Jan .................. you're overdosed on Thomas Robert Malthus !
jh
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Steinman" <Jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 1:33 AM
Subject: [OM] Cost of gas [Was Re: OT American express]
>
>> From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> With that great a discrepancy between sale price and cost of
>> production
>> additional supplies or alternatives would start to rear up...
>
> Don't count on it. The world has never pumped more than it did in May,
> 2005 -- 85 million barrels of oil in one day. The housing crisis and
> financial collapse are a direct, albeit delayed, result of a growing
> economy bumping up against the glass ceiling of 85mb/d. You cannot
> grow an economy without growing energy consumption.
>
> They've had three years since then to come up with alternatives. They
> didn't find any, even when oil was close to $150.
>
> So now we bounced off the ceiling and are using well under that
> amount, but with the price crashed, no one is working on expensive
> alternatives. One large ethanol firm just declared bankruptcy; they're
> closing down tar sands processing capacity in Alberta. That will cause
> the price to remain relatively low -- perhaps even under $50 -- which
> will fuel growth, which will cause us to bump up against the ceiling
> again. Only this time, it won't be 85mb/d; it might only be 80. And so
> on, until it's all gone, or at least unrecoverable at any price.
>
> Everyone thinks little green bits of paper have something to do with
> it -- they don't. Energy should be priced in energy. When oil first
> gushed at Titusville, PA, one consumed one barrel of oil in getting
> over one hundred out. Today, it's more like five out for one in. The
> tar sands are under three. Biodiesel is about 1:1.3, ethanol actually
> consumes more energy in its manufacture than it produces.
>
> Thus the fallacy of saying, "When the price gets high enough, other
> sources will become available." When the cost of producing one unit of
> energy *is* one unit of energy, it doesn't matter at all how many
> little green bits of paper are shuffled around -- we'll be at entropic
> heat death as a civilization, and will have to go back to living
> strictly off of what the sun gives us. Pray that there's enough oil
> and coal left at that point to make a few more solar panels and wind
> turbines.
>
> :::: By 2030... fossil fuel resources will be totally out by then. --
> Katsuhiko Machida, President of Sharp ::::
> :::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality <http://www.EcoReality.org> ::::
>
>
>
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