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View Full Version : The things we never knew about Natural Resources.



Nocte
03-02-2012, 02:11 AM
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/everything-you-know-about-peak-oil-is-wrong-01262012.html

Read this article about natural resources, and seeing people bombard Obama about gas prices I decided to dig it up.

Also this: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/02/21/gasbag-why-no-president-can-bring-us-2-gasoline/

Mythonian
03-02-2012, 02:49 AM
Wow... Those articles cracked me up a bit. >.>

From the first one:

He is correct in saying we aren't on the brink of running out of resources. However, he is wrong in relating that to "everything you know about peak oil is wrong".

When he talked about the Keystone XL Pipeline, I smiled a bit. And then I read this:


In part because of that, the amount of energy the planet needs to generate the same amount of wealth is declining.

That statement is technically true. However, it is extremely misleading and is presented out of context.

Things that aren't taken into account: inflation and non-production-centric energy uses.


While dollar value of production requires slightly less money each year to produce the same value of product (which is due to increasing efficiency), you also have to realize that inflation means the value increases as time goes on.

Additionally, the energy usage for things that aren't production (i.e., everything the average person uses energy for) aren't included. These energy uses are increasing drastically each year, and is proportional with the increase in pollution each year.


Overall, this guy misrepresented numerous things and tried to say "everything you know about peak oil is wrong" when in reality his facts showed nothing of the sort.



From the second one:

This guy doesn't seem to understand how gasoline/oil/petroleum markets work or how they play out in the economy...

Here are some things you need to know about it: 1) it is a "futures-market", and 2) our production is currently at capacity.

What do those mean, though?

1) a futures-market is something for which the price and value is determined by the projections of future demand and supply. Basically, how the economy is at the moment has almost nothing to do with oil prices. (it can affect it at retail a bit, but not for the suppliers, which is what matters).

Him claiming that the current state of the economy is the only thing determining gas prices is ignorant and foolish. The economic state affects--but does not determine--how the market will be projected, which is what ends up determining gas prices. Economic state is a rather insignificant factor compared to various other factors.

2) Our current supply of oil is beyond what our refineries are capable of refining. This is the reason why we export so much crude oil. People say we "have plenty of oil", but that is completely irrelevant. The thing that matters is how much refined oil we are able to produce. If we built new refineries, the price of gas would plummet with the increased supply (because we DON'T have a surplus of refined oil, since we can't produce enough).

However, he isn't far off when he says that "no president can get us $2 gas". It's not the presidents job to do that. However, if the president reduces irrational regulation, fees, and/or corporate taxes (which I've talked about before), then the price of gas WILL decrease.

d3ad1te
03-02-2012, 03:57 AM
Way too optimistic.


We are foooked. Hence why we need to get off this planet and it's finite resources.

GhostHammer
03-02-2012, 05:31 PM
Way too optimistic.


We are foooked. Hence why we need to get off this planet and it's finite resources.

Like I said on my facebook, what University Courses/Programs must I take to captain an "Enterprise" now a days?