| ▲ | blfr a day ago |
| A very impressive number of prejudices strung along an attempt at a narrative around energy transition. Brings back the memories of usenet, where schizo posts were, unlike twitter, fairly long and glued together with something much like this. However, the transition actually driving the change in the world currently, absent from OP, is the demographic transition and migration. It started in France in the 18th century and is now hitting much of the world with no end in sight and virtually no unaffected populations. Dwarfs covid, PVs, or oil, which was largely solved anyway by fracking. |
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| ▲ | pavel_lishin a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| > oil, which was largely solved anyway by fracking. I think you and OP disagree on what the actual problem with oil is. |
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| ▲ | Unearned5161 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think you should familiarize yourself some more with what fracking is if you think it solved anything regarding oil. We just swapped out our straw for a thicker one, but the milkshake hasnt gotten bigger. |
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| ▲ | randallsquared a day ago | parent [-] | | Fracking (and Canadian oil sands) have raised the known extractable reserves considerably. While photovoltaics arguably will drive peak oil within a few years, the amount of oil that we know we could extract is higher now than it was in 2010, and was higher then than in 2000, and so on back to at least the 1960s. In retrospect, there was never any real danger of oil running out before we largely moved on to other energy sources. | | |
| ▲ | defrost a day ago | parent [-] | | The essential points being, * The knowledge abut the actual size of the milkshake has increased, * The actual size of the milkshake has not increased, a decade and more of extraction has continued to decrease that actual size, * The cost per unit of extraction has increased, * All extraction of fossil fuel continues to contribute to an ever increasing real and serious problem with increased insulation in the atmosphere. Peak oil was never about "oil runing out", it was literally about increasing costs for diminishing returns .. an asymptotic issue that never ends, just dwindles. | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Peak oil was never about "oil runing out", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil will help, here. Until recently when it had to be redefined to remain a relevant concern, this was the point of "peak oil": that we would run out of reserves that could be economically extracted for fuel usage, due to rising costs for extraction of increasingly marginal sources. However, given that proven (economically extractable) reserves have steadily trended higher, "peak oil" is now about when other energy source costs fall enough to make oil uneconomical by comparison, which is not politically concerning except to fossil fuel industry lobbyists. This kind of concept creep is very common where technology or science reduces problems that were previously seized upon by political activists. | | |
| ▲ | Unearned5161 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Peak Oil has always and always will be about production rates, going back to Hubbert's paper in the 50s. We never solved the production rate issue, we just threw more money at it, see the shale boom of the 2010s. Relying on "technology" and "science" gets a lot shakier when you realize that oil itself is what has largely funded the ability to do technology and science. We've been gluttonous in an age of cheap energy, the world is in no way prepared for what comes after the cheap part is over. | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Adjusted for inflation, the price of oil has been similar for the last 20 years[1]. As PV ramps up further, there will be less demand for oil, and therefore the price will fall and extraction will reduce. It's not clear to me if that means the peak is 2026 or 2036, but either way, there will be all the oil we need to accomplish everything we want to use it for, even as we use less and less of it. 1. https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-cha... | | |
| ▲ | Unearned5161 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | A bit wild to say the prices have been "similar" for the last 20 years and then cite a source that not only shows a coefficient of variation of 28% on regular prices but one that goes to 31% when you "adjust for inflation". If your salary had a coefficient of variation above 20% I don't think you'd be saying "I make similar amounts year to year". What part of this graph of global energy consumption [1] do you envision PV storming oil and nat gas out of? Notice how we never transitioned from anything in the past on a global scale, sure, coal tapered here in the US, but thats because we have nice oil fields to play with. Developing countries and co are trying to get the same that we got in our boom, i.e we're far from "maturing" away from any energy source as a globe. There's also the thermodynamic note of energy density and temporal coverage, i.e oil and oil derivatives are non-fungible for a bulk of their uses, see planes, ships, and mining. That last one conviniently being the gatekeeper to most of our ideals of renewable energy sources. 1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio... | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I used “similar” to say that it hasn’t been trending clearly up (or down, thus far). The line is definitely a bit chaotic, I’ll agree, but growth is pretty flat at the lowest granularity. The argument I’m refuting is that oil prices are rising in the way you’d expect if production was becoming problematic. It seems other factors, world events, etc, are more impactful. | | |
| ▲ | Unearned5161 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I see what you're trying to say, the issue with this frame of mind, however, is that it appears rather oblivious to the absolutely central role that oil prices have in the economy itself. The price of oil should be viewed as a proxy for the cost of movement in an economy, and when you recall that an economy is defined by its movement, the ouroborus becomes rather apparent. Money isn't the blood of the economy, energy is, oil is. To make this clearer we can take a look at historic prices and the journey they've taken coming to where we are now. If you squint your eyes at the crude graph zoomed all the way out, you can piece together 3 general "tiers" in the pricing, levels where prices have oscillated around. Starting with the one from 1950s to the mid 1970s, this was $3, cheap conventional plays, we were swimming in this stuff, the modern world got built with this foundation. Then there's a rise to about $20 that "stabilizes" in the 80s, the hike up from $3 came due to conventional plays peaking in the 70s just as Hubbert said they would and then Alaska came online. The price didnt go back down to sub 10's because this new oil needed a new price floor to justify commercial viability. It stayed at this $20 range. And then Alaska peaked, China industrialized, global demand surged, and you see the long rise in the 2000s, leading to the recession, then shale comes online, this is the third tier. This is where we are now. Oscillating around $55-60, this is the new floor, fracking is expensive as hell, the only way we've been able to keep production alive at all is just by incinerating money at it. The reason you don't see a clear price increase happening is because we're still on the shale tier. The treadmill is set to fast (check out how many wells need to be drilled for shale production to stay constant). Once this tier exhausts itself, however, that's when the market will correct, the price will rise until the even harder plays become viable. That fourth tier, if it even exists, won't be at a price any of our modern economic conveniences thrive in. It's a ratchet with wiplash, not a steady climb. |
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| ▲ | defrost 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > will help, here. Yes, it's a useful reminder to those that thought Peak Oil related to oil running out when it fact, as your link shows, it was largely always about the relative costs of energy. I had hoped that globally we would pivot harder into cleaner energies much sooner; the continuation and increase in fossil fuel usage has worsened an issue that much of the world will increasingly encounter in the lifetimes of those born today. | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | To be clear, the second paragraph starts "Peak oil relates closely to oil depletion; while petroleum reserves are finite, the key issue is the economic viability of extraction at current prices.[6][7] Initially, it was believed that oil production would decline due to reserve depletion, but [...]" (emphasis mine) |
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| ▲ | mcfunley a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Did HN start automatically translating posts from their original German? |
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| ▲ | stonogo a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| What exactly is "the demographic transition" that's been apparently going on for three hundred years? Attempting to google this just results in a bunch of white supremacists |
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| ▲ | Terr_ a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Attempting to google this just results in a bunch of white supremacists For "demographic transition"? That's not what I get, perhaps those results are customized by Google, and it has an inaccurate idea of what you're interested in? (Even if that "interest" comes from vigorously opposing something.) I'd try opening a private/incognito window and comparing the result-pages. When I search in a private-tab for "demographic transition" (in quotes) the first item is the Wikipedia article (the definition I expect) followed by more of basically the same thesis from other academic sites. | | |
| ▲ | stonogo a day ago | parent [-] | | I searched in the 'news' section, trying to figure out how any of this applies to current events. | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ a day ago | parent [-] | | I feel "news" is not a fertile hunting-ground for information on something "that's been apparently going on for three hundred years." :p |
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| ▲ | eschaton a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There’s a reason for that. It should tell you a lot about the person you’re replying to. | |
| ▲ | phyzome a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'd recommend Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition | | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | stonogo a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | All that tells me is that someone likes normal distribution charts. It describes the concept but I still have no idea what OP is talking about. What started in France in the 1800s and continues in America today? | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I feel the Wikipedia article is pretty clear. It refers to a repeated pattern of changes in births, deaths, technological change, and industrialization. The pattern can be seen in many countries, with various timing-offsets and rates. It has nothing to do with any particular ethnicity. Insofar as "immigration" comes into play, it refers to economic demand for labor as the population-bump people exit the labor pool. | | |
| ▲ | stonogo a day ago | parent [-] | | I'm trying to figure out what changes the OP claimed are being driven by this. Birth-rate-over-time changes happen everywhere and have throughout history, but apparently this is now driving major change? | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ a day ago | parent [-] | | I initially read the top-of-thread HN comment as: 1. Stross is trying to tie many events to a change from fossil fuels to solar power, but stronger drivers lie elsewhere. 2. It's better-explained by population dynamics, involving medical technology, mortality and longevity, contraceptives, the shifting balance of workers to retirees, etc. 3. [Charitable-reading effort increases here] These trends involved are old and multi-generational, arguably going back to the industrial revolution. As a casual way to show a very-long-ago datapoint, there are arguments/research about a secularizing France's odd population slump back in the 1700s, which predates the widespread use of fossil fuels. > Birth-rate-over-time changes happen everywhere and have throughout history If you look at a world population chart (logarithmic scale, naturally) [0] it becomes clear something in the last few hundred years caused a deviation from the old trend. Stross might argue the trigger was fossil-fuels, others would argue the trigger was a change in human-capital from medicine/nutrition, perhaps a third group would argue both are inextricably intertwined. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_gro... |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | pram a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think he means declining birth rates? They were low during the French Third Republic and didn’t recover until WW2 iirc | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | cyberax a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | (The first) demographic transition is a normal term in political science. It just means the transition from mostly agricultural societies to mostly urban ones. It's associated with the drop in fertility, rise in life expectancy, etc. There are now people arguing that we're undergoing the second demographic transition. | |
| ▲ | refulgentis a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's one of the ways [EDIT: s/white supremacists lure people in/they get ya], it's by far the predominant usage, but it's a bastardization of a term of art in the social sciences, essentially, a transition to a low death rate & low birth rate society from norm of high/high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition | | |
| ▲ | pavel_lishin a day ago | parent [-] | | That's how who gets who? I am having a real hard time trying to understand what you're attempting to communicate here. | | |
| ▲ | eschaton a day ago | parent [-] | | “Demographic transition” has become a white supremacist dogwhistle. They’re not upset about declining birth rates in general, they’re upset about declining birth rates among specific populations. | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ a day ago | parent [-] | | Even if they are abusing the phrase among themselves, legitimate usage is still heavy enough that I don't think I would assume it's a dogwhistle by default. | | |
| ▲ | eschaton a day ago | parent [-] | | I would suggest that you need to look at context in order to determine whether a phrase is being used as a dogwhistle. For example, if someone is also repeating other far-right propaganda (“fracking has solved the oil problem”), what are the chances that their use of this term is in good faith rather than as a dogwhistle? | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ a day ago | parent [-] | | Hence "by default." Incidentally, are you claiming one of the above posters here has already included "other far-right propaganda" that tips the scales? From my perspective, there's been some kind of false-alarm. The danger exists out there, but--unless there's some author reputation I'm unaware of--this isn't it. | | |
| ▲ | eschaton a day ago | parent [-] | | Yes, the idea that the problem of “oil” (fossil fuels) has been “solved” by fracking. That’s another right-wing tell, because it ignores the broad environmental destruction caused by the use of fossil fuels and presumes that the only problem with them is scarcity. |
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| ▲ | ReptileMan a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the middle of 19th century France's elites birth rates plummeted. And it spread to the rest of the world in 20th. | | |
| ▲ | stonogo a day ago | parent [-] | | What is the connecting link? The claim being made here is that this is driving "the change in the world" but I can't figure out how 18th century France and 21st century America are comparable changesets. | | |
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| ▲ | aredox a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [dead] | |
| ▲ | otabdeveloper4 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oh no!
Wouldn't want to commit a badthink and read something written by an ungood thoughtcrimer! |
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