This is a shout-out to Tim Worstall’s latest “Weekend Worstall” column on The Register
Limits to Growth is a pile of steaming doggy-doo based on total cobblers
The Guardian praised it? Right, now we know for sure
Keeping a technologically based civilisation on the road isn’t all that easy. There must be stuff available to make stuff from and there’s got to be energy to do the transforming of that stuff. If we posited something like The Culture by Iain M. Banks, where there’s a universe of stuff to transform and an entire universe’s worth of energy, then there’s no real limit to either how rich that society can get nor how long it can last.
Similarly, if all the stuff runs out in a few years’ time, as does all the energy, then humanity will go back to being a couple of million hunter gatherers pretty sharpish.
What we’d really like to know, of course, is which version of the universe do we inhabit: one where Paul Ehrlich is right and we all starved in the 1980s, or one in which, around 2300 or so, the Jetsons finally get their flying cars?
Fortunately we’ve had people trying to work this out for us. One example was the Club of Rome which got together to create a report called Limits to Growth.
This was very much more optimistic than Paul Ehrlich was: this report said that we should all start dying around about now as all the stuff ran out. It’s not, as we can see around us, happening quite yet. Yes, people are dying in Ukraine and Syria and so on, but that’s from an excess of high explosive being sent their way, not from a lack of it. Never mind, though, the Guardian tells us it’s about to start happening real soon now:
Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we’re nearing collapse. Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon
Well, yes, real soon now, no doubt. And the guy who has checked this research must be believed: Graham Turner is a physicist who used to work for CSIRO in Oz. And CSIRO are just great guys: they actually cited me in one of their academic papers so they must be. So, obviously, we should all just curl up and die right now, right?
Read on at The Register
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The only reason to run out of resources is if there are people willing to use the strong arm of the government to stop others from finding and producing resources.
Yeap.
Nope. It could be like er, that there aren’t any left.
Where would they all have gone? What proportion of the Earth’s crust would they represent? Have they really gone or just harder to get?
For all practical purposes our resources are infinite and I stand to be corrected but i am unaware of a single instance of a resource running out and stopping man’s continued progress.
As George Reisman said, the entire earth from the outer fringes of its atmosphere to the center of its core, is a densely packed ball of nothing but natural resources; it’s up to us to discover how to make use of them.
1- With enough energy we can recycle previously-extracted materials.
2- There’s a LOT more resources in our solar system than just this planet.
Conclusion: yes, we are not “running out” of resources.
I’m going to right a book and call it ‘The Limits of Methane Hydrates’. / sarc
This is never going to be the case. One of society’s problems is dumping things before their time is up and that means there are resource mines called land fill sites. I once talked to a mining engineer who proved that no actual mine had as high a percentage of any mineral as a typical land fill site. The only problem with using it was we are not geared to small scale operations as long as there are big ones that are cheaper to run.
The only way to ensure that happens is if the uber rich that make up the Club of Rome use their vast wealth to ensure it. Given how misanthropic they seem to be, it wouldn’t supprise me if they do.
Some1 wants us to run out of energy??
A huge danger to human kind is organized religion, that worries me more than anything.
Religion can be fairly disorganized as well.
Heh.
My thought as well. I suspect when the NWO is fully implemented one of the first official acts will be to outlaw all religions. A fair reading of history shows this must happen as does current news. Crusades, wars, molestation, beheadings, terrorism, coverups, division, on and on. Freedom of thought will still be a protected human right, but it will not include insane ideations and anti-social thoughts. Naturally the nation-state nonsense must go as well. At least one generation must be raised by the Order to keep their minds uncontaminated
Yes, you’re a grade-A lunatic
A fairer reading of history would imply you would have to kill billions to accomplish that, and have the darkest reign that humanity has yet witnessed.
How about the religion of CAGW, or theAtheist religion? Will they be banned in you vision?
“Crusades, wars, molestation, beheadings, terrorism, coverups, division, on and on. Freedom of thought will still be a protected human right, but it will not include insane ideations and anti-social thoughts.”
And that was just the atheistic communists in the 20th Century!
The NWO is the new religion..
Maybe, but the degradation of morality that goes with chucking it is proving to be pretty bad – its a toss up. Pragmatically, the majority seems to need the discipline that they can’t find within themselves. They need to be scared into good neighborliness, honesty, caring and the like. The decline in western world religion has had a deteriorating effect on our culture and civilization. Everyone knows their rights but is happy to jettison their obligations. I personally don’t need a strong police force to keep me from harming my fellow citizens but I’m glad they are around in numbers.
John Boles
September 7, 2014 at 12:19 pm
“A huge danger to human kind is organized religion, that worries me more than anything.”
Yeah let’s go for the peaceful alternative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
of the atheist scientific way of removing the head from the body of undesired persons.
The word “atheist” appears exactly once in the linked article. Maybe you could explain.
Freemasons.
Just the genocidal branch of Islam.
Islam is fairly clear in its understanding that Islam will only survive if it kills everyone else.
The West’s mistake is in not understanding that.
People worry me. Especially statist of all flavors, religious or otherwise. The last 100 years of human history with 100s of millions in genocide from non religious should have taught us that.
correction, change “genocide” to “democide”; death by government.
Excuse me, but I believe that nearly all Western politicians consider themselves “Christians” of one variety or another and almost all attend “church” on a regular basis. Religion or the lack of it doesn’t really matter when it comes to morality/ethics or the lack as any regular interested observer of the human race can readily see. Using religious beliefs as a basis for selection of any Western government politician or indeed other government ruling office is a major psychological error.
How about socialism? Socialists – Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc., etc., have killed more people and destroyed more property than adherents to all religions combined.
“How about socialism? Socialists … have killed more people and destroyed more property than adherents to all religions combined.” more soylent green!
A distinction without a difference. Humans need a worldview to function it seems. A worldview is a system of beliefs. People act consistent with their beliefs, right or wrong. Today, and for the past five hundred years or so, the most wide spread belief system is Statism. Only a few stone age tribes are the exception. Both socialists and religionist are statists. Statism includes a belief in an all powerful, supreme entity called the state. Pretty much anything can be done in the name of the state. We must all submit to the power of the state in the person of the police, judges and so on. If you resist they are authorized to use force, including deadly force. The USSR was one of those states. Where is it now? Prior to statism there were other belief systems that held sway over the minds of men. (and women). ISIS is setting up what? A state. Religious officials are statists first and Christians or whatever, second.
Robert says… “Both socialists and religionist are statists”.
Sorry but B.S; the founding Father’s of the US were religious, and wrote documents specifically designed to prevent statist society from developing. Are their Religious statist? Of course. But no, religion and statist are not the same thing.
Matter is energy. Matter cannot be destroyed. Matter is nearly infinite, thus energy is also nearly infinite. As long as the sun shines, there will be enough resources on earth for a nearly infinite amount of people. The population bomb is just another Marxist Myth.
The Myth of Overpopulation
I want to debunk a popular myth and that is overpopulation. The doomsayers will tell you that overpopulation is a crisis and some groups suggest reducing world population in order to “save the planet.” Some even suggest a world population of only 500 million but that would mean that 11 of every 13 people in the world would need to die.
So, let’s look at the facts. Here is the current world population. 6,920,463,095
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
Here is the area of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in square miles.
Texas: 268,601 sq. mi
New Mexico: 121,593 sq. mi.
Arizona: 114,006 sq. mi
For a total area of 504,200 sq. mi
http://www.50states.com/texas.htm
Then divide the world population by the combined area and you get 13,726 people per sq. mi
Then we compare that population density with known high density areas.
San Francisco County, CA has 17,462 per sq. mi.
http://www.city-data.com/county/San_Francisco_County-CA.html
New York City, NY has 27,532 per sq. mi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City#Demographics
Hong Kong, China has 16,444 per sq. mi.
Singapore has 18,513 per sq. mi.
Monaco has 43,830 per sq. mi.
And Macau, China has 48,003 per sq. mi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density
The Earth’s total land mass is 57,511,026.002 square miles
The entire world population can fit into just 0.009 percent of the land mass with a population density smaller than any of these other areas.
The facts prove that the world is not overpopulated. And we have not even considered the possibility of humans living underground, on the water, under water, or even the possibility of living “George Jetson” style in floating condominiums.
The problem with overpopulation doomsayers is that they project current population growth to infinity (a straight line which never happens in nature) while stopping all technological advancement. They say that while populations grow exponentially, that no human being will ever again invent one single thing. This is of course absurd. Humans have been inventing since humans have existed. And since “necessity is the mother of invention” humans will find ways to deal with population growth. They will invent new procedures, new machines, new techniques, and make new scientific discoveries. I believe that the population capacity of earth is nearly infinite scientifically. And since I believe in God and that he is Omniscient, I also believe that God created this earth to meet all our needs, including population growth.
On the other hand I would ask those who believe that starving children are due to overpopulation, “Just exactly when were starving children due to overpopulation?” Starving children and people have always existed. So, when was the cause of starvation due to overpopulation? 10,000 years ago? 5,000 years ago? 100 years ago? Last week? Yesterday?
What about all the vast uninhabited billions of acres all over the world, could they not be inhabited? Reason says that of course they could.
Since the industrial revolution the world population has gone from being 87% rural (living on farms) to now being mostly urban. As people have migrated to the city, their perception changed to think that the world is becoming overpopulated. But that is just because all they see is the city. However perception is not reality.
My own calculation to get a grip on the magnitude of the population “worry” was that the world’s pop could jump into Lake Superior and have 15sq m to tread water in. I also did a calc of how much they would heat up the lake using a generous ~100Btu an hour/person but I can’t remember it and can’t be bothered to redo. The foregoing also means that 90 billion people could be chumily enclosed in the lake with 1sq m to tread (I guess the pop was 6B when I did it).
Check the UN Population Survey spreadsheet. Note the Low Fertility page, the only one ever close to accurate. Projects a peak in 2045-ish of 8bn. Declining indefinitely long thereafter, back below current levels by 2100. Depop will be the big buzz then, unless androids are perfected!
The timing is pretty good, if the solar physicists are correct that it’s all downhill after the next 2-400(?) year solar cycle.
The very point I have been making for twenty years….just as the climate is self regulating, so is the population. The problem is more the distribution of food and medicine, not the number of people. We need to build better infrastructure in needy countries.
All this population worry is worrying indeed. Don’t worry, be happy. If you are not happy then take the quiz on the next 2 links. The answers are eye opening.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24836917
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24835822
http://youtu.be/QpdyCJi3Ib4
http://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg
http://youtu.be/jbkSRLYSojo
In deed. My employee owned engineering company worked in Ethiopia for over 25 years. There was/is no food supply problem but there was/is a DISTRIBUTION problem and some of it was by design by the government(s) of the day.
It’s not a question of whether people can be warehoused in stifling spaces and fed soylent, it’s whether there is enough resources, industry, and arable land to support people in the lifestyles to which they want to become accustomed. Ted Turner does not want to share his 2+ million acres with indigent riff-raff.
However, there certainly is a lot of habitable space being wasted. For example, why not make wind turbine towers fatter and use them for low-income housing? It would be a win-win-win. Residents could have a diet rich in fresh birds, and researchers could determine unequivocally what kinds of insanity are induced by a constant “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…”
Good comment. Thank you. Just remember the world will need energy to produce and deliver sufficient food for the present population especially as growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere are reducing.
“Matter is energy. Matter cannot be destroyed. Matter is nearly infinite, thus energy is also nearly infinite. As long as the sun shines, there will be enough resources on earth for a nearly infinite amount of people. The population bomb is just another Marxist Myth.”
Well at that point, having seen every single statement you made, run counter to everything that physics teaches us, I gave up.
Perhaps you should, too.
As a 72 yr old registered Profesional Chemical Engineer, I have wrestled with this question frequently. The answers lie our conquering entropy, the power of decay. Scientists (well, at least physical chemists…) understand that our incredible rate of production of entropy can only be countered by an even greater application of energy. The Greens haven’t a clue. The Solution to Pollution is….Energy!.
The earth has plenty of energy, and someday we will be able to harness the energy of the Sun without entropy racing faster in the other direction, like it does now.
Well yes, exactly except rather than harnessing the power of an unshielded dangerous natural reactor whose radiation kills more people in the West than die of road accidents*…why not build a proper set of reactors here on earth where we can control the radiation and get rid of the deaths?
*skin cancer kills more than road accidents in the UK. 90% of all skin cancers are related to over exposure to UV from strong sunlight.
Take just a minute and think about your comment. It’s fairly short-sighted. The sun is also subject to entropy, as is the entire universe. The energy will run out and all be travelling through space in the future.
To answer the question of “When will we ever stop running out of resources?”, the answer is in 2-4 billion years the Earth will be uninhabitable, so then it won’t matter anyway.
Taking deterministic pessimism to a new low where not only is the glass half empty, but the bar is closed and you’ve missed last call.
This is silly.
Julian Simon pointed out back in the 1970s and 1980s that resources are NOT items like oil and coal.
Oil and coal are RAW MATERIALS. If you take raw materials and add HUMAN INGENUITY you get resources. That is why, for instance, we have composites and plastics nowadays while they did not have these in the 1600s – although they had the raw materials then. They just did not count rock oil and sand as useful raw materials because human ingenuity had not developed them at that time.
Various raw materials will run out at various times. But human ingenuity is probably infinite. Meaning that resources will never run out…
As the saying goes “We didn’t leave the stone age because we ran out of stones.
Dodgy Geezer
September 7, 2014 at 12:55 pm
“This is silly.
Julian Simon pointed out back in the 1970s and 1980s that resources are NOT items like oil and coal.”
Read the Register piece, he explains substitutability very well.
It’s always good to see a citation of Julian Simon. Another old timer, Buckminster Fuller opined that there is not a problem of exhausting minerals. Everything we use, we eventually dump, and it remains available here, with the trifling exception of the mass that we send into space. Retrieving and reusing minerals is simply a matter of energy, and that is the most challenging problem, but it seems to be solvable.
Idiot.
without energy ingenuity has nothing to work with and dies.
Leo, no only are you wrong, as we have abundant energy and resources, you are classless and rude.
What seems to be unlimited is mankind’s imagination and resourcefulness. We inhabit a solar system which, for all intents and purposes, has unlimited resources of materials and energy.
We are simultaneously plumbing the limits of mankind’s willingness to close one eye and open the other, with the intent to be willfully blind to the whole picture. This occurs on both sides of the quite unnecessary divide that has adherents clinging to silly ideologies, one of immediate limits and the other of wild abandon. With both eyes open we can see a future in which we care for the planet, its population and its future civilization while sensibly sharing resources on the basis that all people are created equal and have rights of access. You do not have to be a left or right wing fanatic to see this truth.
The future is very bright. We have surpassed the advances (that we know of) of all previous societies and have reached the level of being able to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization that will not succumb to climate conditions, not even an ice age. I have throughout my life witnessed a string of bearded prophets announcing that the “End is Near!” Well, it is not near at all. It is very, very far from near.
We can all start by resisting the climate eschatology so popular as a substitute for having a real plan.
What seems to be infinite is humanities capacity for self delusion.
A ,man arrives in a country full of potential farmland, mineral resources and food just waiting to be eaten. He builds a great nation and say ‘its because I am clever, my religion is the best, and my system of government is the way of the future’
Idiot. Any Fule kno that if you break into someone else’s larder you can stuff your face.
Excellent point there Leo.
Likewise every successful organism knows that to be true. Your point seems to be that we should all stay in our place and accept the status quo of the least successful group. We would then be the least likely to survive out of all living things and what is the point of that?
A few days ago, I was looking for a link to a video or transcript from James Burke’s Connections, Episode 10 Yesterday, Tomorrow, and You.” (1978), one of the best hour of thought ever put on TV. In his closing (and I paraphrase) he examines the question of
Well, I didn’t find a link to that 10th hour, but I found this thoughtful 12-minute video from a couple years ago. “James Burke on the End of Scarcity” He examine the societal issues of what we face when nanotechnology make it possible to make anything out of “air, water, and dirt.” from your personal ‘fabber’ nanofactory in the garage, which was build by another fabber in geometric progression. If scarce = value, what happens when nanotech production means the End of Scarcity? While everyone seems concerned about Malthusian futures, he was focused on what could happen if technology stays ahead of Malthus and the Club of Rome.
Mind you, I don’t expect a nanofabber to be in my garage in my lifetime, nor my children’s lifetime. However when I was in high school in the early 1970s I though I would have a computer in my basement. My classmates thought it unlikely to have even a used one. Today, I’m wearing one, another on my lap, and I see in line of sight too many to count. I probably personally own more GB of RAM memory than existed in the world back then.
I don’t agree with everything Burke says. I can find fault with a great many of his details. Even if we have garage-based nanofabbers from Wal-Mart inside of 50 years, there will be limits to the energy they can consume as they assemble endothermic compounds. His “After the Warming: A View From 2050” (1989) is pure CAGW alarmist claptrap, but it is worth watching and rewatching for its craftsmanship. I invariably find what he has to say well thought out, highly compact, and always worth digesting and reflecting.
I thought his points about a possible End of Scarcity worth sharing in the context of this conversation. (the video is about 12 minutes. The plot thickens at 2:55 and the nanotech starts at 3:55.
(Modified from a Linked-in post on Sept 5.)
I have a nanofabber, it’s called a potty plant. It fabricates more of itself, so it’s not too useful. But my mother has some that make tomatoes.
Yes, indeed. The most practical programmable nanofabber will be one to alter the DNA of some handy algae or bacteria. What could go wrong with that plan? /sarc.
‘The End Of Scarcity’ is like the Second Coming to Communists, but it’s still a silly idea.
In the real world, if I can make anything I want from dirt, I can build a Giant Robot Army and steal all the dirt so I can keep making all the other things I want. The Commies say ‘but oh, no, that would be uncouth,’ but that’s because they’re completely clueless about real people.
One thing we will NEVER run out of is the ingenuity of mankind to cope, adapt and thrive. This of course despite the sheeple, evangelists of every persuasion and doomsayers,
It owes all progress to the productive folk and creative genius that lifts us upward and forward.
I believe…in human ingenuity!
Sheesh. It took us what – 3 million years to work out how to smelt copper?
Hubris.
¿Will any rational human run out of material means for achieving his reasonably feasible economic productivity goals?
¡No!
Rational man acts using applied reasoning to accomplish his economic goals no matter what resource limitations are perceived by others. He reasonably seeks alternative ways to achieve his goals when confronted with all actual scarcity of means (resources).
It is only irrational / non-economic man who whines in existential despair at his erroneous perception of a static zero-sum universe.
John
I beg your pardon. The universe is as far as can be determined zero sum.
Its finite in energy, and entropy is a one way street.
We are just vultures, picking over the corpse of the big bang.
And one day, there wont be anything left.
One of the founders of the Club of Rome, Alexander N Christakis, resigned after CoR chose to push the modelling systems ‘hard’ science approach instead of his preferred soft science approach of changing beliefs. His Structured Design Dialogue is coming into classrooms all over the world under varying names and becoming the foundation for online MOOC courses to guide student beliefs to the desired global crises. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/framing-then-refining-lasting-webs-of-mutual-social-understanding-to-fulfill-aspiration-grounded-in-infamy/
That means we have the bad modelling of Limits to Growth joining up with psychological research on how to create influential false perceptions that will guide future behavior. Now all this may not be on the typical person’s radar screen, but these papers and the broadcast media are aware because that it how media education works now globally. Media and education, per UNESCO, are the two prongs of the communication policy designed to alter the prevailing cultural belief system. They even call it the Zeitgist as well. Use education and the media to alter it and then use the altered beliefs to justify transformational political action.
Social science theory in action can make the bad hard science models and lack of facts a moot point when it comes to policy making.
Damn Robin, what you know scares the hell out of me.
Mike-what I know scares me, which is why I am so determined to get it into the public domain when there is a relevant story.
I also talk about what the Club of Rome is pushing now in the Conclusion of my book Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon. There is a 2006 paper from the Polish affiliate of the CoR that has their endorsement that actually views feudalism as a positive. People did what they were told by political power to do and had little ability to challenge it effectively.
My writing and research is me as a mom and lawyer doing my best to challenge what is documented as being in store for us. It’s also from people who have a Fixed Pie view of the economy and say so. They have no idea how much of what we take for granted is being put at risk.
Some suggested reading;
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00HXO9XGS/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d6_i1?pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0P2MVH17AXRXYJBEWVS2&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1687860482&pf_rd_i=915398
” Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon”.
This is exactly what these clowns want, hence the fierce opposition to hydrofracking.
Anything can happen. They’re taking over the land, the water and the air.
You can have what’s left.
” Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon”.
For collapse is the only thing these people can engineer.
The premature shut down of coal fired electric power plants will raise our risk of regional electric black-out during a polar vortex type of winter storm. If we don’t experience one of these “Barack-Outs” in the next four years, I will be surprised.
And any other practical source of energy.
The doomsayers have been saying we will run out of _________ (fill in the blank) since speech was invented. Ehrlich and his ilk are nothing new. In 1948 or so, experts at the UN predicted we would be out of the metals Zn and Pb and approaching the limits for Cu by the 1970-80’s. Oh so wrong. Here is a fact with respect to copper reserves…in 1900, copper reserves were 25 million metric tons; in 2013, copper reserves were 690 million metric tons. Pretty much the same metrics for other metals. Nothing scary there for the doomsayers, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.
I’m not disputing what you’ve written. And, for many materials substitutes are readily available or can be expected to be available. No doubt fiber optics have displaced significant amounts of copper in many applications. One thing I’m curious about, however, is the rampant theft of copper occurring in California. It’s gotten so bad that some people have actually been killed in the process of trying to steal copper wire from electrically live sources. Could that represent an increasing value to a resource that may be experiencing a shortage of supply to demand?
Wherever you import a very poor population (or open your borders for unchecked immigration) you will have metal thieves. Here in Germany it’s (South)Eastern Europeans of a certain tribe.
Copper price is an indicator for economic activity and in a slump; 25% down from 2011. Still valuable enough for copper thieves though.
More copper theft currently means just more copper thieves around doing their work.
In the US we can call them gypsies. Watch your wallet and your possessions when they are about. They are what they are. Being PC about it doesn’t change reality.
Its the Nu Age hunter gatherer in us all, resurfacing.
Resources are even broader than this. It isn’t copper we are demanding its electrical conductivity, alloying ingredients, and the like. It isnt’ Zn we are running out of – most of it is used in galvanizing iron sheet to make it non-corodable. We can make culverts and barn rooves out other things.
rocdoc-consistent with my earlier point Ehrlich and the UN have actively moved on to use K-12 education to limit what students are to know to what they experience. It is called Foresight Intelligence and is intricately linked to achieving their Sustainability visions of economic and social transformations. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/all-that-is-solid-melts-into-air-but-does-it-really/ lays it out using the actual 2005 conference report.
I have also written about what the Ehrlich’s are now doing with the UN-affiliated MAGB-Millenium Assessment of Global Behavior. Ban Ki-Moon has said back in 2011 that no more treaties are needed because of what can be accomplished through their unappreciated influence on K-12 globally.
I appreciate it and am playing Town Crier using the Internet.
There is a certain, special class of human beings. They oftentimes own yachts. And they’re oftentimes assured to own private jet aircraft, and those that don’t own one (or five) simply don’t own one because they’ve made a financial calculation that it’s better to let the taxpayer own it since the taxpayer doesn’t have a prayer of ever being able to use it. And, the common denominator among these special people is that all of them own mansions. Not one mind you. They own multiple mansions and these are situated in different locations because it wouldn’t do to view duplicate scenes of scenic splendor from each mansion. Thus they have villas on lakes in Italy, Pacific Coast or Atlantic Coast beachfront homes in North America, serene mountain residences adequately endowed with picture windows, large ranches in Montana, and, of course, the obligatory mansions in the state capitals throughout the world – entertainment, you know.
Now, none of these special people have ever invented anything, created anything, developed anything, made anything, built anything, designed anything, and so on, and so on, and so on. Yep, these special people are parasites. Not ordinary parasites, mind you. They are extra special almost godlike parasites. And unlike normal parasites which might just allow the host organism to survive albeit in a weakened state these parasites have appetites that are truly insatiable.
All of the above should indicate that such people, such very special and accomplished people, are in no position to tolerate even a smidgen of competition, regardless of how fleeting it may be. Thus, any leveling of the playing field, or perception of a levelized playing field with the great unwashed and vulgar masses (who are so inferior they’re actually burdened with having to do something useful to survive) is not to be tolerated. So, from this all we get, yes, The Limits to Growth.
Four years ago I looked into resource availability as part of a Government project. A reference I came across summarized the reality very nicely. Short answer: we are not now, and will not, run out of resources. This will be surprising to many, but let me ask a question. Do you know of any resource that has experienced a long term (or permanent) shortage for which there are no substitutes? Many will, until recently, have said “oil”, for which a 200 year supply is now available through fracking just in the USA alone.
Do you know of any strategic or other significant resource that has gone up in price in real dollars over a 20 or more year period? You may have to think about this one. Again the real answer is, “no”. Technological innovation and development of alternatives or “substitutes” consistently cause the real cost of all resources to drop long term. Of course there are market fluctuations and new products that affect resource availability over the short term due to increased demand. But the suppliers relish the new business and find the resources. AND THIS HAS BEEN THE CASE SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!
Here’s what’s really happening. The companies engaged in finding, procuring and refining needed resources will prospect for future resources for up to about 40 years. That’s pretty much the case with all resources. With the possible exception of “oil” and a few other strategic minerals, IT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE FOR A COMPANY TO LOOK BEYOND ABOUT 40 YEARS FOR FUTURE SUPPLIES! The reason is that they would almost certainly be waisting corporate funds to do so. As technology progresses material requirements change, demand changes, and substitutes are found that may become less expensive. So we hear an industry only has 40 years, or so, of a specific resource available. The popular interpretation of this in the press and by the general public is, “WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF EVERYTHING, AND VERY SOON”. At least until 10 years later when the mining companies go out and find more resources to extend their then 30 year supply out to 40 years again based on their new projection of future needs.
Dan, you apparently confuse tight oil resources with the technically recoverable reserve (at any price). The newest TRR for tight oil (correcting for the basic geology mistake made by EIA on 2013 and admitted and corrected by them in 2014) is at most 14Bbbl. That is (365*about 18.5mbpd) about 2 years, not 200. Even in the Bakken, the TRR is only 1.5%, and it has the most favorable geophysics.
Cite?
w.
You won’t give up will you? At the moment about a third of all US oil production is coming from tight oil (most of it from just two fields (Bakken and Eagle Ford), with another two just coming on line (Permian Basin and Niobrara)), but no there is only two years supply there….
W.
Here you go. As footnotes from the forthcoming book. About two easy Google clicks away each.
Regards on recent your sea voyage. Have also done some. Usually under sail rather than tow conditions…
EIA, Review of Energy Resources: US Shale Gas and Shale Oil Plays (2011). Revised 2013. (google and you will find at first click). In 2013 Monterey was revised down to 13.7Bbbl. And in 2014 to almost nothing, the point made in the comment.
On May 21, 2014, almost a year after this next book essay was first written, the EIA revised the Monterey estimate down 97% to 0.6Bbbl. EIA Director Sieminski told the press, “The rock is there, the technology isn’t…”
Just Google Sieminski, Monterey, 2014… My, how easy basic information retrieval now is.
My deliberate reason for not posting your requested precise links is to ‘teach’ all to ‘think’ for yourselves. The internet is a big place. It contains enormous amounts of ‘crap’. And also of ‘truth’. Sort it out for yourselves. I gave search links, please do the searches. Then ignore the unreliable places. Pay attention to ‘reliable’ places like the US GOV. Then be very skeptical of those, as the next book also shows.
BTW, W, if you want to critique this essay from the forthcoming book, figure out how to email me so I can send it to you as Marcel Crok got on full ‘Shell Games’. Perhaps Anthony can help you here off line.
The draft is not yet to the publisher, and all critiques will still be gratefully considered.
TTY, please check your data. You really have no factual clue. There are presently about 2.5mpbd going to maybe 3-4 mbpd coming from all tight oil shales. See, for example EIA 2014. The US consumes about 18.5mbpd. Even the optimistic IEA (not the EIA) says US tight shale oil will peak at about 4mbpd in 2021. You know not of which you speak. And that is a polite restatement of your ignorance demonstrated here.
“TTY, please check your data. You really have no factual clue.”
US oil production (excluding condensates) is currently about 8.5 million barrels per day. Of this something between 2.5 and 3 million barrels are tight oil. According to my mathematics that is a third. And the condensate proportion is higher.
And about that EIA estimate: did you notice something? It does not include the Wolfcamp shale, nor most of the Niobrara shale, both of which are currently coming on line on a large scale. Personally I am more inclined to believe in actual oil production rather than estimates. Particularly from government agencies engaged in policy-based evidence making.
I’m not sure you have mouch of a clue either.
Rud, Have you been in the Bakken? If you had you would be aware the Bakken is one of three oil formations it is the uppermost, the next is the three forks and the third I have not yet heard the name for. The Bakken is expected to play for the next forty years presently is producing 1 million barrels a day and only has a third of the project oil wells drilled have been drilled. Now that is the Bakken, Three Forks has had a few wells drilled in it and those are out producing the Bakken. as far as the formation below it not much has been done. So if the Bakken get all its well drilled and say we are looking say two million a day, ditto for three forks and the on bellow we are looking at six billion a day, that from one state and from know reserves. The nice thing is the way formations lay you can drill all three from the same pad and go all direction from that pad concevely you could have over sixteen well on one pad.
Now the dirty little secret about North Dakota and the Williston Basin it there is a huge pool of oil miles below the surface in the bed rock it runs along a fail line. I assume that were all of the oil in the Williston basin has come from. Present we have no way to get to it. I assume some day they will and I am told it dwarfs anything they have drilled today. They are talking hundreds of billions barrels of oil That came from a land man who’s business is to know these thing, I have no reason to doubt him, I certain do have reason to doubt you.
One last thing a geology professor from either UND or NDSU in the 1980s stated the estimated oil reserve in the Bakken was between 250 billion to 500 billion barrels of oil, at that time he was the most knowledgeable person about the Bakken, I have far more reason to believe him and any yahoo who works for the federal government. One last thing they were horizontal drilling the Bakken in the mid 1980, The reason they quit is oil prices collapsed and you need $45.00 a barrel to make it pay. At that time I was living in the Williston area, and have driven the Williston basin from one end to the other for over fifteen years. I still drive it three to four time a year and yes highway 85 is a bitch from Watford City to Williston. It has the traffic of a major interstate with only two lanes, all though half of it now has four and the Alexander bypass is about complete.
Mark, not that it matters on a dead thread, but to your specific question, yes, I have visited there. My grandfather was one of the original petroleum geologists to explore the Williston Basin. I drove him there in in 1967, part of a cross country venture. Spent most of July and August visitng exploratory well pads ( then vertical) in Montana and North Dakota. My family lost the better part of $1 million drilling along a slip fault fracture above the Bakken to try to capture a seismic signaled reservoir. He said we missed by about 10 feet onto the wrong sideof the fault, about 6000 feet down.
Your assertion that I know not is without merit. Try again, with something better than an ad hom.
Another thing not factored in is all the metals we produced are still here, until recently rusting away in a ring around cities. We are now recycling this stuff. Its cheaper to melt old glass than to make new. Metals can be re-used ad infinitum and we will get better and better at it.
The modem I bought a year ago is twice the size of the new one I had put in today! My dad’s 1956 Chrysler Windsor weighed over two tons. Probably today’s equivalents are half that. Our radio then took two men to lift!
From what I understand the modern soda pop aluminum can (or even more desirable beer can) weighs an amazing 50% less than a comparable can from the 1960s. I don’t think that was the result of NRDC lobbying. Also interesting is the arrangement Mercury Marine had with the Miller Brewing Co. in Milwaukee. Mercury had a plant in Fon du Lac, Wisconsin north of Milwaukee. Miller supplied them with recycled beer cans which Mercury melted down and recast as outboard motor engine blocks. Mercury favored the Miller cans which were alloyed with manganese. That aluminum alloy was more resistant to corrosion in its engines than the aluminum copper alloy used in other cans. I don’t think the NRDC had anything to do with this either.
And, a classic example of recycling that is not considered as such, and is generally scorned, is an automotive junkyard. These facilities economically recycle auto parts, fluids, and materials; and provide opportunity and low cost transportation to people on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Plus they’re a good home for Doberman Pinchers.
Willis has requested citations. Unfortunately I don’t have the original reference anymore. But a very quick check on the internet brings up many good articles stressing the same points. Here are a few:
“Are we running out of minerals?” by John Dobra, posted 6/14/2013 in Mining News
http://www.miningfacts.org/Blog/Mining-News/Are-We-Running-out-of-Minerals-/
What Will Apple Do When Indium Runs Out in 2017?
Forbes 3/09/2012 Tim Worstall
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/09/what-will-apple-do-when-indium-runs-out-in-2017/
Has the Earth Run Out of Any Natural Resources?
There isn’t much cryolite anymore.
By Brian Palmer
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/has_the_earth_run_out_of_any_natural_resources.html
Willis, contact me offline by email for more detail.
Thanks, Dan. Your third citation makes the point very neatly, if unintentionally. The headline is:
Has the Earth Run Out of Any Natural Resources?
There isn’t much cryolite anymore.
Since I knew that cryolite is used to refine aluminum, this sounded quite worrying to me. However, as my Dad told me, “Son, the big print giveth, and the small print taketh away.” And as usual, he was right. When you read the article, the text says (emphasis mine):
This has been the story of “resources” since there’ve been resources. Resources are not inherent in the earth. They are inherent in the ability to use our energy, our imagination, and our work to convert raw materials into resources. When the raw material runs out, as all raw materials eventually must, we create “synthetic alternatives” just as we did with cryolite.
As a result, TO DATE the forward march of technology has never been stopped or even slowed much by resource shortages. Will this continue to be the case?
I think so, because a) humans are so damn ingenious, and b) necessity is the mother of invention, and c) neither Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, nor any other of the many failed “we’re running out of resources” serial doomcasters have ever made one successful prediction of such a resource-based catastrophe. There have been scads of such predictions—running out of magnesium, running out of space for our trash, running out of food, peak oil, the list goes on and on.
But not one of their predictions have come true. SO … I gotta conclude that:
and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
w.
Hey Willis, if you are monitoring dead threads, here is a possibly cogent remark. Cryolite ( which can be synthesized using energy) isnt a fossil fuel. Many respects for your posts. But not for some of your conclusions. Agreement on Tuvalu.
Hey, Rud, not sure why you think the thread is dead. In any case, you say:
I know that. Look at the thread title. It’s about resources, not just energy.
All the best,
w.
Rud Istvan says September 8, 2014 at 9:58 pm
Thanks, Rud, but as you should know, I’m allergic to vague handwaving. If you disagree with my conclusions, please quote exactly what I said and let us in on the secret reason you disagree with whatever it was.
Thanks,
w.
” New research shows ….”
OH dear, here we go again !
The tip of the Washington is a pyramid made of aluminum. Those who built it weren’t being cheap. At the time, aluminum was more precious than gold. Now we wrap leftovers in it.
These guys need to define “resources” before they can say we’ll run out of them.
(At least I didn’t misspell it.)
“The tip of the Washington Monument is a pyramid made of aluminum.”
I think you mean Washington Monument.
I did. Thanks.
The aluminum is protect by platinum lighting rods funny how thing change.
“At the time, aluminium was more precious than gold”
Guess why? It takes a hell of a lot of energy to make aluminium.
Alumina, the mineral is amongst the most common on the planet.
The energy to turn it to metal is amongst the most rare and expensive thing there is.
Energy has been cheap recently. It aint so any more.
For political reasons only. Energy is abundant.
It’s still cheap in Iceland; there are three alumina smelters in the country powered by surplus hydro-electricity and accounting for 2% of world production:
http://arcticecon.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/aluminium-smelting-in-iceland-alcoa-rio-tinto-alcan-century-aluminum-corp/
What I always find interesting is the use of the phrase “New research…” or “A study…” as if this singular bit of information is the end all, be all of the subject at hand. We can point out “A study…” which says/said the Arctic Ice Sheet would be gone in 2013 (or so) and folks will decry, “It is but ONE study!”. They use ONE study and it is Good Night Irene! Geez.
I forget where I first this, maybe SEPP or JunkScience.com?, but such things are referred to as “One Study Wonders”.
Hate to reply to my own post, but there is one resource that “newspapers” like The Guardian will never run out of, and that is these “New Research…” doom and gloom papers!
The one resource that ecomentalists use without end is BS.
even there will be some kind of shortages of some kind of stuff…so what?
even if is horrible for mankind…so what?
what are this people saying but we are able to organize the shortage better ie sooner
let us stop using oil because the time is coming when there will be no more oil….
Hey i know something , we all are going to die…is it a reason to plan our life to organize a better death?
this people want your money, they want you to buy their antishortage devices…that s all….but look at what they are doing?
so they put their own money in their magical devices?
“Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research.”
Gee, ya know, something has got to be done about the universities down under. Since the government change and the panic over pinching off of funds for the Clime Syndicate (thanks to Mark Steyn for that one!), ever more dreadful and shrill offerings from Ozzie science is getting manufactured. I remember over 50 years ago boiling up swampy water for tea on geological survey field work in northern Canada and watching desperate swarms of swimming little bugs searching out the diminishing areas of cool water in the billy pail before giving out and receiving a quarter of a handful of tea to bury them. This image popped into my head on reading this awful drivel. I know the rest of the world’s universities are bad but the volume of sludge from this patch of the globe is astounding.
Ingenuity will be needed. And the resource shoe will still definitely pinch by about 2050. One of the limits is food calories (constrained by arable land, irrigation, spread of best practices, yield improvement limits reached on some key crops already (eg limits to the drawing strategy for IR8 rice), and evolution of previously controlled pests like UG99 wheat rust (which Borlaug had previously conquered as part of his Green Revolution). The other is liquid transportation fuels, only partly substitutible by electricity and in the end only partly replaceable by renewable biofuels. Which in turn affects ‘virtual water’ (trade in agricultural commodities).
Wrote an ebook about all this, Gaias Limits. Malthus was wrong. Erhlich was wrong. Club of Rome was wrong. Pimentalmis wrong.But that does not mean there are no human carrying capacity constraints. CSIRO critique is right, but his unbounded optimism is unwarranted. Read the inexpensive book for details. Factually based counter arguments welcome. (just make sure you have your facts straight.) Food is a soft carrying capacity constraint. Liquid fuel is at least semi hard. You just have to slog through all the technical details.
Gaia’s Limits does not necessarily foresee catastrophe like all the previous neoMalthusian sensations.. There are a few fairly straightforward ‘easy’ policy changes that offer a global soft landing on a long glide path– if we would just get started. But those are not part of the main CAGW agenda like the US ‘war on coal’ or the EU prohibition of high wattage hair dryers and vacuum cleaners.
Talked with an acquaintance who is a farmer a couple of days ago. He was worried. He couldn’t harvest his wheat because he has nowhere to put it. Every grain elevator in the country (Sweden) is chock full. And everybody else in the World apparently had a bumper crop as well. Prices are dropping.
So he decided to slaughter a number of sheep for cash. And was told that the slaughterhouse has a long waiting list….
I also run a farm. We were also blessed this year. I was speaking about the next four decades.
“The next four decades”?
Why then and not now?
Why is it always 40 years in the future; i.e. beyond the planning horizon?
Richard
Rud Istvan,
I just posted a comment to you at the very end of all the comments.
See:
John Whitman says:
September 8, 2014 at 2:30 pm
John
I am Robert of Ottawa and I approve of this post.
Seriously, the AGW tack is just one of many misanthropic attacks by the Stalinist ecomentalists upon civilization. They must be resisted on all fronts.
Who would want to live on a planet where the people are packed in like sardines, lets keep it at 7 billion ;0)
You have no idea how empty most of the planet is.
Of course I realise how empty the planet is, but people don’t move to the wide open spaces or at least most don’t, they live in heavily populated cities that are dirty and smell bad, I live in the country and use to work in the city and I can say for a fact that even a clean city smells bad, I can’t imagine what one of those blue tarp settlements smells like, and turn off the garbage service and it gets bad real quick, remember the garbage strike in NY? I just feel that the planet is at comfortable level now ;0)
Dirk, there are reasons that the Sahara, the Kalahari, the Gobi, and the Australian outback are empty. Even Nevada outside Reno and Las Vegas. Can you Imagine what those might be?
A few hundred liquid fueled thorium reactors, providing safe, efficient, clean, no CO2 emissions electricity, could make the Gobi, the Sahara, and the Nevada desert not only quite livable, but also fun with a few tens of thousand EV dune buggies.
Water you say? Use a few of those LFTRs for coastal desal plants and pipe the pure clean water inland like the Saudis and Aussie’s already do. Again, zero emissions.
– – – – – –
John ;0),
10 billion human beings packed like sardines would easily fit inside the state of Texas with lots of spare Texas space leftover. N’est ce pas?
John
We really don’t want to put that many people in texas there wouldn’t be any room for the cows ;0)
10 billion human beings packed like sardines would easily fit inside the state of Texas with lots of spare Texas space leftover. N’est ce pas?
..and what an attractive target they would make for a nuclear option..