Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Perhaps we expect the Downtown Relief Line? I sure do.
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The End of Suburbia and Economic Apocalypse
- Thread starter Blixtein
- Start date
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Wow, dichotomy, you are a real life saver there, bud.
I'm gonna move out of downtown Toronto and commute in from Rankin Inlet.
Dichotomy
Banned
Whatever happened to the 2nd subway station under Queen St.? The city of Toronto can't shoulder all the blame. Ottawa and Queen's Park need to step up and give this city some respect in the form of a couple billon. An Eglinton E-W line and a Queen Line would do WONDERS for this city.
Dichotomy
Banned
That's the spirit. A friend of mine commutes from Wasaga Beach to his salon in Yorkville.
hkric88
Active Member
This howard guy is one that we need to be concerned about. I started to read one of his books 'Home from Nowhere', and like in his article here, he gets off to a glorious start, until he stars proposing 'solutions'. A ban on all buildings over 7 stories?? what? that is absolutely silly. The Romans built apartment buildings taller than that.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
JasonParis
Moderator
It's never existed. All that was built was a streetcar platform.
Archivist
Senior Member
dichotomy, though I've read carefully and widely about energy issues, your thoughtful, articulate and well researched post has just convinced me of the errors of my ways. Thank you for this. Here especially is where I agree:
1) Autos are never going to to away. I couldn't agree more. Nothing will change ever in how we get around. After autos, we'll surely be in personal jets or helicopters (as is so common in Sao Paulo with it's fabulous transit system).
4) 'Greenhouse gases' are just the Cause of the Month. Absolutely. Same thing with those crazy campaigns against smoking, PCBs, and asbestos. I find it best to ignore all these doomsayers. It makes perfect sense that because some people were alarmed about things that didn't happen, that those can be used to discredit any kind of concern.
5) The oil bubble is just that - a bubble. Brazil and Canada have more oil than Saudi Arabia ... Once the speculators cash in on their paper, prices will drop back to $100 a barrel or so. So true! But why choose $100? I vote for $20 or $30, that's what people were saying at this time last year. And who is going to believe sources like the International Energy Agency that estimate Brazil has 11.7 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and Canada has
179 billion barrels of proven oil reserves (mostly as oil sands, which is heavily energy-intensive to produce) as of January 2008. So what if they say Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels? You were in Brazil, you know better. As we all know, oil is indefinite so this talk about it disappearing is just silly.
8) Las Vegas is tacky, but fun. Adults deserve fun, too. Or have you never been to Disneywordl? Now, that's tacky. Here, I will defer to you. You seem to know.
1) Autos are never going to to away. I couldn't agree more. Nothing will change ever in how we get around. After autos, we'll surely be in personal jets or helicopters (as is so common in Sao Paulo with it's fabulous transit system).
4) 'Greenhouse gases' are just the Cause of the Month. Absolutely. Same thing with those crazy campaigns against smoking, PCBs, and asbestos. I find it best to ignore all these doomsayers. It makes perfect sense that because some people were alarmed about things that didn't happen, that those can be used to discredit any kind of concern.
5) The oil bubble is just that - a bubble. Brazil and Canada have more oil than Saudi Arabia ... Once the speculators cash in on their paper, prices will drop back to $100 a barrel or so. So true! But why choose $100? I vote for $20 or $30, that's what people were saying at this time last year. And who is going to believe sources like the International Energy Agency that estimate Brazil has 11.7 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and Canada has
179 billion barrels of proven oil reserves (mostly as oil sands, which is heavily energy-intensive to produce) as of January 2008. So what if they say Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels? You were in Brazil, you know better. As we all know, oil is indefinite so this talk about it disappearing is just silly.
8) Las Vegas is tacky, but fun. Adults deserve fun, too. Or have you never been to Disneywordl? Now, that's tacky. Here, I will defer to you. You seem to know.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Some additional thoughts:
Automobiles won't go away; the technology will change - as it has since the machines first showed up on the scene. They are far safer and cleaner than they were forty years ago. The major issue with cars in cities are traffic management and mass transit as an alternative.
The debate about so-called GHG's is one that ought to stand on its own merits, and not be confused or compared with cigarettes, asbestos or PCB's.
The greatest drop in the consumption of oil in the twentieth century took place in the 1930's - during the great depression (a 30% drop). While the increasing price of oil may not cause a depression, a market-driven (speculative) rise in the price could contribute to a possible recession, which in turn will drop the speculative price of oil when consumption starts to fall.
Automobiles won't go away; the technology will change - as it has since the machines first showed up on the scene. They are far safer and cleaner than they were forty years ago. The major issue with cars in cities are traffic management and mass transit as an alternative.
The debate about so-called GHG's is one that ought to stand on its own merits, and not be confused or compared with cigarettes, asbestos or PCB's.
The greatest drop in the consumption of oil in the twentieth century took place in the 1930's - during the great depression (a 30% drop). While the increasing price of oil may not cause a depression, a market-driven (speculative) rise in the price could contribute to a possible recession, which in turn will drop the speculative price of oil when consumption starts to fall.
Archivist
Senior Member
Hydrogen, I agree with everything you've written.
Some form of personal transportation will continue to exist indefinitely, though the current technology of autos have some limitations. And actually, even dichotomy's statement about people "going to church" bears some merit: car ownership is wrapped up in self-worth and status issues and will likely, in the short term, become even more of a status symbol than it was previously.
My comparison with cigarettes and PCS was intended as an ironic counterpart to arguments that essentially boil down to "because some people have made some claims in the past that were flawed, then this claim too must be flawed".
I imagine what will happen with oil is that yes, as we enter recession for a variety of reasons, demand will decrease and the price will drop. The problem arises as the economy picks up, since prices will suddenly rise again -- leading to a new recession? I'm not sure how this will play out, but it's not a comforting thought, and there is no question that new discoveries are not in any way keeping up with demand.
Issues around energy scarcity are quite complex and don't lend themselves to quick summaries or ideological fixes. The facts are that oil is unique in the amount of condensed energy that it provides, that it is non-renewable, and that we have come to be very dependent on it. It is not necessarily well understood that different forms of oil are interchangeable - there is nothing so delightful as sweet, light crude, and it's a long way from that to the sticky oil sands. Even the extra 200,000 barrels that the Saudis recently said they would produce was sour oil - they've done this many times - and they are simply trying trying to sell an inferior product at higher prices.
For those most knowledgeable about oil, few reliable people are saying that we have hit the peak, and they are mostly agnostic about it, waiting to see. But there are some truly scary possibilities in terms of depletion, and when you get people who confuse all the issues with didactic and confusing information, it's not comforting.
Some form of personal transportation will continue to exist indefinitely, though the current technology of autos have some limitations. And actually, even dichotomy's statement about people "going to church" bears some merit: car ownership is wrapped up in self-worth and status issues and will likely, in the short term, become even more of a status symbol than it was previously.
My comparison with cigarettes and PCS was intended as an ironic counterpart to arguments that essentially boil down to "because some people have made some claims in the past that were flawed, then this claim too must be flawed".
I imagine what will happen with oil is that yes, as we enter recession for a variety of reasons, demand will decrease and the price will drop. The problem arises as the economy picks up, since prices will suddenly rise again -- leading to a new recession? I'm not sure how this will play out, but it's not a comforting thought, and there is no question that new discoveries are not in any way keeping up with demand.
Issues around energy scarcity are quite complex and don't lend themselves to quick summaries or ideological fixes. The facts are that oil is unique in the amount of condensed energy that it provides, that it is non-renewable, and that we have come to be very dependent on it. It is not necessarily well understood that different forms of oil are interchangeable - there is nothing so delightful as sweet, light crude, and it's a long way from that to the sticky oil sands. Even the extra 200,000 barrels that the Saudis recently said they would produce was sour oil - they've done this many times - and they are simply trying trying to sell an inferior product at higher prices.
For those most knowledgeable about oil, few reliable people are saying that we have hit the peak, and they are mostly agnostic about it, waiting to see. But there are some truly scary possibilities in terms of depletion, and when you get people who confuse all the issues with didactic and confusing information, it's not comforting.
Glen
Senior Member
Necessity is the mother of invention.
There is little question that we have reached, or soon will, "peak oil". What effect it will have though is unclear. There ar limits to what the market can bear, insofar as price is concerned. Once demand falls, we reset the peak oil inflection point, and as you mentioned Archivist, that may in itself produce mini cycles.
More importantly though, is that high oil prices have made alternatives much more viable. When oil was $30 a barrel, few if any alternatives would be viable. Now that oil prices seem destined to remain above $100 p/b, an incredible amount of attention is being paid to the area. Already some companies appear to have viable products that make the idea of future oil fueled transportation a dead end. QuantumSphere, for example, has developed some very interesting nanometal electrodes that very well might lead electrolysis being the future of efficient, cheap and clean hydrogen production.
http://www.qsinano.com/white_papers/QSI_DSE_Hydrogen_PPT_March_07.pdf
There is little question that we have reached, or soon will, "peak oil". What effect it will have though is unclear. There ar limits to what the market can bear, insofar as price is concerned. Once demand falls, we reset the peak oil inflection point, and as you mentioned Archivist, that may in itself produce mini cycles.
More importantly though, is that high oil prices have made alternatives much more viable. When oil was $30 a barrel, few if any alternatives would be viable. Now that oil prices seem destined to remain above $100 p/b, an incredible amount of attention is being paid to the area. Already some companies appear to have viable products that make the idea of future oil fueled transportation a dead end. QuantumSphere, for example, has developed some very interesting nanometal electrodes that very well might lead electrolysis being the future of efficient, cheap and clean hydrogen production.
http://www.qsinano.com/white_papers/QSI_DSE_Hydrogen_PPT_March_07.pdf
But how high will it have to go for consumption to go down? There's a big difference this time around compared to the 30's. India and China are booming and their increased use will more than make up for any decline in North America or Europe.
Dichotomy
Banned
And that is the elephant in the room. Ironic, isn't it: we destroy our economy by shipping our jobs and technology to Asia and south Asia, then they batter our economy by competing with us on the world stage for natural resources that they need (get ready for this) to make widgets to sell back to us again... Neat little circle, eh?
Meanwhile, we bend over backwards feeling oh, so ashamed for our consumption of natural resources (which are ours, BTW) and try to come up with increasingly fancy tricks to atone for our 'over consumption;' however, what we do in this country, with our 34 million (give or take a million that we don't know about) soles matters diddly squat when the - ahem, methane gas released in flushing toilets in China and India does more enviromental damage than we will ever amount to.
[Sarcasm intended.]
I, for one, am not going to apologise for the success of the Western way of life and flaggelate myself for it. Sure, there is something each of us can do to lessen our personal environmental impact, but castrating ourselves at the Citadel of We in the West Are Very Bad People, is not going to cut it.
Dichotomy
Banned
Not so unbelievable, really. Every generation of liberal arts graduates has an all new idea of what a city is supposed to be. Toronto endured a height limit for 20 years and now we seem to have gone the other way.
Dichotomy
Banned
I like your sarcasm. It doesn't cut it, though. I would seriously doubt we will see $30 oil again, unless a bird flu wipes out half of Asia, but $100 is probably the real plateau for oil. The next 4 or 5 months will tell.
Look, there are two ways of looking at this issue: 1) we can all move into igloos and eat moss (because we know killing seals is bad) or 2) we can let human ingenuity reign and think our way through these challenges.
Unfortunately, what largely passes for discourse these days is the Chicken Little Syndrome. I drew all those pretty posters in grade 4 about the population boom and litter. Been there, done that. I listened to my dad curse and swear as gas hit .50 a gallon and he filled up his Chrysler 300.
The trouble is, it seems like only the fringe nuts get heard any more. The large, middle majority has just tuned it out.
We have heard it all before.
Glen
Senior Member
Keep in mind that in both of these countries, governments, not the market place dictates the selling price. As such, both are currently selling oil/gas at less than cost and demand has escaped traditional inflationary pressures. You can run but not hide from inflation. The longer and greater the insulation occurs the greater future hyperinflation will be, causing catastrophe.