Posted on 04/27/2010 9:34:19 PM PDT by neverdem
When you really need something, it's natural to worry about running out of it. Peak oil has been a global preoccupation since the 1970s, and the warnings get louder with each passing year. Environmentalists emphasize the importance of placing limits on consumption of fossil fuels, but haven't been successful in encouraging people to consume less energy—even with the force of law at their backs.
But maybe they're going about it all wrong, looking for solutions in the wrong places. Economists Lucas Bretschger and Sjak Smulders argue that the decisive question isn't to focus directly on preserving the resources we already have. Instead, they ask: “Is it realistic to predict that knowledge accumulation is so powerful as to outweigh the physical limits of physical capital services and the limited substitution possibilities for natural resources?” In other words, can increasing scientific knowledge and technological innovation overcome any limitations to economic growth posed by the depletion of non-renewable resources?
The debate over peak oil is heavily politicized, so let's set it aside and test the idea of imminent resource peaks and their consequences for economic growth on three other non-renewable resources: lithium, neodymium, and phosphorus.
Peak Lithium
Lithium is the element at the heart of the electric car revolution that many green energy enthusiasts are trying to foment. For example, the Chevy Volt, scheduled to be at dealers this fall, will be energized by 400 pounds of lithium ion batteries, plus a gasoline engine to produce electricity to extend the car’s range of travel once the batteries are drained. In 2007, William Tahil, an analyst with the France-based consultancy, Meridian International Research, issued a report that alarmingly concluded that there is “insufficient economically recoverable lithium available in the Earth's crust to sustain electric vehicle manufacture in the volumes required.” Tahil added...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Willie,
This is relevant to your interests. What about "Peak Steel?" If we run out of steel we can't make any more rails!
My nephew told me about “peak phosphorous”. It’s a serious issue, since the economic sources of phosphorous for fertilizer are mined. The phosphorous persists, of course, in elemental form, but it is dispersed and difficult to recover.
Laugh a'while you can, monkey boy.
The problems of “peak oil” and “peak lithium” and “peak phosphorus” and “peak” anything else you can think of are solved by the magic of “economics”.
As demand grows, as supplies of something become harder to get, the price goes up. This encourages people to go farther afield to find more, and it encourages people to find alternatives. The higher price is an incentive to inventors and entrepreneurs and its an incentive to folks like us to find another way.
You don’t have to do anything except follow the logic of the situation. No government mandate needed, no government grandee to tell you to do what you would do anyway without him.
Its funny. If an oil company charges $4 a gallon for gasoline because they are having to go farther to get it, thats bad. If government adds a buck tax to $3 gasoline to encourage you to look for alternatives, somehow thats good.
No. If supplies get harder to get, it’ll go to $4 or $6 a gallon, and people will invent and invest and they’ll come up with alternatives without anyone to tell them to.
“Rare earth minerals independence”
In the 50’s I did research at a major university on rare earth extraction processes on both a lab and pilot plant scale. We have the technology, if we were to dust it off and put it to use. Phosphate rock from certain parts of this country were our rare earth sources then. We had processes that could have been turned into an economical source of the various rare earth minerals. But we had not yet developed a demand, and much of that technology is likely dormant today. It could be resusitated.
“If supplies get harder to get, it’ll go to $4 or $6 a gallon, and people will invent and invest and they’ll come up with alternatives without anyone to tell them to.”
Exactamundo!!
Capitalism is the ultimate sustainable system!
Never underestimate people’s resourcefulness and creativity when they are free.
I think Palladium will be on this list very soon.
The central planners hate Capitalism because it is not a plan. Capitalism is a description of what happens when people are allowed trade freely. It is the natural organization of human exchange.
While I agree that many of the rare earth applications have a work-around or substitute available, this is not the case with crude oil. There is simply nothing else - wind, solar, etc., — that offers the energy rate of return that oil does. It is a large part of the economic growth we have enjoyed for decades.
Yes, we can do some combination of conservation, drilling at home, alternative sources such as nuclear, and withstand a certain level of oil price increase. At $150 a barrel oil, though, the airline industry contracts dramatically, and major lifestyle changes will be needed. There is a certain irony that the electric cars substitute a depleting energy source (oil) for a rare earth element (lithium).
Putting bacterial antibiotic resistance into reverse
MDS, a blood cancer, strikes nearly 5 times more Americans than previously thought
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Not in an economy regulated by an anti-capitalist dem, senate, president, and MSM.
O wants all of the country we knew gone when he leaves office or earlier.
He will write the executive orders needed to finish it off if he looses the house and senate...
It would take a substantial investment, but this Unobtainium is highly profitable, and we would be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.
I am currently seeking investors. Please, contact me if interested and have liquid assets of $275,000. or more.
What about Wipped Cream and the perfect peak?
In labs we create lots of novel or even common elements - it's doable, just at great cost now. In 100 years or so, should we survive and thrive, perhaps not.
That is, of course, if the government allows you to do it. The problem isn't what govt. mandates as much as what it limits.
How about “Peak Taxes”?
......What about “Peak Steel?” If we run out of steel we can’t make any more rails! ......
Have you not heard of Riordan metal. It is used to make rails superior to steel.
Ya’all are making hard to be a smart aleck.
And big government will bury them with taxes and environmental impact statements so thoroughly that the alternatives never get done.
When you live under an oppressive nanny state, you forget what it was like to live without one.
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