Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 11 am in association with NZ Mint.
I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.
My must read today is the graphic on working in an online warehouse. Oh the joys of globalisation. Have a great weekend.
1. Austerity is not working - John Cochrane from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business writes at Bloomberg about the failure of Europe's austerity plans.
He's right.
Cutting government spending and increasing taxes when the household sector is labouring under massive debt and negative equity is pointless.
It just drives an economy deeper into recession.
What is needed is massive debt restructuring that clears the decks and starts again.
Instead, central banks and governments are trying to tip-toe past the elephant in the room and hope they don't get squashed in process. It's a massive crossing of the fingers and hoping that someone -- anyone -- pulls Europe out of the mire. Everyone is betting that China and emerging markets will be the saviour.
We'll see.
Here's Cochrane, who isn't necessarily in favour of a Keynesian solution. He wants structural reform:
“Structural reform” is vital to restore growth now, not a vague idea for many years in the future when the stimulus has worked its magic. It’s also a lot harder politically than the breezy language suggests. “Reform” isn’t just “policy” handed down by technocrats like rules on the provenance of prosciutto; it involves taking away subsidies and interventions that entrenched interests have grown to love, and have supported politicians to protect. They will fight it tooth and nail.
That is even more reason to address this now, while there is a crisis. The will to do so may evaporate if better times return, and the ability to do so might disappear if the economies plunge.
2. The problem with online retailing - It's great for consumers dodging taxes by leaping into the cloud.
But it's not much fun for workers. All part of the progressive shift in the profit share to the 1% from the 99%.
3. How rich people are buying US democracy - That's a bald thing to say, but it's hard not to after reading this Bloomberg report on how one rich guy in Missouri is successfully using Citizen Initiated Referenda to get rid of taxes and 'starve the beast' of government.
This nuttiness has put California in an awful hole.
In a fractured political universe that spawned the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street and 10 percent congressional approval ratings, Rex Sinquefield, 67, is up to his eyeballs in frustration. While he maintains he isn’t a billionaire and won’t divulge his net worth, he is using his wealth to go over the heads of the political establishment. He is a new American oligarch, appealing directly to voters for help in reshaping his home state to fit his economic beliefs.
The Sinquefield plan would kill Missouri’s 6 percent personal income tax and raise the sales tax to a maximum of 7 percent from today’s 4 percent. Since 1992, 140 proposals to cut or limit taxes have appeared on state ballots, and 61 percent passed, said Jennie Bowser, who tracks initiatives at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver.
The Missouri proposal would burden low- and middle-income wage earners while leaving a $3 billion budget hole, says Moody, the former budget director. It would also benefit rich people, he says. Moody describes Sinquefield and his tax plan this way: “There’s not a nice way to say it. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
4. Beijing on edge amid coup rumours - This headline will not go away. It's the FT reporting via CNBC. The head of China's State Security Apparatus is apparently under house arrest.
The Chinese capital is awash with speculation, innuendo and rumors of a coup following the most important political purge in decades, with even some of the most well-informed officials in the dark about what comes next.
Since Bo Xilai, one of China’s most powerful leaders, was removed from his job last Thursday, the bureaucracy and the public have been on tenterhooks, awaiting the next twist in the gripping political saga.
One person with close ties to China’s security apparatus said Mr Zhou had been ordered not to make any public appearances or take any high-level meetings and was “already under some degree of control”.
The same person said Mr Bo, who was Communist Party chief of Chongqing until last week, was under house arrest while his wife had been taken away for investigation into suspected corruption, a common charge leveled at senior officials who have lost out in power struggles.
5. China eases for some banks - Bloomberg reports the People's Bank of China has cut reserve requirement ratios for 379 branches of the Agricultural Bank of China.
The ruling Communist Party has pledged to fine-tune economic policies as needed as a cooling real-estate market and faltering export demand limit the nation’s expansion. Mining company BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) said March 20 that China’s steel output growth has flattened, adding to concern that a slowdown may deepen.
“This is a marginal and targeted easing aiming at encourage more lending in rural areas and to smaller businesses,” said Lu Ting, a Hong Kong-based economist at Bank of America Corp.
6. What's wrong with the world? - Luxury scarf maker Hermes has reported a record profit and plans to pay a special dividend. The victory of the 0.1% seems fairly clear.
Hermes plans to build two leather factories in France this year as demand for its Birkin and other bags outstrips supply, Thomas said in November. The 175-year-old company’s distinctive positioning should mean so-called organic sales rise 13 percent in 2012, one of the fastest growth rates in the luxury industry, HSBC analysts including Antoine Belge estimated this month.
7. Here we go again - European investors are starting to get very nervous about Spain's budget outlook and high debts. Its government bond yields are remaining stubbornly high.
Even Italy's yields are rising again.The dire Eurozone PMI overnight is not helping.
Here's the FT's Richard Milne:
Marc Chandler, currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, noted Italian 10-year yields have fallen 180bp so far this year while Spain’s have risen by 39bp.
“That is after two LTROs,” he said. “That definitely concerns me. When the bonds rally it helps the banks’ balance sheets. But when yields start rising it hurts the banks even more. It is a vicious circle.”
The economic fate of Spain and Italy is both viewed as central to assessing whether the eurozone debt crisis – quiet since Greece’s default earlier this month – could re-erupt. Investors worry that weak growth, not just in Italy and Spain but across the rest of the eurozone, could be the spark to reignite the crisis, despite some European politicians’ claims that it was largely over.
8. Conversion to CNG or LPG? - I wonder how long before America looks at converting its vehicle fleet to start using all the natural gas it has discovered through fracking.
Natural gas prices are collapsing and there's now a serious gap between oil and gas prices. HT Zerohedge.
9. Would the real Mitt Romney please stand up - Some entertaining editing.
10. Totally Clarke and Dawe on the new speaker of Parliament in Australia, who was elected to oppose the Government but is now the speaker of the house...
"That boy. No running near the pool. No running near the pool."
110 Comments
Re: number 8. Thanks for covering this. I am also surprised that we are still using oil to power our cars, given the price differential (per BTU) with natural gas. I can only believe that infrastructure costs and/or the difficulty in changing the tax structure that holds us back.
Anyone know if it's possible for me to convert my petrol car to run on compressed natural gas, and to buy my own compressor to install in the garage at home?!
Rob
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicle/warrants-certifications/alt-fuel-cert.h…
Yes, and its absolutly the future. Big moves in the USA for this. The USA could be a net exporter of LNG instead of a net importer of oil, if the world converted to LNG instead oil. It's only a matter of time.
The picken's plan starting off....but with little govn support.
I think you are over-stating the case of exporting bearing in mind the fracking might actually not deliver the quantities claimed, let alone the pie in the sky over the world using gas instead of oil.....just wont happen.
"its only a matter of time" you are totally right, but not the outcome you see I think.
regards
Hi Steven,
If you're refering to the this article - http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-big-fracking-bubble-the-s…
I understand, and Chesapeake is a company that is massivly overleveraged and heading for disaster. However, for me it's mainly pure economics; expensive oil/cheap gas. Some of Americas largest trucking companies are converting their whole fleets. I think in 4-5 years time it will be common place. It's the only easy plentiful alternative to oil. And every major oil company is now making big moves in the gas sector.
Not specifically....that piece is more of a "front" for the sort of stuff I read...I go for the more technical stuff.
I agree there are some economics at present that make sense and will for some years. What I do think however is this capability is overblown...ie it isnt going to fix the glbal oil fossil fuel production limits.
Its also an alternative fuel, so if there is say an oil shortage its mor elikelt the economy will be still functioning.....
regards
Dr Bob it is completely possible to run your car on CNG, but the compression of the gas isn't so easy. The compression required is significant and likely involved multiple stages, perhaps you could go halves with your neighbour for the $10-20K for that. You just need a regulator for the gas and a copper pipe crimped(venturi) and piped into your air inlet is a crude but effective method.
The WOF Nazi's won't like your conversion either.
You will notice a significant loss in power, as CNG is a lot slower burning. This can be overcome in part by upping the compression ratio. You can run a diesel on it because of this, but you still need a small amount of diesel to provide ignition. Modern engines built for unleaded don't have the problems with valves burning out like they did back in the late 70's.
Lool into running your car on woodgas :-P
Now what you should have done is bolted a big turbocharger on to overcome the disadvantages :-P .... a shame the refinements on turbos aren't what they are now.
But in further answer to the Doc, you could drive around with the gas in a big bag on your roof :-)
Look to India for the technology, it is how they have cleaned up some of their cities. I have a friend that is an electrical engineer that has working for a NZ company working on delivery systems. Trouble is he was just laid off.
Yeah - makes a lot of sense for
New Zealand in the long run as well Bernard.
I am not sure about how thermally efficient it is to use Compressed Natural Gas for running a car, but it is probably comparable to imported Oil. The question for
New Zealand is, why do we squander our limited Natural Gas resource to make electricity at 35% efficiency? When we could be making much better use of it…
http://freenrg4nz.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/10-stop-wasting-our-natural-gas/
NZ was a world leader in CNG installations post the first and second oil shocks.
Set up by the Liquid Fuels Trust Board.
Compressors everywhere. Also LNG freely available.
Great for savings and current account.
All rooted out and sold to Asia under the economic " reforms "
Oh well - we can just repeat the exercise for a few billions ( All borrowed )
JB - funny, I was just looking through John Cobb's 'New Zealand Synfuel', as your post came up!
Gas is nothing new - the stuff in the 'States has long been documented - but it won't either stem the decline, nor does it pack as much punch per tankful, and it also needs more careful/complicated storage.
As one can see, long taken into account, but not a game-changer.
A company that I worked for was very committed to LPG but like most drifted away from it. I noted that whereas staff were previously happy with standard 2 litre 4 cyl sedans, they worked the system to get themselves into larger more powerful fuel hungry 6 cyl's. The net effect was that we spent a lot of capital to achieve zero or less fuel saving.
There is a good future for gas powered vehicles. They need to be purpose designed with full sized boots not ones half taken up with tanks and compromised performance and weight. Heavy trucks and construction plant would be good candidates for early adoption as they have less spacial design constraints and are high enery users per vehicle.
As to 4wd the other large vehicles used for personal transport. If the BS nebulous carbon credit scheme/scam is half justified then far more would be achieved by a vehicle owner/user tax heavily weighted in favour of smaller fuel efficient cars. (I bet any FTA with the USA would preclude it)
NZ and Italy were world leaders in CNG and LPG in the early 80's and conversions were subsidised. I remember most taxis ran on CNG. In the interest of free markets the Labour govt ended all subsidies and natural gas was sold cheaply (commercially sensitive price of course) to Canadian company for methanol production. All the CNG infrastructure was removed. Could NZ have been self sufficient in transport fuels with further development? Probably. Ford NZ were still offering dedicated LPG Falcons a few years ago and Honda I think it was in the US offering NatGas Civics or Accords. No performance loss with dedicated LPG systems. Diesel vehicles are supposed to be relatively easy to convert to CNG. Don't worry the "market" will sort it out, national interest and current account be damned.
I recently drove a dual LPG / Petrol L300 van around the South Island.
Apart from having to plan my journey according to the intermittent service stations that stocked LPG the price difference made it well worth while.
However, unlike the competitive petrol market, there were wild swings in prices from one outlet to another. For example a Shell station in Queenstown sold LPG at $1.32/lt while a BP station only 2 km away was pushing it for $1.50/lt.
I doubt that the oil companies have much of an incentive to install LPG infrastructure when they are making so much from high petrol prices, while the consumer doesn't have much of an incentive to pay for a vehicle conversion when fuel prices fall...
Hence the need for Govt intervention in the past I imagine.
Rugby World Cup : IRB Cash Windfall
The Pareto principle saw me miss out on NZ's share if there ever was any.
Oil discoveries peaked in the early 1960's and have been in decline ever since, as far as I can understand this does include all the shale oil and tar sands etc. Average last decade was about 10 Billion barrels discovered per year or 4 months use at current rates, 2010 was an exception where 50 Billion barrels were discovered, most of that in Brazil. Gas will be the next major energy source as a % of consumption, however the energy density is lower then that of conventional liquid fuels. So much larger fuel tanks will be required.
Best article on oil, explains how it forms, how it is priced and anything else you want to know. Peak oil starts at about p55.
Swan is causing a real flap over in Oz with this ginormous bailout for unions- HT Macrobusiness
The Federal Government says it has avoided a “knockout blow” to the manufacturing sector by giving $215 million in assistance to General Motors Holden.
The car maker will also receive $50 million from the South Australian Government and $10 million from the Victorian Government.
The $275 million package will be handed over in return for a $1 billion investment from Holden to make two new car models at its Adelaide plant, with a guarantee the carmaker will maintain its Australian operations for at least the next decade.
Unions and industry bodies have welcomed the deal, which Prime Minister Julia Gillard says will save thousands of jobs.
“In January this year we were at real risk that there would be no more Holden in Australia, that we wouldn’t have Holden here producing motor vehicles,” she said.
“That wasn’t acceptable for me as Prime Minister and it wasn’t the right thing for the nation’s future.
“It would’ve been a knockout blow for manufacturing in this country, given the importance of the auto industry to all of manufacturing.”
http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012/03/22/global-spare-oil-output-capa…
And on Fox of all places!
This peakoil stuff is all discredited nonsense dont you know, baaaaaaaaa........
Except as per usual such ppl who read fox only think of how they can make money as an individual....so its valid for thme to look and say I can play the futures market and make myself rich.....ordainary ppl pay for it....but that is of no consquence now is it?
regards
I have no idea how to interpret your post Steven.
I found it ironic that a Barclays study which in effect confirms massive problems with oil supply (and by extension the liklihood of peakoil) was highlighted by Fox, the propaganda arm of the US right wing business behemoth, which usually attaches notions of resource depletion to pinko commie conspiracy theorists (come to think of it is David B Fox's man in NZ?).
What were you trying to say?
Proven World Oil Reserves, June 2011
(Thousand Million Barrels)
at the end of:-
1990, 1003.2
2000, 1104.9
2009, 1376.6
2010, 1383.2*
*+ Canadian oil sands,
Total 1526.3 Million Barrels of proven world oil reserves.
Just rmember, andy, he who laughs last (me) gets to laugh loudest!
Proved reserves of oil – Generally taken to be those quantities that geological and engineering information indicates with reasonable certainty can be recovered in the future from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.
What was that that you Royal Highness was mumbling, Andrew?
It's stones Gummy, mining stones, then heating and mixing with chemicals to refine into oil, to refine into petrol diesel etc.
Most of the oil is in the persian Gulf, it's the good stuff.
Most of the ashphalt sands are in Canada, it's old degraded oil.
Most of the shale 'oil' is in the US it's like half done oil, and sits between coal and oil in the cooking process.
There is no hope, Gummy. The world is doomed, DOOMED. There is nothing that can be done. The poultry curve tells us so. Might I suggest that you go and build a mud hut bunker way out in the outback that you can run on the same amount of energy contained in a daily captured gaseous emission, and wait for the end of the world to come? It may take 3000 or 4000 years, but at least you'll be proven right!
PS, Don’t forget your organic lentils, peas and home grown turnips. Absolute essentials to generate the gaseous emission. Waste not want not!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkYVlZ9v_0o&context=C354984aADOEgsToPDsk…
That needed a "beverage warning."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohjqwN8N30w&feature=endscreen
Just plug in the hydrocarbon fractionator and we can all fly to the moon on our unicorns, for a feast of cheese.
US Inching Towards Energy Independence.
The New York Times, March 22, 2012.
Read it and weep, flat earthers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/business/energy-environment/inching-t…
Tears in my eyes, the US has 2% of the worlds oi reserves, and is planning on producing 12% of the worlds oil. Awesome. Energy independence will swiftly be followed by...........
There are plans to increase the amount of wells in North Dakota by 40% this year, wells that have a productive life of about 3 years, as they drop from 5,000 to 80bpd. Is it that hard to accept that soon we will have to use less oil?
""There are plans to increase the amount of wells in North Dakota by 40% this year, wells that have a productive life of about 3 years, as they drop from 5,000 to 80bpd""
This is not correct, the drop off from initial flow is high as you state, but these wells can flow for decades at 80 or less boepd. It all adds up over time. No oil company drilling in Dakota or elsewhere is going to spend $6 million to drill and frac one well with a 1-2 year payback if the productive life is just a little longer than that.
Sure, if you drill a few wells it may last for decades, if you drill 25,000 it may not. I'm sure the payback is a lot faster then 2 years at current prices. Sucking it out faster does not change how much is there. The US has the largest shale oil reserves in the world, and the bullish scenario for tight oil is up to 20 Billion bbl with most between 3-4.
Dear David, please read this and engage your brain!
Global annual (Brent) crude oil prices doubled from $55 in 2005 to $111, an average rate of increase of one percent per month, although actual prices have of course been above and below this trend line. The available production data over this time frame, from the EIA and BP, show that global crude oil production and global total petroleum liquids production have been virtually flat, with a slight increase in total liquids production of about 0.5%/year (inclusive of low net energy biofuels).
A study of the top 33 net oil exporters in the world, which account for 99% plus of total global net exports, and which we define as Global Net Exports of oil (GNE), shows that GNE fell from 46 mbpd (million barrels per day) in 2005 to 43 mbpd in 2010 (BP & EIA data, total petroleum liquids).
Furthermore, China and India (“Chindia”) have been consuming an increasing share of this declining volume of GNE. At the 2005 to 2010 rate of increase in Chindia’s combined net oil imports as a percentage of GNE, the Chindia region alone would consume 100% of GNE by the year 2029, 17 years from now.
While the US has shown a small increase in crude oil production, up from the pre-hurricane rate of 5.4 mbpd in 2004 to 5.7 mbpd in 2011, a net increase of 0.3 mbpd, this is virtually a rounding error in the context of the multimillion barrel per day declines that we have seen in GNE, especially the ongoing decline in the volume of GNE available to importers other than China and India, which dropped from 40 mbpd in 2005 to 35 mbpd in 2010.
And while it is certainly true that US net oil imports have declined, a significant contributor to the decline in net imports was a large decline in US consumption, which was down by 1.5 mbpd from 2004 to 2010 (EIA).
So, while slowly increasing US crude oil production is very important, the dominant trend we are seeing is that developed oil importing countries like the US are being gradually priced out of the global market for exported oil, as global oil prices doubled from 2005 to 2011, and as developing countries like the Chindia region consumed an increasing share of a declining volume of global net exports of oil.
46 if we can keep current rates steady, then it's all gone in year 47. Which is not how it works, the first half comes out easy, the second half is harder. Tar sands are mining, not drilling, so a fair bit of diesel etc is used in the extraction process, shale oil is the same except it's a stone not sand.
Oil is a finite resource, there is no hope, forget it. In the future we will have to use less oil, thats a fact. Globally discoveries peaked in the '60's we are finding less and less oil every year. The fact that we are reduced to mining sand, and stones to extract oil should explain that we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's not the end of the world, but things will have to change.
It will when there's an economic incentive to do so. But with such large amounts of available oil (remember those are reserves that are recoverable with current technologies), that incentive is not really there yet. Peak oil is a meaningless argument at this time, fit only for obsessive’s and those who don’t really understand how the world works. E.g., watermelons and lettuce heads.
Lol, I suspect you are thinking of cousellors. Quite rightly so. Actually have a cousin that is an associate professor of psychology now and quite the opposite really, more like a bureaucrat. But his angle has been more industrial, with key work in the areas of brain damage and alcohol abuse. Could send him a few subjects from here to study:-P
It's not the amount of reserves which matters, its the RATE OF PRODUCTION. I understand some people are slow learners but I think you've taken the cake with your repeated failure to grasp the most simple concept of Peak Oil.
Think of it this way, you can have a whole room full or air but if you're breathing through a straw then you're going to have problems.
2 things about Canadian *Tar* Sands (its Tar not Oil) firstly you ommit to include the fact that to extract the 1.5 Billion Barrels of Tar will require strip mining an area the size of Great Britain and secondly how much gas this will require. Its not just reserves that are important but the EROEI of those reserves
Neven
Meanwhile back on planet peakoil:--
UK petrol prices touch record high:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/9164101/Pain-for-motorists-as-filli…
US petrol prices reach record high for March month:
http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2378392.html
NZ petrol prices near record high:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/6572967/Petrol-prices-approach-re…
Yum, yum, rocketfuel for the economy.
Bernard, mate, I think you need a hug or something. I've always enjoyed your reality checks on Interest.co.nz, but this trend of hating on 'the 1%' seems misguided. Take for example #2:
"[online retailing:] It's great for consumers dodging taxes by leaping into the cloud. But it's not much fun for workers. All part of the progressive shift in the profit share to the 1% from the 99%."
Mate, your first line says it in black and while - consumers are choosing to go down this route. Yeah it might mean retail jobs are lost and/or distribution centre jobs aren't super flash, but it's a bit like free range eggs - people talk a big game, but when it comes time to hand over their own dollars they're more likely to want to save a buck...and who can blame them.
It's a bit like this whole kerfuffle down here in Wellington about public sector jobs - civil servants forget that the government doesn't exist to provide people with jobs, it exists to provide citizens with services, and preferably in the most efficient, bang-for-buck way.
It's not some kind of conspiracy by 'the 1%' - Amazon.com does well and makes its founders rich because...drum roll...people like shopping there. It's as simple as that. Steve Jobs didn't hold a gun to anyone's head to buy music from the iTunes store - many of just decided to do it because it suited us. Ditto if people want to spend a fair whack on a Hermes scarf - it's their money (we trust), so why not. I'm glad to see high-end manufacturers doing well. I wish we had more high-end manufactuers in NZ. What would you rather have - a factory churning out cheap do-dads for The Warehouse, or a Porsche assembly line?
Don't be a player hater Bernard - be a player congratulator. Rather than hating on those who've done well, we should be looking to do well ourselves.
Do you think the 0.1% should earn an increasing share of the wealth and income?
Do you think it's sustainable?
Have a read of this paper from the IMF on how inequality makes economies less stable and is ultimately self-defeating.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2010/wp10268.pdf
Remember that the strongest and longest period of economic growth in the developed world was in the 1950s and 1960s when inequality was at its lowest and there were very serious moves (accepted by most) to redistribute income via very high tax rates on those with high incomes.
cheers
Bernard
That is true, Bernard, but I'm not sure that the strength and longevity of that economic growth can be attributed to either the taxation policy of that time, or that income inequality was less.
I think you’ll find it had more to do with a post-war and depression era recovery in the West, and the folly and utter stupidity of the socialists’ and communists’ in the East.
Might find it had more to do with plenty of cheap energy, but you completely miss the clues that it is all over. Population growth has been declining since 1961 for the first time in the history of civilisation. Only thing that supported it for the last 250 years was coal then oil. Biggest clue you will ever get that the growth game is over.
So that's 12 of you who admit to lacking the scientific literacy to understand the difference in meaning between a decline in population growth and a decline in the rate of population growth. That’s sadly telling. Well they don’t say we live in an anti-science and anti-intellectual world for nothing. They just need to read this thread!
Or 12 people who are actually intelligent enough to both read, and then comprehend the post. Go on David, keep digging. Perhaps you should stop trying to save face and accept there are far smarter people, who know far more then you, who are very concerned about world's energy problems. But hey, maybe if you post a few more MSM articles and stamp your feet loud enough it'll go away! Right??
Scarfie - his problem is that what he does, starts from a flawed point.
You don't need spin, if you have the factual high-ground; left to it's own devices, the truth will out. Spin is required when the truth is not the message you need to project; it's a 'tangled web' where you have to start justifying all sorts of nonsense, and to completely ignore that which is unpalatable.
Spin 101 says "throw at your opponent, that which you are guilty of" and we have a wee classic here: calling us 'Flat Earthers', is more than a throw-away. Geometrically, an infinite-resource planet can't be spherical, and I have suggested here that it would have to be flat - the only shape that supplies an infinite potential. I suggest he is aware of the flaw in his message.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's just the dumb, pompous, throwaway of a has-been.
Oh FFS, cherry picking at its finest....Iran, no or limited birth control, lots of cheap energy....I mean why not pick Saudi?
Just about every bit of data and graphs ive seen see's the rate of growth declining out to 2050 and that assumes business as usual.
regards
The biggest game changer available is solar energy , and we're only utilising about 3 % of that .......
....... so the " growth game " has a 33 times growth potential for us , on solar alone ........
The " growth game " is very far from over . As Sir James Wolfenson says , the next 20 - 30 years are going to be an amazingly positive period for mankind ........
........ womenkind too , if they stop being so lippy .......
If it isn't over, then why have the last 30+ years been slowing?
We can't even build our houses to utilise passive solar, so the collective will is missing to make the changes necessary. I don't think the yanks can run those carrier groups on solar cells, and definitely not an F-16. Look to the military for the clues of where energy is headed. Wouldn't want to be an Iranian about now.
http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/books/galbraith_money.html
John Galbraith says maintaining income equality and regressive taxation are key to economic health.
The key is in that word "earn". I make an offering to others, of my labour or my ideas, and they choose whether to buy it at the price I suggest. If they choose to buy from somebody who makes a better offer, that person has earned it. If they choose to buy from me because my offering is better, I have earned it. That's true wherever I sit on the wealth distribution.
Who do you think has a greater title to the money than the person whose ideas or labour have been bought with it?
Who is going to be better off if I am prevented from retaining the earnings and therefore refrain from making the superior offer?
Bernard. What the 0.1% need to realise is that they need to sprinkle some of the wealth down to the lemmings because if they dont they end up feeding on themselves in a cancerous way. They are fools if they dont. The 0.1% are dependent on the 99% for their increases in wealth. Or else they need Benjamin Shalom to turn the lever on the confetti machine to "faster" and have them make-believe they are richer.
Yes , I think the 0.1 % should earn an increasing share of the wealth and income ......
..... it is sustainable .... yes ......
Those folks in the 0.1 % didn't get there by hanging around WINZ for a free hand-out , they produce a disproportionate share of the world's wealth & jobs , so why shouldn't they reap the greatest rewards .........
The lemmings of Lemmington , stuck on WFF & all the other " free " government programmes and packages deserve exactly what they get ......
GBH
Is this a wind up? am I missing something? or do you consider it rational to justify the actions of the 0.1% at the top based on the sole fact that they do'nt behave like the 5% at the bottom? You seem to have missed something in the middle like 94.5% of the population
The 0.1 % are an endangered species , there's only one person in one thousand of the population in that group .......they're not making any more of them ..... but there's a heaping lot of lemmings , 99.9 % of the human race , leeching off that precious 0.1 % at the top .......
....... it is a well known fact that if you don't stop shearing the wool off the sheep that lays the golden eggs , you'll pump it dry .......
Social migration is indeed a myth. The 0.1% stole the golden goose a long time ago, as well as the magic carpet, and the singing harp. If only we could trade our last remaining cow for some magic beans, climb up it and take back the harp, the goose and the carpet.
The assumption that "equal opportunity" exists, is laughably naive. A ridiculous concept that doesn't exist. Even in studies of enviroments where there was a theoretical possibility of equal opportunity, the despotic behavior of a minority of individuals within the group caused the inequal distrubution of resources, of equal reward. In nature this is called the 'pecking order.'
Not that a deeply ingrained belief structure should ever be challenged.
Re : Austerity not working : BBC Radio had an interesting piece this morning , in the street interviews with Greek youngsters , many just graduated from uni or with a trade apprenticeship .........
....... they're bailing on their homeland , off to Germany , France , England , Italy , Poland ....... anywhere !
I agree with you gummy that people with skills need to be paid more than people without skills, but if you don't have a system that gives people at the bottom a living wage, they will turn to undesirable behaviours, and that is not sustainable. Sure the rich can fence themselves off from the poor, but you show me a 20 foot fence and i'll show you a 21 foot ladder.
LOL, indeed, just look at say South Africa for how well taht worked....however delaying tactics is often all some ppl want....I mean if you are 50 and can delay it 20 years putting any morals or concerns for the next generations aside, why wouldnt you?
On top of that the poor have the vote these days, the top 1% is relying on a middle class it is destroying to block vote to keep the poor at bay and also pay the rump of taxes....that will change......The only Q is peacefully or not...hence I wonder if we wont see BE dangling from a lampost one day...
NB this isnt what I want, its what might unfold.
regards
Here is an absolutely mind blowing point from this article. See who gets the significance.
Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.
#8 the engine makers are developing CNG engines.
http://www.hybridcars.com/news/natural-gas-gaining-ground-truck-engines…
CNG is an older fuel source, the world is stepping back from oil, toward less efficient fuel sources. CNG, Shale, Tar and Coal, all fossil fuels that were abandoned in favour of oil. Oil production is not rising fast enough so economic substitutions are comming in. Once oil production starts to decline, the shift backwards will have to accelerate. As efficiencies decline, consumption will have to decline. This isn't rocket science, people have always known that fossil fuels are non renewable.
CNG however is significantly cheaper and domestic (in US terms) so this seems to make a lot of sense to me....if nothing else, resilience comes from diversity...
Shift backwards isnt going to look good, the UK for instance has in effect used all its coal...The eu doesnt have [enough] gas...
NZ on the other hand has some resources and few ppl...
regards
Conventional crude oil is normally extracted from the ground by drilling oil wells into a petroleum reservoir, allowing oil to flow into them under natural reservoir pressures, although artificial lift and techniques such as water flooding and gas injection are usually required to maintain production as reservoir pressure drops toward the end of a field's life. Because bitumen flow very slowly, if at all, toward producing wells under normal reservoir conditions, the sands must be extracted by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells by in-situ techniques, which reduce the viscosity by injecting steam, solvents, and/or hot air into the sands. These processes can use more water and require larger amounts of energy than conventional oil extraction, although many conventional oil fields also require large amounts of water and energy to achieve good rates of production.
It is estimated that approximately 90% of the Alberta oil sands are too far below the surface to use open-pit mining. Several in-situ techniques have been developed.
Most exploitation of oil shale involves mining followed by shipping elsewhere, after which one can burn the shale directly to generate electricity, or undertake further processing. The most common methods of surface mining involve open pit mining and strip mining. These procedures remove most of the overlying material to expose the deposits of oil shale, and become practical when the deposits occur near the surface. Underground mining of oil shale, which removes less of the overlying material, employs the room-and-pillar method
Is then converted to Shale Oil
If we had pleanty of oil, why would we bother with sand and stones?
Hugh,
absolutely un-proven and un-reliable...some "analysts" at an in-solvent bank.....oh dear.
Well at least you have a piece that is current, if un-supportable unlike PB who had neither.
However lets say for a moment (and ive said this elsewhere) that the USA can get back up to 26.6 from its about 8 by 2020, so 18 years.....so 1mbpd every year.
Globally of course this is at most 1/7 of the amount needed evrey year just to hold off the declines of the rest of teh world...
It just doesnt add up globally and everyone pays the global price. This means the that the USA might make 3 million more jobs but a lot more americans will be jobless to counter that.....busineses driven out of business by crippling energy costs...
and thats the crux....they wont be able to pay the resulting cost.
....and its not even probable anyway.
Oh and that 1/7th means that we need a new Saudi every 3~4 years...so OK the USA is one....we are still missing 4 more to get to 2020...
The sums just do not add up.
regards
Fair crack Hugh. A housing shortage we can do something about, but creating a society less dependant on oil we can't? They both face the same criticisim, "price will increase supply." As if this will make either one go away. I could make a fair argument that supply does not effect price, as in China a housing bubble, and ghost cities. What effects the price is the amount of leverage in the system, and the transition from a liability to a financial asset. There are literally thousands of books on how to get rich from property.
The German Armed Forces recently conducted a study on peak oil. The results are grim, and housing affordability will become even more of an issue, but the least of our concerns.
The conclusion was that peak oil is unavoidable. Germany has the most awesome building code in the world, and is one of the few countries making the transition to renewable energy.
Those who claim that the world remains “awash” in oil are technically correct: The planet still harbors vast reserves of petroleum. But propagandists for the oil industry usually fail to emphasize that not all oil reservoirs are alike: Some are located close to the surface or near to shore, and are contained in soft, porous rock; others are located deep underground, far offshore or trapped in unyielding rock formations. The former sites are relatively easy to exploit and yield a liquid fuel that can readily be refined into usable liquids; the latter can only be exploited through costly, environmentally hazardous techniques, and often result in a product which must be heavily processed before refining can even begin.
The simple truth of the matter is this: Most of the world’s easy reserves have already been depleted — except for those in war-torn countries like Iraq. Virtually all of the oil that’s left is contained in harder-to-reach, tougher reserves. These include deep-offshore oil, Arctic oil and shale oil, along with Canadian “oil sands” — which are not composed of oil at all, but of mud, sand and tar-like bitumen. So-called unconventional reserves of these types can be exploited, but often at a staggering price, not just in dollars but also in damage to the environment.
In the oil business, this reality was first acknowledged by the chairman and CEO of Chevron, David O’Reilly, in a 2005 letter published in many American newspapers. “One thing is clear,” he wrote, “the era of easy oil is over.” Not only were many existing oil fields in decline, he noted, but “new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically and even politically.”
The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon
Review by
Herman E. Daly
January 1982*
This book is an all-out attack on neomalthusian or limits-to-growth thinking and a plea for more population and economic growth, both now and into the indefinite future. It is not a shotgun attack. Rather it is an attack with a single-shot rifle aimed at a single (but critical) premise of the neomalthusian position.
If Simon hits the target, then neomalthusian arguments collapse. If Simon misses the target, then all neomalthusian first principles remain unscathed, and Simon's progrowth arguments collapse. The critical premise that Simon attacks is that of the finitude of resources, including waste absorption capacities. Other premises from which neomalthusians argue include the entropy law and the vulnerability of ecological life-support services.
Simon's theoretical argument against the finitude of resources is that:
"The word "finite" originates in mathematics, in which context we all learn it as schoolchildren. But even in mathematics the word's meaning is far from unambiguous. It can have two principal meanings, sometimes with an apparent contradiction between them. For example, the length of a one-inch line is finite in the sense that it bounded at both ends. But the line within the endpoints contains an infinite number of points; these points cannot be counted, because they have no defined size. Therefore the number of points in that one-inch segment is not finite. Similarly, the quantity of copper that will ever be available to us is not finite, because there is no method (even in principle) of making an appropriate count of it, given the problem of the economic definition of "copper," the possibility of creating copper or its economic equivalent from other materials, and thus the lack of boundaries to the sources from which copper might be drawn."
Two pages later he drives home the main point in connection with oil:
"Our energy supply is non-finite, and oil is an important example . . . the number of oil wells that will eventually produce oil, and in what quantities, is not known or measurable at present and probably never will be, and hence is not meaningfully finite."
The fallacy in the last sentence quoted is evident. If I have seven gallons of oil in seven one gallon cans, then it is countable and finite. If I dump one gallon of oil into each of the seven seas and let it mix for a year, those seven gallons would no longer be countable, and hence not "meaningfully finite, " therefore infinite. This is straightforward nonsense.
http://www.mnforsustain.org/daly_h_simon_ultimate_resource_review.htm
Did anyone read this one? http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/03/the-exponential-end-game-leith-van-onselen/ The problem is not what fossil fuels are left but whether the energy return exceeds the energy invested to extract them.
It sounds like he assumes peak oil means we will run out of oil in the near future? Peak oil is when the maximum rate of extraction is reached. The mean estimate in time is 2020, the mean estimate in rate is 100mbpd (2011=89). The mean estimate of ultimatly recoverable oil is 2.2 trillion barrels. There will be a peak in production, and maintaining the peak will increase the cost, with flow on effects throughout society, food and transport are sensitive to the price of oil. Substitution is possible, but the net outcome is a more dramatic decline after peak, we are already in the substitution phase, delaying the peak, but exarcerbating the decline. The switch to renewables is too slow, and is not an answer in any case, as changing dependancy from rare fuels to rare metals is no solution. Consumption of resources and energy cannot be maintained at the current exponential rate, in most cases it will have to reduce.
I originally looked, because I was under the impression that new discoveries were enough to offset the decline of past discoveries well into the future. However they are woefully inadequit, additions to reserves the "price makes more available" argument, are comming from old discovered oil, and have already been counted as ultimatly recoverable oil. Hence they are factored into Hubberts peak. Production has not increased at the rate predicted by Hubbert in '56 which has shifted the peak further out in time, but the fundamentals are correct.
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