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'Carbon Bubble' Could Spark Global Financial Crisis, Study Warns (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The existence of a "carbon bubble" -- assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use. Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world. Instead, the authors' detailed simulations found the demand drop would take place even if major nations undertake no new climate policies, or reverse some previous commitments. That is because advances in technologies for energy efficiency and renewable power, and the accompanying drop in their price, have made low-carbon energy much more economically and technically attractive.
That's just a guess.
For many of you, this slump will happen right before you retire, crushing your savings and forcing you to stay in the working world, with now-shittier pay and even fewer job prospects.
But you are the lucky ones.
For me, it will happen just a few years after I have already retired, let my skills rust and myself age to the point of being unemployable....now with no passive income to speak of and no job prospects at all. And the costly medical issues that come with age.
The world is an unkind place.
Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world.
This dangerous trend can and will be stopped: We will use a combination of tariffs, executive orders and obscure WWII-era federal statutes to nationalize the energy sector and stamp out this "change" nonsense, ensuring that fossil fuel jobs in key voting districts will endure for decades to come!
Dont worry, peak oil should cancel it out nicely ;)
(for the idiots, yes, joking, get a sense of humor.....)
In a 4,5 billion $ pipeline... kill me now plz
[($)]
It seems as though our vaunted financial indicators must be...a trifle off...in some way if a combination of cheaper energy efficiency measures and increase in availability of energy sources cheaper than the current low cost options would have negative effects on the economy.
How do you do that? The cost of a fair amount of energy(and often a lot of petrochemicals that will presumably be cheaper if less demand for using them as fuel means lower cost for purchasing them as feedstocks) is baked into pretty much every good and service imaginable. What sort of ghastly mistake does it take to turn "basically everything has become cheaper to produce" into a financial crisis?
I've read that a mix of lower Energy Reruns On Investment (EROI) I.E higher energy inputs to extract carbon fuels (one barrel of light crude equivalent) and lower ore grades for mining raw materials (more energy to move more rock for less ore) will cause the bubble to burst eventually.
But the true wildcard is the adoption or non carbon energy sources and how much of a market share it will take from carbon fuel sources.
Worse case scenario, carbon fuel EROI will be very low I.E high extraction costs. In a market where carbon fuel prices are trending lower due to drop in market share to green energy!
In a situation like this investors won't put money into oil/gas or mining companies!
if you want to see the effects of dropping oil prices look at Venezuela. Yeah, some of those wounds were self inflicted, but the big issue was the sudden drop in oil prices pulling the rug out from under them (plus a drought shutting down their hydro electric dam, folks forget how small they are, that was a big deal).
Now, imagine what's gonna happen when the price of oil gets low enough that the middle eastern countries can't afford to keep up their militaries and their social welfare programs. Don't forget that most of these countries are crazy religious and several of them have big arms and nukes.
The sane thing to do is to provide aid to modernize these countries. Instead we've been putting sanctions on a lot of these countries. We're doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing, and it's exactly what we've always done as a species. I don't have an answer because it comes down to conniving assholes taking advantage of large groups of people who aren't very bright, and I don't have an answer for that.
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You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
So that would be like the economic disasters that came about when people started burning coal for steam power or oil for the internal combustion engine, And electrification destroyed the worlds economy ?
Heat pumps are not particularly economical. Geothermal or heat storage are better. In the extereme low termperatures of the American plains and intermountain West heat pumps are all but useless. They work best in mild to moderate climates.
Saudi Arabia has been investing in nuclear power as well. Electric vehicles are only useful in reducing domestic use of oil if they have sources of electricity that do not depend on burning oil to produce. I know that people will claim that electric cars will use less oil per mile even if the oil is burned to produce electricity, because a central power plant is more efficient in converting oil burned to miles traveled. You know what burns even less oil per mile than an electric vehicle charged from an oil fired power plant? One charged from nuclear power.
I know that Saudi Arabia has lots of sun, and is building solar collectors to produce electricity. They did the math just like anyone else can do, solar power will not provide the electricity they need. The only solution they have is to build nuclear power or face an impending energy crisis.
Right now Saudi Arabia burns 1/3rd of the oil they produce to meet domestic energy needs. Whatever they don't burn domestically they can sell to foreign markets. While electric cars are great in reducing oil burned for transportation there is no alternative right now for making planes fly. When it comes to shipping there have been three modes of power that have been shown successful at some point in the past, wind, oil, and nuclear fission. Wind powered shipping hasn't been profitable for about a century now. Oil fired shipping is the norm, and will likely remain so for some time. There's been experimentation in civilian ships powered by nuclear fission in the past and the results were mixed. Military ships powered by a nuclear reactor are obviously a thing but the cost/benefit calculation on that is very different.
Electric cars and solar panels will get us only so far. Barring some leap in technology the future looks bright for nuclear power to take over for when oil gets too expensive. This switch to nuclear power will happen at some point. It will be because oil prices get high enough to exceed the cost of producing energy from nuclear reactors, or because we've advanced nuclear fission technology to the point its price fell to below that from oil. I expect both will be a factor in the switch over.
Oh, and as best I can tell many energy companies have been focusing on one kind of energy to produce. The big oil companies did at one time invest a lot into solar power but that had problems. One problem is that making solar collectors and drilling for oil called for very different skill sets and markets. This meant solar power tended to distract from oil production or oil production distracted from making solar collectors, its difficult for any one company to be good at both. Another problem was more political. Governments did not like the idea of companies getting a monopoly on energy, so companies that in the past only focused on drilling for oil would have to defend their practice of buying up the competition. This was also a political problem for investors and customers. Customers would accuse oil companies of holding up the competition by holding patents and other intellectual property for making solar collectors. Investors also saw a company that was developing solar power and oil as a bad investment because their investments would be devalued if either oil or solar power took a dive, they preferred holding stock in one or the other.
We'll see BP advertise itself as being "Beyond Petroleum", as one example, but they are still focusing on liquid fuels, like ethanol and bio-diesel. Even so the haters will simply claim such investments by BP and other companies that deal in petroleum is just "greenwashing". Well, haters are going to hate. Such investments don't gain them any favors from the anti-oil crowd and bring scrutiny from government regulators.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Speaking of bubbles that are going to burst...
Agreed. She won't be tempted to bring home any of that gas station sushi for supper.
The problem with Clean, ATOMIC Energy was that it was only fun when the US gov was asking for a nuclear weapons production line out the side of the nuclear plant.
The cost to design Clean, ATOMIC Energy was not a low cost.
That ATOMIC energy then had to sell for less than hydro, coal, oil, gas, later solar and wind to stay in demand.
Then the US fuel cycle was different and had to look after its waste on site.
All the new security, storage, upgrades, spare parts, new computers, next germination of staff with security clearances.
Finding the nuclear weapons experts to design busy "work" to hide the US nuclear weapons production lines from the UN.
Finding people to buy/design a part for a 40 year old system. Having other experts to see if the new part will last 40 years.
Then covering the costs of closing down a nuclear power plant. Cleaning up. Storing the years of waste.
Getting gov approval to run for another 40 years. But the cracks then need to be fixed as the plant falls apart.
The money is just not in the nuclear power without the hidden profit of the US needing new nuclear weapons for decades.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
China goes coal, solar, hydro, nuclear. Coal. Coal. More coal.
They are Communist. They don't have to care.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
No. He expects it to negatively effect the financial world which has a lot riding on the traditional energy users. Too big to fail is such due to the impact the failure itself has on the economy. Industry itself will be doing just fine as will the general economy. The fewer job prospects isn't really anything to do with the number of jobs as much as the competition.
Also your comparisons to the switch to coal and oil isn't quite fair. The coal and oil for its most part provided new opportunities rather than replacing existing ones. Buggy whip manufacturers aside the world economy wasn't propped up by people selling horses and hay. The same can not be said for the trillions of of dollars sitting in the oil industry. We are talking about active replacement / destruction of industries as the end goal now. Expect it to be quite different from the steam age.
But the source of electricity can change. The significant breakthrough is moving to EV. The rest is "phase ".
>when oil gets too expensive ...
Solar and wind are already the cheapest, and are STILL falling in price. Nuclear, however
Traditional energy sources are predicted to drop in value, as many things will have moved to using alternative energy sources. By 2035 i imagine fossil fuel cars will no longer be in production, with fuel being available as a niche for classic car enthusiasts.
So sure you might be able to buy gasoline cheaply, but it won't be of any use to most people. Most industry similarly will have moved on to newer sources of energy.
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The authors are a condensed matter physicist and a lawyer. No economists there. So the "global financial crisis" they refer to could be that some countries benefit, others lose, that some companies make higher profits and others go bankrupt. How is that different from today's "crises"? An economist could help.
I was under the impression that the oil bubble was finally what pushed the US economy over the edge and into recession back in the summer of 2008. Are we in another oil bubble now? Maybe or maybe not?
Can I have some of what you are smoking? There is no way fossil fuel cars are going away by 2035. Even if the necessary energy storage and packaging issues are solved and electric cars become entirely feasible to replace gasoline and diesel, the electric grid cannot handle that hand off and it will take more than 17 years to add the infrastructure necessary to deliver that amount of energy much less produce it.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Saudi Arabia jumped the gun on nuclear and it doesn't look like a good investment any more. When they selected it there wasn't much of a grid scale battery storage market and it seemed like it might be a long way off. Now solar+battery costs about half as much per megawatt as nuclear does, and works much better in terms of reacting to demand.
Even worse, they are buying in the nuclear tech (some from France, some from Japan and some from South Korea) and don't have any capability to produce fuel themselves. They missed an opportunity to become leaders in solar+battery tech and export it, rather than being reliant on technology and fuel imports.
To be fair it was harder to see back when they made the decision to build $80bn of nuclear generation, but it's also not too late to pivot away from it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Like I give a shit what will happen in 2035!
Like I give a shit what a group of academics predicts will happen financially in 2035. Even famed economists can't predict what is coming in the next 5 years.
Price goes down, people can afford more of it, demand goes up.
Price goes up, people can no longer afford it, demand goes down.
The price of petroleum products will only ever keep going up (on average). Humanity won't stop burning oil until there's none left to burn.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Who remembers being told we are heading into a new ice age?
Sigh. In the 1970s, some people in the media claimed that there would be an ice age; scientists were in fact already talking about global warming https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm.
Why do we pay attention to this crap. It's just like a new fad diet.
Because this "crap" happens to be pretty accurate and pretty concerning. See e.g. https://xkcd.com/1732/, and look at changing sea ice levels http://nsidc.org/sites/nsidc.org/files/images/cryosphere/sotc/arctic-antarctic-anomaly-trend-1978-2017.png http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html.
I imagine it's "possible" but that's academic. Ultimately our world is connected. You could do the cleanest possible thing in a few countries and it wouldn't matter. Ultimately it might make it worse like say...exactly what we have now. Current anti-pollution laws are in no small way associated with outsourcing. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. It may be worse in East Asia where they're burning scrap electronics to recycle copper and gold, but you're the ones who turned them in to be "recycled" and ultimately the jet stream will distribute your comuppance, at least insofar a what wasn't released as soil contamination, that will come through in the food instead.
I doubt electric only will out sell or produce gasoline only production by 2035. I agree that hybrids are likely to gain a lot of traction, but I see the split being more like 15:60:25 for passenger vehicles. The cheap end of cars is going to be gasoline only for a long while considering the cost of batteries and that's a good amount of volume. People on a tight budget are unlikely to invest more capital up front to reduce fuel costs over the life of the vehicle. Also, pickup trucks are unlikely to transition to hybrids at all in the next 5 years and definitely won't be electric only for a lot longer. Electric only isn't going to take over commercial vehicles anytime soon either. Until batteries can charge in 5 minutes comparable to refueling or last an entire 8 or 10 hour shift employers aren't going to pay to sit around and wait for charging and they aren't going to maintain twice or three times the fleet or swappable batteries to keep a charged vehicle at the ready. Electric only might make some inroads to long distance freight trucks, but I see that being more of a transition to electric motors powered by a diesel generator similar to how rail is primarily powered today for freight.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Current batteries are also dangerous, there have been numerous cases of lithium batteries exploding.
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India and China will continue to use fossil fuels. If there is any bubble, it's in green technology, There are lots of unworthy solar stocks etc that are way overvalued. I love Teslas, but that company is also extremely overvalued and wouldn't be surprised to see it have a $5b market cap in a few years which would be much more reasonable since the Model 3 isn't the godsend it was supposed to be... $35k? Lol!
"The kingdom has proven reserves of 266 billion barrels according to government estimates submitted to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (“Annual Statistical Bulletin”, OPEC, 2015). If these numbers are correct, Saudi Arabia’s reserves will last for another 70 years at the average production rate of 10.2 million barrels per day reported for 2015." https://www.reuters.com/articl... That's JUST Saudi Arabia. We are not even close to peak oil.
You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
So that would be like the economic disasters that came about when people started burning coal for steam power or oil for the internal combustion engine, And electrification destroyed the worlds economy ?
Exactly.
As well, the article seems to neglect the real worldwide collapse if we simply decided to ride fossil fuels to the point that supply simply peters out and becomes so limited and expensive that there isn't enough to support civlization. It appears they believe that the supply of coal and oil are infinite.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've been hearing garbage like this for years. The Peak Oil Apocalypse is a similar doomer line of thought by people who don't seem to understand the energy density of liquid fossil fuels. Since we are talking about someone's bullshit cockamamie theories how about we throw this one into the ring? Fossil fuels keep selling until significant amounts of vehicles and equipment becomes electric. At that point, the fossil fuels get cheaper, and as folks transition away jobs open up on the electric side (nowhere did I say we'd stop transporting people & goods). It could very well be a seamless transition based purely on supply, demand, and price dynamics. As tech makes electric cheaper, the shift occurs and no big dislocation occurs at all. Why is it that anytime someone sees a change coming, they say "This is going to result in massive joblessness and blood in the streets!"
You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
No. He expects it to negatively effect the financial world which has a lot riding on the traditional energy users.
Won't someone think of the Koch Brothers!
Now let's say that in order to avoid this collapse because of shifting to renewables - and a big thanks to the Guardian for alerting us to this truth - we decide to make all alternative energy sources illegal, That in order to sustain civilization - we must force coal, oil and gas.
So is the supply of the three energy sources that are keeping us from global collapse infinite? Should we just fold the tents and pray for the rapture?
Yes - if we get some stubborn folks who want to ride the fossil fuel train forever, they will suffer. But that is their stupidity, not their gawd given right to make a never ending profit on a diminishing resource
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Can I have some of what you are smoking? There is no way fossil fuel cars are going away by 2035.
God will provide us with all of the oil we need. It will fall like manna from the heavens.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yep. The whole Peak Oil thing seems like a complete fantasy at this point. Both the "we are running out of oil" and the "it will cause the apocalypse" parts of it seem to be a total canard.
Well the supply of fossil fuels or any kind of fuel is hardly infinite, but hydrocarbon fuels are indefinitely available
https://www.betterworldsolutio...
If you are going to force people to sequester carbon you might as well do it as diesel.
So what is America's excuse for using more coal powered electricity per person than China?
Only reason China uses more is because it has more people.
Nope. The bubble is people's interest in climate change. People aren't giving a sh*t about it because they have come to the realization that solving it is too expensive for them.
Pretty sure it won't sneak up on the financial markets (which is what would actually effect your retirement scenario). In fact, since energy use will persist and it's a swap of energy sources, it seems like the financial markets, while divesting slowly from carbon source investments, will re-invest in those replacing them. Because, you know, that's how market economies work.
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people mellow out once they've got enough food/shelter/healthcare. It's not like we don't have plenty of evidence of this either. Look at Europe. The problems they're having right now are mostly from Muslim refugees being forced to migrate because of bad economic conditions in their countries. They're a problem because they're being forced to move, so they're not integrating into their new countries. It'll be 3 generations until they do.
TL;DR: It's cheaper to drop food than bombs.
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They transformed themselves from a third world hell hole into a first world nation in 50 years. That's incredible when you think about it. A modern miracle they don't get enough credit for. But it was all based on the price of oil. When the petrol dollars dried up they didn't have a 200 year old banking system in place to deal with it.
The Saudis see this coming, btw. It's why they're letting women drive. They're trying to get them into the workforce to keep their economy growing.
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I find this truly interesting and I have noted it as well. It speaks to the hypocrisy of most of the people in the world I guess. All the blustering aside, the ACTUAL policies of the two main parties in the US political system are quite similar. It was Mrs. Clinton who called the TPP the "Gold Standard" for trade treaties even though it would decimate the environment throughout a good chunk of the world and many, many more US jobs. Mr. Obama pushed for expansion of that abomination, The Patriot Act. Mr. GW Bush pushed and got the patriot act. Mr. Clinton got the first anti-terrorism laws in the 90s, which were Patriot lite. Unfortunately, because the peons believe the politicians that they support are on their side, when really they aren't as the little people are merely proles, they support them.
If Hillary has any damn sense, she says "fuck you ingrates, you had your chance".
Even if the transition does happen around 2035 (which is doubtful), I would anticipate big businesses to lobby heavily for taxes and bailouts to stave off the inevitable for some time. That move will almost certainly artificially move the bubble burst to the right but the writing will be on the wall.
I welcome our new energy overlords - I'm bored with the old ones.
There's a basic stupidity here. By implied extrapolation, the PR wonks are trying to lump energy technology in with Moore's law, as it applies to silicon: a die shrink only ever gets better (which itself is barely true any more, though it certainly enjoyed a stellar half century).
Environmental energy is not like that. Your fancy new solar technology might be cost effective while there is still more of California to exploit, but hardly ready for prime time in frigid "central" Alberta (the same 55th parallel north also runs through Glasgow, Copenhagen, and Moscow, just for starters).
But no problem, Canada's tiny population has a ludicrously unfair share of the world's ground water (and many powerful rivers associated with this). And if that doesn't get us through, we've still got thorium, too. As for wind power, better hope you get that build soon enough for forestall run-away climate change, or your wind forecasts might prove extremely fickle.
The march of progress is good, but this is shaping up as a long war, and today's low hanging fruit shall ever remain in perilous supply.
Yes, the implied metaphor sucks big time. In truth, the problem here is a lot more like optimizing software than optimizing silicon. Your database is the bottleneck, so you optimize a few key queries—and declare permanent victory.
Celebrating Too Early Compilation
But nope, now you've got other fish to fry. The load balancer, OMG PHP, the Intel Spectre BIOS patch, etc.
Dang it! If only Intel would simply give us the 8 GHz chip we've been waiting for since the thermally untenable Pentium 4 teased us horny.
———
As a side note, the legendary inefficiency of the Pentium 4 almost surely lead to the construction of an entire electrical generation station the world desperately did not need. And now all that extra carbon is part of today's problem, too, likely continuing to bear Intel-legacy climate interest for the next hundred years.
Good grief, Charlie Brownout, are we a feckless, stupid species.
———
Global-foresight triple word score if you bought a Prescott and then configured your 24/7 screensaver to run 3D Pipes.
Intel's Pentium 4 E: Prescott Arrives with Luggage — 1 February 2004
Cuffing Intel upside the head is popular again, lately, but in truth Intel has always been strangely bipolar.
For a while, there, CoreDuo's lurking Spectre saved a lot of carbon (on finite tasks, not counting CPU sinks like 3D Pipes).
Even Steven?
Hard to say.
Man, here in Norway electric cars are almost 2/3 of all new vehicles already (half battery, the other half hybrids, mostly plug-in). Range is already more than enough for anyone who is not a taxi driver or otherwise drives all day long. Calculations by DNV GL indicate that EVs will be overall cheaper than fossil-fuelled card by 2022, that's before you factor in extra taxes on pollution or subsidies on zero emissions. It's true that their up-front cost is higher, but maintenance and energy are way cheaper, so that the TCO is still better.
2035 is a perfectly reasonable date to expect ICE cars to be off the market: It took only 10 years for the car to displace the horse. Some ICE cars will still be around, but mostly as a curiosity (we did not exterminate horses either). Also, as demand for gas plummets, gas stations will close, oil companies will not invest in new fields, the oil value chain will lose its economies of scale, and gas prices will go a long way up.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I wonder if after the oil collapse, biogas will become more attractive for those people still running a petroleum powered engine.
There's actually a really good reason to think it COULD happen before 2035. Autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles (EV) have a great synergy together (A-EV), which would drive the adoption of both far faster than one would expect. The short version is that autonomous vehicles allow the reduction of automobile stocks by about a factor of 10, due to primarily to heavier re-use as part of an autonomous transportation network, as well as more efficient use patterns (for instance, it'd make "carpooling" to work on an electric shuttle bus much easier and dirt cheap). In addition, it'll drastically drive down transportation prices at the same time, especially when EVs are used since they're much more efficient and deprecate very slowly due to their simplicity (few moving parts means low maintenance costs). We're seriously talking about costs so low that it'll probably end up being packaged as a monthly transport network use fee (ex. $50/month for "unlimited" on-demand in-city transport). Even if someone hates driving with people it'd still be only like $0.10/mile to go anywhere in a private vehicle. The prices will be so low that using your currently existing paid-off vehicle will lose you a LOT of money compared to just using the transportation network, driving people to abandon their current vehicles even if it's at the loss of the entire vehicle and their investment in said vehicle with no recompense (since just the insurance and maintenance costs are more than using the transport network an unlimited number of times, let alone the fuel costs).
Requiring 10% of today's vehicles to service the population and offering vastly lower costs means that the transition time may very well be 10x faster as well, and given that a present day car lasts around 10 years, a year or two's worth of present-day car production volume may be all that's needed to replace our current stocks of gasoline vehicles with A-EVs (once critical mass is reached).
The following report lays out the full case for this. This report suggests a slower but still shockingly fast transition period of 10-ish years with the main transition happening over approximately 4 years.
https://www.rethinkx.com/execu...
Full report here:
https://static1.squarespace.co...
I was skeptical of this at first, but after reading it I'm confident it'll play out this way if full autonomy can be worked out. The disadvantages of EVs are completely moot when they're used in this way (ex. the high up front expense doesn't matter when each car is worth 10 today and they have much lower long term costs and a much longer lifespan). Socially, most people will respond to the drastically lower cost and drastically higher convenience, since it'll basically take transportation costs down to a rounding error on their current costs ($10,000 today to $50-100) and be available 24/7 without needing to park or drive. I'm sure there'll be some holdouts that refuse to change, but they'll pay out the nose to keep the luxury of their own vehicle, and most will have to transition to EVs when the carbon bubble pops (which they detail in said report, basically you'll see a massive stock of abandoned fossil fuel vehicles due to the earlier mentioned incentives, and the gasoline infrastructure will collapse as soon as the transition gets serious because you can't easily stockpile gasoline as it's a volatile chemical, driving even more people to adopt EVs even if they aren't using them autonomously).
As for electrical needs, it won't be nearly as bad as you're thinking, since EVs use a LOT less energy than gasoline vehicles, and if we're only running a tenth of the vehicles (admittedly much more frequently), then the energy requirements will be substantially lower. EVs can also make better use of cheap baseload power in the middle of the night and intermittent renewables (th
The average age of cars in the US is something like 12 or 15 years, and rising. In 2035 the average car may be from 2018 or earlier, and then there are all the cars above average in age. Gasoline will still be available everywhere, because there will still be millions of gas powered cars on the road, regardless of what is being produced new.
nope, developing 3rd world will eat that stuff up.
burn baby burn
Well the supply of fossil fuels or any kind of fuel is hardly infinite, but hydrocarbon fuels are indefinitely available
https://www.betterworldsolutio...
If you are going to force people to sequester carbon you might as well do it as diesel.
Of all the cacahead things, concepts that make using food stocks to produce fuel look like prudent and sensible strokes of genius, using the very element that allows the earth to have some temperate climate areas - removing carbon dioxide to allow coal rolling is as good an idea as using Brawndo with electrolytes - it's what plants crave.
The earth would have an average temperature below freezing if not for carbon dioxide. This gas is critical for life on earth.
So now these tools propose turning atmospheric CO2 into a cash generator. Well now, I kind of wonder if they would plan on stopping once they disrupt the atmosphere in the other direction. There is as much an issue it it goes too low as if it goes too high.
Even then, the problem isn't that the CO2 is one thing or another. It is the rapidity of change. The level at the beginning of the industrial revolution isn't the level it has to be for all eternity, it is the rapidity of change which causes unstable weather, and shifts habitible zones, creating deserts and verdant areas based on the shifts. High or low, the rapid disruption is the issue.
We kinda have the CO2 levels we have now, and our best bet is to live within whatever happens, try to shift to energy sources that don't generate any extra, and not perform cacahead experiments like seeding the oceans with iron, or turning CO2 into a money generator.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What this ignores is the primary issue that much of the oil which hasn't been extracted is harder to extract. That's why for example we've moved further and further out to sea to drill oil from deeper and deeper. As we exhaust the easy supplies, the remaining supplies while large, become harder to access. The most important metric in this context is EROEI- the energy returned on energy invested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested. In the 1980s the EROEI was generally in the 40s. That means that the energy returned from a barrel of oil was about 40 times the energy invested. Now, the EROEI for oil is between 10 to 20. Once EROEI drops below 1, a resource no longer works as an energy source, but even before that, when it drops below 3 or 4, it becomes largely impractical. Saudi oil EROEI will drop below 1 well before we've exhausted all the oil.
>when oil gets too expensive
Solar and wind are already the cheapest, and are STILL falling in price. Nuclear, however ...
Solar and wind are nowhere close to the bottom for oil. Solar and wind are cheaper just because the demand for oil is high. If the demand drops like this article predicts, then price will also continue to drop. Some of the cheapest oil can still be extracted for under $10 a barrel. Solar and wind have a long ways to go before they can compete with $10 oil. We will likely stay in an equilibrium for a long time to come and as solar and wind drop, the price of oil drops with it. This does mean that the more expensive oils start dropping offline and the supply gets smaller, and the price goes back up, etc, etc... until the price of solar/wind drops below the price of the cheapest oil.
What makes you think that the coal miners and the people who voted for Trump because they are disappointed at globalism shipping their jobs to China and Mexico will vote for Hilary in 2020? Why should "the map" change?
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A crash in fossil fuel prices will certainly be disruptive, but it takes more than just disruption to cause a major financial crash.
Certainly many specific areas will face some pretty severe consequences from such a crash. States where fossil fuel exports make up a large fraction of their economy, such as Alaska or North Dakota, will be hit pretty severely. Nations that are doing similar, such as Saudi Arabia, will get it even worse. But most countries and areas are likely to sail through without dire consequences.
What could cause such a crash to turn into something like the 2007-2008 crash is debt: debt magnifies crashes. That's the reason why the housing bubble had such severe consequences: houses are typically debt-financed. The question, then, is how much of fossil fuel investment is leveraged, and where is that debt held? The answer to that question will determine whether there are wider consequences beyond oil-exporting areas.
Granted, the consequences within oil-exporting areas could be extremely severe if it triggers wars. Which is definitely a possibility in some such areas.
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A few dozen billionaires become millionaires, a few millionaires go bust and thousands of employees head for the solar and wind industry.
It has happened before, the world didn't end.
There's been no lack of demand for oil, and it's doubtful that this is going to change any time soon.
In fact (as a later item on the slashdot front page today notes):
The World Set a New Record For Renewable Power in 2017, But Emissions [of oil and gas sourced carbon dioxide] Are Still Rising.
This is because energy demands rose faster than deployment of renewable energy sources to supply them, and fossil fuel energy is still cheap.
I expect renewable energy generation to catch up with demand growth and start makng it shrink again. And the driving force for the changeover, of course, will be price: Economy of scale and technological advancement will reduce the price of renewable generation, attracting first new loads, then equipment replacement loads, and possibly eventually changeover of existing facilities. Meanwhile, cost of fossil fuel extraction gradually rises as the cheaper-to-get portions get used up and less-cheap-to-get portions become worth chasing.
I also expect both deployment of renewable generation and load switchover to be gradual. There is an ENORMOUS amount of infrastructure involved, and no percentage in all of it changing at once. (In fact, price signals would push back against sudden changeovers.)
Now that doesn't mean you won't get a market panic sometime in the next SEVENTEEN YEARS, as the article moots. Crowds CAN be driven mad from time to time. (Especially by articles like this. B-) )
But while I don't claim to be any better than the authors of the study at predicting the markets for a generation ahead, I don't see any reason why the currently-visible fundamentals of the markets and the typical vicissitudes of tech deployment should be expected to produce such a sudden crash.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones, the oil age won't end because we run out of oil.
What a GREAT sound bite. That deserves both an "insightful" and a "funny".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Traditional energy sources are predicted to drop in value, as many things will have moved to using alternative energy sources. By 2035 i imagine fossil fuel cars will no longer be in production, with fuel being available as a niche for classic car enthusiasts.
So sure you might be able to buy gasoline cheaply, but it won't be of any use to most people. Most industry similarly will have moved on to newer sources of energy.
Here's the IEA world energy outlook which takes into account likely policies.
https://www.globalenergyinstit... ... gy-outlook
"Global Demand Growth: Energy demand between 2015 and 2040 is expected to grow by a bit more than 28%, or 3,770 million tons oil equivalent (mtoe) worldwide. All of the increase in global demand—in fact, more than all (about 3,922 mtoe or 104%) of it—will come from non-Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (i.e., developing countries). IEA expects that OECD (developed) countries will see their energy demand decline by about 4% while non-OECD demand jumps 49%."
Ah, spoken all scary-like by someone not in the industry. Those price fluctuations can be all attributed to political events, as well as technological changes in extraction making new deposits economical to extract. Politics increases prices, technology decreases them. Sound familiar? No need to use terms like "Peak Oil" which mean nothing. If the price rises above a certain point, production ramps up, if it falls below, it ramps down (but demand rises which starts the cycle over again).
Most of those can be attributed in part to specific political events yes, but the scale of the fluctuations has increased, and that's true even if you look at other metrics such as adjusting for inflation or looking at the approximate logarithmic derivative. Why do you think that is?
Global financial crises cycles are now much shorter than the 17 years to come before 2035.
No one is thinking of the Koch Brothers. They will be the least affected by the result. On the other hand the continued wealth of the rich is of great interest to a lot of people nearing retirement age, as their wealth is pegged to the same source of value.
Also no one is saying that we should do anything to avoid the crisis, just that the crisis will happen.
Also also, the question of if the supply is infinite is missing the fundamental cause that will lead to the collapse. The useful life of equipment is dependent on the sources of energy. The abandonment is taken into account of the financing which is clear from the up-front estimation of the size of oil and gas fields. It what makes them viable or not. The end of a field and the associated cost is normal. What we are seeing here is a potential shift away from these resources leading to a devaluation of the field, or a premature abandonment. That is what causes accounting books to not balance, and what moves share prices around.
> American's use more coal electricity than Chinese do. (The most in fact)
Not according to the last info I could find:
United States: 1612Tw from coal (http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/iframe/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source?select=ELPRODP_Unit%2C%22%22TWh%22%22&select=ELPRODP_Country%2C%22%22United%20States%20of%20America%22%22&select=ELPRODP_Year%2C%22%222014%22%22&select=ELPRODP_Energy%2C%22%22Coal%22%22)
China: 3681Tw from coal (http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/iframe/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source?select=ELPRODP_Unit%2C%22%22TWh%22%22&select=ELPRODP_Country%2C%22%22China%22%22&select=ELPRODP_Year%2C%22%222014%22%22&select=ELPRODP_Energy%2C%22%22Coal%22%22)
Note this data is from 2014.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
If you're getting close to retirement and still have the majority of your retirement funds in the stock market you need to get a new financial adviser.
But of course, popularity is not a measurement of validity.
Not really relevant as an issue here, since the point in question here was precisely about a claim about what was believed by scientists in the 1970s. Note incidentally, that in technical matters, while popularity does not imply validity, expertise is relevant evidence when one doesn't have the ability or time to go through all details of claims; that's not relevant here precisely because the claim was that scientists generally predicted global cooling and the point is that that is clearly false.
No one is thinking of the Koch Brothers. They will be the least affected by the result. On the other hand the continued wealth of the rich is of great interest to a lot of people nearing retirement age, as their wealth is pegged to the same source of value.
Although altogether to many people approaching retirement age do as you say, It it bass ackwards. Whether through waiting too late to start saving for retirement, greed, or the fear instilled by financial advisors, you don't invest in this sort of thing nearing retirement.
Also no one is saying that we should do anything to avoid the crisis, just that the crisis will happen.
Also also, the question of if the supply is infinite is missing the fundamental cause that will lead to the collapse..
Ahh, the collapse because of transitioning away from Petrochemicals and other fossil fuels.
Tell me, is that going to be more a cause than the protectionist and socialist tariffs that seem to be suddenly the economic touchstone of crypto-conservatives? That's what interests me about this whole concept of the shift to renewables being responsible for the next collapse. That's really handy, when you can identify the guilty party long before it happens.,p> It isn't going to be the student loan debt - nope
It isn't going to be restrictive tariffs either - or the inevitable backlash to them. That's crazy talk.
It will be those damn liberals not buying fossil fuels and using rewnewables instead.
The useful life of equipment is dependent on the sources of energy. The abandonment is taken into account of the financing which is clear from the up-front estimation of the size of oil and gas fields. It what makes them viable or not. p>
Sure - its why the gas companies have largely stopped drilling in my neck of the woods. There's still plenty of gas, but they drilled so much it isn't economical to drill more.
The end of a field and the associated cost is normal. What we are seeing here is a potential shift away from these resources leading to a devaluation of the field, or a premature abandonment. That is what causes accounting books to not balance, and what moves share prices around.
No one is assured of a profit. As for the fields themselves, be it gas or oil, there are uses for both that will continue for a long time. Plastics, home heating. Those will provide a good use for oil and gas. Coal? That's the big loser in the modern age. That's a really good thing too. Living in the area of production and having relatives who worked in the mines and strippings - and who mostly died young, and the destruction of the environment coal causes - I'm happy to see that go away.
Anyhow, it's a good thing that we have found the real villain of the coming collapse.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
All those, except Trump, were completely believable then. 2001 was a crucial year in my life, and I remember a lot about it. There was a belief that everyone would have great cell phones: Hell, I had a japanese one with a built in dictionary at the time that was way better than US available ones.
China's pace was obvious.
Electric cars would eventually arrive, and their equivalent. It was just a matter of when.
How much is a "WAY"? How many libraries of congress or football fields?
Oil isn't going anywhere and Cost is a complex question.
It might not be used for personal transportation as much in the future, which will have a significant impact on demand.
However things like planes and ships are not going to stop using oil. The whole military complex isn't going to stop using oil. You mention nuclear, however the most numerous ships are subs, mostly owned by Russia and the US. After that is Carriers, of which there are only a handful, mostly owned by the US. Apart from those to things, there are a handful of Ice Breakers, owned by Russia. That's about it. Also probably almost all of the above are a couple decades old...
Then there are things like plastics and the like, which aren't going anywhere and are largely composed of oil.
There are plenty of houses heated by oil, though many have been replaced with cheaper gas. It would be interesting to see if the lack of demand for cars drives the cost lower to make it more economical for house heat generation again. Then again, as mentioned, less demand could just mean less production, which would actually raise prices, so it is pretty hard to predict.
One possible growth area (though limited in scope) are remote areas powered by oil moving to small scale nuclear, as was recently seen by Russia. Too early to tell however if that is a trend that will continue or not.
The sun goes down. There is no "math" needed. I guess one could say that they can just use big batteries and that is where the math comes in. Then go look at the cost of solar power now, the cost of battery storage now (because in a desert nation cheaper storage like pumped hydro storage is not all that viable), and then compare that to the cost of nuclear power right now.
You can claim that solar power and battery storage will be cheaper in the future but in the mean time we have a nation with ever increasing electrical demands (from a growing population and desire for improved standard of living) so they have to act now to meet the expected demands in five years. They simply cannot wait.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.