5 dollar gas...are we ready?

[Kepler]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Though you don't need geometric growth forever. Let's say we plateau at 10 billion people all having the energy usage of an average 2011 American. That would be a larger number than today, maybe by a factor of 10 or even 100, but it wouldn't be the rise we saw from say 1800 to 2000.

The historical energy usage curve might wind up looking like, say, life expectancy.

The other possibility is that energy availability might itself become a limiting factor on population, like food.

 

[unh_hockey]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Though you don't need geometric growth forever. Let's say we plateau at 10 billion people all having the energy usage of a typical American. That would be a larger number than today, maybe by a factor of 10, but it wouldn't be the rise we saw from say 1800 to 2000.

The historical energy usage curve might wind up looking like, say, life expectancy.

Interesting thought. Denmark might be a good case study here, as their population growth has been stagnant for the past 30 years or so I believe. Could we maintain population growth at its current level? While that would certainly help us cope with a world of limited resources, we’d at least have some time to develop new solutions down the road.

 

[walrus]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Initial Permit: Dec 11, 2008
Permit application accepted: July 31, 2009.

2 years seems like a long time to me.

 

[Almington]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

2 years seems like a long time to me.

2 Years? it was ~8 months between the initial application and acceptance. Then a period of public comment occurred which is the result of the Code of Federal regulations and not a EPA requirement.

If you want to speed the process up, the Code of Federal regulations will need to be adjusted to remove the public comment period. Do any of us want federal organizations to not have to respond to public comments? It is the only way to home the bureaucracy accountable for what they do, it isn't like we can vote them out of office.

 

[unofan]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

A great article that sums up what we are seeing, and not just with oil

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/GMO April.pdf

The central idea is that geometric growth is mathematically unsustainable by design.

Thankfully, we don't have geometric growth. The world's population is increasing, but at a decreasing rate. And were it not for immigration, the U.S. would be roughly breaking even, or only growing slowly.

The projected peak population is now down to about 12 billion, though if anything that will be revised downward again.

 

[unh_hockey]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Thankfully, we don't have geometric growth. The world's population is increasing, but at a decreasing rate. And were it not for immigration, the U.S. would be roughly breaking even, or only growing slowly.

The projected peak population is now down to about 12 billion, though if anything that will be revised downward again.

Dude, just stay on the short bus. Geometric growth is exponential. Let me paint a picture for you

vs.

Of course you'll play the second derivative game and claim things are changing, but inflection points do not necessarily mean a reversed trend, just less growth. overall though you can model population growth with current data a exponential model.

And yes, due to the constraints of the universe, it obviously is unsustainable.

Whats next, want to argue over how airplanes fly? But really, thanks for playing.

 

[Patman]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Patman- wasn’t trying to be prestigious. Just a bit excited that I’ll be close to work and where I want to live. However in NH, you have to drive to get anywhere so filling up once a week or so is probably still in the cards. Also im not the greenest person in here. I believe in nuclear, natural gas, and petrol ( okay not coal, but I don’t have an alternative for that =( )

Meh, I just get a kick that I'm greener than everybody else here... its a farce really. In principle that should mean that i get moral authority on this subject since I'm "walking the walk" on the whole greenery bit.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Airplanes fly by feeding on the souls of those flying coach.

 

[unofan]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Dude, just stay on the short bus. Geometric growth is exponential.

I was wrong. The U.N. is predicting a 9.5 billion population peak in their middle model. Even their high estimate shows a flattening of the curve.

But if you want others:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4584576/ns/health-health_care/

The global population grew 1.2 percent from 2001 to 2002, or about 74 million people, but growth will slow to 0.42 percent by 2050. That’s far below the peak growth of 2.2 percent between 1963 and 1964.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/08/0806_population.html

Their forecast shows there's a high chance that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the 21st century. It suggests that the total number of people may peak in 70 years or so at about 9 billion people, compared with 6.1 billion today.

But you're right, Malthus. Growth in the human population isn't slowing at all and continues at an exponential or geometric rate...

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Of course you'll play the second derivative game

All I know is this: The 2nd derivative game is the first game I've heard of in a while that makes a game of Battleship sound like a good idea.

You remember Battleship. It's the one where you almost win and then spend 30 minutes guessing where the effing 2-peg ship is.

C1: miss
C3: miss
C5: miss
D2: miss
D4: miss
oh fer the love of god, I can't take this anymore.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

I was wrong. The U.N. is predicting a 9.5 billion population peak in their middle model. Even their high estimate shows a flattening of the curve.

I wonder how much they spent to conclude that the world population in 2050 could be anywhere from 5.5 to 14 billion people.

 

[walrus]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

i get moral authority on this subject since I'm "walking the walk" on the whole greenery bit.

You and Al Gore

 

[Kepler]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Airplanes fly by feeding on the souls of those flying coach.

As is obvious whenever you fly coach.

 

[unh_hockey]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

So in retort to a world population growth chart ( a crude one, but one none the less), you post a few predictions about the UN? Really?

Lets try this again. Population growth with the current ( not your wide eyed futuristic predictions) are geometric. If you can’t grasp that, than there is no hope for you. You are beyond help. See, the difference between engineers and economists is that engineers use what they have, and economists predict what they don’t know. Ever wonder why we put planes in the sky, rockets into space, and you guys make lousy economic forecasts that need to be revised every month? Imagine if an F18 yaw/pitch/roll control systems need revisions every time they went into the sky…

For the sake of discussion, lets move on. Even with steady growth, or stagnation, limited resources imply a system where costs on the long term couldn’t possibly go down. The idea of the article isn’t to argue about population , but rather the paradigm of lower commodity prices in a world with limited resources. Would it be helpful as a nation to embrace the paradigm of gas prices which can not and will not go down?

 

[unofan]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Population growth with the current ( not your wide eyed futuristic predictions) are geometric.

No, they're not. Or did you not notice that the growth rate had already dropped by roughly 45% in the last 50 years?

Industrialized nations are barely at, or already slightly below, replacement birth rates.
Developing nations have had their birth rates decline sharply in the last 50 years.

That is not geometric growth. No one is predicting that we'll quadruple the population of Earth ever again, let alone at the same pace as during the industrialized revolution. The worst case scenario is about another 150% by 2150. Most estimates are we won't even double population again. That is not geometric growth.

 

[unh_hockey]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

I wonder how much they spent to conclude that the world population in 2050 could be anywhere from 5.5 to 14 billion people.

because when you fail out of engineering and still want to play with numbers, its easier to do that in the field of economics. Only there would predictions with a range of several orders of magnitudes actually hold any water. At UNH, we had a running joke for the engineers who failed out of beginners calculus and went to business school or, WSBE - the whitamore school of bad engineers.

 

[Almington]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

because when you fail out of engineering and still want to play with numbers, its easier to do that in the field of economics. Only there would predictions with a range of several orders of magnitudes actually hold any water. At UNH, we had a running joke for the engineers who failed out of beginners calculus and went to business school or, WSBE - the whitamore school of bad engineers.

5.5 to 14 is not several orders of magnitude. Any prediction of the future out that far holds so many differenting assumptions about what will happen that the uncertanty just grows as time increases.

Economics will always be hampered by our inability to predict the irrational behavior of people.

 

[Kepler]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Meh. Engineers think they're smarter than everybody else just like lawyers and doctors do. It's the "salary equals intelligence" fallacy. I'm sure Hosni Mubarak thinks he's a genius.

Come the last judgment, nobody's getting ranked above this guy. B.A. in psychology with a double minor in creative writing and art.

 

[unh_hockey]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Could throw hank moody onto that list. That guy wheels em in like a champ. I am in the wrong field for women, that’s for sure.

I wouldn’t say its my pay or background that make me kind of arrogant ( on a message board, im much more humble in person). Its more what I read and what I digest. You’ll notice energy columnists like Robert Bryce and Robert Rieper have a same ‘shoot from the hip’ mentality when it comes to debunking bogus green energy claims. What I like about them is they break down the numbers, and draw conclusions based on that. Typical rebuttals to their articles are usually countered with ‘future predictions’ or ‘technology rounding a bend’..but nothing substantial. One might argue that some of my favorite experts in the energy field are , indeed, journalists.

In all seriousness, folks who excel in my field are a very ‘show me’ type person. I let the data do the talking. Going further, we ask a lot of questions about the data and ask about its credibility. This is why I never bought into technical trading ( chart theory for the stock market). Too much black box stuff on human emotion which is nearly impossible to predict. Buffet/ Graham came the closest when they develop value investing and “be greedy when everyone is fearful and fearful when everyone is greedy’.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

As is obvious whenever you fly coach.

Fortunately, the TSA does a great job preparing our souls for consumption. It's all about comparisons. Sitting in a cramped space for 2-3 hours is bad, until you compare it to having strange men ogle you or feel you up in the name of "security". If I didn't know better, I'd swear this was some plot to make us all more accepting of the gay lifestyle, and that the DHS is somehow complicit.