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.
Regarding Leo Smith says
September 7, 2014 at 11:55 pm
“You can criticise – and you are right to criticise – the club of Rome on the details. But not on the main thesis, which is that growth itself is unsustainable.
Everything that grows in the Universe, does so by tapping into an entropy flow, and eventually that flow ceases, and it dies. Or it itself becomes a victim of its own growth.
To date, we dont see any way to avoid that inescapable conclusion. Yes, some new quantum level effects may give us access to infinite energy and zero entropy, but until it does we had best stick with the physics we have got, take note, and adjust out thinking accordingly.’
Reply
David A
September 8, 2014 at 6:55 am
Your universal entropy timeline is meaningless, as it applies to time scales 100 percent irrelevant to civilization. Here are two posts from E.M. Smith, filled with both facts, and logical deductive reason on why we do not need to worry, if we are willing. Energy and resources are abundant and cheep for all meaningful time scales pertinent to social policy. The energy and resource shortage is mostly a political problem as science has done remarkable work in practical application to practically limitless resources.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
Now be certain to read the comments as well, because your objections are well dealt with.
What Priority: Climate or Energy?
Egypt – the convergence of oil decline, political and socio-economic crisis
Egypt’s Blackout
Oil Companies failing
Peak Oil Review 8 Sept. 2014 ASPO-USA
Will consumers be concerned over 0.7 C/century?
Or being able to drive work?
Or having work?
US has imported $10 trillion since it’s production peaked in 1970.
Debt & rising interest are being piled on our children.
For how long before the US similarly collapses?
Or develops replacement fuels?
Where are the resources going? What is getting jettisoned off the planet?
If it is all still here, then how can it have been used up?
I don’t believe the materialistic dooms-dayers. The argument is that we are about to use everything up so quickly that civilization will crash. However, logically, it makes sense that we would run out of one thing first, or that there must be that one thing that would be most dear to lose.
The arguments here seem to say the thing we must be most concerned about is energy. If so, I am not really scared. There are plenty of alternatives.
Elsewhere, water has been noted as the limiting factor.
Wow. If water is at such a premium, why can I let it fly full-force willy-nilly all over my yard? And barely notice the impact on my water bill that is in the range of what it costs a dinner for two at a chain restaurant?
And what is all of that wet stuff over there? That ocean thingie?
The Club of Rome / intellectual-elitist scare is just a ploy to get power over us. If there is a serious limit we are about to hit, then make the case. It obviously is not energy, space, land, water, copper, or lithium.
Leo Smith: “We have already reached some limits to growth, and if you dont recognise that people killing each other in the middle East is part of that, you haven’t thought it through.”
There just is not much to say about something this clueless.
While the middle east political conflicts are complicated, and have been for a long time, it is bothersome to know that Bill Ayers and other communist agitators are taking full advantage of the opportunity to agitate.
Maybe you simply haven’t worked out that people whose expectations exceed what society can deliver, and who have no work left to do, are precisely the ones who join organisations like ISIS or Greenpeace…
The devil they say, finds work for idle hands.
There is a massive upheaval going on: youth unemployment is almost the norm in many parts of the world. Meanwhile they are bombarded with marketing for this or that product they simply cannot afford (unless they steal it) ..and that generalised discontent is being tapped into by cynical people who simply see it as a way to get rich, gain power and have a moire exciting life.
When you are getting richer every day, and your life is full of novelty, you dont start revolutions.
When you are young, buzzing with testosterone, not very rich, and no prospect of getting richer (unless you go into politics) the temptation to go for a walk on part in a war, rather than not even a lead role in a cage, is overwhelming.
JIhad is a great adventure. In a socialist society that has eliminated every single risk and thrill as far to dangerous for mere citizens, that it can find a way to legislate against.
When you look at the root causes of high unemployment and of the stiflingly rule bound existence,and indeed of the massive amount spent on marketing ‘shiny new thing, make everything better’ you see it is simply the end game of consumerism and exponential growth.
High unemployment because machines and capital are cheaper than labour. Lots of capital invested in consumer goods because selling to dimly educated idiots is a lot easier than selling to peole who gave real product specifications. You just tell lies and use emotional cues – marketing. Rising populations means rising markets, and rising population means more social tension which means more rules. If your own people wont breed, import someone else’s. Capital Debt can only be serviced by a rising GDP.
Result. Even more social tension.
So more rules, more marketing to part people from money they actually haven’t got, so lend it to them with sub prime debt and credit cards, crash, get bailed out by governments, and go back to more shiny new thing.
Wind turbines are consumer products. They dont have to work. They just have to make people feel good.
A self reinforcing spiral of consumerism, consumer debt, government debt, and so on. All fuelled by exponential growth.
Guess what. We haven’t HAD in the west, any economic growth for over a decade. LSE and the NYSE have not exceeded levels from 15 years ago.You cant make money out of people whose bank accounts you have raided, who are already so deep in debt that you dare not lend them any money any more.
And the one thing we need to keep this ball rolling, is free energy*. Low entropy. The one thing you cannot recycle, With cheap free energy we can build and transform, replace one technology with another..if copper is scarce and expensive to mine, use aluminium or plastic instead, depending on whether its wires or plumbing… but they take ENERGY to manufacture as well. If the energy cost of smelting and refining aluminium exceeds the cost of copper mining and smelting, well copper will be used until it IS too expensive.
Therefore the real issue today behind all that societal and economic upheaval, is in the end, the rising cost of energy, in energy and in human terms.
And that is caused by governments who have taken the stance of ensuring energy scarcity by allying themselves with green causes, and oil interests in order to get the maximum profit out of diminishing cheap oil and gas reserves. Failing to see the damage that this selfishness causes.
And THAT is why coal and nuclear power are dirty words. If coal is allowed to be burnt, gas prices would halve and half the gas businesses would go under. In nuclear replaced either at baseload generation, you can kiss some big industries goodbye.
Green is no longer about the planet and its certainly not about the people. Its now entirely the marketing arm of big oil, big gas, and big government. Big oil is behind Jihad. Guess which oil nation started the Wahabbi movement, is profoundly and deeply Sunni, and controls the oil markets?
Yes, the limits are artificial, and based in government and big corporate thinking. That doesn’t make them any the less real.
You might say that as human beings we have reached in terms of our social structures and organisations, the limits to growth. It doesn’t really matter, continued expansion will always reach a limit, because the universe is a finite place.
The Left are contriving to create a new species. Homo communensis. Anthill man, where the queen ant (Julia Gillard?) sends out all the little green (sexless) workers to do her bidding and metrosexual man gets one chance to boff her, and then becomes a useless male drone (Obarmy?)
Might is Right doesn’t care one way or the other. The corporate alpha males run that pack, and if the world goes down in flames they firmly expect to be in charge at a better lifestyle than ever in a world free of surplus humanity. Let’s face it. machines are more reliable. Take the money off the poor and let them starve.
End games. No one who is anyone actually cares about anything except themselves and their clique. Political systems of the left that dont take onto account human nature as it is, because they are busy trying to change it, fail. Political systems of the right that fail to take into account the force of the masses and of nature, fail because they think they can control it.
Meanwhile they have both betrayed everybody.
Maybe what we are really running out of, is common sense. Trust. Decency. Honour. The values that allow us to lend and borrow and vest power in individuals to act on our behalf, in our best interests. Not their own. The ability to make value judgements based on reality, not on marketing.
Maybe the situation is that democracy is dead. Because no one needs the people when they have machines, and therefore no one actually gives a damn whether they live or die horribly. Or on the left, they can tell themselves that people themselves are evil planet destroying monsters and need to die. if they wont conform to the new austerity. Or the new religion.
Except that one thing the Right and the Left share, apart from their utter contempt of ordinary little people, is a complete lack of understanding of the technological nature of the society they seek to control. They dont understand energy, and they dont understand machines – they just expect them to work and be there.
The people with real power, that they don’t even realise, are the hackers and the geeks, Not only did the bible warn us that a great profit would arise in the land, but that ultimately that the geek would inherit the earth. There you are. Its in the bible. Only a bit less mistranslated than usual.
That means in our post democratic society, the people with ultimate power are the people who keep the lights on and the water in the taps and the sewage treatment plants going. And above all, the electricity in the wires and the gas in the pipes. And of course these days, the internet running.
Because that affects even the rich and powerful.
It was not social conscience that built the great sewers and pumping stations of London, it was the cholera and the stink that even the rich could not escape.
If you cant see that economics and technology and access to energy are what drives politics and social structures, the of course this is all meaningless nonsense.
But what affected humanity more? a Greek philosopher, a Roman emperor or the wheel?
CHEAP Oil energy built the 20th century, oil gave us exponential growth where iron steel and coal faltered.
CHEAP oil is gone. Sure there is lots left, but none of it is cheap.
Cheap uranium and thorium should be building the 21st century. But no one actually really wants to build the 21st century.
The Left are broadly Luddite, and would prefer to go back a thousand years, along with the Jihadists. The right don’t see the point in a society that can manage current population levels, because they are already fed up with and despise, the people.
As long as they hold all the capital, own all the banks governments and big businesses, as well as the Left, they consider they are safe.
“Everything is fine, everything is OK, just pay some more taxes and we will see you right”.
Yeah, right.
Its not OK, Its disintegrating before our eyes. Debt is completely out of control. People are bored angry and resentful. Iraq, Libya, Gaza, Syria, Ukraine…it doesn’t matter where you look on the edges of Europe, people are in power plays, looking to grab land resources and commit effective genocide, or ethnic cleansing on their fellow men. THEY are not seeing exponential growth. THEY have woken up to the fact that its a zero sum game, now, and to the victor go the spoils, such as they are.
I was out political canvassing at the weekend. Forget climate change. No one mentioned it.What concerns them is the destruction of a society and their way of life by forces that are beyond their wit to affect, the forces of big business and politics cosying up to one another to screw them one twice and again. All they know is that they are being taxed taxed and taxed, their savings are being raided, everything is expensive, and people who dont talk their language and who dont respect their laws are moving in to their towns. While their politicians treat them with the same contempt that the media and Big Marketing does.
Maybe what we are really running out of, is patience.
*Not cost free, free in the thermodynamic sense. I.e low entropy.
Tom J: “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?”
No, Tom – it is just an easy way for drug addicts to make some easy money. They would prefer to steal and pawn your power tools and home electronics – does this mean our society is about to collapse because we are running out of appliances?
There are a few resources so special that finding replacements is difficult if not impossible. I get into arguments with people about helium, which is an example of a very special substance for which there appears no replacement, and which is expensive to obtain recycled from the atmosphere. However, there are substitutes for almost everything, and as someone has already pointed out, one can recycle what one needs with sufficient energy.
I have also learned over time that people often cause their own problems, but they also refuse to admit that they do so. Almost all instances of resource shortages turn out to be, on close inspection, self-inflicted and easy to solve. Price controls, import-export controls, and the like, lead to shortages without exception. But, of course, people more often point to the free-market as the source of their problems, rather than as the solution to problems, because it makes allocations that they deem “unfair”. Fairness seems like a religious idea to me.
+3. Full agreement on every point.
Helium. Entire economic texts can be written on the subject and folly of regulation. Whenever I see a latex balloon filled with the stuff… Easter Island comes to mind as they cut down the trees.
Helium has superconducting properties that even liquid hydrogen cannot match at much greater danger.
But now Congress has decided to let the free market play a greater part [although still painfully slowly], we will likely see more helium extracted out of natural gas from fracked high gamma-ray shales.
Helium weighs 10.54 lbs per 1000 cu ft and will cost somewhere between $75 and $150 per 1000 cu feet when the government stops selling at fixed sub-market prices. So He might be worth $15/pound or a buck and a quarter a troy oz. We go to a lot of effort to get gold and platinum at $1000 / troy oz. I think we can get all the helium we want if we raise the price enough. But that doesn’t mean we should waste what we have in the gas-bank.
@Leopold Danze Smith at 11:48 pm
But EROI is exactly a measure of the cost of energy …and its sustainability.
No. It is neither.
EROI is typically defined as [Energy_Out]/[Energy_In] Joules over Joules, BTU over BTU.
Nothing about that formula addresses sustainability.
Nor is the Dollar Cost of the [Energy_In] at issue. The units are of Energy, such as Joules.
It is NOT $ over $. If that is what you desire, then try simple ROR, IROR, DCFROR,
or PVI [=NPV(Net Cashflow) / NPV(Investment)]. Then you can address whether making $5 bills out of $10 bills makes sense or whether making $5 bills out of $1 bills makes sense.
The [Energy_In] could be solar, it could be coal, it could be 40 gravity oil, it could be 100 octane Aviation Gasoline. Each with wildly different $/Joule because each source of energy has advantages and limitations. Sustainability is not addressed by the concept
Any Tree takes in more Energy than it give back as useful energy. It’s EROI is well under 1.0. Does that mean we should burn down the forests? It does not. Trees take free (as in at no-cost) Joules in Solar Energy and create many useful things that are valued as stored energy (carbon compounds).
What an interestingly short sighted piece. Look up! within our local solar system, space we have already sent our exploration vessels through, there are resources in massive quantities. China will apparently lead the way when it comes to space mining operations because apparently everyone else is too stupid to figure it out. To this point the only resources we have used on this planet that are not renewable by the natural processes of this world are the ones we have shot into space. The anti evolution crowd is on it’s soap box again but they keep forgetting that the key to expansion is MASS and then push. We are ready for the next step, a step that is needed for our continued existence lest a single big rock bash us out of existance.. however once we take it the puppet masters will lose their illusion of control and so they hold us back. They tell us how terrible everything will be and I believe, secretly wish for the good old days of stone knives and bear claws, as long of course as it is not them that have to live that way.
Course there are but it takes ENERGY to exploit them.
And we dont hav eCHEAP ENERGY. We could, but we dont.
“Course there are but it takes ENERGY to exploit them.”
The space environment has energy.
Just look at our Moon vs Earth in terms of solar energy. And on average on the the Moon has 1/2 the solar energy as GEO [or L-points].
With moon whenever sun is above the horizon [and mountains or regions in polar area can have more sun above the horizon then “average”] one can get about 1360 watts per square meter.
Earth on clear day and in summer and when sun is near zenith, one can get just over 1000 watts per square meter. Or on earth in the morning and late afternoon there is much less than 1000 watts per square meter.
This generally also mean anywhere on earth above 45 degree latitude is a poor location [almost regardless of how many cloudless day one gets [but cloudiness really degrades it further- or Germany is one of the worst locations to harvest solar energy because it cloudy and quite cloudy during summer. Around Seattle, Washington also very poor location. UK not quite as bad.
The Sahara desert is pretty good location [other than occasional sandstorm], southwest US is pretty good, area in Australia are good good, and etc. Or desert like conditions are generally good. Though obviously a problem that not huge amount people live in deserts.
But anyhow even best location on Earth are worst than the Moon.
Anywhere on Earth or the Moon half the time is daylight, if in temperate zone, in summer one gets more daylight and less daylight in winter. And generally one earth of the average 12 hour day, one can can only about 6 hours of useful solar power. On the moon one get the full 12 hours of 24 period. So with moon one gets twice as time of useful sunlight and one get 360 more watts [and no clouds]. So 24 hrs at 1360 watts is 32.6 kW hour. And average place anywhere on the Moon get 1/2 of this 32.6 kW hour per day. So 16.3 Kw hours average per year. Germany gets about 2 kW hours per 24 day per year. And better locations on earth can get about 8 kW hours per average day.
If you certain location of the Moon in polar region, places called Peaks of Eternal Lights, instead of 1/2 the time getting sunlight, one get 80% or more of the time in sunlight.
So generally the problem with solar energy on Earth is one gets 6 hours of 24 hours on average from solar energy, and humans needs more the 6 hours of energy supply per day. Now if Human could pick and choose the 6 hours they get, this better than 6 hours average based upon the daylight [or whether if happens to be cloudy]. Or solar energy on earth would be far more valuable if one could get 12 hours instead of 6. The other part is one need more energy in winter than in summer.
Another aspect of the Moon [and applies elsewhere in space] is it’s a good location to use nuclear energy. On the moon one live 4 blocks away from nuclear power plant that has none of the safety precautions used on Earth. Or nuclear power plant could have complete meltdown it not threat to person living 4 blocks away. It’s bad news for the power plant, but there is no atmosphere to containment nor any ground water, and to live on the Moon one has to sheilded from huge fusion reactor in the sky [the sun] and from GCR [the universe with it’s exploding supernovas]. Likewise one live 4 blocks from huge depository of nuclear waste. The Moon would be good location to put all of Earth nuclear waste- it’s close to being economical to ship it to the Moon, and if the cost to launch from earth was lowered by half- and we are lowering these costs- then it could make economic sense. So storing nuclear waste on the moon is obviously safe for people living on Earth [nowhere on Earth could possibly be safer] and it’s safe to anyone living on the moon.
Now the point with Moon, is one would mine stuff on the Moon so one is not shipping everything from Earth. Iron is easily mined on the Moon for example. But most critical resource on the moon in the near term is water. And there is billions of tonnes of water on the Moon in polar region.
But the location of minable water is not known to enough precision. Or there is billions of tons of water, but in terms of near terms what needed is location of first million tonnes of minable water. And in first decade of mining lunar water, one will only need somewhere around 100 to 1000 tonnes of water per year. So best location in which one could mine up to say 100,000 tonnes of water is something we would need to discover.
Or if the lunar material has 10% of it’s volume which is recoverable water [moderately damp dirt on Earth has about 10%] and mine meter depth of 1 square km- that’s 100,000 tonnes of water.
Or to start one is doing fairly scale mining- mining less than the surface of football field in a year’s time. After enough time, demand for amount water needed per year could increase, so the thousands of tonnes per year would mined. Or for entire Apollo program, one could used about 100 tons of lunar water.
Rud Istvan,
I have enjoyed your more than a dozen lead articles posted in the last several years on Judith Curry’s blog and enjoyed your several lead post articles posted here at WUWT in the last several years.
I found that your comment stream here on this thread has expanded the discussion to an analysis of the possibility of ‘resource pinches’ versus the erroneous systemic doom and gloom of Mathusim / Erhich / Club of Rome. In your comment on this thread @ur momisugly September 7, 2014 at 2:19 pm you said,
I can understand that our intellectuals (I include scientists as a small portion of valuable relevant intellectuals) can be in diverse areas (academia, government orgs, commercial industry, private research groups, in general cultural orgs and can be independent freelancers) will naturally be in a very competitive free market of ideas to literally provide all views and multiple solutions to any imaginable problem. But only if they are not interfered with by government intervention in both the economy and in restrictive processes determining what case studies, overviews and research will be done. That aspect was expressed by Ludwig von Mises,
So, other than awareness, nothing in the realm of policy change is needed in a free society if ‘pinches’ in resources are seen by the free marketplace of ideas.
NOTE: I would be willing to review a draft of your upcoming book. If you want to contact me just click on my name in the comment header and it will take you to my blog. At my blog you can use the ‘Contact Me’ tool in the side column to send me an email.
PS – I effortlessly followed the references that you gave in your comment Rud Istvan on September 7, 2014 at 8:17 pm
John
As long as you have plentiful energy you can make / extract / concentrate any of the material goods.
We have a near infinite supply of energy (for all practical purposes) at costs only slightly above present:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/ulum-ultra-large-uranium-miner-ship/
Japan created the technology of sea water U extraction. It’s about $30 / lb more than land based mining. By definition, not a ‘reserve’ at present, but a very recoverable and a very cheap ‘resource’ when prices rise just a tiny bit (or tech improves just a bit).
The Club Of Rome and the Limits To Growth crowd are all daft Chicken Littles who can’t engineer their way to an assembled kit from Ikea…
Richard Courtney, I think you will immensely enjoy both these posts if you take the time to read them.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
Leo Smith, they answer every concern you raise.
David A
Yes, I did “enjoy” it. Thankyou.
Richard
Of course there is tons of energy in fissile and fertile materials., but no one is exploiting them
For reasons of OTHER limits than the strictly material.
There is a theory that comes originally from agriculture, whose correct name escapes me, that says ‘growth and productivity is limited by the one necessary thing that is in scarcity’
Fertile soils that lack water…wetlands that lack minerals …a post industrial society that is now scared of technology…
It doesn’t matter how abundant everything else is, it only takes one vital ingredient to be missing and the cake wont bake.
Leo Smith
You say
No problem. Humans provide the missing ingredient.
For example, here in the West Country in past centuries each coastal village had a lime kiln that ‘burned’ sand from the beaches. The sand includes fragments of sea shells that transformed to lime in the kilns, and the ‘burned’ sand was added to local agricultural land which otherwise produced little.
Richard
Leo, is that an insincere comment to EM. Smith’s posts I linked, or just the one he linked. In either case the posts directly addresses the “other” reasons beside strictly material, and addresses many ways that if human will is engaged, those reasons can be overcome now.
I am glad you admit that neither energy or materials are the problem. Indeed, economics, which Mr. Smith is formally trained in, and politics, even more then economics, are the primary problem. (I.E. Polotics is what makes the economics to steep.) We currently have the technological capacity to achieve relatively clean safe abundant energy at costs below what is current market rates, and this capacity exists for centuries to come.
Please read the other two links I gave you.
@Leopold Danze:
To quote a wise man: “You can’t fix stupid”. But some society will not be so stupid, so market Darwinism will assure they win… and human society moves on from the paranoia. That there is no shortage assures it.
@John Whitman 9/8 at 2:30 pm
PS – I effortlessly followed the references that you gave in your comment Rud Istvan on September 7, 2014 at 8:17 pm
I would like to point out that Rud accused me of ignoring reference citations that did not yet exist.
The timeline, by posted position
Rud 1:56 “You confuse tight oil” with TTR
__Willis: 2:27 “Cite?”
__Rud: 8:17 “Here you go” “two google clicks away” “My deliberate reason for not posting your requested precise links …..:
10 Level 1 posts ——————————————————————
Rasey: 2:39: Doomsday Myth
__Rud: 6:16 “check your geophysics and TRR”
____Rasey: 7::23 “by not supplying references”
__Rud: 9:03 “ignorance devoid of the citations you seek”
1 Level 1 posts ————————————————————————-
Rasey: 3:27
__Rud 5:46 “Invest your life savings…”
____Rasey: 6:45 Supply links. I did.
____Rud: 8:42 “Well, actually I did.” “You ignored them
11 Level 1 ————————————————————————————–
Willis: 10:03 RE Rud 8:17 “Snipe hunt”
It is one thing to make a lengthy post far up the page in a Level 2 reply that few will find.
It is quite another to accuse someone of ignoring an up page nested reply before it was written and available for reading (or ignoring).
Stephen Rasey on September 8, 2014 at 5:19 pm
– – – – – – – – – –
Stephen Rasey,
I do not know of any accusations on this thread that involve me. So I do not understand why you addressed me with your comment that focuses on accusations.
But, I am curious so I would like some clarification.
PS – I personally do not like the nested comment format . . . .
John
It was just in context of your note to him about the ease of following the references he posted way up thread and late in the day. He accused me of ignoring something he hadn’t yet posted much less putting it in a place it could be easily found.
Nesting is something to be avoid for any long replay. Much better to put it in line to maintain some easy way to find new stuff. Use nested replies if you don’t care whether anyone but the parent author sees it.
But nesting is great for directed replies and for corrections to the parent a comment.
Stephen Rasey on September 8, 2014 at 7:31 pm
– – – – – – –
Stephen Rasey,
I appreciate your additional info. Yet the issue you have is not mine.
On another thought, the nested commenting to me is a practically untrackable mess. I can read 3 or 4 of the strictly chronological un-nested format in the time it takes me to make sense of a single thread in the nested comment format. My time is my most valuable possession so I do not like the nested format.
John
Have we run out of “good” weather yet? There are hundreds of millions of morons asking that question daily, it seems… That’s the root of the “climate disruption” meme. And they don’t even need any evidence – they just FEEL it happening…
Is the Shale Revolution a ‘Ponzi Scheme’ or the End of Peak Oil?
reason.com | Ronald Bailey | September 19, 2014
A good piece with lots of hyperlinks. It briefly sketches out the history of the technology an resource estimates.
The answer to the title is “neither.” Shale oil and shale gas are not Ponzi schemes. Real work, real reserves, real value. But Shale oil production will not eliminate the day of peak oil. It will delay it a bit, but it will make the decline gradual in both volume and increases in price.