Exactly the point I have been making here for some years. It took a couple of decades and lots of then cheap energy and raw materials to build the "suburban infrastructure" the US foolishly chose. To a take trivial example: the nails in a 2by4 now cost more than twice as iron ore prices are climbing etc. the coke that reduced the Fe2O3 has more than tripled in inflation adjusted dollars. The US has neither the time nor the money to tear down suburbia and build the high rises and good urban schools, parks, public transport, etc. it should have, It will take less than a year to go from boom to deep, deep depression and I predict that a run on the dollar will be the trigger. All this credit being pumped out to stem the recession until at least post election, means there will be depression. It is, and will continue, to make holding US treasury bonds the surest way to lose purchasing power as it has been for a couple of years. Why finance the US debt? That debt is still growing. IMHO depression is now unavoidable.
Could the rise in material cost be due to the fact that the USA and India and most developing nations moved from material production to service oriented economy? In the past, the material cost was based on improvements in productivity due to tools used and an abundant manpower. Now that those manpower has been diverted to service industries....that is my reasoning...I could be wrong.....
their are many reason for the rise, but the most prominent is the oil production for the last 3 years has not match demand, oil production has essentially plateaued and the price of oil has thus inflated grossly, inflating the price of everything that uses oil. Your argument does have some truth, because of globalization we have become more reliant on transporting goods between local economies rather then making them in local economies, as the price of transports goes up (most obviously affected by oil prices) will mean the end of consumer countries and producers countries as we know it.
I always had the problem in grasping the demand side. How do we know exactly what the demand is? Is it based on rising prices? If that is so, then a cartel or monopoly can raise the price and say, the demand is too high. The demand is hard to pin down quantitatively. Is De Beers control of the diamond market due to demand or more due to supply or lack there of? The supply side of oil is farly stable. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MEESchart.png It has been suggested that the IT salary in India is rising so fast that by 2015, it will be same as USA salary. So what would that do to the outsourcing market. Also, I think, oil production is a controlled market where only very large companies can play and they are very few and getting smaller every month from M&A. The Titanium market is 95% controlled by big five and they all bank at the same bank. It is illegeal to fix the price...but hey, if the bank suggests...then who are they to argue! Wink...wink...nod...nod... And if OPEC needs to build five new cities...guess where the money will come from....
I'm not a economist on how they predict demand, but based on their projects demand has outstripped supply. I would wager demand must go up as populations go up and as people try to acquire higher standards of living. Move the market to less developed country, assuming that outsource will still be viable in a global economic depression brought on by the price of oil. OPEC does not even control the majority of the world oil anymore. Prices are not raising because they are holding back the profit, they know that the more they hold back the more their customers will see non-opec products. As is unconventional oil sources are exploding but their production will always be more expensive then conventional oil was, thus at best we have the end of cheap oil and a stable economy.
That sounds logical. However, the GDP of India and China are growing by 8% and 9% respectively while USA the major consumer is growing at about 1% to 0.2% for the last 3 years (which for a 13 trillion economy is still a lot). In 2006 USA used 20.60 MBPD of oil China used 7.27 MBPD India used 2.53 MBPD At 10% China needs another 0.72 MPD of oil while USA growth went down from 4.2% to 0.2% creating a surplus of 0.80 MPD of oil that it would have otherwise used. In essence, the demand is slightly higher and not twice as everybody thinks. India uses the same anount of oil as Canada or Germany in spite of a billion people. So, it is quantitatively not much. That is why, oil production is fairly stable because demand in one area is compensated by recession in other areas.
That is true, but not by some "fortunate accident." This stability is more related to the availability to produce not changing much annually, especially near the peak of "Peak Oil" curve. I.e. if some area is doing better economically (such as China and India) then they will be able to buy more than the prior year and this added demand will force others to use less - a higher price is just the mechanism that causes this. American are actually driving less, carpooling more, etc.as the price rises. The real pain for Americans with their surburban infrastructure (which assumed cheap oil was "for ever") will come on the down side of the Peak Oil curve - production falling and coming from more costly sources. As China and others grow much faster (earn dollars etc instead of try to borrow them) they will buy a bigger part of a shrinking pie. Americans will get a smaller part of a shrining pie. - that will really hurt.
Perhaps there is some movement of demand, but according the IEA demand has still be roughly a million barrels above production. Its a chicken or egg argument, does the economy stale and that why oil has plateaued or oil has plateaued and that why economies have staled. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t21.xls
http://www.dailytech.com/Princeton Physicist Calls Global Warming Science Mistaken/article13773.htm Scientist fired by Al Gore was told, "science will not intrude on public policy". Noted energy expert and Princeton physicist Dr. Will Happer has sharply criticized global warming alarmism. Happer, author of over 200 scientific papers and a past director of energy research at the Department of Energy, called fears over global warming "mistaken". "I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect", said Happer. "Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science." Dr. Happer views climate change as a predominately natural process. "The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past." In 1991, Happer was appointed director of energy research for the US Department of Energy. In 1993, he testified before Congress that the scientific data didn't support widespread fears about the dangers of the ozone hole and global warming, remarks that caused then-Vice President Al Gore to fire him. "I was told that science was not going to intrude on public policy", he said. "I did not need the job that badly". Happer's latest remarks were made yesterday, as he asked to be included in a Senate Environment and Public Works report of scientists disputing global warming alarmism. Happer joins 650 other scientists on the list, many of whom have been interviewed previously by DailyTech. "Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility," Happer concluded. In response to Happer's remarks, Senator James Inhofe, ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said, "The endless claims of a consensus on man-made global warming grow less and less credible every day".
No, he wasn't told that - that's not a quote, anyway, and shouldn't have quote marks around it. And he was fired - allegedly - two months before the already scheduled end of his Bush era appointment, after making a speech calling for further study of the effects of UV-B radiation getting through, to see if it was really all that bad a thing to lose a lot of the ozone layer every winter, rather than immediately phasing out CFCs. As he pointed out, where there were lots of people pollution was already adding ozone near the ground, so maybe only rural and wilderness areas would be affected much at all. No big deal. Similar reasoning appears to be involved in his recent declarations re CO2.
I think the evidence is now clear that the economy is now crashing by its own means, demand for oil from the global depression is now below supply and opec is cutting production dramatically to start getting some of that jew gold they were getting a year ago again.
Hi, Reading this hyperbowl of global warming, or "Climate change" as they like to call it now, with record cold and record snow fall... Why is everyone quit about global warming when it is cold? Next summer, everyone will be moaning again, that it is getting hot... It is called seasons! I am in California, where our so called republican Govenor has declared that he will stop "global warming" this is right after telling us that we will have a 65 million dollar shortfall this fiscal year. Well if everyone is out of a job, then that will cut back on emisions. How much is Al Gore making on his new buisness of selling "carbon credits" I think he has made about 10 million so far? Offer a junk docu-drama, with false science and photos of polar bears stranded on ice flows (that turn out to be old footage of them playing) did anyone mention that a polar bear can swim for 500 miles? How do they get stranded? I heard that the polar bears are doing great, with the added food from the warmer weather. Just venting. Jon
Quoted from the comments in one of the articles linked to in this thread: "Over a 9 year period, the earth is cooling. Over a 100 year period, the earth is warming. Over a 1500 year period, the earth is cooling. Over a 13,000 year period, the earth is warming. Which of these periods is the correct one to use?" I thought this was funny.
So you think there is no answer? The 100 year period - the one we will be reacting to, and that our reactions will influence. It's not at all clear, btw, that the earth will still be cooling in the 1500 year period, if the warming in the 100 year period proceeds as it seems to be proceeding. The "natural" cycles have been interrupted by a new factor.
I thought I saw a news report last week that showed remarkable build-up of ice caps in an area that was considered to have catastrophic losses. I'll see if I can find it again. Have we even seen a warming over the past 7 or 8 years? Or are we starting our measurements and ending them at the best possible times to support a theory? Also, has anyone demonstrated what would be wrong with a warmer planet? Are we scared of longer growing seasons and feeding more people? Or of grasslands in the Sahara? Is it really nothing more than a rise in sea level? I have a hard time believing that the anti-capitalists really give a shit about the environment. They are nostalgic for pre-catalytic converter VW buses and leave concerts a littered mess. Burning cop cars releases toxins in the air. Speaking of clean air, how does that joint taste? You won't use a plastic shopping bag, but you wallpaper the back of your Subaru with bumper-stickers? And have any of you greenies seen the environmental ratings that Apple has had the past dozen years? Your iPod was a bad choice, but at least you look "different" with everyone else. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Irrelevant. In many places, especially inland in Antarctica, warmer air temperature is predicted to cause large increases in snowfall and ice buildup. The melting elsewhere is predicted to outpace it, of course. Depends on how fast it warms up. The problem with the CO2 buildup and consequent warming is that it's probably (and apparently) going to be very fast. On a geological time scale, three hundred years of climate chaos is nothing. On a human scale, it can potentially bring down most of our current major civilizations. River delta rice farming, for example, the most productive and important kind, depends on the formation of a delta - that will not happen in a hundred years or so, to replace one saturated by salt water. We are starting our measurements as early as possible, and exercising a lot ingenuity to make that earlier.
Oh, good. I'll ignore all reports of melting ice caps as well then. What a perfect way to form a conspiracy theory. Allow your bias to guide you in picking and choosing which findings are important and which are irrelevant. :bugeye: Let's ignore predictions that the Sahara will return to fertile grasslands if the Earth warms, because that would lead to more full human bellies. And the human-haters can't have that, can they? We need only predictions that foretell the collapse of capitalism and death to as many members of our vile species as possible. I don't buy any of this picking and choosing. If I was supposed to be scared about melting ice caps, then I am going to rejoice at rebuilding ones. If I am supposed to care about temps going up for 20 years, I am going to notice when they go back down for the next 7. And there is no way in the world any human-hater is going to convince me that a 6" rise in sea levels is worse than another ice age. Know why? I like our species. Imagine that. I would love to see our planet support 20 billion happy people living in as much freedom as possible. Heresy, I know. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Science is soundly and methodically disproving most of these ridiculous 'Al Gore' type Global Warming claims. Thank goodness. I have the idea posting the studies here is kind of frowned upon, that this horse has been beaten to death, so I don't do it.
