Peak Oil vs. Climate Change ... Fight!
Climate change is happening. Peak oil could have already happened. Civilization is going to end. Twice.
Climate change, which is part coursed by humans using fossil fuels, means that the global climate is going to become more unpredictable and because of this our industrial civilisation unsustainable. Nobody is going to invest the capital in the required infrastructure if it is likely to get wiped out by some freak weather event before generating a return on investment. So we are reduced to a pre-industrial exisence.
Peak oil is that we are running out of oil, on which our economies depend, and so will no longer be able to power our economies and be reduced to a pre-industrial existence.
The only way to stop climate change is to massively reduce the quantity of fossil fuels that we use. Peak oil means that there is going to be a massive drop in the quantity of fossil fuel available. In a free market economy when a resource starts to become scarce, the price goes up. As the price goes up people substitute that resource in various ways (often ways that cannot be predicted), so demand for the resource falls. This leads to the price finding a new equilibrium, and less of that resource being used.
Thanks to the magic of the market Peak Oil nullifies Climate Change! The only question becomes is humanity inventive enough to be able to substitute fast enough? I guess that I'm an optimist, but I say yes.
posted by chris at 2/19/2006 12:44:00 pm
5 Comments:
Global climate is going to be more unpredictable...
Its already unpredictable so the global warming cheerleaders get to say that any unpredictability proves their theory.
Ah, but the climate is not completely unpredictable and the predictions that we can make based on a model with global warming fit very well with the available data. The scientific consensus is that climate change is real, and while it remains that is the view I am going to go along with.
"Thanks to the magic of the market Peak Oil nullifies Climate Change! The only question becomes is humanity inventive enough to be able to substitute fast enough? I guess that I'm an optimist, but I say yes."
Have you not noticed that the polar ice caps are melting, there is no snow on the summit of Mt Kilamajaro, the States are getting more and more severe hurricanes, Africa is getting more severe droughts and Russia is getting more severe winters?
Anonymous please learn to read, then start at sentence one. Climate change is happening.
The thing is how to deal with it, this requires a massive reduction in the use of fossil fuels. Peak Oil will prompt a massive reduction in the use of fossil fuel. Hence one counteracts the other.
"Thanks to the magic of the market Peak Oil nullifies Climate Change!"
Peak Oil does NOT nullify Climate Change, because the first and most likely substitute for oil & gas is COAL, which releases far more CO2 per unit of energy obtained than either oil or gas, thereby ACCELERATING Climate Change.
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