Good documentary - Great news for cyclists (Page 2)

bradword - 2007-04-30 3:52 PM

 

They've tried this in Europe and it hasn't made a bit of difference, exept driving the economy down and raising prices on all goods.  People are still driving as much with prices up to 2-3x(?) as high as US gas.

bradword - 2007-05-01 12:13 AM

I haven't looked either way, but hasn't that been the case in europe long before gas prices went high?  Coalition and causality are totally different.

HankJKy - 2007-05-01 12:31 PM

Gee, I heard this in 1976. The prediction then was that worldwide oil reserves would be exhausted in 15 years. This was the inspiration for the Mad Max movies. In the early 70's I remember predictions by scientists who should know, that we would have worldwide famine by 1987, and that all natural resources, copper is one I specifically remember, would become exhausted by the year 2000 causing global economic collapse. Oh, we were also supposed to be prepared for a coming ice age. One advantage of late middle age is being able to remember all this stuff. I even did a paper on the pressures for war that would be created by overpopulation and famine. I opined that China/USA conflict would cause WWIII by around 1984. Oh, well. These are all predictions I was glad to have not be accurate, but, if you keep predicting this sort of thing, eventually you will be right.

Opus - 2007-05-01 11:41 AM




So.... does this mean you don't think we should start planning for the day that the world runs out of oil?

tkbslc - 2007-05-01 1:56 PM

I agree we don't have to panic now, but we should react now before we HAVE to panic. I think that is the point Opus is trying to make as well. Unfortunately, every time Americans start thinking about gas conservation, OPEC releases a few hundred billion extra barrels into the supply chain to drop the prices back under $2.

HankJKy - 2007-05-01 2:31 PM

Nope. Like I said, eventually one of these predictions will be right. However, predictions of more than say 50 years have a built in problem, which is that they assume present trends will continue, and things change. Oil use, though, is here to stay for quite a while, it seems to me, and obviously we will use it all up unless we find alternatives. That could be one of those things that changes, right? My point, I guess, is that predictions of this sort are frequently wrong, and "experts" sometimes have such strong opinions that they forget they don't really know for sure. Especially on the issue of timing. The articles in the 70s were based on the same sorts of data as the current predictions, but were made inoperative by later developments, mostly newly discovered oil reserves. At the time, the opinion was that all the discoverable oil was known. Now don't go all postal; the folks in the 70's were just as passionate about their scenarios as anyone today. We overlook so much, and focus on only a few issues, and long-term ones at that. If the bees all die, we won't last long enough to worry about the oil running out. Or, if a big asteroid comes along, or a supervolcano, or a nuclear exchange, or a nice new disease of the "black death" genre. We may not see it coming if it actually comes. Also , there are lots of environmental reasons to reduce oil dependency, even if we had an unlimited supply. Our dependency on the automobile also consumes a huge portion of our resources and economy, when you consider road construction, and related expenses. Even just the cost of automobiles is so high that it baffles me how middle-class folks handle it, sometimes. I would much prefer we had invested long ago in mass transit.

watsonrm - 2007-05-01 1:43 PM

 Why is reality "unfortunate"? If there weren't a few hundred billion extra barrels to spare, it doesn't seem like there would be anything to release?

Opus - 2007-05-01 1:50 PM  But, similar to the global warming debate, to fail to act on what we know does no favours to our descendants who are bound to see us 200, 500 or 1000 years from now for what we are: Stupid and short-sighted.

bradword - 2007-05-02 3:52 AM

 

Yeah, those generations with 100s of years of better technology, those poor people just won't know what to do at all.