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And it can only get worse as these finite reserves of oil are consumed. What is the end game we are heading towards? Surely it is nuclear war or nuclear terrorism. We cannot tolerate where this is heading, yet we seem to ignore the clear signposts.

This is why I said a rise in the price of oil is a good thing.

Hard to beat this. Don't even need to invent the data - congress is well aware of this one.

even though the government with which the treaty was signed no longer existed?

There is always a difference between the spirit and letter of the law. The intent of the ABM treaty was to stop nuclear prolifertion and hold the status quo of power. While the Soviet Union has been dissolved, Russia and it's friends still have ICBMs in silos - and if their effectiveness is reduced, alternatives WILL be found. Nations do not have friends.

The agreement to not militarize space is supposed to represent a understanding amoung nations that our conflicts here on this planet should not exend elsewhere. Perhaps this is a naive view of the world, but I'd like to think that others might share it. The USA is in a position to militarize and dominate the theatre of space; At least until the LGM decide to show off their superiority in weapons.

Never forget, that this is a slippery slope - once it starts, it -will- end with nuclear weapons in space pointing down on us. I don't want to have to explain to my kids that there has to be MIRV orbital warheads aimed at the planet because we're really miserable to each other. Space is the last hope left for man working together as a species, and once it is gone, I fear it is gone forever.

It is likely the inevitable outcome of the USA's emerging world dominance. It will accellerate the development of (american) space initiatives. The USA will be making many moves in the next 10-20 years to solidify it's military power before world oil reserves become a problem. Having a monopoly on the heavy hydrogen reserves on the moon may be a justification down the road as well. Alas, I am an engineer, and not a military strategist.

My $0.02cdn.

In the 1950s, oil producers discovered about fifty barrels of oil for every barrel invested in drilling and pumping. Today, the figure is only about five for one. Sometime around 2005, that figure will become one for one. In other words, even if the price of oil reaches $500 a barrel, it wouldn't make energy sense to look for new oil in the United States after 2005 because it would consume more energy than it would recover.

The increasing energy cost of oil sets up a positive feedback loop: since oil is used directly or indirectly in everything, as the energy costs of oil increase, the energy costs of everything else increase too -- including other forms of energy. For example, oil provides about 50% of the fuel used in coal extraction.[7]

Immutable energy laws tell us that a growing economy must eventually consume more energy than it can buy. When America spends more-than-one unit of energy to produce enough goods and services to buy one unit of energy, it will be physically impossible to cover the overhead (money is irrelevant). At that point, America's economic machine is "out of gas". Forever!

"Instead of being a condescending ass"

That's a very touching thought. I should be a more sensitive IT guy and empathize with users' lack of technical knowledge and understanding...nah, I'll be an ass.

Sigh. Have you never heard of comparative advantage?

Less methane around to heat things up....this is A Good Thing for sure. Is Global Warming a real problem? The evidence that it is a problem is becoming undeniable. Even though the scientific evidence is not 100% certain, there is a great deal of evidence that global warming is happening, and the scientific community has made this clear many times over. See here and here for references. Much of the so-called uncertainty in this area (so far as the public and public policy is concerned) originates from the work of "scientists" such as S. Fred Singer, who are funded in large measure by oil companies and the PACs that represent them in Washington. A close look reveals that thier work has not stood up under intensive peer review, and is thus not taken seriously by the scientific community as a whole; Singer's work is useful only in that it gives industry and thier pet politicians a way to keep the wool pulled over the public's eyes.

A more pressing problem that receives far too little attention is the issue of overpopulation. The ecological, economic, and social problems that will be caused by the uncontrolled growth of the human population have the potential to make global warming look like a walk in the park.

.....just my $0.02

Less methane around to heat things up....this is A Good Thing for sure. Is Global Warming a real problem? The evidence that it is a problem is becoming undeniable. Even though the scientific evidence is not 100% certain, there is a great deal of evidence that global warming is happening, and the scientific community has made this clear many times over. See here and here for references. Much of the so-called uncertainty in this area (so far as the public and public policy is concerned) originates from the work of "scientists" such as S. Fred Singer, who are funded in large measure by oil companies and the PACs that represent them in Washington. A close look reveals that thier work has not stood up under intensive peer review, and is thus not taken seriously by the scientific community as a whole; Singer's work is useful only in that it gives industry and thier pet politicians a way to keep the wool pulled over the public's eyes.

A more pressing problem that receives far too little attention is the issue of overpopulation. The ecological, economic, and social problems that will be caused by the uncontrolled growth of the human population have the potential to make global warming look like a walk in the park.

.....just my $0.02

The reality will become apparent in the next 10-20 years, not 50. The first world will not feel the effects until the 50 year or more barrier because we have the military power that will guarantee a supply of the limited oil reserves. Enjoy the oil while it lasts.

The future is not optimistic no matter what you think the source of oil is. Some might say that it is the best kept secret in Washington.

The reality will become apparent in the next 10-20 years, not 50. The first world will not feel the effects until the 50 year or more barrier because we have the military power that will guarantee a supply of the limited oil reserves. Enjoy the oil while it lasts.

The future is not optimistic no matter what you think the source of oil is. Some might say that it is the best kept secret in Washington.

we will have used all the available oil in about 200 years.

The truth is a a little more grim than that.

All TV advertising is using devious techniques comparable to subliminal advertising anyway. More info here.

Daniel

Maybe advertisers will be forced to think up *gasp horror* interesting adverts that people will actually want to watch! What a concept... Brainwashing could maybe not be as easy to achieve anymore??...

Daniel

This tends to take some of the wind out of their arguments since most people will (correctly) conclude, "Well, temperatures have been rising and falling since the beginning of the planet. Are we really causing it?"

While it is correct to conclude that climactic fluctuation occurs naturally in the absence of anthropogenic influence, it is extremely foolish for us to thus conclude that the large quantities of greenhouse gases that we are releasing into the atmosphere are having no effect upon global temperatures. It is well established that we are currently in the midst of a warming trend, particularly in artic and subartic regions. Even if you stipulate that this warming would have occured in the absence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, you cannot ignore the fact that these emissions would excacerbate the problem.

Yes, but most of what global warmer's use for data is surface readings from the last 100-150 years based on "direct observations." That's far too little data to make any conclusions.

This is incorrect. The scientifically accepted models of global warming are based both on directly observed climactic data and paleoclimatic data.

It is worth noting at this point that even British Petroleum has released a statement on the subject of rapid global warming which acknowledges its exsistance and probable roots in greenhouse gas emissions.

There is no shortage of energy. There will never by a shortage of energy until the Sun goes nova...

Sorry but that is a ridiculous statement. A shortage is when demand out strips supply. While large amounts of solar energy are incident on the Earth the present demand is truely staggering. US Energy Consumption in 1998 was 94.27 Quadrillion BTU or 9.945x10^19 Joules. 80 percent of it came from fossil fuels. This is effectively solar energy that has been collected and stored by plants over millions of years and concentrated by geology over billions of years. Once it is gone it is gone for ever and we will be forced to survive (on try to anyway) on much less concentrated energy sources.

Solar power isn't even an energy source at the moment. More energy in fossil fuels and human effort is used to make a solar panel than it will ever collect during its lifetime. Economics is no more connected with the real world than Monopoly. The only true measure of an energy source is the ratio of the energy it produces over the energy expended to get it. Oil runs out as an energy source when it takes more energy to get it out of the ground than it will yield when burned. That ratio has fallen from around 100 to less than 10 as the most accessible oil has been tapped.

Not all energy sources are the same. Even physically indentical barrels of oil are not the same. A 1930's barrel of crude from Texas that shot out of the ground when a small well was drilled is a vastly superior energy source to present day oil than must pumped up or forced up by blowing steam down because the net energy yielded is much higher. Globally the amount of energy produced per capita is already falling and has been since 1979. Soon overall energy production will start falling as well.

Once it does start falling there isn't going to be the spare energy available to invest in building vast numbers of wind turbines or solar panels. Renewable energy involves a huge up front investment in energy that is only payed back if at all over decades. Even with technological improvements it is never going to have the 100:1 energy return ratios oil had and it will at the very best allow a steady state. The energy production growth of 8 percent a year seen through most of this century will be a thing of the past. Since modern argiculture is so dependent on oil and as many as 5 billion people are alive today only because of the extra food mechanized agriculture allows the future does not look all that rosey.

Only an idiot would believe that windmills and solar panels can run bulldozers, elevators, steel mills, glass factories, electric heat, air conditioning, aircraft, automobiles, etc.

Oil production will finally stop when the cost of extracting the remaining oil exceeds market price.

No, oil extraction will stop shortly after the amount of energy it takes to extract a barrel of oil exceeds the amount of energy gained from burning a barrel of oil. After this point, oil wells become net energy sinks. The amount of money doesn't matter at this point - eventually, you will run out of energy. Energy, not money, is the limiting factor.

Dieoff.org has some depressing statistics.

...according to this site!

Check out dieoff.org and have a look at the future.
Better start saving for that supersize dynamo...

Speaking of The Tragedy of the Commons. Guess what? This argument applies to Internet email, too. The individual benefit a marketer gets by sending a single piece of spam is a relatively high positive number, and the impact of this extra piece of email on the world is a very small negative number. Therefore, spammers will continue to send more email, until eventually the commons collapses. In this case, perhaps the Internet will not be able to handle the load, or maybe people will stop using email for communication. But the collapse will come.

What can we do about it? The freedom to send any email must be restricted somehow. You can't have unrestricted freedom without the eventual collapse of the commons.

Reed believes that as more and more of radio's basic signal-processing functions are defined in software, rather than etched into hardware, radios will be able to adapt as conditions change, even after they are in use. Reed sees a world of "polite" radios that will negotiate new conversational protocols and ask for assistance from their radio peers.

Radio's basic signal function defined in software? Sure, "Maximize your bandwidth with our new RadioBooster!!!" (at the cost of your neighbors).

While this guy might have a point - the current FCC policies on RF spectrum might be a bit outdated, I would be careful with deregulation here.

--totally agree with you on the energy side being a major factor in successful industrialization. One of the reasons I am convinced the 21st century will be the era of the "resource wars" primarily over oil, fresh water, and arable land that doesn't require massive irrigation to be productive. I am quite pessimistic over this. I think that some smaller wars coming up have a very good chance of getting to a "major" level because of population pressures and demand for just *more* of everything and oil still being so necessary.

Link to a website with a plethora of energy related articles/editorials

Note, this website definetly has a "doomer" type bent, but there's a lot of data here.

Rapid decline of oil production will start around 2012. The growth of an economy only works because we have lots of easy energy around.

If current consumption trends continue, the world will be having a serious energy problem. The world isn't going to end - we'll just start burning coal for electricity. So much for the environment, though. This is a direct effect of the current price of gasoline - high consumption. Much more effort should be put into higher efficiency alternatives and new means to generate large quantities of mobile energy.

I have no problem with people driving SUVs, but you should have to PAY for that luxury. I pay about $0.90/l (~$4/gallon) for premium in Canada. We are an net oil exporting nation, unlike the US. I would be much more confortable with a price about twice that - but how many americans are going to handle a $8/gallon price tag at the pump? That'd be no big deal with a 80mpg hybrid.

What does ANY of this have to do with the topic? I'd put big bets on technologies that allow for teleconferncing, remote work, etc. Telecommunications are likely going to become very valuable as they allow for productive work without much worker mobility. Likewise, technologies related to the more efficient combustion of energy are going to take off. The current model of north american society, commuting, etc - is going to end. It is just not sustainable.

Bonus to living here though - the US military machine will make sure the effects are felt everywhere else first. Another observation is Russia holds some of the largest untapped reserves of petroleum.

But hey, don't panic.

Anyway, I think it IS likely to cause spontaneous stripping. People are more readily programmed by television than you think. It puts you into an alpha state. (Boy is it hard to find reasonably reputable links about that!) As such, you are more suggestible (it is similar to the state achieved during hypnosis, though with somewhat different results here, we hope.)

Now, am I saying that guys are going to run around raping people because they see more porn? No. In fact, some studies have shown just the opposite. If you don't make people feel guilty about sexual urges they're more likely to beat off and get all that tension out of their system. Then they can just beat women up instead of raping them, like good little Americans. Hey, it works for football stars.

Will there be more unprotected sex? I'm sure there will be more sex, and a certain percentage of it is unprotected. So you could say yes, but probably not. Then again, if you make people horny enough they sometimes skip the protection and move right onto the beast with two backs phase of the evening.

Is this a case where the strongest no longer survive?

Was that ever the case? Are you stronger than a baboon?

Are we on our way to overpopulation?

Yes. See Tragedy of the Commons. "A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero."

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1. The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly + 1.

2. The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decisionmaking herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

Hardin discusses what happens when everyone's individual interests are optimized by exploiting a common -- until the common is destroyed. It's a standard pattern of human behavior, IMHO, and is useful in analyzing any situation involving something held in common. I use it for software architecture ideas, for example.

As usual with Hardin, he brings in diverse topics like game theory, economics, politics, etc.

Take with as large a grain of salt as you think appropriate.

Aaaah, a beautiful example of the 'tragedy of the commons'.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that globalisation et al are wrong, as long as you take *all* aspects of it, not only the short-term ones like make-money-fast and the-next-generation-will-solve-this. If you go for a certain approach, take everything including the messy parts, not only the easy gains.

I can think of many reasons why it will

I can think of many reasons why it will

Alternatives don't work. Solar power, you make me laugh. Do you know how much energy it takes to make a solar panel? Do you know how nasty to the environment semiconductor manufacturing is? Are you aware of how inefficient solar power is? You'd need solar panel area near 100 times the land mass of the United States to come close to meeting the energy demands. That's assuming the panel doesn't take more energy to make than it produces!

Windmills are the same problem. You need too many of them all over the landscape to have any benefit. Small scale? Sure. Large scale oil replacement? You are living in a dreamworld. Before you call me a freak, bush supporter, bunny-killing lunatic, or any other choice names the environmental lobby uses instead of numbers, look up some of your own. Hydrogen, biodiesel, and ethanol are not energy sources. They are energy carriers, because it takes more energy to produce them than you get from burning them. If there were huge hydrogen reserves under the earth, that would change.

There are two alternatives: Fission and Fusion, and people would rather burn up oil instead of finding ways to make nuclear power safe, or investigate safe nuclear power (Witness the flames to the cold fusion article awhile here on slashdot, of all places). Nothing else has the energy density.

Huge hydrogen deposits in the earth might be evidence of a higher power, because it will pull our bacon out of the fire. do some research as to the state of the world's petrochemical reserves. Like I said in a previous article, Global Warming won't mean much in a few years, because the oil won't be economically viable any more. Uh-oh!

There isn't that much oil left to burn anyway. Of course, when the oil is done, out comes the coal.. Lofty treaties to limit emissions are doomed by the sad fact there are no good alternatives besides nuclear power, and research into those areas is either non-existant (fission) or outright shunned (cold fusion). Anyone who thinks you can replace the per-day energy consumption of the united states with solar panels and windmills needs a crash course on thermodynamics and a hard look at numbers.

Global warming is the result of a deal with the devil we made for having an industrial society. It's too late to go back now, there's too many people on this planet - 6 billion, or so - and every last one of them wants to live like western europeans and americans.

This sounds like a troll.. but this bitching over Koyoto pisses me off. It won't work. At least Bush has the balls to recognize that, although he hasn't said it outright.

CS nerds might be in a good position to end the recession. We know how to do big simulations and distributed computing and how to mine for data to feed a simulation. We know how to run several simulations in parallel, each representing a different course of economic intervention.

The economy is driven primarily by human actions and decisions. In principle, humans could all agree that recessions are bad, and each tweak our behavior to end the damn thing. Given how much suffering the economy can cause, it seems ridiculous to leave it entirely to chance.

It may turn out that benign interventions are impossible because of conflicts of interest (an individual's own interests dictate behavior that prolongs the recession or injures society, what the economics folks call a tragedy of the commons). But it might at least merit investigation.

My own small effort in this direction appears in my sig.

Basic economics still apply. 802.11 is a "Tragedy of the Commons" waiting to happen.

One of the central points behind Tragedy of the Commons is that given a finite supply of grazing grounds and a competitive environment of farmers grazing on these grounds, an incentive to overgraze is built into the system. Thus the commons for all are destroyed as each farmer maximizes his "share" of the commons to everyone else's detriment. Hardin's essay leaves out the potential for ad-hoc agreement between competing farmers to limit over-use of the commons (without privatization). But most importantly it doesn't even consider the potential for a limitless commons -- that is, one in which the supply in commons is not finite.

This is where Tragedy of the Commons breaks down, Lessig says in The Future of Ideas, his latest work. As Lessig points out, it's a logical fallacy to use Tragedy of the Commons as an analogy to further certain intellectual property rights since there is no limit to the number of times some kinds of IP can be duplicated and distributed. Being a physical object, grass in a commons is in finite supply and subject to the potential for overgrazing. But without artificial barriers (such as copy protection technology) how can one ever over consume to scarcity the supply of digital data such as a software program?

Interesting book.

Cheers,
--Maynard

The commons in old English villages is public land that can be used by all for grazing. It's intent is to create a reserve to be used by townsfolk when their own pasture is lacking, say in times of drought. However, if one villager aquires too many sheep for his land to sustain, then uses the commons to sustain his herd, he will become wealthier than his neighbors since he is raising more sheep than his own land could support. In times of real need, as in a severe drought, all villagers will try to graze their flocks on the commons which has already been depleted by the greedy villager.

The commons will be destroyed by overgrazing, the majority of villagers will lose their flocks & livlihood, but the greedy villager will probably have the most sheep left, since they grazed from the commons longer and both his sheep & his land were in better shape at the start of the drought.

The system works only if the villagers collectivly can bring pressure upon the one abusive individual.

Here's a related link that may say it better than I can.

Garrett Hardin proposed what is to me the same thesis 33 years ago in his paper The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin was proposing a class of problems that had no technical solution, no matter how hard we looked for them, as they were moral problems. Specifically he was talking about growing populations taxing resources, but the analogy is fairly easily applied to "the internet as commons" model.
The 400 lb gorillas of IP are trying to maximise their utility gains from the internet while impacting the utility to others negatively. Good old utilitarianism.
Hardin goes on from there, but it has been a few years since I read the paper so I'm going to breeze through it again. I'm looking forward to picking up this book to see what new thinking it might bring to the analysis.
I'd be interested to hear from Mr. Lessig (as he seems to be posting here) how much his thesis was influenced by Hardin.

device drivers, ip-stack, kernel - all need changing to be tuned to your special hardware and features offered. its not only the hardware that's the value-add, it is the software as well.

Ok, I understand that part of what makes people want to buy your product, and be willing to shell out for the price you ask, is that there is good software for it that makes it do what it's supposed to, and fast. What I don't understand is how releasing the source to that software interferes with adding value. Wouldn't it still add value if people could see the source?

I suppose part of your reluctance to release source would be reluctance to help your competitors. However, if you released your source under the (full, not lesser) GPL, your competitors couldn't use it in their product unless they also released their sources. If that happened, then your industry would be a software sharing utopia... :) OTOH, your competitors could look at the source to see how you do things, and then re-implement the good ideas themselves. There would be nothing illegal about that. The real question here is, how hardware-specific is your value-add? Would you be adding value to your competitors products too, if you released the source? If the answer is yes, then we have an example of the tragedy of the commons, or the so-called prisoner's dilemma. Human nature sucks :(

Imagine that a Canadian oil tanker was dumping crude into the pacific, such that some of it washed ashore in Washington, it would not matter that the ships were bound for Vancouver, the pollution was experienced by the state of Washington, thus if Washington has laws against crude dumping AND the company and or its subsidiaries/partners does business in Washington, they would obviously be liable there (IANAL).

Enter the most interesting case of the genre Doe vs. Unocal another French Connection. In this case some very bad stuff done in Burma by the corrupt military (mostly slave labor to build pipelines) was connected to the French and the French is connected to the hipbone and the hipbone is connected to California - so the class of Burmese slaves is suing Unocal in California for actions of the military in Burma. They have won for now the issue of jurisdiction. Subject to final ruling these cases will mean that International companies will need to comply with the most restrictive rules on human rights, pollution, and speech which are common to the countries in which they choose to operate legitimately. CNN for example may choose to operate illegally in Baghdad - which I believe they did during the gulf war - they don't however _do_ business in Iraq, their Arab broadcasts are based in India and available by satellite. The US has set the precedent in this case - by allowing a suit against a Company in the U.S. for actions outside its borders.

The US court faces a conundrum here for which they only conclusion can be American Hegemony: France cannot fine companies outside its jurisdiction, but it can fine companies inside its jurisdictions for the known behavior of its benefactors/partners/subsidiaries wherever the behaviors occurred and, ala Doe vs. Unocal, Irregardless of the nationality of the afflicted. By simply getting involved, the US has declared itself to have the right to meddle in the affairs of France - by telling France that she hasn't the same right to meddle in the affairs of the US, while simultaneously reserving for itself the right to meddle in the affairs of Burma via the same mechanism. What the world hears: "we can meddle - you can't." That's hegemony.

I believe very strongly that the US court should differ this as a political matter, rather than a legal one, as our legal system does not have jurisdiction on the French system of government. This is not a question of Free Speech - the issue of guilt is not before the court - only the question of jurisdiction and here it would be doublespeak for the U.S. to tell the French they cannot interfere while the U.S. is doing the same thing (indirectly to France) Yahoo should either not do business in France, obey their laws, or build better fences.

"If you do behave as we ask, we will secretly condemn you for a simpleton who can be shamed into standing aside while the rest of us exploit the commons." Garrett Hardin (1968)

Because I put the rights of existing people above the rights of potential future people who don't exist yet.

Don't get me wrong, I want the future to be a nice place, if for no other reason than my son (who actually exists) will be there. Heck, I hope to be there, too. But I don't think we need to go killing off existing people; maybe, just maybe, we should consider limiting our own reproduction instead.

No, it's not easy. My wife wants a bigger family than I do, and it's a source of some tension. But I do think it's irresponsible to have a huge family these days. Understandable but irresponsible.

There is no propulation[sic] problem! There is a resource distribution problem.

Okay, quoting Dieoff.org, "Approximately 99% of the world food supply is derived from terrestrial ecosystems with the percentage from aquatic systems shrinking (Kendall and Pimentel, 1994). The availability of arable land at world level is less than 0.27 ha per capita, lower than it has ever been in history, and much less than the average of 0.7 ha per capita in the United States (WRI, 1994). Note that 0.5 ha per capita has been suggested as the minimum requirement for a diverse diet of animal and plant food products (Lal, 1989)."

How do we get enough food these days? Fertilizers! How do we make them? Fossil fuels!

We are using up fossil fuels faster than they are being replaced. Obviously, we will run out of them someday. The energy in fossil fuels ultimately comes from the sun. We are using more energy today than actually arrives from the sun. We will run out of fossil fuels eventually.

So what will we do to make the fertilizers to grow the food to feed everyone? If you're so concerned about people of the future, why aren't you working on this mathematically certain problem they will face?

Just remember, the life you abort might have grown up to save yours.

Who said anything about abortion? Unless you think life begins at erection...

The piece is not very thought-out, or it is designed to fool (an eighth grader). The Antioch College comparison is an obvious straw man, set up to be knocked down.

If we take away the property rights of privacy, do we make it a public good? If so, it's subject to the Tragedy of the Commons. Want that? That's what I thought you'd say.

Unfortunatly this is just wrong.

a) Estimates for reserves of oil and gas are usually severly flawed and horribly inaccurate.

i)Is USGS 2000 Assessment Reliable?
ii)Reserve Growth: Technological Progress, or Bad Reporting and Bad Arithmetic?

b) As demand for gas increases its true we could just drill more wells, but all the easy stuff is gone. It gets more expensive and more difficult to extract hydrocarbon resources from the ground and therefore prices remain high.

i)What goes up must come down: when will it peak?

Unfortunatly this is just wrong.

a) Estimates for reserves of oil and gas are usually severly flawed and horribly inaccurate.

i)Is USGS 2000 Assessment Reliable?
ii)Reserve Growth: Technological Progress, or Bad Reporting and Bad Arithmetic?

b) As demand for gas increases its true we could just drill more wells, but all the easy stuff is gone. It gets more expensive and more difficult to extract hydrocarbon resources from the ground and therefore prices remain high.

i)What goes up must come down: when will it peak?

One thing that strikes me when browsing the 'current research' mentioned above is that the main point of reducing our use of fossil fuels is not (or maybe, shouldn't be) to decrease CO2 emmission, but to avoid wasting precious energy. I would suggest a look at dieoff for some, imo, interesting graphs and references.

Thanks for responding :) I just want to clarify your clarification. I found the Hardin Science article. What he describes as the tragedy of the commons (search for "herdsman" on that page) is exactly what I described in the traffic jam example I cited. I think you were trying to make the point that medieval cow grazing commons did not fail for this reason. IANAExpert, but we see that same sort of market failure with overfishing parts of the ocean, overgrazing in the West, etc., and I would find it hard to believe that it wouldn't affect cow grazing commons also if they did not first fail for the reasons you gave.

So what are they doing about it?

There are two issues here; firstly that the US population are living an unsustainable lifestyle that is destroying the planet's ability to support life; and secondly, that what benefits the US may not benefit other countries.

It is generally agreed that the best way to stop global warming is to lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; unless we do, we could see the end of the rainforests. Yet the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases is dragging its heels over constructive action because it would damage US industry.

The overall mean surface temperature is predicted to rise by 3 degrees C over the next century; this would mean an environmental preservation bill totalling trillions of dollars, not to mention the partial destruction of low-lying countries like Egypt and the Netherlands and cities like Manhattan.

If, as New Scientist reports this week, global warming 'turns off' the North Atlantic Drift, the mean temperatures in Europe are going to start resembling those in Siberia; which will mean the productivity and fertility of Europe will be badly hit. As a Briton, I'm not exactly thrilled by this possibility!

If the economy of a country is ruined by global warming, it seems only reasonable to press for compensation on the world stage; which means that the largest producers of greenhouse gases and consumers of energy will be making the largest payout.

Compare energy usage among the following five countries;

Electricity consumption per capita

US 13477 kWh
Japan 7523 kWh
France 6966 kWh
UK 5525 kWh
Russia 5397 kWh
(Source: CIA)

It should be pretty obvious that the US is producing rather more than its fair share of carbon dioxide. I'm not pretending that the US is the only overconsumer; but the US consumes a *lot* more than it should - and this isn't sustainable in the long term

>...their overall outlook about the future
>remains optimistic. And technology is the reason.

Technology can be used to provide incalculable benefits; true; the whole of humanity benefits from increased knowledge in fields like medicine and meteorology; but can technology save us from the faulty assumption that we can go on consuming ever-greater amounts of non-renewable natural resources in the hope that we will develop a technofix that will solve the problem.

Necessity is the mother of invention, but there are limits to what you can do. Our entire world runs on a base of non-renewable resources; and we have no workable plans to provide a substitute as yet. It is Panglossian to insist that there's a bright new future up ahead when we've consumed half of the world's estimated reserves of natural resources since World War I and have no real contingency plans in place.

I write this on a machine made from processed oil and silicon and metals; it runs using power generated from burning fossil fuels and the metals were dug out of the ground using fossil fuels. I'm one of the privileged few who can do this. But is it really justifiable to produce more and more computers and assorted gadgetry if we are using scarce resources but aren't adding to the sum assets of humanity by doing so?

Is technology only to be used to bolster the lifestyle of the few who are already rich; or should the free exchange of information be made the platform for building a better life for everyone; a democratic, open and sustainable way of life?

Gideon Hallett

Oil isn't just about getting your cars going. It is the basis of our entire existence on this planet. Why do we have food surpluses? Because of massive use of oil-based fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides (all of which are becoming less and less effective; food supply growth has been slowing relative to population growth for some time now). There is no other energy source of the same quality and of the same usefulness as oil. Barring fusion (I notice that Arthur C. Clarke's predictions seem all to hinge on the discovery of cheap cold fusion in 2002!) there are presently no solutions on the horizon (and even fusion won't grow the food we need). Read up on http://dieoff.org... Lot's of very well researched info...