Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday October 13 2015, @04:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the dot-com-and-housing-and-... dept.

The transition from fossil fuels must be carefully managed to avoid an economically disastrous bursting of the "carbon bubble," the World Bank's top climate official said on Saturday.

Decades of reliance on oil, gas and coal have made them central to the global economy, and polluting industries risk a potentially catastrophic crash as the world shifts to alternative energies, said Rachel Kyte, the Bank's special envoy for climate change.

"If we accept that we need to have less carbon in our growth, then we might have a financial risk associated with the prominence in our economy of companies who are heavily invested in carbon. That's the whole question of the carbon bubble," Kyte told AFP on the sidelines of the World Bank's annual meeting in Lima, Peru.

"financial risk associated with the prominence in our economy of companies who are heavily invested in carbon." Break out the tissues, everyone.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Despite Lavish Subsidies, Fossil Fuel Loses In Latest IEA Forecast 11 comments

Renewables represent the future, even if they get far less in subsidies than fossil fuels. At least according to the data in the latest report from the International Energy Agency.

The agency's World Energy Outlook 2015 provides a comprehensive forecast of the use and consumption of energy worldwide. Energy demand is still rising—the IEA estimates that total global energy demand will rise by 33% by 2040—but a growing proportion of it will come from renewables. The growing popularity of efficiency and regulations promoting efficiency, meanwhile, will also keep a ceiling on overall demand.

Like last year's report, the 2015 report also underscores the vast sea change that has taken place in the world energy scenario. In the 2004 IEA report, solar didn't rate a mention and "efficiency" was only mentioned twice in the summary.

Sea change.


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:06PM

    by Kromagv0 (1825) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:06PM (#248987) Homepage

    The shift was going to be gradual anyway. Probably taking a couple of decades at least. Replacing all those power plants, not to mention iron smelting and concrete manufacturing, is going to take time. This also ignores vehicles which are only now starting to be available in reasonable electrics so for that change over to happen would also take a couple of decades. Then there still the people who use heating oil for heat but that is substantially smaller than the other uses.

    --
    T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:48PM (#249011)

      > The shift was going to be gradual anyway.

      I wouldn't be so sure of that. You don't have to completely replace a power plant's worth of electricity to make that power plant unprofitable. They were financed based on models that didn't plan for drops in power demand - they assumed steady growth. That starts to fall apart with even relatively small drops in demand on the order of 10%. At that point their only option is to raise prices, which encourages further alternative power deployment (and additional conservation plans, like replacement of inefficient manufacturing equipment) and you get a snowball effect.

      • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:00PM

        by Kromagv0 (1825) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:00PM (#249018) Homepage

        So you drop of the least profitable plant first and then there is still demand for the others. It isn't like all of a sudden one day all of plants will shut down all at once it will be a gradual drop. It will take years. Also as demand for coal and natural gas drop the price will making the remaining plants that are better utilized more profitable, or did you think your $/kwh would go down?

        --
        T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:29PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:29PM (#249042)

          > So you drop of the least profitable plant first

          You have now agreed with TFA.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:57PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:57PM (#249050) Journal

        Electricity demand is growing around the world. Not so much in the U.S., but that could change if electric cars take off.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:30PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:30PM (#249064)

          > Electricity demand is growing around the world.

          Yes. But irrelevant to the point.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:52PM

          by frojack (1554) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:52PM (#249074) Journal

          Exactly.

          People have no idea what the demand for electricity will be as electric cars start demanding charging at night, (and also in the daytime).
          Any saving is power use by conservation will be consumed by cars. Chargers, both fixed and portable, are starting to appear in the mass market, even Amazon, and the useless ones draw 15 amps at 240 volts, and fixed installation ones can demand 40 amps per outlet.

          Need to charge two cars at night, you could easily pull 80 Amps. (Many houses are wired with only 100 amp entrances).

          Electrical Demand is not going down any time soon.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:05PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:05PM (#249081) Journal

            Overnight demand would be welcome by the grid, since coal-powered portions of it run at a loss (typically) overnight anyway. We probably will see a huge push from the utilities to abolish net metering though, so they can wring more profit out of that trend in the short-run. Hmm, which makes me think that ironically that could push Big Coal and Big Power to support the changeover to EVs at the expense of Big Oil, since it would handily compensate for the demand destruction currently happening thanks to wind & solar.

            I better double the amount of popcorn on my shopping list.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:32PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:32PM (#249095)

            > People have no idea what the demand for electricity will be as electric cars start demanding charging at night,

            I don't think you've thought that through very well either.

            Every car that starts charging at night is going to be one less car that is burning gasoline. You know, propping up the "carbon bubble." Except centrally generated electricity is more efficient than burning gasoline per mile traveled.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:20PM

              by frojack (1554) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:20PM (#249120) Journal

              Except centrally generated electricity is more efficient than burning gasoline per mile traveled.

              Is it?
              I've not heard that claim made. You have huge line losses to contend with when using centrally generated power.

              Modern gasoline engines have a maximum thermal efficiency of about 25% to 30% when used to power a car.
              Modern steam turbine power plants are able to achieve efficiency in the mid 40% range for newer plants. Most plants are not modern.

              However that does not take into consideration transmission loss. Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6%. But that was for high-voltage long distance transmission. The low voltage neighborhood transmission lines are usually much more lossy due to operating at lower voltage. And the household wiring is even worse.

              It may be cleaner to burn coal in a modern well scrubbed plant (most plants are scrubbed but most plants aren't modern). But more efficient is still not proven,

              --
              No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @10:57PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @10:57PM (#249173)

                > You have huge line losses to contend with when using centrally generated power.

                Where "huge" is on the order of 10% total.

                > Modern steam turbine power plants are able to achieve efficiency in the mid 40% range for newer plants. Most plants are not modern.

                Make that over 60% efficiency [asme.org] as of 3 years ago. Most plants aren't modern, but a large minority of the old ones are scheduled for decommission in the next 10 years.

                Furthermore, you can not run your gasoline car on solar, wind or hydro.

                But ultimately what matters in a discussion of industry collapse is the cost and cost per mile in an electric is a lot cheaper than cost per mile in a gas car - requiring 45mpg to equal the cost of the least efficient electric. [inel.gov]

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:18PM

      by Hyperturtle (2824) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:18PM (#249089)

      Can we use Zazzle to create a few "Save the Oil Baron" t-shirts? Maybe we can reuse some of the whale pictures? It could reflect the profits and oil industry's oversize impact on politics and the economy!

      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday October 14 2015, @01:00PM

        by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday October 14 2015, @01:00PM (#249369) Journal

        You know, if you depict the oil baron as Jabba the Hutt in a "Fat Cat Banker" style suit and top hat, I would buy that.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:12PM

    by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:12PM (#248990) Homepage

    While the underlying problems are resource exhaustion and pollution, the symptoms manifest them economically -- and, just as with diseases, it's the symptoms that kill you, not the disease itself.

    As the EROEI of petroleum falls and it becomes more and more expensive to extract lower and lower grade carbon ores, we may well face an existential paradox, with fuel prices both too high and too low. Too high for anybody to pay, but too low to pay the bills to extract and process into fuel. When that happens, the entire economy simply ceases to function.

    At the $200 / barrel range, we have lots of profitable alternatives to pumping crude out of the ground. With off-the-shelf technology, extracting atmospheric CO2, using Fischer-Tropsch to turn it into syngas, and powering it all with solar photovoltaics is profitable at $200 / barrel. But there's good reason to strongly suspect that prices that high would come with increased costs throughout the economy, especially in food and transportation, that would result in the Great Depression looking like a picnic.

    And, in the midst of such an economic crisis...who's going to be able to afford to invest in energy development, whether conventional or alternative?

    The bubble is very real, too. Energy company stock prices have built into them all their claimed reserves...meaning that investors have bought those stocks on the assumption that every last drop of every last claimed reserve will be dug up and burned. That simply isn't going to happen for all sorts of reasons -- again, especially because the cheap oil these days comes from wellheads a mile below the ocean floor, with miles more well drilled through bedrock. Everything else is even harder to get to, and lower quality when you get to it...but investors are assuming it'll be as profitable to extract as back in the good ol' days when you had to be careful with a pickaxe in Texas lest you set off a gusher.

    b&

    --
    All but God can prove this sentence true.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:34PM

      by BsAtHome (889) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:34PM (#249001)

      Yes, it is a joking matter. It is a paradoxical system and using terminology as "carbon bubble" just exemplifies that more.

      The statement ".blabla...carbon bubble...catastrophic crash...when shift to alternative...blabla..." associates the reader with "carbon good, ecological bad". That is a very bad message to send, and in my opinion a laughable suggestion.

      The economy will function without the heavy carbon corporations. It will simply be a different one. Will it be difficult to change? Yes, it is *always* difficult to change, especially if you have to "sacrifice" something, even is that sacrifice is simply "flawed thinking" that needs to be left behind. That is a human reaction.

      I am by no means suggestion that changes are easy. However, the article reeks simply too much of hype and "we must keep the status quo". That attitude is simply complete and utter bollocks.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:47PM (#249010)

        I suppose a few years ago you were saying "I don't own my own house, what do I care about subprime mortgages? It makes no matter to me if those lenders fail."

        There's nothing wrong in pointing out that a dramatic shift will cause chaos and that it might be wise to consider whether the chaos can be managed.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:51PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:51PM (#249013)

          There's nothing wrong in pointing out that a dramatic shift will cause chaos and that it might be wise to consider whether the chaos can be managed.

          If "mission accomplished!" was good enough for George Bush, its good enough for all the greenies, amirite?

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:00PM (#249019)

        As oil becomes cheaper, it will be used more extensively as a manufacturing material. That will reduce some of the impact of reducing its use as a fuel.

      • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:57PM

        by curunir_wolf (4772) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:57PM (#249049)

        associates the reader with "carbon good, ecological bad". That is a very bad message to send, and in my opinion a laughable suggestion.

        Actually, it's nothing of the sort. You (and every living thing) is made up of carbon. LOTS of carbon. Humans are about 20% carbon, in fact. Somehow everyone has gotten into this meme of "carbon pollution" - meaning most of every life form is "pollution". Life = pollution = bad = go kill yourself. Not a good message at all.

        Yes, it's all short hand. But if you're going to make semantic arguments about associations being made, and what's good or bad, you should start there.

        --
        I am a crackpot
        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:31PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:31PM (#249129)

          Except, in context, we're talking "carbon energy sources", aka "geological carbon". And that IS bad. As you point out, carbon per-se is not a problem, the problem is that we're dumping geologically sequestered carbon into the atmosphere at a rate hundreds of times higher than it can be re-sequestered, thus increasing the atmospheric and oceanic carbon concentrations and precipitating a host of serious global problems.

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:32PM

        by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:32PM (#249067) Journal

        "But bubbles are fun! Right SpongeBob!?!"

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday October 14 2015, @01:24AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 14 2015, @01:24AM (#249237) Journal

        associates the reader with "carbon good, ecological bad".

        Obviously, it should be "ecological good, carbon bad", right? Propaganda is ok if is has the right sign, right?

        The economy will function without the heavy carbon corporations. It will simply be a different one. Will it be difficult to change? Yes, it is *always* difficult to change, especially if you have to "sacrifice" something, even is that sacrifice is simply "flawed thinking" that needs to be left behind. That is a human reaction.

        So why only mention "flawed thinking" when there clearly is more to fix than that, such as the entire world's transportation infrastructure.

        I am by no means suggestion that changes are easy. However, the article reeks simply too much of hype and "we must keep the status quo". That attitude is simply complete and utter bollocks.

        Actually, it does sound like you are suggesting such changes are easy. Else why just mention "flawed thinking" above?

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:00PM

      by Hyperturtle (2824) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:00PM (#249020)

      I'm not sure I really think it's appropriate to prop up an industry because we can have an economic collapse instead of having an ecological collapse. I'd rather save some of the future for the planet than save it for current day industry executives. Of course, the planet will be fine. We'll turn into oil after the collapse, and the future sapient dinosaurs will thank us for our short-term sacrifices to prevent stock market losses.

      If they are really afraid of all of those people losing their jobs, let's have them plant trees, retrain them in other energy industries, or otherwise have them continue to find oil for use later for those important things like plastics and other materials that are best to use, reuse, and recycle (reducing is part of the overall plan!). The fact we burn oil when we could be making things with the hydrocarbons... well.

      There are so many things to do with hydrocarbons that aren't just burning them for fun and profit. I wish that more articles aimed at the mainstream media focused on them. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing black-or-white transition process, but that's generally how it's depicted...

      That's all easy for me to say though. I can't power my car off twisted rubber bands or solar power without further investment in that realm of transportation; I can't afford the nice electric cars out there, so I am chained to the pump for now.

       

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:18PM

        by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:18PM (#249035) Homepage

        Oh, I'm not at all suggesting we should prop up the fossil fuel industry. That wouldn't do us any good.

        What I'm pointing out is that we've already dug ourselves into a really nasty hole, and there's no easy way out of it. The bubble is real, it's bigger than all the other bubbles in history combined, and it may well take the whole civilization out when it pops.

        It's just barely possible that we might be able to transition to a solar-based economy rapidly enough to survive, and there's some reason for hope. Electric vehicles are starting to take off...if they really take off, they'll ease the burden on petroleum, maybe even at about the rate that production is going to taper off as more and more reserves pass peak. If we can electrify the passenger fleet, as a bonus we'll have inexpensive batteries that can be used in the home (like Tesla's PowerWall) to pair with solar photovoltaics that're already in a rapid price decline; that gets us a transition away from coal as well. But it also encourages grid defection; the electricity companies need to get it out of their heads that they're going to be the ones generating electricity and instead become the marketplace responsible for shipping electricity around or else we loose the grid...and they're unfortunately digging in their heels.

        A lot of things have to happen just right. They're just barely close enough that it could happen...but I wouldn't count on it.

        b&

        --
        All but God can prove this sentence true.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:17PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:17PM (#249088) Journal

          the electricity companies need to get it out of their heads that they're going to be the ones generating electricity and instead become the marketplace responsible for shipping electricity around or else we loose the grid...and they're unfortunately digging in their heels.

          People who work in industries that have operated the same way for more than a century are not nimble thinkers. But it's not up to them. They cannot stop you or me from putting solar panels on our own roofs. They cannot stop you or me from setting up a microgrid in our neighborhood for local load balancing. They cannot charge us for power we don't use. And once you and I, living in the same neighborhood, get all our electricity from our solar panels, then we can drop other fossil fuel dependencies like gasoline and natural gas for heating and cooking.

          There's really nothing to fear for the larger economy, though, because Americans demonstrate that time & again when they get any money in their pockets they don't do anything foolish like saving or investing, but run right out and blow it. Ergo the rest of the economy should see a $365 billion/yr shot in the arm from money that's no longer spent on oil.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 1) by tekk on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:20PM

        by tekk (5704) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:20PM (#249119)

        Actually that's a pretty interesting misconception. We won't be turning into oil, and neither will anything else. I don't have a citation as usual, but I recall that all the oil was only created because it was from plant matter before bacteria had evolved to break it down, and so it never decomposed properly and left us with oil, coal, all those nice things.

        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday October 14 2015, @01:38PM

          by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday October 14 2015, @01:38PM (#249384) Journal

          Thomas Gold [wikipedia.org] had a theory, and significant evidence, that a large majority of "fossil fuels" was in fact primordial. That is, it was simply incorporated into the planet as it accreted and slowly made its way to the surface because it was less dense than rock.
          There is significant biological contamination (he also wrote a book about that - "The Deep Hot Biosphere"), but he claimed actual source of hydrocarbons was not biological.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:42PM

        by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:42PM (#249139)

        We'll turn into oil after the collapse, and the future sapient dinosaurs will thank us for our short-term sacrifices to prevent stock market losses.

        This is one of the simultaneously least intelligible and most insightful statements I've ever seen on this or its related site. Kudos.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:05PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:05PM (#249025)

      is profitable at $200 / barrel

      If all the external costs have the same cost at $200 as they do at $50. But they won't.

      Its some interesting posturing. We had a bubble in ethanol turning lots of diesel into slightly less energy content of ethanol, and the fracking / sands / shale bubble thats popping with oil low prices due to the start of the recession (low global demand, low prices...)

      One interesting aspect of the frack / sands / shale bubble is those supplies are shit for duration so in about two years crude is going to be very tight unless we have an epic recession. Its already too late to drill drill drill. That'll create an interesting bubble and / or public relations nightmare.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:06PM (#249026)

      Also, given a fiat currency, new money can get shifted to other industries or the people to compensate for the loss of an industry.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:14PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:14PM (#249055) Journal

      As the EROEI of petroleum falls and it becomes more and more expensive to extract lower and lower grade carbon ores, we may well face an existential paradox, with fuel prices both too high and too low. Too high for anybody to pay, but too low to pay the bills to extract and process into fuel. When that happens, the entire economy simply ceases to function.

      There is no such number. When that has happened in the past, it was due to external interference which resulted in different effective prices for buyer and producer. For example, during the worst of the gas rationing in the US during the oil crises of the 70s, the seller's price was capped while the buyer had to pay in time (by waiting in line for hours) in addition to the monetary cost of the fuel.

      At the $200 / barrel range, we have lots of profitable alternatives to pumping crude out of the ground. With off-the-shelf technology, extracting atmospheric CO2, using Fischer-Tropsch to turn it into syngas, and powering it all with solar photovoltaics is profitable at $200 / barrel. But there's good reason to strongly suspect that prices that high would come with increased costs throughout the economy, especially in food and transportation, that would result in the Great Depression looking like a picnic.

      If that were true, then we would have seen some inkling of that effect with the huge variation in current oil prices to date. For example, oil peaked at $145 in 2008 and it wasn't responsible for the economic meltdown (in fact the price rapidly dropped from that point due to lower demand due to weaker economic activity globally).

      And, in the midst of such an economic crisis...who's going to be able to afford to invest in energy development, whether conventional or alternative?

      Plenty of people. Economic crises are not universal. A lot of people do well during them.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:17PM (#249185)

      Yeah, I know...the sky is falling. Preach it from the highest hilltop, Chicken Little!

      And, in the midst of such an economic crisis...who's going to be able to afford to invest in energy development, whether conventional or alternative?

      My, how shallow your understand truly is! Do you honestly think that all economic activity will cease just because energy costs have drastically risen? Seriously?!? I got news for you: economic activity was in full swing long before oil and coal conglomerates ever existed and economic activity will still be in full swing long after oil and coal conglomerates are tossed on the ash heap of history.

      The bubble is very real, too. Energy company stock prices have built into them all their claimed reserves...meaning that investors have bought those stocks on the assumption that every last drop of every last claimed reserve will be dug up and burned. That simply isn't going to happen for all sorts of reasons -- again, especially because the cheap oil these days comes from wellheads a mile below the ocean floor, with miles more well drilled through bedrock. Everything else is even harder to get to, and lower quality when you get to it...but investors are assuming it'll be as profitable to extract as back in the good ol' days when you had to be careful with a pickaxe in Texas lest you set off a gusher.

      Yes, there are going to be economic losers in the transition away from oil and gas. But what you don't seem to have yet grasped is that there are also going to be some economic winners as well. Such is the nature of bursting economic bubbles and shifting paradigms. To give you an historical example, about a century ago the auto industry was in it's infancy. In the span of a few short decades a new industry was born which today brings in billions of dollars of economic activity. On the other hand, all those horse and buggy whip makers had a terrible time making the transition to the new economy. Would you really rather have stayed in the era of the horse and buggy?

    • (Score: 1) by dak664 on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:15PM

      by dak664 (2433) on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:15PM (#249508)

      The paradox of fuel prices being both too high and too low will soon make it gruesomely obvious that money can not create energy, it only diverts more or less of an existing energy flow among particular uses. As we enter the fossil-fuel EROEI end game the flow will become inadequate to support our current economy, and no amount of money printing or reallocation will change that.

      Solar could have established a comfortable and rising energy floor had we started decades ago, but now we don't have the surplus energy to build it up. It could perhaps be done with a decade or two reduction in luxury energy use. Even if that were politically possible in some areas, at this point it would probably just trigger global resource wars.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by snufu on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:02PM

    by snufu (5855) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:02PM (#249021)

    Made from no petroleum based products.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:03PM

    by SubiculumHammer (5191) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:03PM (#249022)

    Too big to fail industries must be propped up even after they become irrelevant...stupid

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:37PM (#249101)

      > Too big to fail industries must be propped up even after they become irrelevant...stupid

      Er, no.
      But the people working for them need to have a soft-landing into new careers otherwise ripple effects of mass unemployment will be harmful to everyone.

      You can understand that pollution harms everyone, but you can't understand that 5% of the workforce becoming unemployed hurts everyone too?

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Dunbal on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:04PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:04PM (#249024)

    Bubble bursting is healthy. It's the inflating that's a problem.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:33PM

      by SanityCheck (5190) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:33PM (#249068)

      Bubble bursting is healthy. It's the inflating that's a problem.

      But that's where 1% makes it's bread :(

      (Yes smallest violin moment)

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by SemperOSS on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:06PM

    by SemperOSS (5072) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:06PM (#249027)

    Since the energy sector is so huge, the impact of a crisis is not only in the main part of the sector but in the supply chain, which is long and mostly not directly visible.

    Many years ago, one of my customers was a company that supplied consultancy to a company that supplied software to a company that supplied turn-key solutions to a contractor that worked for Norwegian Statoil — six levels of companies in the direct supply chain. Each of these companies obviously bought products from a range of suppliers that again bought from ... You know what I mean. This long tail of a supply chain is what makes it very important that the energy sector has to realign without the bubble bursting.

    --
    I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
    Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:33PM

    by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:33PM (#249045)

    Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
    Benjamin: Yes, sir.
    Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
    Benjamin: Yes, I am.
    Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
    Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
    Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?

  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:41PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:41PM (#249046) Homepage Journal

    The energy sector is composed of some of the largest companies in the world. I trust they will be able to properly read the market and invest in non-carbon energy revenue streams in time. That or buy off some legislators to prop up their industry a bit longer.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:57PM (#249051)

    power sector natural gas prices are 28% lower in 2015 compared with 2014

    -- http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/coal.cfm [eia.gov]

    (EIA predicts a slight rise in the price of coal)

    Benchmark Central Appalachia coal has dropped 20 percent to $42.13 a ton in the past year.

    -- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-06/coal-s-upside-things-can-t-get-much-worse-after-disastrous-2015 [bloomberg.com]

    The price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate oil declined from $96.54 in August of 2014 to $42.87 in August of 2015, says http://www.statista.com/statistics/279941/west-texas-intermediate-wti-crude-oil-price/ [statista.com] (that's a drop of 56%).

    Of course, bubbles can be reinflated.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:14PM (#249056)

    "We can't outlaw smoking, alcohol, and actually require that items claiming to be food or actually that....think of all of the cancer hospitals, drug companies, and DUI lawyers. They'll starve!"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2015, @12:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2015, @12:46PM (#249360)

      You seem to think that outlawing those substances would mean less of them would be consumed. Historical precedent indicates the opposite.

  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 14 2015, @12:11AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 14 2015, @12:11AM (#249215) Homepage Journal

    Compare Las Angeles now to when I lived there from 1982-1985.

    For decades some entrenched moneyed interests fought tooth and nail against a subway system. Quite likely my life expectency is reduced - even today - from breathing all that Nitric Oxide.

    It's a beautiful place now, busses go everywhere. My friend in Koreatown posts FB photos every day. "But Ted where is the smog?"

    "What smog?"

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]