Posted on 10/29/2005 11:59:11 AM PDT by Matchett-PI
Babylon (Iraq): Huge oil reserves. Russia: Huge oil reserves. Rome: still exists as a united Europe with a direct ancestry to the original Rome. Germany: Still one of the richest countries on earth with enormous coal reserves.
I would suggest your theory needs a little tweaking. Better to look at the political and human reasons those empires you site collapsed than to make a blanket statement about there demise as related to energy production.
See post #20:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1511695/posts?page=20#20
Excerpt: "...Ausubel sees that trend continuing until carbon-based fuels are eliminated by the end of the century.
He expects that carbon dioxide concentrations, now about 360 parts per million (ppm), will peak at 450 ppm. That is 100 ppm less than the U.N.’s sometimes stated goal of "stabilizing" carbon dioxide at 550 ppm, and it would happen without draconian increases in energy prices or the creation of global bureaucracies aimed at regulating the atmosphere. ..." [snip]
"..Most Empires through out history collapsed because of a failed or dwindling natural resource" ~ jec41
Doomsday Is Cancelled Until Further Notice: A Review of Predictions and Prophecies .... [succinct excerpts]
"...there has always been profound pessimism available at the wholesale and retail level, from thinkers such as Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, 1918), down to the streetcorner preacher warning sinners of the imminent apocalypse. And indeed, the persistence of apocalyptic visions throughout history and across cultures suggests that human beings are endowed with eschatological chromosomes.
The year 1000 was marked by widespread anxiety that the world would come to an end. Thousands of people awaited the coming of the year 1000 on mountain topsrather like Californians did for the harmonic convergence back in 1987.
The decline of religious consciousness has not ended this deep tendency in human social thought; rather it has secularized it. We now find many sources of apocalyptic portents, as we shall discuss in a moment.
This is what makes the outlook of the year 1900 so striking. In a nutshell, social thinkers of every variety, and in every modern nation, thought the 20th century would experience the full flowering of the moral and scientific promise of the Enlightenment. The year 1900 was, after all, the cusp of the age known in America as the "Progressive Era." The German philosopher Ernst Haeckel published a book in 1899 entitled The Riddle of the Universe, in which he argued that science would soon solve all of mankind’s most pressing problems, and, most important, eliminate war. In America, President Theodore Roosevelt predicted that the 20th century would be a century of "moral progress" to match our rapidly advancing material progress. He had lots of company. A few far-sighted thinkers even tried to envision what the year 2000 would be like.
One of the most popular and best-selling futuristic visions of the late 19th century was Edward Bellamy’s futurist novel Looking Backward. Bellamy predicted a benign socialist world would exist by 2000, and it seemed very plausible at the time.
Looking Backward sold millions of copies when it was published in 1888, and was translated into more than 20 languages. Hundreds of "Bellamy Clubs," a precursor of the Fabian Societies, sprung up all over the United States. In form, Looking Backward was an updating of Rip Van Winkle, in which the narrator, Julian West, awakens to find himself 110 years in the future, in the Boston of the year 2000. There he describes the utopia of a hierarchical society in which the entire population is organized like an army, all means of production are state-owned, and there is complete equality of income.
Most astonishing of all, in the utopia of Looking Backward, private transactions of any kind are frowned upon. "What if someone wanted to buy something from someone else?," West asks his host. "Before the nation could even think of honoring any such transfer as you speak of, it would be bound to inquire into all the circumstances of the transaction, so as to be able to guarantee its absolute equity," he is told. "Human nature must have changed very much," West concludes. ...
Mankind has always tried to predict the future in various ways. Once upon a time shamans used to predict the future by reading chicken entrails. Today, we still read entrails, but we call them computer printouts. ....
Most of the doomsday predictions are based on a very simple fallacy of assuming that current trends will continue unless something dramatic is done about them, by the ubiquitous but never defined "we" or "they."
This neglects Herb Stein’s first law: If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. This is true of population bombs, energy crises, budget deficits, crime rates, and so forth. ....
The radical egalitarian impulse that was always at the heart of utopian thinking lives on, but today it manifests itself mostly in the group-based politics of anger and resentment, and through narrow issues such as "comparable worth"an idea that appears in Looking Backward. Instead of trying to move people with grand visions of utopia, the egalitarian agenda today is more akin to trench warfare, with small bits of ground being contested in the arena of public policy.
As Hayek presciently reminded us in The Constitution of Liberty, the most potent threats to liberty come through small administrative measures. That’s why there’s still a lot of work for us to do, and why we must gird ourselves for the inevitable ideological contests of the 21st century." ~ Steven Hayward - Doomsday Is Cancelled Until Further Notice: A Review of Predictions and Prophecies for the Year 2000 http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/enviro/doomsday.html
*
Hillary Clinton Proposes Massive Energy Tax
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1509583/posts?page=29#29
bttt
Of course, this analysis omits the cost of the existing infrastructure and labor, presumably also included in the costs of obtaining the coal. That is a hard nut, because it is not as friable as money - or energy for that matter. And owners will often operate a money loosing infrastructure (the airlines, LOL) for a long time before being extinguished.
I suspect that Ausubel is being overly pessimistic. He is not even considering the vast resources available to us in this one, small solar system. The future is bright, if we can defeat our own predilections for doom, defeat, and unreasoning fear of the unknown.
Which ones? Rome did not. Ottmans did not. The Holy Roman did not. The Byzanitan did not. Austria Hungry did not. Britian's did not. The Soviets did not. Russia's did not. Macadonia's did not. In fact, I cannot think of one that did.
And how do you measure what is a resource and what isn't? You can not measure it simply on BTU's or ergs or kilowatt-hours, because a BTU is worth far more where it is needed than where it is in abundance. If BTU's were directly comparable, then the South West deserts would be enormously wealthy, because they receive vast numbers of BTU's in the form of sunshine.
The way to compare and measure the resources is with monetary units such as dollars. That is the beauty and the major advantage of capitalism and the market economy. It is a way of informing us of what is valuable and what is not.
Trying to figure out whether or not something is worth doing by comparing BTU's is the quintessential vanity of the central planners, and that is one of the major reasons empires failed in the end, most obviously the Soviets, as the latest example.
"..I have hope for a better informed populace in the future..." ~ marktwain
This is what we're up against, however:
Thomas Sowell: "Us" or "Them"
Creator's Syndicate ^ | October 25, 2005 | Dr. Thomas Sowell
Posted on 10/25/2005 5:24:39 AM EDT by RWR8189
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1508713/posts
A reader recently sent me an e-mail about a woman he had met and fallen for. Apparently the attraction was mutual -- until one fateful day the subject of the environment came up.
She was absolutely opposed to any drilling for oil in Alaska, on grounds of what harm she said it would do to the environment.
He argued that, since oil was going to be drilled for somewhere in the world anyway, was it not better to drill where there were environmental laws to provide at least some kinds of safeguards, rather than in countries where there were none?
That was the end of a beautiful relationship.
Environmentalist true believers don't think in terms of trade-offs and cost-benefit analysis. There are things that are sacred to them. Trying to get them to compromise on those things would be like trying to convince a Moslem to eat pork, if it was only twice a week.
Compromise and tolerance are not the hallmarks of true believers. What they believe in goes to the heart of what they are. As far as true believers are concerned, you are either one of Us or one of Them.
The man apparently thought that it was just a question of which policy would produce which results. But many issues that look on the surface like they are just about which alternative would best serve the general public are really about being one of Us or one of Them -- and this woman was not about to become one of Them.
Many crusades of the political left have been misunderstood by people who do not understand that these crusades are about establishing the identity and the superiority of the crusaders.
T.S. Eliot understood this more than half a century ago when he wrote: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."
In this case, the man thought he was asking the woman to accept a certain policy as the lesser of two evils, when in fact he was asking her to give up her sense of being one of the morally anointed.
This is not unique to our times or to environmentalists. Back during the 1930s, in the years leading up to World War II, one of the fashionable self-indulgences of the left in Britain was to argue that the British should disarm "as an example to others" in order to serve the interests of peace.
When economist Roy Harrod asked one of his friends whether she thought that disarming Britain would cause Hitler to disarm, her reply was: "Oh, Roy, have you lost all your idealism?"
In other words, it was not really about which policy would produce what results. It was about personal identification with lofty goals and kindred souls.
The ostensible goal of peace was window-dressing. Ultimately it was not a question whether arming or disarming Britain was more likely to deter Hitler. It was a question of which policy would best establish the moral superiority of the anointed and solidify their identification with one another.
"Peace" movements are not judged by the empirical test of how often they actually produce peace or how often their disarmament tempts an aggressor into war. It is not an empirical question. It is an article of faith and a badge of identity.
Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace -- not for actually producing peace but for being part of what was called "the peace process," based on fashionable notions that were common bonds among members of what are called "peace movements."
Meanwhile, nobody suggested awarding a Nobel Prize for peace to Ronald Reagan, just because he brought the nuclear dangers of a decades-long cold war to an end. He did it the opposite way from how members of "peace movements" thought it should be done.
Reagan beefed up the military and entered into an "arms race" that he knew would bankrupt the Soviet Union if they didn't back off, even though arms races are anathema to members of "peace movements."
The fact that events proved him right was no excuse as far as members of "peace movements" were concerned.
As far as they were concerned, he was not one of Us. He was one of Them.
Yeah, I put about 25K in VGENX about 4 years ago thinking the supply of oil is finite. I thought I was taking a bit of a risk. Boy did I undervalue my thinking. I should have put 250K in said fund.
"..The way to compare and measure the resources is with monetary units such as dollars. That is the beauty and the major advantage of capitalism and the market economy. It is a way of informing us of what is valuable and what is not..." ~ marktwain
Capitalism is the only morally mature economic system:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1352736/posts
You are right, if it takes 100 BTUs of coal to make 10 BTUs of gasoline, and as a bulk user, I want gas, I'll pay for the 100 BTUs of coal, and I will bid up the price eventually, to be equal to 10 BTUs of oil. However, the coal burning electric utility will outbid me, because the 100 btus of coal will be more useful to it than the 10 btus of gas. They would eventually bid the same amount for btus delivered in oil, natural gas, hydrogen, or coal, all other things being equal (pollution, capital investment, etc.)
Very good timing. I wish I had had the sense to do that, but I was still viewing energy stocks as a boom-bust cyclic deal with a marginal return. I caught on late last year though, and caught a few flyer's. BR, XEC (through MHR), MSSN and VLO gave me nice returns this year, though May and October were painful.
Leave the money to the money industry, it fluctuates too much to be meaningful in another industry. Use units of coal when mining coal. Fifty years ago it took a carload of coal to mine 100 carloads of coal. Now it takes a carload of coal to mine 50 carloads of coal. When it takes one carload of coal to mine a carload of coal, then coal will cease to be a resource. Still useful, but not a resource.
Veblen notes the difference between product and profit. Many assume money is unchanging, but in fact it changes with every breeze. Profit comes from observing the rules of money. Resource is a different concept.
If we recycle and breed the Nuke fuel we have we have fuel for about 500 years: if we don't - about 50 to 100 years. Breeding doesn't cost anything, proving your point.
Nuke plants have been designed to provide heat to crack the oil shale. So breeding Nuke fuel could provide energy to produce oil for almost nothing.
The leftist Democrats know this, and that's why they have always been anti-nuke. They thrive on chaos and destruction; that is all they have to offer!
bttt
Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but the reason that US production peaked was an artificial roadblock to oil production created by the Greenies.
Hubbert's prediction is worthless when framed in those terms.
This proves my "high rank vs. low rank" argument. Try burning Wyoming coal in your car...
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