wages haven't been keeping up with inflation and now we
have these oil/gasoline problems. Not a good mix.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote

>I always think it is worth remembering that the biggest oil producers
> in the world were once Pennsylvania and Romania (or Rumania as they
> wrote it then).
>
> They still both produce oil in fact. Rumania it might even be a few
> thousand barrels/day.

Production: 128,000 bbl/day (2004 est.)
Consumption: 253,800 bbl/day (2003 est.)

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Arne" <> wrote in message
news:QDZMe.20692$

>
> --I don't know what 'lose your rag' means, and I'm fairly certain I don't
> want to know.

Go to the store, buy a box of Kotex, come home
and then wonder where you put it. Simple.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Gary C" <> wrote

> Go to the store, buy a box of Kotex, come home
> and then wonder where you put it. Simple.

Might make great sweat bands as hot as it's been around here. Nice yesterday
and today.

Re: Rising oil prices.

See, as expected.... I didn't want to know..<g>.

Arne
..
..
"Gary C" <> wrote in message
news:Iz_Me.4270$
>
> "Arne" <> wrote in message
> news:QDZMe.20692$
>
>>
>> --I don't know what 'lose your rag' means, and I'm fairly certain I don't
>> want to know.
>
> Go to the store, buy a box of Kotex, come home
> and then wonder where you put it. Simple.
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

The reality is, from my perspective, people still speed and drive just as
they always did. We used to have to mentally accept a new per gallon price
of gas. First is was the $2.00 barrier, then 10 cent increments.... Now, we
have accepted not just a new price, but the fact that prices will continue
to escalate. Price increases are no longer news worthy. Maybe $3.00 per
gallon will make the nightly news.

But, though it does not seem to have affected driving practices, it has
affected SUV sales. Temporarily. We are a silly nation in some regards. We
make useless threats (like any company hears them or cares), like: "I'll
stop driving if gas hits $2.00 a gallon..!". Several years ago, during a
dinner deal, I asked a woman if she would pay 2 bucks a gallon for
gasoline.... Never..! she replied....... she is still driving. Of course.

Arne
..
..
"Ed" <> wrote in message
news:
>
> "darkness39" <> wrote
>
>> That data you showed is not price per barrel of oil, it is price of
>> gasoline?
>>
>> And there is the problem of apples and oranges. We don't have
>> comparable grades of leaded and unleaded for 1973 and 1980 and 2005.
>
> Yes, this thread was started with the thought of how gasoline prices will
> hurt the economy. Although they are not parallel, oil and gasoline prices
> usually move in the same direction. Consumer spending and growth in
> consumer spending is key to the economy. Higher gasoline prices are eating
> into money that was once marked for discretionary spending.
>
> It was yesterday or the day before that Walmart said sales were below
> expectations and they blamed higher gasoline prices as the main problem. I
> agree with them.
>
> With the exception of food, energy, and health care insurance, I haven't
> seen noticeable increases in the cost of most things. They are coming. Add
> these increases to the cost of the goods and services and the problem only
> gets worse. Real wages haven't been keeping up with inflation and now we
> have these oil/gasoline problems. Not a good mix.
>
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

Arne wrote:
> The reality is, from my perspective, people still speed and drive just as
> they always did. We used to have to mentally accept a new per gallon price
> of gas. First is was the $2.00 barrier, then 10 cent increments.... Now, we
> have accepted not just a new price, but the fact that prices will continue
> to escalate. Price increases are no longer news worthy. Maybe $3.00 per
> gallon will make the nightly news.
>
> But, though it does not seem to have affected driving practices, it has
> affected SUV sales. Temporarily. We are a silly nation in some regards. We
> make useless threats (like any company hears them or cares), like: "I'll
> stop driving if gas hits $2.00 a gallon..!". Several years ago, during a
> dinner deal, I asked a woman if she would pay 2 bucks a gallon for
> gasoline.... Never..! she replied....... she is still driving. Of course.
>
> Arne
> .
I think you are right. Actual driving is very insensitive to the price
of petrol (gas to you). The UK case proves this as our petrol is
89p/litre which, if I have done the conversions right, is equivalent to
$6.09/US Gallon. This is because we have about a 400% tax rate on
petrol. It does not stop anyone driving as far as I can see as the roads
are clogged with traffic and the supermarket car parks with cars. And we
are a poorer country in terms of GDP/head.

And you would not believe how much we pay for the cars over here either,
where ours are the most expensive in Europe. Would you believe $41,400
equivalent for a top of the range Honda Accord, which I believe you have
over there too?
> .
> "Ed" <> wrote in message
> news:
>
>>"darkness39" <> wrote
>>
>>
>>>That data you showed is not price per barrel of oil, it is price of
>>>gasoline?
>>>
>>>And there is the problem of apples and oranges. We don't have
>>>comparable grades of leaded and unleaded for 1973 and 1980 and 2005.
>>
>>Yes, this thread was started with the thought of how gasoline prices will
>>hurt the economy. Although they are not parallel, oil and gasoline prices
>>usually move in the same direction. Consumer spending and growth in
>>consumer spending is key to the economy. Higher gasoline prices are eating
>>into money that was once marked for discretionary spending.
>>
>>It was yesterday or the day before that Walmart said sales were below
>>expectations and they blamed higher gasoline prices as the main problem. I
>>agree with them.
>>
>>With the exception of food, energy, and health care insurance, I haven't
>>seen noticeable increases in the cost of most things. They are coming. Add
>>these increases to the cost of the goods and services and the problem only
>>gets worse. Real wages haven't been keeping up with inflation and now we
>>have these oil/gasoline problems. Not a good mix.
>>
>>
>
>
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

David Wilkinson <> wrote:

> And you would not believe how much we pay for the cars over here either,
> where ours are the most expensive in Europe. Would you believe $41,400
> equivalent for a top of the range Honda Accord, which I believe you have
> over there too?

Is there a different "spec" of car for Europe for Honda? I remember
that there used to be 2 types of BMW cars released. The "european
spec" (the one that rocked) and the "american spec" (the one that
was a little slwoer).

So the Europeans paid a bit more.

You should pick up a car in the states and have it shipped back.
Given the currency advantage you have with the Euro, it might be
worth the trip. I'm guessing there are some crazy regulations
against this though.


-Mike

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote
> Herb wrote:
>
> > I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
> > information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.
>
> I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?

Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?

> > You do realize
> > that people like you have been calling this peak since early in the last
> > century.
>
> That's irrelevant.

It's empirical evidence that geologists don't know when the peak will occur.

> > I do suppose, sooner or later, one of you is bound to be right but
> > I'm not at all sure the sun won't burn out first.
>
> So do you think that Saudi-Arabia can meet any possible rise in demand?
> It seems that oil-production outside the Middle East has largely peaked
> already.

IIRC, the above point remains in dispute.

I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes sense. But
as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when applied
to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and drilled
every possible well yet.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"David Wilkinson" <> wrote

> And you would not believe how much we pay for the cars over here either,
> where ours are the most expensive in Europe. Would you believe $41,400
> equivalent for a top of the range Honda Accord, which I believe you have
> over there too?

2005 Honda Accord Sdn LX AT, $19,044.00
With a little shopping you could do better.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Mike Stone" <> wrote

> You should pick up a car in the states and have it shipped back.
> Given the currency advantage you have with the Euro, it might be
> worth the trip. I'm guessing there are some crazy regulations
> against this though.
>
>
> -Mike

They use the pound sterling, still not a bad deal.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Mike Stone wrote:
> David Wilkinson <> wrote:
>
>
>>And you would not believe how much we pay for the cars over here either,
>>where ours are the most expensive in Europe. Would you believe $41,400
>>equivalent for a top of the range Honda Accord, which I believe you have
>>over there too?
>
>
> Is there a different "spec" of car for Europe for Honda? I remember
> that there used to be 2 types of BMW cars released. The "european
> spec" (the one that rocked) and the "american spec" (the one that
> was a little slwoer).
>
> So the Europeans paid a bit more.
>
> You should pick up a car in the states and have it shipped back.
> Given the currency advantage you have with the Euro, it might be
> worth the trip. I'm guessing there are some crazy regulations
> against this though.
>
>
> -Mike

Well, yes. You drive on the wrong side of the road for a start! A Left
Hand Drive car would be suicide over here where speed limits are for
wimps and it's every man for himself.

I think they would also get you on European emissions regulations and
lighting codes and possibly on crash protection if the construction is
at all different. We are very big on rules and regulations in the EU!
Rest assured that every possible regulation is framed to preserve the UK
as "Treasure Island" for importers and foreign owned manufacturers,
which account for about 100% of our cars.

Oh, yes, and the customs men would levy VAT and a special Vehicle Tax on
it at import, so the government would get their cut, and then it would
be classed as a "grey import" so its resale vale would be less than for
one bought here.

You can see why no one bothers to import from the USA. Quite a lot of
people do import Right Hand Drive cars from Europe, though, and make a
few thousand saving but nothing like the 50% the US/UK price comparison
would indicate. It always seems a lot of hassle to me so I have not
tried it.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Ed wrote:
> "David Wilkinson" <> wrote
>
>
>>And you would not believe how much we pay for the cars over here either,
>>where ours are the most expensive in Europe. Would you believe $41,400
>>equivalent for a top of the range Honda Accord, which I believe you have
>>over there too?
>
>
> 2005 Honda Accord Sdn LX AT, $19,044.00
> With a little shopping you could do better.
>
>
Half the price. Ridiculous isn't it! Do they still make a profit over
there? GM seem to be heading for chapter 11.

Re: Rising oil prices.

David Wilkinson wrote:
> Ed wrote:
>
>> "David Wilkinson" <> wrote
>>
>>
>>> And you would not believe how much we pay for the cars over here
>>> either, where ours are the most expensive in Europe. Would you
>>> believe $41,400 equivalent for a top of the range Honda Accord, which
>>> I believe you have over there too?
>>
>>
>>
>> 2005 Honda Accord Sdn LX AT, $19,044.00
>> With a little shopping you could do better.
>>
> Half the price. Ridiculous isn't it! Do they still make a profit over
> there? GM seem to be heading for chapter 11.

Toyota Honda Nissan have been posting record North America sales and
profits for many months this year, some months inspite of the employee
pricing from American companies.

Re: Rising oil prices.

SD wrote:
> David Wilkinson wrote:
>
>> Ed wrote:
>>
>>> "David Wilkinson" <> wrote
>>>
>>>
>>>> And you would not believe how much we pay for the cars over here
>>>> either, where ours are the most expensive in Europe. Would you
>>>> believe $41,400 equivalent for a top of the range Honda Accord,
>>>> which I believe you have over there too?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2005 Honda Accord Sdn LX AT, $19,044.00
>>> With a little shopping you could do better.
>>>
>> Half the price. Ridiculous isn't it! Do they still make a profit over
>> there? GM seem to be heading for chapter 11.
>
>
> Toyota Honda Nissan have been posting record North America sales and
> profits for many months this year, some months inspite of the employee
> pricing from American companies.

I can see why Honda, Nissan etc. build factories in the UK and are
always expanding them. With lower salary rates than the USA and selling
cars at something like twice the price in the US they must make huge
profits.

Why can't any British manufacturers make any money making cars? The last
British "volume" car maker, Rover, has just gone bust, again, and bits
of it have been bought up by the Chinese. BMW bought Rover a few years
ago and even they could not run it successfully and sold it off for £1
to cut their losses.

Yet Honda have a huge and ever-expanding factory in Swindon, where I
live, and seem to make big profits using British labour. Presumably it's
because they excluded unions from day one, as it was the unions that
destroyed the old British motor industry.

Re: Rising oil prices.

British Honda and British Nissan *are* unionised, I believe.

'The Machine that Changed the World' by Womack is as good a guide as
any to how the Japanese came from nowhere to dominate the world car
industry.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Elle" <> wrote in message
news:_m1Ne.7974$
> "Evojeesus" <> wrote
> > Herb wrote:
> >
> > > I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
> > > information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.
> >
> > I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?
>
> Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?
>
> > > You do realize
> > > that people like you have been calling this peak since early in the
last
> > > century.
> >
> > That's irrelevant.
>
> It's empirical evidence that geologists don't know when the peak will
occur.
>
> > > I do suppose, sooner or later, one of you is bound to be right but
> > > I'm not at all sure the sun won't burn out first.
> >
> > So do you think that Saudi-Arabia can meet any possible rise in demand?
> > It seems that oil-production outside the Middle East has largely peaked
> > already.
>
> IIRC, the above point remains in dispute.
>
> I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes sense.
But
> as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when applied
> to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and
drilled
> every possible well yet.

More than that, we don't know if we will still be using oil in 2050. If the
naysayers are right about constant price rises (and they well could be) then
everthing changes. Alternatives that once looked expensive become
increasingly cheaper (relative to oil). Innovation in alternatives becomes
increasingly lucrative.

My boss once told me in 1978 that I would have a computer on my desk within
5 years. I thought he was crazy. There is just no predicting what will
happen 50 years hence.

-herb

-herb
>
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> I always think it is worth remembering that the biggest oil producers
> in the world were once Pennsylvania and Romania (or Rumania as they
> wrote it then).
>
> They still both produce oil in fact. Rumania it might even be a few
> thousand barrels/day.
>
> No big oil field has previously been exhausted as fast as the North Sea
> ones. Peak was in 1999, only 27 years after first extraction.
> Normally the peak is about 50 years: East Texas was cracked in the
> 1920s I think, and only peaked in 1970.
>
> All Hubbert is saying is that just as the world's oil fields
> individually show a predictable pattern of extraction and exhaustion,
> with extraction rising to a peak and then slowly declining, so too will
> the world's oil fields collectively. The optimists reckon that date is
> 2020ish, the pessimists reckon it was 2005.
>
> One of the striking things if you look at the world's big oil fields on
> a map (even the Gawar one in Saudi, the largest ever found) is how
> *small* they are: less than 200 miles long and 100 miles wide in most
> cases.

I think people are trying to equate what may well be a long-term trend
(rising real price of oil over time) with short-term mania in the oil
markets. It is like saying that a very hot August day is proof of global
warming.

-herb
>

Re: Rising oil prices.

Two nations divided by a common language ;-).

'friend' is ironic, Americans are accused locally of being irony free.

'lose your rag' is to lose your temper.

I learned a lot from the interchange (about myself). Ed might learn
something (about himself) but I suspect he won't.

You might think about your prejudices about population, but that is a
different point.

I did learn something....

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> Two nations divided by a common language ;-).
>
> 'friend' is ironic, Americans are accused locally of being irony free.
>
> 'lose your rag' is to lose your temper.
>
> I learned a lot from the interchange (about myself). Ed might learn
> something (about himself) but I suspect he won't.

You don't appreciate my type of humor.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> Two nations divided by a common language ;-).
>
> 'friend' is ironic, Americans are accused locally of being irony free.
>
> 'lose your rag' is to lose your temper.
>
> I learned a lot from the interchange (about myself). Ed might learn
> something (about himself) but I suspect he won't.
>
> You might think about your prejudices about population, but that is a
> different point.


If you know someone is just here to bait you, consider using your killfilter
or whatever you Brits call it (cheeksieve?).

It makes for a much more pleasant Usenet experience.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Herb" <> wrote

> If you know someone is just here to bait you, consider using your
> killfilter
> or whatever you Brits call it (cheeksieve?).
>
> It makes for a much more pleasant Usenet experience.
>
> -herb

Do you just copy and paste that every chance you get? You're boring.

Darkness and I might have our differences but he isn't stupid and he can
make up his own mind. He doesn't need any help from the likes of you.

The way to 'bait' Herb is to prove what he said was wrong. He is the master
of inuendo and misleading information.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Mike Stone" <> wrote in message
news:gd1Ne.88191$
>
> You should pick up a car in the states and have it shipped back.
> Given the currency advantage you have with the Euro, it might be
> worth the trip. I'm guessing there are some crazy regulations
> against this though.
>


MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Funny.
I remember doing a European Benz for U.S. use conversion around 1983.
I guess then it was the other way around.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"David Wilkinson" <> wrote in message
news:de2ank$ijn$

>
> You can see why no one bothers to import from the USA.

Today, I stumbled across five overseas containers loaded with automobiles.
The containers were bound for Moscow.

About eight years ago, I was involved with an Illinois State Police sting,
that netted 17 stolen, brand new Jeep Cherokees, bound for Moscow,
inside of overseas containers. The word was, this was done by the
Russian mafia. Makes me reminiscent of what I saw today.

I think they still import from the USA.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> Two nations divided by a common language ;-).
>
> 'friend' is ironic, Americans are accused locally of being irony free.
>
> 'lose your rag' is to lose your temper.
>
> I learned a lot from the interchange (about myself). Ed might learn
> something (about himself) but I suspect he won't.
>
> You might think about your prejudices about population, but that is a
> different point.
>

Who the hell are you replying to?
Without quotes in your reply, how can one tell?

Re: Rising oil prices.

"darkness39" <> wrote in message
news:
> British Honda and British Nissan *are* unionised, I believe.
>
> 'The Machine that Changed the World' by Womack is as good a guide as
> any to how the Japanese came from nowhere to dominate the world car
> industry.
>

Who the hell are you replying to?
Without quotes in your reply, how can one tell?

Re: Rising oil prices.

Gary C wrote:
> "darkness39" <> wrote in message
> news:
>
>>British Honda and British Nissan *are* unionised, I believe.
>>
>>'The Machine that Changed the World' by Womack is as good a guide as
>>any to how the Japanese came from nowhere to dominate the world car
>>industry.
>>
>
>
> Who the hell are you replying to?
> Without quotes in your reply, how can one tell?
>
>
You are right, Gary. I keep having to view all the read messages and
threads to see where his latest note fits in, and whether it is me he is
calling an ******!

But in this case I think it was me he was replying to. And, as usual he
is right. Honda UK workers voted to adopt the Amalgamated Engineering
and Electrical Union (AEEU) on 10th Dec 2001. I missed that! I have not
looked up Nissan UK but will take his word for that.

However, the point still stands that Honda UK set up their factory in
Swindon long before that, probably around 1985 but I can't find the
date, expressly excluding the unions at that time and insisting on
Japanese rather than British working practices. After 15 years or so of
successful and profitable operation they presumably decided they had
built in a non-strike, non-union culture and it was safe to let some
union influence in. Let's hope they don't come to regret it.

The old British motor industry is, or was, the supreme example of the
old biblical saying that if a house be divided against itself then it
will fall. And boy, did it fall!

Re: Rising oil prices.

"David Wilkinson" <> wrote

> However, the point still stands that Honda UK set up their factory in
> Swindon long before that, probably around 1985 but I can't find the date,
> expressly excluding the unions at that time and insisting on Japanese
> rather than British working practices. After 15 years or so of successful
> and profitable operation they presumably decided they had built in a
> non-strike, non-union culture and it was safe to let some union influence
> in. Let's hope they don't come to regret it.

The union or Honda? If the union gets too far out of line Honda will close
the plant and the workers will lose their jobs.

A proposal (was: Rising oil prices)

We've got problems with terrorism and the cost of energy. Here's an
idea that gets two birds with one stone.

1. Pull all US troops, equipment, support, etc., out of mideast and
anywhere else that we are fighting terrorism. Just pack up and leave.

2. Take one-half of US Defense budget and go on a crash program to
develop alternative to gasoline and oil (much like Kennedy's effort to
go to the moon.)

3. Get our own source of energy - owned, controlled and operated by
USA. We can sell it to other countries to recoup our investment, or
not.

4. Ignore Middle East. Without the oil revenues they'd go back to a
Stone Age economy and get to practice their religion in peace.

I'd let others work out the details, and I recognize that it wouldn't
be easy. But damned if I wouldn't vote for anyone who was willing to
try. Where's FDR when we need him?




-HW "Skip" Weldon
Columbia, SC

Re: A proposal (was: Rising oil prices)

"HW "Skip" Weldon" <> wrote

> We've got problems with terrorism and the cost of energy. Here's an
> idea that gets two birds with one stone.
>
> 1. Pull all US troops, equipment, support, etc., out of mideast and
> anywhere else that we are fighting terrorism. Just pack up and leave.

Whether you where for the Iraqi invasion or not, we did it. It wouldn't be
right to pull out now until Iraq can fend for itself. I understand where
you're coming from though and often feel that way myself.

Everyday there are more US personel killed in Iraq and for some reason the
sour taste I get in my mouth when I hear that is directed at Washington and
not the Middle East.

> 2. Take one-half of US Defense budget and go on a crash program to
> develop alternative to gasoline and oil (much like Kennedy's effort to
> go to the moon.)
>
> 3. Get our own source of energy - owned, controlled and operated by
> USA. We can sell it to other countries to recoup our investment, or
> not.
>
> 4. Ignore Middle East. Without the oil revenues they'd go back to a
> Stone Age economy and get to practice their religion in peace.

They will have oil revenues anyway, with or without us as customers.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Gary C" <> wrote in message
news:BQaNe.3136$Z%
>
> "darkness39" <> wrote in message
> news:
> > British Honda and British Nissan *are* unionised, I believe.
> >
> > 'The Machine that Changed the World' by Womack is as good a guide as
> > any to how the Japanese came from nowhere to dominate the world car
> > industry.
> >
>
> Who the hell are you replying to?
> Without quotes in your reply, how can one tell?

You and Herb have asked the same question. Since you both seem to be using
OutlookExpress (which seems to be too primitive to show you links to the
referenced posts), here's how to find the antecedent posts by hand:

Right click on the listing for the message, find "properties" (at the
bottom); or if you've opened up a window with the message, go to "file" and
then properties.

You'll get a dialog box with two tabs. Select the "detail" tab (the one
that doesn't come up by default). There's a line in the detail text labeled
"References" - this is the chain of referenced articles, in forward
chronical order. So, if you go to the end, you'll get the message ID for
Darkness' post that you're replying to (and your mail reader also placed
that ID in the body of the post, above).

If you look at the next-to-last reference, you'll see:
<de2ego$l8c$>

Go to IE (or whatever browser you are using), and enter the URL:
news:de2ego$l8c$ .

Assuming that you're browser is configured to launch the appropriate program
(OutlookExpress) for news reading, this will pop up the message to which
Darkness is responding.

RFC 822 gives you the syntax for text messages.
It has been superceded for MIME
messages, but since this is a text newsgroup, it should suffice to explain
the "Reference:" line in the detail of the message.

That's the answer to your second question (how do you tell). The answer to
your first question, who is Darkness responding to, is David Wilkinson.
--
Mark Freeland

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Herb" <> wrote

> If you know someone is just here to bait you, consider using your
> killfilter
> or whatever you Brits call it (cheeksieve?).
>
> It makes for a much more pleasant Usenet experience.
>
> -herb

Herb, please keep in mind that you don't read my messages because I allow
you not to.
Your killfilter, like you, is a joke.

Have a pleasant experience.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Mark Freeland" <> wrote in message
news:SOoNe.9871$p%
>
> You and Herb have asked the same question. Since you both seem to be
> using
> OutlookExpress (which seems to be too primitive to show you links to the
> referenced posts), here's how to find the antecedent posts by hand:
>
> Right click on the listing for the message, find "properties" (at the
> bottom); or if you've opened up a window with the message, go to "file"
> and
> then properties.
>
> You'll get a dialog box with two tabs. Select the "detail" tab (the one
> that doesn't come up by default). There's a line in the detail text
> labeled
> "References" - this is the chain of referenced articles, in forward
> chronical order. So, if you go to the end, you'll get the message ID for
> Darkness' post that you're replying to (and your mail reader also placed
> that ID in the body of the post, above).
>
> If you look at the next-to-last reference, you'll see:
> <de2ego$l8c$>
>
> Go to IE (or whatever browser you are using), and enter the URL:
> news:de2ego$l8c$ .
>
> Assuming that you're browser is configured to launch the appropriate
> program
> (OutlookExpress) for news reading, this will pop up the message to which
> Darkness is responding.
>
> RFC 822 gives you the syntax for text messages.
> It has been superceded for MIME
> messages, but since this is a text newsgroup, it should suffice to explain
> the "Reference:" line in the detail of the message.
>
> That's the answer to your second question (how do you tell). The answer
> to
> your first question, who is Darkness responding to, is David Wilkinson.
> --
> Mark Freeland
>
>
>
>

COOL! Thanks Mark!

>

Re: Rising oil prices.

Elle wrote:
> "Evojeesus" <> wrote
> > Herb wrote:

> > > I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
> > > information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.

> > I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?

> Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?

If production cannot meet demand in the future, the reason will be
geology, not commodity markets.

> I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes sense.

Yes, and when applied to a great number of wells (sum of production of
those wells) the central limit theorem ensures that the resulting
distribution is gaussian, which has a distinct peak.

> But
> as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when applied
> to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and drilled
> every possible well yet.

My understanding is that the current rate of new findings is way too
low so unless there are still some megafields out there, we're screwed.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:

> More than that, we don't know if we will still be using oil in 2050. If the
> naysayers are right about constant price rises (and they well could be) then
> everthing changes. Alternatives that once looked expensive become
> increasingly cheaper (relative to oil). Innovation in alternatives becomes
> increasingly lucrative.

True, but can these alternatives supply energy at the rate of 90+
million barrels of oil per day?

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote
> Elle wrote:
> > "Evojeesus" <> wrote
> > > Herb wrote:
>
> > > > I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
> > > > information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.
>
> > > I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?
>
> > Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?
>
> If production cannot meet demand in the future, the reason will be
> geology, not commodity markets.

Geology is not the only factor in determining prices.

> > I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes sense.
>
> Yes, and when applied to a great number of wells (sum of production of
> those wells) the central limit theorem ensures

Not "ensures"; "states."

> that the resulting
> distribution is gaussian, which has a distinct peak.

The Cental Limit Theorem as applied here states that, as the number of wells
approaches infinity, the barrels/year... oh never mind. It's really not
terribly relevant.

Every individual oil well that has dried up has passed through a peak
production year. Then production declines. IIRC declines tend to be more
rapid than increases.

> > But
> > as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when
applied
> > to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and
drilled
> > every possible well yet.
>
> My understanding is that the current rate of new findings is way too
> low so unless there are still some megafields out there, we're screwed.

Speculation, which tends to be a waste of time from the standpoint that the
best reason for reducing oil consumption is the kids who are dying in Iraq.

Re: A proposal

HW "Skip" Weldon wrote:
> We've got problems with terrorism and the cost of energy. Here's an
> idea that gets two birds with one stone.
>
> 1. Pull all US troops, equipment, support, etc., out of mideast and
> anywhere else that we are fighting terrorism. Just pack up and leave.
>
> 2. Take one-half of US Defense budget and go on a crash program to
> develop alternative to gasoline and oil (much like Kennedy's effort to
> go to the moon.)
>
> 3. Get our own source of energy - owned, controlled and operated by
> USA. We can sell it to other countries to recoup our investment, or
> not.
>
> 4. Ignore Middle East. Without the oil revenues they'd go back to a
> Stone Age economy and get to practice their religion in peace.
>
> I'd let others work out the details, and I recognize that it wouldn't
> be easy. But damned if I wouldn't vote for anyone who was willing to
> try. Where's FDR when we need him?

Your theory is based on a faulty premise, hence it's not worth
criticizing in detail.

Islamic terrorism is not caused by oil.
Islamic terrorism is caused by Islam.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Mark Freeland" <> wrote in message
news:SOoNe.9871$p%
> "Gary C" <> wrote in message
> news:BQaNe.3136$Z%
> >
> > "darkness39" <> wrote in message
> > news:
> > > British Honda and British Nissan *are* unionised, I believe.
> > >
> > > 'The Machine that Changed the World' by Womack is as good a guide as
> > > any to how the Japanese came from nowhere to dominate the world car
> > > industry.
> > >
> >
> > Who the hell are you replying to?
> > Without quotes in your reply, how can one tell?
>
> You and Herb have asked the same question. Since you both seem to be
using
> OutlookExpress (which seems to be too primitive to show you links to the
> referenced posts), here's how to find the antecedent posts by hand:
>
> Right click on the listing for the message, find "properties" (at the
> bottom); or if you've opened up a window with the message, go to "file"
and
> then properties.
>
> You'll get a dialog box with two tabs. Select the "detail" tab (the one
> that doesn't come up by default). There's a line in the detail text
labeled
> "References" - this is the chain of referenced articles, in forward
> chronical order. So, if you go to the end, you'll get the message ID for
> Darkness' post that you're replying to (and your mail reader also placed
> that ID in the body of the post, above).
>
> If you look at the next-to-last reference, you'll see:
> <de2ego$l8c$>
>
> Go to IE (or whatever browser you are using), and enter the URL:
> news:de2ego$l8c$ .
>
> Assuming that you're browser is configured to launch the appropriate
program
> (OutlookExpress) for news reading, this will pop up the message to which
> Darkness is responding.
>
> RFC 822 gives you the syntax for text messages.
> It has been superceded for MIME
> messages, but since this is a text newsgroup, it should suffice to explain
> the "Reference:" line in the detail of the message.
>
> That's the answer to your second question (how do you tell). The answer
to
> your first question, who is Darkness responding to, is David Wilkinson.
> --
> Mark Freeland
>

Mark:

I will assume this is your dry wit getting downright arid.

It seems a long way to go when darkness, who seems quite gracious in every
other respect, could simply quote, at least an excerpt, of the original
message for the convenience of those of us who are too cheap to buy a
newsreader.

Usually, If I really care, it would seem that I could just click the view
message and temporarily switch my view to all and clearly see the message to
which he was responding. Since the one I questioned (well, referred to)
however, involved Anglo-Saxon terminology for parts of female anatomy, I
would guess that I would not find that message due to my blocked senders
list. I also wouldn't require more than one guess as to the identity of the
troll it was who was blocked.

But thanks for the advice,

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
news:
> Elle wrote:
> > "Evojeesus" <> wrote
> > > Herb wrote:
>
> > > > I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
> > > > information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.
>
> > > I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?
>
> > Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?
>
> If production cannot meet demand in the future, the reason will be
> geology, not commodity markets.
>
> > I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes sense.
>
> Yes, and when applied to a great number of wells (sum of production of
> those wells) the central limit theorem ensures that the resulting
> distribution is gaussian, which has a distinct peak.
>
> > But
> > as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when
applied
> > to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and
drilled
> > every possible well yet.
>
> My understanding is that the current rate of new findings is way too
> low so unless there are still some megafields out there, we're screwed.

Or, if you have made the false assumption that nothing will come along to
replace petroleum the way petroleum replaced coal or the way coal replaced
wood...

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
news:
> Herb wrote:
>
> > More than that, we don't know if we will still be using oil in 2050. If
the
> > naysayers are right about constant price rises (and they well could be)
then
> > everthing changes. Alternatives that once looked expensive become
> > increasingly cheaper (relative to oil). Innovation in alternatives
becomes
> > increasingly lucrative.
>
> True, but can these alternatives supply energy at the rate of 90+
> million barrels of oil per day?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind (shining in the sun and
floating on the tides). The potential energy is there, it's simply a matter
of harnessing it.

-herb
>

Re: A proposal

"Steven L." <> wrote in message
news:leKNe.9022$
> HW "Skip" Weldon wrote:
> > We've got problems with terrorism and the cost of energy. Here's an
> > idea that gets two birds with one stone.
> >
> > 1. Pull all US troops, equipment, support, etc., out of mideast and
> > anywhere else that we are fighting terrorism. Just pack up and leave.
> >
> > 2. Take one-half of US Defense budget and go on a crash program to
> > develop alternative to gasoline and oil (much like Kennedy's effort to
> > go to the moon.)
> >
> > 3. Get our own source of energy - owned, controlled and operated by
> > USA. We can sell it to other countries to recoup our investment, or
> > not.
> >
> > 4. Ignore Middle East. Without the oil revenues they'd go back to a
> > Stone Age economy and get to practice their religion in peace.
> >
> > I'd let others work out the details, and I recognize that it wouldn't
> > be easy. But damned if I wouldn't vote for anyone who was willing to
> > try. Where's FDR when we need him?
>
> Your theory is based on a faulty premise, hence it's not worth
> criticizing in detail.
>
> Islamic terrorism is not caused by oil.
> Islamic terrorism is caused by Islam.
>
Agreed but our dependence on Persian Gulf oil involves us with both.

I like Skip's idea. The only thing missing is where in the world we will
get the money we would need to buy as many senators and congressmen as the
oil industry has.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:
> "Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
> news:
>
>>Herb wrote:
>>
>>
>>>More than that, we don't know if we will still be using oil in 2050. If
>
> the
>
>>>naysayers are right about constant price rises (and they well could be)
>
> then
>
>>>everthing changes. Alternatives that once looked expensive become
>>>increasingly cheaper (relative to oil). Innovation in alternatives
>
> becomes
>
>>>increasingly lucrative.
>>
>>True, but can these alternatives supply energy at the rate of 90+
>>million barrels of oil per day?
>
>
> The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind (shining in the sun and
> floating on the tides). The potential energy is there, it's simply a matter
> of harnessing it.
>
> -herb
>
>
>
I don't think anyone would contend that wind power could replace oil as
an energy source. There already are rows of wind turbines on the
hillsides in California that I saw when I was there. How much power do
they actually produce? Not much on average if UK experience is typical
and none at all when the wind is not blowing. Also, in spite of the
"fuel" being free, wind generated electricity is still more expensive
than fossil-generated electricity and only exists in the UK due to
government subsidies.

Total generating capacity in the UK is about 60GW from gas, oil, coal
and nuclear power stations, mainly. At, say, 1.5MW to 2 MW per wind
turbine it would need about 40,000 wind turbines to replace this
capacity and this would double the total capacity as the original
stations would still be needed for cold winters days when there is no
wind so this would be very expensive. Since each wind turbine or wind
farm of a few dozen needs planning permission and is argued over for
years by countryside conservationists who do not want them in beauty
spots or near their houses, there is no room for that many turbines anyway.

See this article for a well-written piece saying what a lot of us have
been saying on this NG:

Apparently in 2001 the USA with 4% of the world population was using 40%
of world gasoline production. As the rest of the world strives to catch
up with this, rising oil prices will make it too expensive to continue
at this rate. The writer's contention is that the USA will have to learn
to live with reduced energy consumption.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Herb" <> wrote

> I also wouldn't require more than one guess as to the identity of the
> troll it was who was blocked.

If you aren't being a troll here then what would you call it?

I allow you to hide because you want to hide. Your blocked senders list is
silly and can be easily defeated. Be nice, asshole.

And please, don't hold me responsible for the foul language and lack of self
control displayed by darkness. Those are his shortcomings, not mine.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:

> Or, if you have made the false assumption that nothing will come along to
> replace petroleum the way petroleum replaced coal or the way coal replaced
> wood...

Sure, it's about time that we found out what this something will be.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Elle wrote:
> "Evojeesus" <> wrote
> > Elle wrote:

> The Cental Limit Theorem as applied here states that, as the number of wells
> approaches infinity, the barrels/year... oh never mind. It's really not
> terribly relevant.

Well, it makes predicting the peak more credible as the rise and fall
of the total production of thousands of wells will be Gaussian, even if
some future technology changes the shape of the production-curve of
each individual well.

> Every individual oil well that has dried up has passed through a peak
> production year. Then production declines. IIRC declines tend to be more
> rapid than increases.

Yes.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
news:
> Herb wrote:
>
>> Or, if you have made the false assumption that nothing will come along to
>> replace petroleum the way petroleum replaced coal or the way coal
>> replaced
>> wood...
>
> Sure, it's about time that we found out what this something will be.

People still heat with wood and coal is through the roof. I was not aware
that anyone might think these things were replaced.

I should add...

"Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
news:
> Herb wrote:
>
>> Or, if you have made the false assumption that nothing will come along to
>> replace petroleum the way petroleum replaced coal or the way coal
>> replaced
>> wood...
>
> Sure, it's about time that we found out what this something will be.

.....that out of all the electricity produced in the US only about 3% is
produced with oil.
Petroleum in no way, shape, or form replaced coal as an energy source for
the production of electricity.

If Herb is ever right about anything I'll be the first to give him credit
for it. So far he's batting about 1,000 in the misinformation column.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:

> "Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
> news:
>
>>Elle wrote:
>>
>>>"Evojeesus" <> wrote
>>>
>>>>Herb wrote:
>>
>>>>>I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
>>>>>information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.
>>
>>>>I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?
>>
>>>Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?
>>
>>If production cannot meet demand in the future, the reason will be
>>geology, not commodity markets.
>>
>>
>>>I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes sense.
>>
>>Yes, and when applied to a great number of wells (sum of production of
>>those wells) the central limit theorem ensures that the resulting
>>distribution is gaussian, which has a distinct peak.
>>
>>
>>>But
>>>as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when
>
> applied
>
>>>to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and
>
> drilled
>
>>>every possible well yet.
>>
>>My understanding is that the current rate of new findings is way too
>>low so unless there are still some megafields out there, we're screwed.
>
>
> Or, if you have made the false assumption that nothing will come along to
> replace petroleum the way petroleum replaced coal or the way coal replaced
> wood...

Petroleum replaced coal for heating buildings and for trains, and coal
replaced wood for the same applications. Not for personal vehicles.
For personal transportation, there were a few steam-powered and electric
cars late in the 19th century, but that never became practical or
widespread. The advent of personal transportation (the automobile) was
always tied to the exploitation of petroleum.

So the question is finding a substitute fuel for personal
transportation. And for that use, the requirements are much tougher than
for heating buildings or for trains.

So far, nothing has come along that is practical.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

Re: A proposal

Herb wrote:

> "Steven L." <> wrote in message
> news:leKNe.9022$
>
>>HW "Skip" Weldon wrote:
>>
>>>We've got problems with terrorism and the cost of energy. Here's an
>>>idea that gets two birds with one stone.
>>>
>>>1. Pull all US troops, equipment, support, etc., out of mideast and
>>>anywhere else that we are fighting terrorism. Just pack up and leave.
>>>
>>>2. Take one-half of US Defense budget and go on a crash program to
>>>develop alternative to gasoline and oil (much like Kennedy's effort to
>>>go to the moon.)
>>>
>>>3. Get our own source of energy - owned, controlled and operated by
>>>USA. We can sell it to other countries to recoup our investment, or
>>>not.
>>>
>>>4. Ignore Middle East. Without the oil revenues they'd go back to a
>>>Stone Age economy and get to practice their religion in peace.
>>>
>>>I'd let others work out the details, and I recognize that it wouldn't
>>>be easy. But damned if I wouldn't vote for anyone who was willing to
>>>try. Where's FDR when we need him?
>>
>>Your theory is based on a faulty premise, hence it's not worth
>>criticizing in detail.
>>
>>Islamic terrorism is not caused by oil.
>>Islamic terrorism is caused by Islam.
>>
>
> Agreed but our dependence on Persian Gulf oil involves us with both.
>
> I like Skip's idea.

I will submit to you that America will suffer tremendously from further
terrorist attacks long before we can ever find a substitute for Persian
Gulf oil.

The odds are that we're going to get hit by terrorist WMD long before we
have found any substitute for Persian Gulf oil. Hence we have to win
the war on terror before then.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"David Wilkinson" <> wrote in message
news:de958s$6gt$
> Herb wrote:
> > "Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
> > news:
> >
> >>Herb wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>More than that, we don't know if we will still be using oil in 2050.
If
> >
> > the
> >
> >>>naysayers are right about constant price rises (and they well could be)
> >
> > then
> >
> >>>everthing changes. Alternatives that once looked expensive become
> >>>increasingly cheaper (relative to oil). Innovation in alternatives
> >
> > becomes
> >
> >>>increasingly lucrative.
> >>
> >>True, but can these alternatives supply energy at the rate of 90+
> >>million barrels of oil per day?
> >
> >
> > The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind (shining in the sun and
> > floating on the tides). The potential energy is there, it's simply a
matter
> > of harnessing it.
> >
> > -herb
> >
> >
> >
> I don't think anyone would contend that wind power could replace oil as
> an energy source. There already are rows of wind turbines on the
> hillsides in California that I saw when I was there. How much power do
> they actually produce? Not much on average if UK experience is typical
> and none at all when the wind is not blowing. Also, in spite of the
> "fuel" being free, wind generated electricity is still more expensive
> than fossil-generated electricity and only exists in the UK due to
> government subsidies.
>
> Total generating capacity in the UK is about 60GW from gas, oil, coal
> and nuclear power stations, mainly. At, say, 1.5MW to 2 MW per wind
> turbine it would need about 40,000 wind turbines to replace this
> capacity and this would double the total capacity as the original
> stations would still be needed for cold winters days when there is no
> wind so this would be very expensive. Since each wind turbine or wind
> farm of a few dozen needs planning permission and is argued over for
> years by countryside conservationists who do not want them in beauty
> spots or near their houses, there is no room for that many turbines
anyway.
>
> See this article for a well-written piece saying what a lot of us have
> been saying on this NG:
>
> Apparently in 2001 the USA with 4% of the world population was using 40%
> of world gasoline production. As the rest of the world strives to catch
> up with this, rising oil prices will make it too expensive to continue
> at this rate. The writer's contention is that the USA will have to learn
> to live with reduced energy consumption.

David:

I don't pretend to be following the wind power industry closely, but I
remember reading an article in USNews a while back that claimed that the
cost of a wind turbine was on a downward slope while the productivity of a
single turbine was rising. All this is happening while the cost of
petroleum, some say, is on a permanent upward slope. The vision was one of
wind turbines storing their power in the form of hydrogen which can, indeed,
be burned on a windless day.

But the point is not for me to predict which technology, or mix of
technologies will come to replace burning petroleum in the future. My only
point is that nature provides many times the potential energy that mankind
could ever, conceivably need to propel itself around the surface of the
planet. I once attended a talk on windpower in which the speaker claimed
that more wind energy passed through the Aleutian Arc every day than mankind
has used since the dawn of history.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Steven L." <> wrote in message
news:Sy2Oe.9433$
> Herb wrote:
>
> > "Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
> > news:
> >
> >>Elle wrote:
> >>
> >>>"Evojeesus" <> wrote
> >>>
> >>>>Herb wrote:
> >>
> >>>>>I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
> >>>>>information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.
> >>
> >>>>I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?
> >>
> >>>Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?
> >>
> >>If production cannot meet demand in the future, the reason will be
> >>geology, not commodity markets.
> >>
> >>
> >>>I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes
sense.
> >>
> >>Yes, and when applied to a great number of wells (sum of production of
> >>those wells) the central limit theorem ensures that the resulting
> >>distribution is gaussian, which has a distinct peak.
> >>
> >>
> >>>But
> >>>as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when
> >
> > applied
> >
> >>>to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and
> >
> > drilled
> >
> >>>every possible well yet.
> >>
> >>My understanding is that the current rate of new findings is way too
> >>low so unless there are still some megafields out there, we're screwed.
> >
> >
> > Or, if you have made the false assumption that nothing will come along
to
> > replace petroleum the way petroleum replaced coal or the way coal
replaced
> > wood...
>
> Petroleum replaced coal for heating buildings and for trains, and coal
> replaced wood for the same applications. Not for personal vehicles.
> For personal transportation, there were a few steam-powered and electric
> cars late in the 19th century, but that never became practical or
> widespread. The advent of personal transportation (the automobile) was
> always tied to the exploitation of petroleum.
>
> So the question is finding a substitute fuel for personal
> transportation. And for that use, the requirements are much tougher than
> for heating buildings or for trains.
>
> So far, nothing has come along that is practical.
>
>

Steven:

It is my understanding that the Stanley Steamer was quite practical in many
ways outperforming internal combustion engines. It was bought and put out
of business by people with a vested interest in petroleum based
transportation.

Even if I grant your point, a lot of petroleum is still being used to
generate electricity and to heat buildings. In the short run, this could be
converted to transportation if alternatives were pursued.

I don't want to get involved in defending a particular, emerging technology
when the present is so full of things that I never would have predicted, but
it is not too hard to imagine that advancing technology will find a
solution. Even if we had a limitless supply of gasoline, the ecosystem
would not support the whole world burning it at the rate that Americans burn
it now. Change is not optional.

-herb

Re: A proposal

"Steven L." <> wrote in message
news:OB2Oe.9434$
> Herb wrote:
>
> > "Steven L." <> wrote in message
> > news:leKNe.9022$
> >
> >>HW "Skip" Weldon wrote:
> >>
> >>>We've got problems with terrorism and the cost of energy. Here's an
> >>>idea that gets two birds with one stone.
> >>>
> >>>1. Pull all US troops, equipment, support, etc., out of mideast and
> >>>anywhere else that we are fighting terrorism. Just pack up and leave.
> >>>
> >>>2. Take one-half of US Defense budget and go on a crash program to
> >>>develop alternative to gasoline and oil (much like Kennedy's effort to
> >>>go to the moon.)
> >>>
> >>>3. Get our own source of energy - owned, controlled and operated by
> >>>USA. We can sell it to other countries to recoup our investment, or
> >>>not.
> >>>
> >>>4. Ignore Middle East. Without the oil revenues they'd go back to a
> >>>Stone Age economy and get to practice their religion in peace.
> >>>
> >>>I'd let others work out the details, and I recognize that it wouldn't
> >>>be easy. But damned if I wouldn't vote for anyone who was willing to
> >>>try. Where's FDR when we need him?
> >>
> >>Your theory is based on a faulty premise, hence it's not worth
> >>criticizing in detail.
> >>
> >>Islamic terrorism is not caused by oil.
> >>Islamic terrorism is caused by Islam.
> >>
> >
> > Agreed but our dependence on Persian Gulf oil involves us with both.
> >
> > I like Skip's idea.
>
> I will submit to you that America will suffer tremendously from further
> terrorist attacks long before we can ever find a substitute for Persian
> Gulf oil.
>
> The odds are that we're going to get hit by terrorist WMD long before we
> have found any substitute for Persian Gulf oil. Hence we have to win
> the war on terror before then.

We don't know the odds of getting hit again. 9/11 turned out to be a
disaster for Islamism. It is quite possible that, once we get serious and
put Al Queda out of business, no one else would be so foolish.

We already have the substitute for Persian Gulf oil but we just can't get
Americans to all drive economy cars. We are fighting for the right to drive
SUVs and Hummers.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Steven L." <> wrote

> So the question is finding a substitute fuel for personal transportation.
> And for that use, the requirements are much tougher than for heating
> buildings or for trains.

Now you're talking about something that makes sense. Incidentally, petroleum
didn't replace coal for heating homes.

The two major fuel sources for home heat are electric (coal rules in this
area) and natural gas.
Oil is a pimple on the butt of the other two.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Herb" <> wrote

> Steven:
>
> It is my understanding that the Stanley Steamer was quite practical in
> many
> ways outperforming internal combustion engines. It was bought and put out
> of business by people with a vested interest in petroleum based
> transportation.

It couldn't be because internal combustion engines improved dramatically,
could it?
Wasn't it coal and not petroleum that powered them?

Even if I grant your point, a lot of petroleum still being used to
> generate electricity and to heat buildings. In the short run, this could
> be
> converted to transportation if alternatives were pursued.

Less than 10%.

> I don't want to get involved in defending a particular, emerging
> technology
> when the present is so full of things that I never would have predicted,
> but
> it is not too hard to imagine that advancing technology will find a
> solution. Even if we had a limitless supply of gasoline, the ecosystem
> would not support the whole world burning it at the rate that Americans
> burn
> it now. Change is not optional.
>
> -herb

You are so stupid I can't believe it. I'm ashamed that you're from
Massachusetts.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Ed wrote:
> "Herb" <> wrote
>
>
>>Steven:
>>
>>It is my understanding that the Stanley Steamer was quite practical in
>>many
>>ways outperforming internal combustion engines. It was bought and put out
>>of business by people with a vested interest in petroleum based
>>transportation.
>
>
> It couldn't be because internal combustion engines improved dramatically,
> could it?
> Wasn't it coal and not petroleum that powered them?
>
I thought one of its problems was that you had to light the boiler
(paper, wood, coal?) and wait 15 mins or so for it to boil the water and
get up steam pressure. While one's footman or chauffeur would do this
for one, of course, it needed a certain level of forward planning
compared to the IC engine, where he just turned on the petrol and
magneto, retarded the ignition, closed the choke, tickled the
carburettor and turned the starting handle and, with any luck, it went.

> Even if I grant your point, a lot of petroleum still being used to
>
>>generate electricity and to heat buildings. In the short run, this could
>>be
>>converted to transportation if alternatives were pursued.
>
>
> Less than 10%.
>
>
>>I don't want to get involved in defending a particular, emerging
>>technology
>>when the present is so full of things that I never would have predicted,
>>but
>>it is not too hard to imagine that advancing technology will find a
>>solution. Even if we had a limitless supply of gasoline, the ecosystem
>>would not support the whole world burning it at the rate that Americans
>>burn
>>it now. Change is not optional.
>>
>>-herb
>
>
> You are so stupid I can't believe it. I'm ashamed that you're from
> Massachusetts.
>
>
He's right though about the global warming aspect of burning unlimited
amounts of oil.

Herb's main problem in this context is using the Micawber philosophy
that if we just do nothing some technological fix will magically turn up
to cure our energy problems. As usual he is extrapolating past trends
into the future. Because we have discovered a lot of things in the past
does not necessarily mean there are a lot of equally useful things still
to be discovered or invented. The reverse probably holds in fact. There
being only a limited number of things to discover, the more you find the
less there are still to be discovered. Like finding new oil wells out of
a finite number actually in the ground.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Steven L. wrote:
> Herb wrote:
>
>> "Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
>> news:
>>
>>> Elle wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Evojeesus" <> wrote
>>>>
>>>>> Herb wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> I am being "qualitative" because there is absolutely no empirical
>>>>>> information on what the price of oil will be in 45 years.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> I think geology is pretty darn empirical as a science, don't you?
>>>
>>>
>>>> Why do you think the pricing of commodities is a science like geology?
>>>
>>>
>>> If production cannot meet demand in the future, the reason will be
>>> geology, not commodity markets.
>>>
>>>
>>>> I like the Hubbert oil peak theory for individual wells. It makes
>>>> sense.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, and when applied to a great number of wells (sum of production of
>>> those wells) the central limit theorem ensures that the resulting
>>> distribution is gaussian, which has a distinct peak.
>>>
>>>
>>>> But
>>>> as Herb pointed out, there is this one huge gaping hole in it when
>>
>>
>> applied
>>
>>>> to worldwide oil production: We don't know that we've discovered and
>>
>>
>> drilled
>>
>>>> every possible well yet.
>>>
>>>
>>> My understanding is that the current rate of new findings is way too
>>> low so unless there are still some megafields out there, we're screwed.
>>
>>
>>
>> Or, if you have made the false assumption that nothing will come along to
>> replace petroleum the way petroleum replaced coal or the way coal
>> replaced
>> wood...
>
>
> Petroleum replaced coal for heating buildings and for trains, and coal
> replaced wood for the same applications. Not for personal vehicles. For
> personal transportation, there were a few steam-powered and electric
> cars late in the 19th century, but that never became practical or
> widespread. The advent of personal transportation (the automobile) was
> always tied to the exploitation of petroleum.
>
> So the question is finding a substitute fuel for personal
> transportation. And for that use, the requirements are much tougher than
> for heating buildings or for trains.
>
> So far, nothing has come along that is practical.
>
>
Probably hydrogen would do for powering cars, not as well as gasoline as
it is more difficult to handle and store in the car, but it would work.
However, it is a secondary fuel that has to be made out of oil or gas or
from electrolysis of water, all of which need primary power, which
remains the main problem.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"David Wilkinson" <> wrote

> Herb's main problem in this context is using the Micawber philosophy that
> if we just do nothing some technological fix will magically turn up to
> cure our energy problems. As usual he is extrapolating past trends into
> the future. Because we have discovered a lot of things in the past does
> not necessarily mean there are a lot of equally useful things still to be
> discovered or invented. The reverse probably holds in fact. There being
> only a limited number of things to discover, the more you find the less
> there are still to be discovered. Like finding new oil wells out of a
> finite number actually in the ground.

Sound reasoning and I agree.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:
> "David Wilkinson" <> wrote in message
> news:de958s$6gt$
>
>>Herb wrote:
>>
>>>"Evojeesus" <> wrote in message
>>>news:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Herb wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>More than that, we don't know if we will still be using oil in 2050.
>
> If
>
>>>the
>>>
>>>
>>>>>naysayers are right about constant price rises (and they well could be)
>>>
>>>then
>>>
>>>
>>>>>everthing changes. Alternatives that once looked expensive become
>>>>>increasingly cheaper (relative to oil). Innovation in alternatives
>>>
>>>becomes
>>>
>>>
>>>>>increasingly lucrative.
>>>>
>>>>True, but can these alternatives supply energy at the rate of 90+
>>>>million barrels of oil per day?
>>>
>>>
>>>The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind (shining in the sun and
>>>floating on the tides). The potential energy is there, it's simply a
>
> matter
>
>>>of harnessing it.
>>>
>>>-herb
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>I don't think anyone would contend that wind power could replace oil as
>>an energy source. There already are rows of wind turbines on the
>>hillsides in California that I saw when I was there. How much power do
>>they actually produce? Not much on average if UK experience is typical
>>and none at all when the wind is not blowing. Also, in spite of the
>>"fuel" being free, wind generated electricity is still more expensive
>>than fossil-generated electricity and only exists in the UK due to
>>government subsidies.
>>
>>Total generating capacity in the UK is about 60GW from gas, oil, coal
>>and nuclear power stations, mainly. At, say, 1.5MW to 2 MW per wind
>>turbine it would need about 40,000 wind turbines to replace this
>>capacity and this would double the total capacity as the original
>>stations would still be needed for cold winters days when there is no
>>wind so this would be very expensive. Since each wind turbine or wind
>>farm of a few dozen needs planning permission and is argued over for
>>years by countryside conservationists who do not want them in beauty
>>spots or near their houses, there is no room for that many turbines
>
> anyway.
>
>>See this article for a well-written piece saying what a lot of us have
>>been saying on this NG:
>>
>>Apparently in 2001 the USA with 4% of the world population was using 40%
>>of world gasoline production. As the rest of the world strives to catch
>>up with this, rising oil prices will make it too expensive to continue
>>at this rate. The writer's contention is that the USA will have to learn
>>to live with reduced energy consumption.
>
>
> David:
>
> I don't pretend to be following the wind power industry closely, but I
> remember reading an article in USNews a while back that claimed that the
> cost of a wind turbine was on a downward slope while the productivity of a
> single turbine was rising. All this is happening while the cost of
> petroleum, some say, is on a permanent upward slope. The vision was one of
> wind turbines storing their power in the form of hydrogen which can, indeed,
> be burned on a windless day.
>
> But the point is not for me to predict which technology, or mix of
> technologies will come to replace burning petroleum in the future. My only
> point is that nature provides many times the potential energy that mankind
> could ever, conceivably need to propel itself around the surface of the
> planet. I once attended a talk on windpower in which the speaker claimed
> that more wind energy passed through the Aleutian Arc every day than mankind
> has used since the dawn of history.
>
> -herb
>
>
Whatever the Aleutian arc is, this sounds a very unlikely statistic
indeed. Would you like to back that up with numbers in Terra Watt-hours,
MegaJoules or some other suitable unit with explanations of where the
numbers came from?

Wind energy is very highly dispersed or, to put it another way, its
energy density is very low. To get hold of substantial amounts of wind
energy requires enormously extended arrays of wind turbines.

If you are estimating the wind power crossing the western coast of the
USA between ground level and the stratosphere at 36,000 feet on a windy
day then it may be large but there is no practical way of extracting it.

Re: Rising oil prices.

In article <deajaq$2qa$>,
David Wilkinson <> wrote:

> Probably hydrogen would do for powering cars, not as well as gasoline as
> it is more difficult to handle and store in the car, but it would work.
> However, it is a secondary fuel that has to be made out of oil or gas or
> from electrolysis of water, all of which need primary power, which
> remains the main problem.

How about solar cells to generate electricity to perform
electrolysis on water?

--

"Did you notice that [Candaq and Gardner] never miss one of my posts and I
never read theirs, I have to wonder just who it is that's envious." -Ed, in
news:<9cn26l$6di6$>.

Re: Rising oil prices.

In article <deak6i$85a$>,
David Wilkinson <> wrote:

> If you are estimating the wind power crossing the western coast of the
> USA between ground level and the stratosphere at 36,000 feet on a windy
> day then it may be large but there is no practical way of extracting it.

There will be when oil hits $200 a barrel, unless the free market
is somehow stifled and innovation is thus hampered, which could
easily happen. And if not wind energy, something else.

And if not, I welcome the return of the horse and buggy, or the
development of a decent mass transportation system in this
country, something that can handle large numbers of people with
far fewer units of energy per person expended.

Let's face it. The way things are going, we're going to use oil
wildly until we run out. The only thing that will stop our
consumption is scarcity--we obviously have no self-control.
Before we run out, we might kill ourselves through global
warming, however. But you know--we had a chance to do something
and didn't, so it will be okay; we didn't step up to the plate.
As Kurt Vonnegut once said about the earth (paraphrasing from
memory): we could have saved it, but we were too lazy and cheap.

What are you gonna do?

--

"Did you notice that [Candaq and Gardner] never miss one of my posts and I
never read theirs, I have to wonder just who it is that's envious." -Ed, in
news:<9cn26l$6di6$>.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote
> Elle wrote:
> > "Evojeesus" <> wrote
> > > Elle wrote:
>
> > The Cental Limit Theorem as applied here states that, as the number of
wells
> > approaches infinity, the barrels/year... oh never mind. It's really not
> > terribly relevant.
>
> Well, it makes predicting the peak more credible as the rise and fall
> of the total production of thousands of wells will be Gaussian, even if
> some future technology changes the shape of the production-curve of
> each individual well.

We disagree that the Central Limit Theorem has any relevance to a process
that is not in fact random, because, for one, new wells are being dug
regularly, etc.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"sam grey" <> wrote
> Let's face it. The way things are going, we're going to use oil
> wildly until we run out. The only thing that will stop our
> consumption is scarcity--we obviously have no self-control.
> Before we run out, we might kill ourselves through global
> warming, however.

I think we'll kill ourselves through plain ol' homicide and genocide, first.
Maybe it will be murder over a scarcity of gasoline, though. (Of course,
that's already started in some parts of the world.)

Things are serious. Or cereal, because it won't affect me personally.
America is eating itself to death. Which means health care costs are higher.
Domino-ing and mushrooming to still greater calamity. Which means only those
who have the brains to figure out how to survive physically will get through
some tough years.

I'm glad I'm not 30 or younger. That generation is really screwed.

Re: Rising oil prices.

sam grey wrote:

> In article <deajaq$2qa$>,
> David Wilkinson <> wrote:
>
>
>>Probably hydrogen would do for powering cars, not as well as gasoline as
>>it is more difficult to handle and store in the car, but it would work.
>>However, it is a secondary fuel that has to be made out of oil or gas or
>>from electrolysis of water, all of which need primary power, which
>>remains the main problem.
>
>
> How about solar cells to generate electricity to perform
> electrolysis on water?

You can't repeal the law of conservation of energy. To generate enough
hydrogen to power a hundred million cars would require enough solar
cells to cover hundreds of square miles.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

Re: Rising oil prices.

David Wilkinson wrote:
> Ed wrote:
>
>> "Herb" <> wrote
>>
>>
>>> Steven:
>>>
>>> It is my understanding that the Stanley Steamer was quite practical
>>> in many
>>> ways outperforming internal combustion engines. It was bought and
>>> put out
>>> of business by people with a vested interest in petroleum based
>>> transportation.
>>
>>
>>
>> It couldn't be because internal combustion engines improved
>> dramatically, could it?
>> Wasn't it coal and not petroleum that powered them?
>>
> I thought one of its problems was that you had to light the boiler
> (paper, wood, coal?) and wait 15 mins or so for it to boil the water and
> get up steam pressure.

Yes, and the complexity didn't stop there. To drive the car, you had to
monitor and control a maze of dials and levers that were monitoring the
pilot light, the fuel, the steam pressure and water levels. It was as
complex as operating a steam locomotive, which as you know required a
trained engineer.

BTW, the fuel used to heat the boiler was kerosene. But the pilot light
used gasoline, meaning that refueling required filling up three
reservoirs: kerosene tank, gasoline reservoir and water tank.


> Herb's main problem in this context is using the Micawber philosophy
> that if we just do nothing some technological fix will magically turn up
> to cure our energy problems. As usual he is extrapolating past trends
> into the future. Because we have discovered a lot of things in the past
> does not necessarily mean there are a lot of equally useful things still
> to be discovered or invented. The reverse probably holds in fact.

I disagree with this. The problem isn't technological breakthroughs.
It's marketing them and creating the infrastructure for them. The
gasoline-powered automobile has a vast support infrastructure. You can
find fuel for it and repairs for it anywhere on earth. Any new
technology would need a comparable investment to develop a comparable
infrastructure.

Even if hydrogen fueled cars became practical, we would still need to
retool and resupply every filling station in the world to offer hydrogen
fuel, build zillions of new plants to produce the hydrogen (and those
plants will need electric power themselves), train mechanics to repair
the new hydrogen-fueled cars, etc. etc.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"sam grey" <> wrote in message
news:
> In article <deak6i$85a$>,
> David Wilkinson <> wrote:
>
> > If you are estimating the wind power crossing the western coast of the
> > USA between ground level and the stratosphere at 36,000 feet on a windy
> > day then it may be large but there is no practical way of extracting it.
>
> There will be when oil hits $200 a barrel, unless the free market
> is somehow stifled and innovation is thus hampered, which could
> easily happen. And if not wind energy, something else.
>
> And if not, I welcome the return of the horse and buggy, or the
> development of a decent mass transportation system in this
> country, something that can handle large numbers of people with
> far fewer units of energy per person expended.
>
> Let's face it. The way things are going, we're going to use oil
> wildly until we run out. The only thing that will stop our
> consumption is scarcity--we obviously have no self-control.
> Before we run out, we might kill ourselves through global
> warming, however. But you know--we had a chance to do something
> and didn't, so it will be okay; we didn't step up to the plate.
> As Kurt Vonnegut once said about the earth (paraphrasing from
> memory): we could have saved it, but we were too lazy and cheap.
>
> What are you gonna do?
>
To paraphrase Bush: saving the earth would be bad for the economy.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Steven L." <> wrote in message
news:O9bOe.10133$
> sam grey wrote:
>
> > In article <deajaq$2qa$>,
> > David Wilkinson <> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Probably hydrogen would do for powering cars, not as well as gasoline as
> >>it is more difficult to handle and store in the car, but it would work.
> >>However, it is a secondary fuel that has to be made out of oil or gas or
> >>from electrolysis of water, all of which need primary power, which
> >>remains the main problem.
> >
> >
> > How about solar cells to generate electricity to perform
> > electrolysis on water?
>
> You can't repeal the law of conservation of energy. To generate enough
> hydrogen to power a hundred million cars would require enough solar
> cells to cover hundreds of square miles.

Really? Is that all? I have to think we could spare a few hundred square
miles, especially if we spread it out. Maybe we could work it into highway
surfaces.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Steven L." <> wrote in message
news:WobOe.10140$

> I disagree with this. The problem isn't technological breakthroughs.
> It's marketing them and creating the infrastructure for them. The
> gasoline-powered automobile has a vast support infrastructure. You can
> find fuel for it and repairs for it anywhere on earth. Any new
> technology would need a comparable investment to develop a comparable
> infrastructure.
>
> Even if hydrogen fueled cars became practical, we would still need to
> retool and resupply every filling station in the world to offer hydrogen
> fuel, build zillions of new plants to produce the hydrogen (and those
> plants will need electric power themselves), train mechanics to repair
> the new hydrogen-fueled cars, etc. etc.

Yes, we would need new infrastructure just like any new technology. I don't
think, though, we have to assume that it would follow the same model in
which we have to go to giant, multi-national corporations. Not everyone can
build a gasoline refinery but any science minded kid with access to water
and electricity can create hydrogen.

I saw a show on PBS (Scientific American Frontiers, I think) that said
Iceland planned to be the first country to switch to a hydrogen based
economy utilizing their geo-thermal resources. Eventually they plan to
export hydrogen. It will be interesting to see how they do.

-herb

Re: Rising oil prices.

Herb wrote:
> "Steven L." <> wrote in message
> news:O9bOe.10133$
>
>>sam grey wrote:
>>
>>
>>>In article <deajaq$2qa$>,
>>> David Wilkinson <> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Probably hydrogen would do for powering cars, not as well as gasoline as
>>>>it is more difficult to handle and store in the car, but it would work.
>>>>However, it is a secondary fuel that has to be made out of oil or gas or
>>>
>>>>from electrolysis of water, all of which need primary power, which
>>>
>>>>remains the main problem.
>>>
>>>
>>>How about solar cells to generate electricity to perform
>>>electrolysis on water?
>>
>>You can't repeal the law of conservation of energy. To generate enough
>>hydrogen to power a hundred million cars would require enough solar
>>cells to cover hundreds of square miles.
>
>
> Really? Is that all? I have to think we could spare a few hundred square
> miles, especially if we spread it out. Maybe we could work it into highway
> surfaces.
>
> -herb
>
>
Yes, That's what I thought. When I traveled across the Arizona desert on
the way from San Diego to Phoenix once I thought then that there was a
lot of heat going to waste, especially at Gila Bend where it seemed to
be about 130 F! A 100 square miles is only 10 miles square so there must
be thousands of square miles available there of no other possible use to
anyone. Just rock, sand and a few cacti and those cactus birds that peck
them.

I suppose some group of desert lovers would claim it was actually a
haven of wildlife and a national heritage site, home of the lesser
spotted wood louse or something, but I am all for paving it over with
solar cells. Does anyone know the economics of this?

Re: Rising oil prices.

Elle wrote:
> "Evojeesus" <> wrote

> > Well, it makes predicting the peak more credible as the rise and fall
> > of the total production of thousands of wells will be Gaussian, even if
> > some future technology changes the shape of the production-curve of
> > each individual well.

> We disagree that the Central Limit Theorem has any relevance to a process
> that is not in fact random, because, for one, new wells are being dug
> regularly, etc.

So you're saying there's a global system that synchronizes new drilling
on thousands of fields? Even if that was the case I don't think it
would change anything, the end result would still be normally
distributed. The only way of significantly postponing the peak would be
finding new gigafields, or slashing demand.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Herb" <> wrote
> "Steven L." <> wrote
> > sam grey wrote:
> >
> > > In article <deajaq$2qa$>,
> > > David Wilkinson <> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Probably hydrogen would do for powering cars, not as well as gasoline
as
> > >>it is more difficult to handle and store in the car, but it would
work.
> > >>However, it is a secondary fuel that has to be made out of oil or gas
or
> > >>from electrolysis of water, all of which need primary power, which
> > >>remains the main problem.
> > >
> > >
> > > How about solar cells to generate electricity to perform
> > > electrolysis on water?
> >
> > You can't repeal the law of conservation of energy.

What bull---- is this?

Conservation of energy has nothing to do with it. Sam is pointing out that
solar energy is low cost and underutilized.

> > To generate enough
> > hydrogen to power a hundred million cars would require enough solar
> > cells to cover hundreds of square miles.
>
> Really? Is that all? I have to think we could spare a few hundred square
> miles, especially if we spread it out. Maybe we could work it into
highway
> surfaces.

Indeed.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"Evojeesus" <> wrote
> Elle wrote:
> > "Evojeesus" <> wrote
>
> > > Well, it makes predicting the peak more credible as the rise and fall
> > > of the total production of thousands of wells will be Gaussian, even
if
> > > some future technology changes the shape of the production-curve of
> > > each individual well.
>
> > We disagree that the Central Limit Theorem has any relevance to a
process
> > that is not in fact random, because, for one, new wells are being dug
> > regularly, etc.
>
> So you're saying there's a global system that synchronizes new drilling
> on thousands of fields?

No, I'm saying you've confused a Gaussian distibution with graphs of how oil
well output changes over time.

No big deal. Just a huge, gross conceptual error.

Re: Rising oil prices.

Elle wrote:

> No, I'm saying you've confused a Gaussian distibution with graphs of how oil
> well output changes over time.

No, instead I've grasped the fact that summing thousands of _arbitrary_
distiributions results in a distribution that is nearly Gaussian. The
way single oil wells behave matters very little, if at all.

> No big deal. Just a huge, gross conceptual error.

I don't think so.

Re: Rising oil prices.

In article
<O9bOe.10133$>,
"Steven L." <> wrote:

> > How about solar cells to generate electricity to perform
> > electrolysis on water?
>
> You can't repeal the law of conservation of energy. To generate enough
> hydrogen to power a hundred million cars would require enough solar
> cells to cover hundreds of square miles.

Okay, well, we seem to have hundreds of square miles free over
deserts and perhaps even oceans (floating solar cells, maybe?).
And even if you can't power a hundred million cars, if you power
a quarter of that number and still run the rest on petroleum,
well, that delays the apocalypse for a little longer at least.

I'm no engineer. I'm sure there are technical problems. But I bet
if we really wanted to come up with something, if our hearts
were into it, we could.

--

"Did you notice that [Candaq and Gardner] never miss one of my posts and I
never read theirs, I have to wonder just who it is that's envious." -Ed, in
news:<9cn26l$6di6$>.

Re: Rising oil prices.

In article
<6jcOe.122453$>,
"Herb" <> wrote:

> Really? Is that all? I have to think we could spare a few hundred square
> miles, especially if we spread it out. Maybe we could work it into highway
> surfaces.
>
> -herb

Maybe we could use right of eminent domain to mount them over
poor peoples' houses.

--

"Did you notice that [Candaq and Gardner] never miss one of my posts and I
never read theirs, I have to wonder just who it is that's envious." -Ed, in
news:<9cn26l$6di6$>.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"sam grey" <> wrote in message
news:
> In article
> <6jcOe.122453$>,
> "Herb" <> wrote:
>
> > Really? Is that all? I have to think we could spare a few hundred
square
> > miles, especially if we spread it out. Maybe we could work it into
highway
> > surfaces.
> >
> > -herb
>
> Maybe we could use right of eminent domain to mount them over
> poor peoples' houses.


We'd have to find a way to make them pay for the free shade.

Re: Rising oil prices.

In article
<_5xOe.125617$>,
"Herb" <> wrote:

> > Maybe we could use right of eminent domain to mount them over
> > poor peoples' houses.
>
>
> We'd have to find a way to make them pay for the free shade.

Now you're talking! I was beginning to suspect that you might not
be a True Believer. Well, that's good, now I don't have to report
you. (But you'd better watch your step.)

--

"Did you notice that [Candaq and Gardner] never miss one of my posts and I
never read theirs, I have to wonder just who it is that's envious." -Ed, in
news:<9cn26l$6di6$>.

Re: Rising oil prices.

"sam grey" <> wrote
> "Herb" <> wrote:
> > > Maybe we could use right of eminent domain to mount them over
> > > poor peoples' houses.
> >
> >
> > We'd have to find a way to make them pay for the free shade.
>
> Now you're talking! I was beginning to suspect that you might not
> be a True Believer. Well, that's good, now I don't have to report
> you. (But you'd better watch your step.)

.... they say as they count up the stock dividends from the very companies
that now occupy once formerly blighted property, subsequently seized by
eminent domain and developed for the benefit of shareholders, among others.

Don't criticize corporate greed unless you admit you partake of it.

It's no joke.

Herb doesn't have a home but if you think it's funny then you two clowns
should read this:








"Elle" <> wrote in message
news:LIGOe.663$
> "sam grey" <> wrote
>> "Herb" <> wrote:
>> > > Maybe we could use right of eminent domain to mount them over
>> > > poor peoples' houses.
>> >
>> >
>> > We'd have to find a way to make them pay for the free shade.
>>
>> Now you're talking! I was beginning to suspect that you might not
>> be a True Believer. Well, that's good, now I don't have to report
>> you. (But you'd better watch your step.)
>
> ... they say as they count up the stock dividends from the very companies
> that now occupy once formerly blighted property, subsequently seized by
> eminent domain and developed for the benefit of shareholders, among
> others.
>
> Don't criticize corporate greed unless you admit you partake of it.
>
>

Re: It's no joke.

Ed wrote:
> Herb doesn't have a home but if you think it's funny then you two clowns
> should read this:
>
>
>
Wow! Tamany hall redux!

Didn't Batman used to fight this sort of thing in Gotham City?

Most countries need a tinpot dictator to do this sort of thing to them.
>
>
>
>
>

Re: It's no joke.

"Ed" <> wrote:

>Herb doesn't have a home but if you think it's funny then you two clowns
>should read this:
>
>

I can't speak to the other examples in the article, but this portion
is incorrect:

>• Bremerton, Washington removed a woman in her 80s from her home of 55
>years for the claimed purpose of expanding a sewer plant, but gave her
>former home to an auto dealership.

The water district was *required* by the courts to purchase the
property after being sued by land owners in the neighborhood over the
stench being emitted by the poorly designed, operated, and maintained
plant. Eventually a second suit by local environmentalists forced the
water district to actually correct those faults (rather than simply
have a buffer), plus others which were resulting in raw or under
processed sewage being dumped into Sinclair Inlet.

The end result was that the city was in possession of prime real
estate in the expanding West Hills (Navy Yard City to old timers) area
- and sold it off to developers. (After sitting fallow for 4-6
years.) If anyone got screwed in the process, it's the customers of
the water district, who will be paying for those two suits for another
fifty years - as the water district got none of the revenue from the
sale. (The suit over that went nowhere.)

I'll grant the individual that owns the auto dealership is one of the
local "good ol' boys", but his general tactics are smash and grab and
confront - not Machiavellian. Planning on a ten year scale is simply
unheard of. (Politics around here have all the sophistication and
none of the charm of a kindergarten playground.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL