U.S. to overtake Saudi as top oil producer - IEA

[WIP]

Rare earths are not actually rare. They are simply expensive to mine. The price of rare earths has dropped dramatically in the last two years as new supplies came online and as the Japanese manufacturers found substitutes after China tried to use the supply as political tool.

Except the inputs required per unit of GDP are constantly decreasing. http://www.economist...1/01/energy_use

Rare earths are not dropping in cost! That's why the U.S. Government right now is subtly threatening to go to war with China if they keep withholding metals like neodymium for their own industries, instead of allowing them to be exported. Your Economist article is typical globalist big business BS! GDP is a sketchy measure of economic output to begin with (that's likely why governments prefer it to the old GNP previously used), and if we accept the obvious reality that modern globalized capitalist economies are dependent on fractional reserve banking (essentially banks creating money out of thin air), then economies have to keep growing to keep paying the new money that the banks loan out. If there is no economic growth and everyone starts to realize it, our money...which has no intrinsic value, will become worthless, and currencies will collapse worldwide, one after another. So, keeping this in mind, what the money fudgers at the Economist are really doing here is claiming greater energy efficiency by comparing the numbers with growing economies.....except that they're not growing! So, the chart...if you noticed, has projected economic growth numbers from 2010 (the last year they added real data) to 2030 that us pessimists who are trying to factor in peak oil and peak NNR's say will NOT happen! So, energy use per capita GDP in the future, will either be flat, or the increasing costs of energy supplies will start increasing those numbers, and there will be no future declines.

But, back to the start -- in theory, if GDP could continue increasing and energy efficiency could also continue improving, that would still mean a continued net increase in total energy consumption. And that would require continued extraction of carbon sources, or major resource inputs to build millions of solar panels and windmills or a bunch of new nuclear power stations.....whatever it is, increased energy consumption will have impacts on the environment and lead to further declines in available NNR's.

They are making a simple issue too complex. It comes down a question of risk assessment and tolerance. You have no tolerance for risk so you panic about these various hypotheticals and think that no expense should be spared tried to avoid the hypothetical problem. You also place more weight on people who share your risk adverse nature.

As has already been mentioned, this is a pretty lame attempt by you to try to reframe the psychological and neurological evidence on the differences between liberal thinkers and conservatives. I provided three links to recent, brief articles on what leads neuroscientists to the conclusion that there are differences in brain function between the way most liberals and conservatives think and develop a worldview (but you obviously didn't bother reading them), and you didn't bother to look at Robert Altemeyer's study of authoritarian personality types -- the people who are drawn to join often dangerous authoritarian movements and remain loyal followers.

So, I didn't want to start drifting off to talking about psychology, but I was willing to point out where my prejudices lie, and why I am not going to just change everything I believe about climate change because of one study you cite an abstract of, which questions evidence of one, and only one part of the evidence - that droughts have increased and will continue the process of desertification in the future! On the contrary, what you have done with that story, and many others...is to take little shards and bits and pieces of what might be evidence to question the consensus of opinion shared by 97% of the world's climatologists. If you want me to join the so called climate change skeptic side, maybe you could provide me with evidence or at least a hypothesis of how adding carbon to the atmosphere and increasing the greenhouse effect does not result in higher temperatures and eventual permanent changes to our environment. A basic rule of physics is that you can't increase energy in a complex system without expecting changes, but that is exactly what the so called skeptics (like Richard Lindzen) are doing. And that doesn't even get to the main problem I have with business-as-usual, which all the liberal and conservative talkingheads in media adhere to: how do we resolve the conflicting conditions of living in a finite world with an economic system that demands constant growth, and a hedonistic culture addicted to novelty, that demands a constant supply of new and different products?

Because there is no way to determine if a product contains GMOs after the fact (unlike things like salt or fat content). Having such labels requires an expensive network to separate and track GMOs when there is *absolutely* no scientific evidence of harm.

If a product contains food that had its origin in GMO seeds, I would assume that there is some connection. Even if it can't be definitely determined, it could still be included on the label....like all of the processed foods that contain the warnings that they may contain peanut residue to advise those with severe peanut allergies. They don't know for sure either, but it's still on the label!

This is an example of your risk adverse nature. You see a risk and think nothing of the cost of avoiding that risk. I look at the cost and say the cost is not worth trying to avoid the risk. We can argue until the cows come home about what the science says but nothing in the science will change our different tolerances for risk.

That's not risk aversion; that's an aversion to living in denial! Which is what I think most conventional thinkers - liberal or conservative are doing on this subject. If a young child walks out on the street in front of a car, their first instinct is to close their eyes, not to jump out of the way. And that's because the child thinks what he or she can't see is not actually there. It takes a greater degree of maturity to come to the realization that the world exists whether we see it or not, and even more maturity to realize that, no matter how much we have enjoyed our present way of life, it cannot keep continuing on like this in the future. So far, what I have seen of most green activists and movements...and political parties, leaves me hugely disappointed, because their default position (which they will tell you openly) is that the public will go into denial if faced with too much bad news, and solutions have to provide a way to keep the present comfort levels going. To me, this is an impossibility, and most of their work is a waste of time!

[WIP]

As for exponential growth in the future thats also debatable.

No it's not! It's a flat out logical fallacy that has been argued by futurists like Julian Simon, who use the claim that substituting resource inputs and technological innovations will keep the joyride going......I just don't subscribe to that religion.

A lot of our economic growth as been the result of demand for goods and services by a rapidly growing population, and the technologies to sustain them. But a lot of people that study this stuff figure our population will peak within the next century at about 10-11 billion and then receed back to 5 or 6. These projections are based on the decrease in fertility rates around the world. This is going to slow down economic growth as well, because thats loosely tied to population growth.

That's what a UN report claimed a couple of years ago (I could look it up if I have to). They forecast a world peak population of 9 to 10 billion half way through this century, and then a steady decline in population. That sounds great, but the problem is there are a whole lot of assumptions contained in that rosy scenario, like reversing the 30 year trend of the reactionary trend restricting birth control for women....thankyou Ronnie Reagan, George Bush, Pope John Paul, a whole host of Muslim leaders too numerous to be mentioned, and many other smaller players who collaborated together to help reverse the declining trend in family size in Africa and many other nations! The glimmer of hope in that story is that Malthus doesn't have to be right about the human race being no better than other animals who will reproduce themselves until the point where they exhaust food resources, if there are no natural controls on population growth. It seems that we (or at least the female half of our species) is sensible enough to only have as many children as can be adequately provided for.

But, even if we could take population growth completely off the table as an existential threat, we still have the problem of providing enough food to feed that 9 or 10 billion population as it peaks and very slowly declines to more manageable numbers.....which better be a damn lot less than 5 billion, if we are ever going to reach a permanently sustainable population based on carbon footprint numbers. Our present world food production is 40% irrigated with water drawn up at unsustainable levels. And then if we add unsustainable land use, the oil-based fertilizers and mined phosphates that will run out in a couple of decades....not to mention the still little understood impact on the total biosphere that our usage has on the wild plant and animal habitats facing extinction....well, it's still a big problem trying to get this species in line with sustainable living, and not becoming an extinct species ourselves in a couple of hundred years or so.

[TimG]

Rare earths are not dropping in cost!

Prices are down by 50% or more from 2011: http://www.lynascorp...id=1&page_id=25

Rare earths are not rare. As prices rise more supply will be available.

But, back to the start -- in theory, if GDP could continue increasing and energy efficiency could also continue improving, that would still mean a continued net increase in total energy consumption.

Not necessarily. GDP growth and energy use has increased together in the past but it is also possible for the GDP to grow even if energy unit is constant or decreasing if the GDP per unit of energy increases fast enough. There is no theoretical limit to growth as long as their are ways to increase efficiency.

As has already been mentioned, this is a pretty lame attempt by you to try to reframe the psychological and neurological evidence on the differences between liberal thinkers and conservatives.

They are entitled to their opinion but any academic that tries divide a complex world between two arbitrary poles is not describing reality. The real issue here is risk tolerance and it has little to do with the traditional political poles. It is clear that you cannot grasp the concept.

If a product contains food that had its origin in GMO seeds, I would assume that there is some connection. Even if it can't be definitely determined, it could still be included on the label....like all of the processed foods that contain the warnings that they may contain peanut residue to advise those with severe peanut allergies. They don't know for sure either, but it's still on the label!

Would you be happy if everything in the store had a 'may contain GMOs label'? It defeats the purpose of the labeling. If you want products that are GMO free then go pay a premium for the privately certified organic stuff. There is no public heath justification for forcing companies to track this information and increasing the cost of goods for people who don't care.

That's not risk aversion; that's an aversion to living in denial!

The historical evidence shows that doom mongers like you are proven wrong over and over again. No matter how bleak the predictions the world seems to muddle through and unanticipated technological change often renders the doom mongers' concerns irrelevant. If you want to play the odds then assuming that doom mongers are wrong is a safe bet.

If you choose to place a lot of weight on these predictions of doom then that is your choice - but is it is a choice you make because it gives you some sort of psychological satisfaction from it. Fortunately, the world is filled with smart people that are working to invent the things that will change society in small ways that will collectively bring huge change.

Edited November 21, 2012 by TimG

[dre]

In regards to population growth, no, it is not necessary for economic growth. Note the graphs are GDP per capita. Further it's almost meaningless to try to predict stuff more than a few decades out as technological change will have utterly reshaped the world by the middle of the century.

In regards to population growth, no, it is not necessary for economic growth. Note the graphs are GDP per capita. Further it's almost meaningless to try to predict stuff more than a few decades out as technological change will have utterly reshaped the world by the middle of the century.

I cant think of any historical precident for that claim... declining populations with fast economic growth. A modern growth economy depends on population growth which is why we have the immigration policy we do in the west. If the population isnt growing then we arent building much stuff... we arent building the infrastructure to support a growing population, and we companies are not expanding production of goods and services to meet the needs of a growing base of customers.

[WIP]

Prices are down by 50% or more from 2011: http://www.lynascorp...id=1&page_id=25

Rare earths are not rare. As prices rise more supply will be available.

Did you happen to look at how much prices increased between 2009 and 2011??? Or, consider how much higher prices are for all eight listed on those charts from 2009 to the present? A price drop from last year does not mean there is a trend towards lower prices!

Now, what I've been talking about, is the estimates of future prices for rare earths if all of the new high tech products are to be made in the quantities proposed:

Clean energy could lead to scarce materials

Rising demand for wind turbines and electric vehicles could strain supplies of some rare earth metals.

http://web.mit.edu/n...nergy-0409.html

As the world moves toward greater use of low-carbon and zero-carbon energy sources, a possible bottleneck looms, according to a new MIT study: the supply of certain metals needed for key clean-energy technologies.

Wind turbines, one of the fastest-growing sources of emissions-free electricity, rely on magnets that use the rare earth element neodymium. And the element dysprosium is an essential ingredient in some electric vehicles’ motors. The supply of both elements — currently imported almost exclusively from China — could face significant shortages in coming years, the research found.

The study, led by a team of researchers at MIT’s Materials Systems Laboratory — postdoc Elisa Alonso PhD ’10, research scientist Richard Roth PhD ’92, senior research scientist Frank R. Field PhD ’85 and principal research scientist Randolph Kirchain PhD ’99 —

has been published online

in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, and will appear in print in a forthcoming issue. Three researchers from Ford Motor Company are co-authors.

The study looked at 10 so-called “rare earth metals,” a group of 17 elements that have similar properties and which — despite their name — are not particularly rare at all. All 10 elements studied have some uses in high-tech equipment, in many cases in technology related to low-carbon energy. Of those 10, two are likely to face

serious supply challenges in the coming years.

The biggest challenge is likely to be for dysprosium: Demand could increase by 2,600 percent over the next 25 years, according to the study. Neodymium demand could increase by as much as 700 percent. Both materials have exceptional magnetic properties that make them especially well-suited to use in highly efficient, lightweight motors and batteries.

A single large wind turbine (rated at about 3.5 megawatts) typically contains 600 kilograms,

or about 1,300 pounds, of rare earth metals

. A conventional car uses a little more than one pound of rare earth materials — mostly in small motors, such as those that run the windshield wipers — but an electric car might use nearly 10 times as much of the material in its lightweight batteries and motors.

Currently, China produces 98 percent of the world’s rare earth metals, making those metals “the most geographically concentrated of any commercial-scale resource,” Kirchain says.

Historically, production of these metals has increased by only a few percent each year, with the greatest spurts reaching about 12 percent annually. But much higher increases in production will be needed to meet the expected new demand, the study shows.

China has about 50 percent of known reserves of rare earth metals; the United States also has significant deposits. Mining of these materials in the United States had ceased almost entirely — mostly because of environmental regulations that have increased the cost of production — but improved mining methods are making these sources usable again.

Neodymium and dysprosium are not the most widely used rare earth elements, but they are the ones expected to see the biggest “pinch” in supplies, Alonso explains, due to projected rapid growth in demand for high-performance permanent magnets.

Kirchain says that when they talk about a pinch in the supply, that doesn’t necessarily mean the materials are not available.

Rather, it’s a matter of whether the price goes up to a point where certain uses are no longer economically viable.

And from Price waterhouse Cooper:

Rare Earth Metals Scarcity: A 'Ticking Time Bomb' for the World?, Asks PwC

Seven core manufacturing industries could be seriously affected by a shortage of minerals and metals, which could disrupt entire supply chains and economies, according to new PwC research. PwC surveyed some of the largest manufacturing businesses across manufacturing, chemicals, automotive, energy/renewable energy, aviation, metals, infrastructure and high-tech hardware to see what impact such a scarcity would have, and where, over the next five years.

Of these, business leaders in automotive, chemicals, and energy sectors fear they will be hit hardest according to ,b.PwC's Minerals and metals scarcity in manufacturing: A 'ticking time bomb', report.

PwC's global sustainability leader, Malcolm Preston, said:

"Put simply, many businesses now recognise that we are living beyond the planet's means. New business models will be fundamental to the ability to respond appropriately to the risks and opportunities posed by the scarcity of minerals and metals."

The report's main author, Hans Schoolderman of PwC Netherlands, added:

"The world's growing population, an increase in GDP levels and changing lifestyles are causing consumption levels to rise globally - creating a higher and higher demand for resources. Governments and companies should all be aware of the scope, importance and urgency of the scarcity of both renewable and non-renewable natural resources: energy, water, land and minerals."

Among the minerals & metals on the 'critical' list are:

• Beryllium: used as a lightweight component in military equipment and in the aerospace industry. it is used in high-speed aircraft, missiles, space vehicles and communication satellites.
  
• Cobalt: a material used in industrial manufacturing. Used in jet turbine engines and automotive rechargeable batteries.
  
• Tantalum: used in mobile phones, computers and automotive electronics
  
• Flurospar: used in construction, cement, glass, iron and steel castings.
  
• Lithium: used in wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries in hybrid cars
  

Not necessarily. GDP growth and energy use has increased together in the past but it is also possible for the GDP to grow even if energy unit is constant or decreasing if the GDP per unit of energy increases fast enough. There is no theoretical limit to growth as long as their are ways to increase efficiency.

There are actually very few examples of new technologies having such high efficiencies that they are able to produce greater economic benefit with less energy. Most of the assumptions that economic growth can continue within physical limits of constraint, are based on nothing more than faith in technological progress that continued innovation and substituting of resource inputs, can continue on indefinitely in the future. And, I'm not a member of that church!

They are entitled to their opinion but any academic that tries divide a complex world between two arbitrary poles is not describing reality. The real issue here is risk tolerance and it has little to do with the traditional political poles. It is clear that you cannot grasp the concept.

I can see that this is a waste of time!

Would you be happy if everything in the store had a 'may contain GMOs label'?

And, I don't care enough about GMO either! Plus, my main objections to GMO is the manner in which they will further entrench the dominance of a few giant agribusiness conglomerates over food production.

The historical evidence shows that doom mongers like you are proven wrong over and over again.

Just like the guy who fell out off the 50th floor and said, while on his way to the ground:"so far, so good!"

If you choose to place a lot of weight on these predictions of doom then that is your choice - but is it is a choice you make because it gives you some sort of psychological satisfaction from it.

Yeah, that must be it! I'd rather be fleeing into the woods from roving gangs of robbers and looters and try to fight for survival, than to collect my pension and live in one of the Caribbean Islands!