Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by AdmiralZhao

After a certain point, the demand for oil is elastic only in the sense that the groups that cannot afford it will die off. Oil is vital to nearly every aspect of modern society, and in particular to the industrialized agriculture that America uses to feed our population. Without at least a baseline amount of oil, the truck which delivers food to the grocery store does not arrive, and I have go Hinnom-style on my next door neighbors.

We have many trillions of dollars of infrastructure which can only use oil. And because everything currently relies on oil, any effort to upgrade this infrastructure will also require large amounts of oil. The scenario that people are worried about is that the free market doesn't start responding until oil is scarce and difficult to acquire, and at that point we don't have the energy resources to both maintain our society, acquire new oil, and upgrade our infrastructure.

This is one of the reasons why oil is different from platinum, paladium, or uranium. Society does not need constant inputs of these metals to function, and we can develop alternatives to these metals without needing large new stocks of these metals.

This is also why people want to see early development of alternatives to oil. When oil starts running low, we want oil to be in the same category as platinum, paladium, and uranium, i.e. something that is not hugely vital, and that we can continue to phase out without needing large new inputs.

'Die off' is a bit melodramatic. We just absorbed a tripling spike in the price of oil, and as far as I know, no deaths have occured because of it.

In point of fact, you are quite incorrect about society needing constant inputs of these metals. These metals are essential to hydrocarbon cracking, to computers, to Grignard reagents.

Yes, the scale of need is smaller - but that has to do with price. which was sort of my point. As oil increases price its relative importance will diminish.

It is critical now, because it was easily exploitable.

We continue to try to exploit oil, because even at its current prices, it is *less* of an lifestyle change than the alternatives.

[chrispedersen]

Being generous with your *own* money?

There is absolutely nothing preventing global warming advocates from getting off their high horses and buying solar panels, buying a prius, etc.

In fact, I really think that those are the minimum qualifications before they attempt to inflict those lifestyle choices *involuntarily* on the rest of us. Put your money where your mouth is.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Edi

As promised, a reply addressing the article Licker linked:

[*]The section about water vapor being the most important greenhouse gas again neglects the fact that while some amount of greenhouse gases are necessary to maintain a habitable temperature and that water vapor is by volume the greatest one, it is nowhere near as effective at trapping infrared wavelengths as CO2 is. Much like methane is 20 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (but much shorter lived before it degrades to CO2), CO2 is more effective weight for weight. If the difference is similar, even modest CO2 increases would show increased temperatures.

Hmmm.. First, I think all of these claims are hocum. I believe that CH4 is more like 50x than CO2 - and I have never heard this comment that Ch4 'degrades' into CO2. Especially in short periods of time.

Burn it, combust it .. sure.

And the claim that CO2 is more effective weight for weight is purely wrong.

[thejeff]

I think the claim that CO2 is more effective weight for weight was against water vapor not methane.

According to Wikipedia (Not an authoritative source, I know, but usually reliable on basic stuff), methane has 25 times the impact of the same amount of CO2 over 100 years. This appears to be a common way of measuring the effects of emissions. It is much stronger initially, which is probably where your 50x comes from, but oxidizes in the atmosphere into CO2 and Water with a half life of 7 years

[chrispedersen]

Good comments, thejeff - but when some here suggest that the problem has to be solved in 10 years - you can't use the 100 year weighted average.

As an emergency measure, the most bang for the buck effect would be for methane reductions.

[AdmiralZhao]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

'Die off' is a bit melodramatic. We just absorbed a tripling spike in the price of oil, and as far as I know, no deaths have occured because of it.

In point of fact, you are quite incorrect about society needing constant inputs of these metals. These metals are essential to hydrocarbon cracking, to computers, to Grignard reagents.

Yes, the scale of need is smaller - but that has to do with price. which was sort of my point. As oil increases price its relative importance will diminish.

It is critical now, because it was easily exploitable.

We continue to try to exploit oil, because even at its current prices, it is *less* of an lifestyle change than the alternatives.

No, I'll stand by my original statement. A die off would be an accurate description of what would happen to America if we could not procure a baseline amount of oil. This time around, please note that I am using a qualifier in my sentence. I am not saying that we will all die if we have to reduce our oil usage by 5%.

You do raise several interesting points in your response though. The price of oil did recently triple, due to minor variations in supply and demand. This is a good illustration of how inelastic the demand for oil is. If there were readily available alternatives, people would use them rather than paying through the nose for oil. Another interesting point is how no one died over the recent price increases. While I apologize in advance for mixing my flamewars, there is certainly an argument to be made that the primary reason America is in the Middle East, and has been for the last N decades, is to secure our access to oil. Many people have died because of oil prices, and to secure access to oil.

Again, I would say that there are critical differences between the metals that you list and oil. As an example, if we were to completely run out of Paladium, it would indeed interfere with the production of new computers. However, since we did not burn the old Paladium, it could be recycled from older computers to create new ones. Also, because the computers that we have will continue to play Dominions 3 without us pouring more Paladium into them, there would not be any immediate disruptions to my turn schedule. Running out of Paladium would certainly cause large problems in some segments of society, but it would not prevent us from developing and implementing solutions to those problems.

I agree that as the price of oil increases, the free market will act to develop alternatives. Again though, the worry is that the free market will begin to act too late. As Barak Obama put it, we need to stop hiring the mercenaries of cheap oil, and start investing in the Claws of Cocytos of alternative power for when the Tartarian Cyclops of peak oil teleports onto our capital.

[AdmiralZhao]

Man that's a lot of quote.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by AdmiralZhao

I agree that as the price of oil increases, the free market will act to develop alternatives. Again though, the worry is that the free market will begin to act too late. As Barak Obama put it, we need to stop hiring the mercenaries of cheap oil, and start investing in the Claws of Cocytos of alternative power for when the Tartarian Cyclops of peak oil teleports onto our capital.

[ontopic]

Heh. Measuring by the Elemental Royalty, 4 path levels is basically what it takes to be a god of that element. I therefore find it curious that so many Tartarian Cyclopses have 4E. There's basically a whole pantheon of Cyclopses that you yank out of Tartarus to serve your needs. You should name the first one "DeadHades," the next one "DeadPolyphemus," the one after that "DeadCronus," etc.

Tartarians should be treated with more respect: they're not just faceless pawns like flagellants, they're ancient dead gods in their own right!

[/ontopic]

-Max

[Edi]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

How is Mr. Felix's biography relevant to the quality of the sources he links to? I say this as someone who was likewise unimpressed with the signal/noise ratio on Ice Age Now, but argumentum ad hominem is beside the point. (All licker said was that it links to some interesting studies--although I found mostly only news stories.)

Not that your link to the guardian story wasn't interesting in its own right as a story of journalistic carelessness and/or malfeasance.

-Max

It's relevant in the sense that when his numbers were checked, they all turned out to be bogus. When Mr. Felix's other work is examined, it turns out to be anti-evolution conspiracy crap that has no basis in real science at all. The man is a fraud, as simple as that. He has demonstrated an intellectual dishonesty that has been independently verified. This means that if he does make some statement about something related to science as being fact, there is no obligation on anyone to believe that what he says has even a passing acquaintance with truth unless it has been independently verified.

The man is in the same category as the Moon Hoaxers, 9/11 Truthers and UFO cultists in terms of credibility. That's one of the things about integrity and credibility: Once lost, rehabilitation is very difficult if not impossible, depending on just how far you have gone. Felix may link to some interesting news articles, but he goes one step further and then presents hiw own opinions based on the articles as some sort of supposedly scientific fact, without understanding the first thing about any of it. Pointing out that he is a scientific fraud is not an ad hominem.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Edi

It's relevant in the sense that when his numbers were checked, they all turned out to be bogus. When Mr. Felix's other work is examined, it turns out to be anti-evolution conspiracy crap that has no basis in real science at all. The man is a fraud, as simple as that. He has demonstrated an intellectual dishonesty that has been independently verified. This means that if he does make some statement about something related to science as being fact, there is no obligation on anyone to believe that what he says has even a passing acquaintance with truth unless it has been independently verified.

Yes, yes, yes, but that's all beside the point. You're *supposed* to ignore his statements. All licker said was that you should follow the links. Those links are to outside sources, some of them news sites (unfortunately, since I was hoping for studies), which should stand or fall on their own merits. Mr. Felix's biography is totally irrelevant because Mr. Felix's web site was specifically disclaimed by licker.

-Max