Just adressing your point about fluctuations in the oil price.. Jeff Vail wrote a peice recently on one aspect of of this - how the oil price and demand follows a process similar to predator-prey dynamics in the wild - http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/09/predator-prey-dynamics-in-demand.html.
Ed Bryant on
September 14th, 2008 10:24 am
Hi Kris,
I accidentally rated your vid with a single star. Can you change it to a five? I misunderstood and tried to click each star - duh!
Love all your stuff! Keep up the good work and don’t let the google/Utube nazis get you down.
Best,
Ed Bryant
Rob Stelling on
September 14th, 2008 11:12 am
I work in healthcare. Medicines, plastics everywhere in the hospital, double the average energy use for machines, heating, cooling. Healthcare will be hit HARD when peak oil starts getting serious. What can we do? Better learn about how to take care of yourself, and realize that we are NOT immortal, we WILL die, and your doctor is not God. It was not too long ago that half of pregnancies ended in death — of the mother. If she was able to have kids, half would be expected to die. Most people died of infections. That may be the new reality.
Rob
Jim on
September 14th, 2008 7:27 pm
Price is a very funny business - it’s a function of all the different places a dollar might come from or might go. These days the credit crunch has the financial markets in turmoil. Look also at the Shanghai stock market. Really, there is not so much information to be gained by looking at price - there is just too much noise.
What is more useful is to look at relative prices, e.g. perhaps food versus gasoline, or either versus electricity. It’s especially interesting when there are alternative ways to sarisfy some need or other. Over the long run, producers will use the most profitable, i.e. the least expensive, method. But it can take a while to shift, because of investments in equipment. For example, just to keep your house warm - when does it become such a good idea to replace leaky old windows instead of burning so much heating oil? Payback time has to be compared to interest rates.
People don’t make decisions just based on price, either. The cheapest method might be illegal. It might also be really embarrassing. What drives fashion, that is really fascinating - but a total mystery to me!
jp on
September 21st, 2008 1:59 pm
Howdy,
You mentioned local and national dialogue…I think international is pretty important too.
Of course oil products and by-products are insidious…wasn’t it just wonderful when the plastic shampoo bottle was invented? - thereby banishing forever the nasty and dangerous dropped and shattered bottle in the shower (subsequently stomped upon producing ugly cuts and profuse bleeding…) - the only time I ever had to visit the doctor as a kid, and it didn’t even require stiches.
Well, my feet got saved ever after, but at what cost? - this….is the question.
Another good question concerns the whole “global” model forced down our throats.
While we run out of the precious stuff, it is insisted that manufactured products travel the world over like drunken salty sailors (as if all those parts would enjoy the wanderlust) - um, do they have a girl in every port?
The widget from Vietnam, the gizmo from California, the whatsit from China, the whatever from Romania - all meeting up together and assembled in some Maquiladora somewhere….after having traveled separately some 25 thousand miles or more…..what for? To save some corporate penny-pincher enough bucks that all that fuel was still worth the cost….take it out of the pockets of the factory workers and slip it into the gas tank………….
Sure, people will notice the issue when rising costs of practically everything hammer their wallets…but I still don’t believe your wallet should offer insights that otherwise come from common sense….like a bit of sensitivity to your environment and community, for instance.
When I live urban, kids are on the street. When I live suburban, they’re nowhere to be found. What’s that worth? What IS that worth?
To answer your question - an oil-based economy functions on exactly this form - just as getting rid of the buffalo effectively got rid of the Sioux - at least in terms of their being able to wage a feasible campaign of resistance to Manifest Destiny and the “conquering” of the Great American Desert (otherwise known at the time, as whatever was west of the Mississippi).
Makes one pause….if such a resilient people could be so effectively subdued, eliminated in such a simple fashion……..what will empty oil barrels do to us?
Okay, maybe the best answer is just this: What isn’t related? So far, our common sense, and our political and public will. They strongly appear to be strangers unto each other!
(12 votes, average: 4.58 out of 5)
Loading …
Hi Kris,
Just adressing your point about fluctuations in the oil price.. Jeff Vail wrote a peice recently on one aspect of of this - how the oil price and demand follows a process similar to predator-prey dynamics in the wild - http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/09/predator-prey-dynamics-in-demand.html.
Hi Kris,
I accidentally rated your vid with a single star. Can you change it to a five? I misunderstood and tried to click each star - duh!
Love all your stuff! Keep up the good work and don’t let the google/Utube nazis get you down.
Best,
Ed Bryant
I work in healthcare. Medicines, plastics everywhere in the hospital, double the average energy use for machines, heating, cooling. Healthcare will be hit HARD when peak oil starts getting serious. What can we do? Better learn about how to take care of yourself, and realize that we are NOT immortal, we WILL die, and your doctor is not God. It was not too long ago that half of pregnancies ended in death — of the mother. If she was able to have kids, half would be expected to die. Most people died of infections. That may be the new reality.
Rob
Price is a very funny business - it’s a function of all the different places a dollar might come from or might go. These days the credit crunch has the financial markets in turmoil. Look also at the Shanghai stock market. Really, there is not so much information to be gained by looking at price - there is just too much noise.
What is more useful is to look at relative prices, e.g. perhaps food versus gasoline, or either versus electricity. It’s especially interesting when there are alternative ways to sarisfy some need or other. Over the long run, producers will use the most profitable, i.e. the least expensive, method. But it can take a while to shift, because of investments in equipment. For example, just to keep your house warm - when does it become such a good idea to replace leaky old windows instead of burning so much heating oil? Payback time has to be compared to interest rates.
People don’t make decisions just based on price, either. The cheapest method might be illegal. It might also be really embarrassing. What drives fashion, that is really fascinating - but a total mystery to me!
Howdy,
You mentioned local and national dialogue…I think international is pretty important too.
Of course oil products and by-products are insidious…wasn’t it just wonderful when the plastic shampoo bottle was invented? - thereby banishing forever the nasty and dangerous dropped and shattered bottle in the shower (subsequently stomped upon producing ugly cuts and profuse bleeding…) - the only time I ever had to visit the doctor as a kid, and it didn’t even require stiches.
Well, my feet got saved ever after, but at what cost? - this….is the question.
Another good question concerns the whole “global” model forced down our throats.
While we run out of the precious stuff, it is insisted that manufactured products travel the world over like drunken salty sailors (as if all those parts would enjoy the wanderlust) - um, do they have a girl in every port?
The widget from Vietnam, the gizmo from California, the whatsit from China, the whatever from Romania - all meeting up together and assembled in some Maquiladora somewhere….after having traveled separately some 25 thousand miles or more…..what for? To save some corporate penny-pincher enough bucks that all that fuel was still worth the cost….take it out of the pockets of the factory workers and slip it into the gas tank………….
Sure, people will notice the issue when rising costs of practically everything hammer their wallets…but I still don’t believe your wallet should offer insights that otherwise come from common sense….like a bit of sensitivity to your environment and community, for instance.
When I live urban, kids are on the street. When I live suburban, they’re nowhere to be found. What’s that worth? What IS that worth?
To answer your question - an oil-based economy functions on exactly this form - just as getting rid of the buffalo effectively got rid of the Sioux - at least in terms of their being able to wage a feasible campaign of resistance to Manifest Destiny and the “conquering” of the Great American Desert (otherwise known at the time, as whatever was west of the Mississippi).
Makes one pause….if such a resilient people could be so effectively subdued, eliminated in such a simple fashion……..what will empty oil barrels do to us?
Okay, maybe the best answer is just this: What isn’t related? So far, our common sense, and our political and public will. They strongly appear to be strangers unto each other!
cheers,
jp