Peak Oil and investing in oil companies and or other companies

[Phone Booth]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


Again, as I've said before, capitalism is good for low-hanging fruits.


[/ QUOTE ]

How did edison get money to fund this project? Thats right, he invented shot and made money off it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Say that again?

[Phone Booth]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you even understand how many network protocols were developed in the seventies and eighties? And how small the teams were that developed them?If suitable protocols weren't available it would have been very easy for them to be developed. Do you know how good Appletalk was and how little resources it took Apple to develop it?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's like saying: "Do you know how easy it is to build a PC? I can show you how to do that in 3 hours!" Yes, once the idea of computer networking, packet switching, network layers and all that's established, it's not that hard to come up with a protocol. I'm saying that the idea of computer networking, the idea of large-scale computer networks, the basic theoretical and practical foundation for a large-scale computer network, and the first actual implementation that eventually led to the internet were all conceived outside of the private sector.

In fact, the "if you didn't do it first, I could've done it myself" argument is far, far more applicable to most commercial innovations (like all of Edison's inventions, all of Microsoft products, pretty much anything web-related).

And I'm not sure what the size of the team has to do with anything. General relativity isn't any less important because it took just one person. You seem to have this disturbing tendency of confusing cost with value. That's not true anywhere outside of accounting.

[DcifrThs]

hey, phonebooth,

why don't you take a break from your discussion in the weeds with DC and take a second to respond to my post about innovations...specifically how they tend to be related, in no modelable, but certainly in a logical way to time, money, and people being thrown at them.

this is the basis of my point and i'd like to see how you think about that.

in my mind, it is absolutely indisputable that innovations will occur.

the issue is when, not whether.

as long as enough time, money, and people are thrown at the problem soon enough, the trama you assert will come about could be avoided.

if not, and production of oil declines far faster than demand, then price can soar and cause temporary dislocations that could be quite near or even beyond what you predict.

my assertion is that the dislocations to the economy will not be devastating to the degree i think you are implying.

Barron

[Phone Booth]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What the...? The concept of computer networking and packet-switching in the 60's and the design and implementation of TCP/IP that led to the development of the internet was not a great advance and was "basic" because by the 80's or so, all these people who have studied those concepts in school were now able to reimplement them?

[/ QUOTE ]

This seems like an aside, but no those things weren't big inventions. Anyone looking at the problem would have invented them. They are based on pre-existing maths. The guys who did it deserve credit, but it wasn't a big technological breakthrough. It was just the order it happened.

[/ QUOTE ]

On some level, this is true. On another level, most things seem that way after the fact. I don't think packet-switching, for instance, was as obvious to everyone as it is to us now. Nevertheless, the point is that nearly everything technologically crucial to the internet as we know it, has almost no commercial roots.

[T50_Omaha8]

Phonebooth,

What do you suggest is done to supplement the alledgedy inadequate research capitalism will put into solving the alleged coming energy woes?

[Phone Booth]

[ QUOTE ]
innovations, major ones, are random events that can't be modeled.

some can be out of need:

- apes and other animals use tools that they structure to survive.

- humans turned rocks into spear heads and attacked them to sticks

those are cases where survival is pretty much on the line. those who used the tools and created them get an edge to survive.

but, incentives don't necessarily immediately produce world changing innovations. people randomly produce world changing innovations:

- fire randomly was allegedly discovered from sparks while initially determine dto be useful after lightning struck or forest fires burned.

- the wheel was simlar

- electricity, steam engines etc.

those things were massively impactful random (ish) innovatinos.

innovations increased in speed (in terms of time between them as more people existed and more people had time on their hands and money...think greece & rome, the renaissance, and the industrial revolution).

so incentives in this day in age can provide something for innovation: people, money, and time.

as oil becomes more and more expensive, more people, time and money will be spent on innovations and the random events, and incented events that have lead to innovation in the past are more and more likely to occur.

low hanging fruit will obviously be first: dependable good looking cars, buses, trucks that don't need so much oil. more efficient extracting and refining processes, more areas for extraction (how important will the environment be if we were to be choosing between societal damage and drilling?).

during that time, more and more time, money, and peole will be allocated to bigger innovations increasing the likelihood of their occurance.

you are right about one thing though, pinning our hopes to a random process for which we don't know the generator is a bad spot to be. doesn't mean that it's the end of the life of oil.

Barron

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a great post Barron.

You're right that the real problem is that we have no idea. Sure the likelihood is higher the more people work on it, but are we going from 1/1000000 to 1/10000 or 1/10 to 4/5? There isn't a whole lot of basis for any estimate - as a species, we've only really discovered two major sources of energy that can sustain us at this level - fossil fuels and uranium. Is there another one? Can we get there before without stuff blowing up? (a major problem with uranium -> plutonium)

One reason why innovations may happen faster in the future, other than what you mentioned, is a greater level of information sharing. With the widespread use of the internet, especially in academia where now it's typical for many academic journals and papers to be published online, there's a much greater ability to collaborate with experts elsewhere and much more public information available for smart minds to look at.

Unfortunately, both of the above factors probably increase the possibility of stuff blowing up, especially given the close nature of energy and weapons technology. Also, somewhat ironically given this thread, there are good reasons to believe that strong profit incentives could decrease the chance of an innovation, if one were tempted to withhold solutions to pieces of the puzzle. For instance, a corporation could hire away experts who would have otherwise published their research to the public so others can build upon it, but are not allowed to do that since their research is now proprietary information.

It's also not clear to me how much time we have before we need something major, as opposed to incremental improvements. Right now, plutonium seems like the best solution for the medium-term. And that's really scary.

[Phone Booth]

[ QUOTE ]
Phonebooth,

What do you suggest is done to supplement the alledgedy inadequate research capitalism will put into solving the alleged coming energy woes?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know that there's necessarily inadequate research - A lot of good work is being done, even outside of corporate R&D.

[T50_Omaha8]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Phonebooth,

What do you suggest is done to supplement the alledgedy inadequate research capitalism will put into solving the alleged coming energy woes?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know that there's necessarily inadequate research - A lot of good work is being done, even outside of corporate R&D.

[/ QUOTE ]Wait...WHAT?!?!

Doesn't that undermine your entire argument?

[Phone Booth]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Phonebooth,

What do you suggest is done to supplement the alledgedy inadequate research capitalism will put into solving the alleged coming energy woes?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know that there's necessarily inadequate research - A lot of good work is being done, even outside of corporate R&D.

[/ QUOTE ]Wait...WHAT?!?!

Doesn't that undermine your entire argument?

[/ QUOTE ]

No - a lot of it has little to do with profit motives and there's nothing about free markets that necessarily ensures that enough research is done. And the key phrase is "I don't know." No one knows where the next new great energy technology will come from, so there's no obvious reason to believe that price signals from the market will seriously affect its development.

[Fishhead24]

Let's just hope oil and unleaded gas can continue to move higher in price in the coming 2-24 months.