1. Uinta Basin? Local US Oil appears to be able to supply the world for ... a century?
2. Nebraska + Japanese Rare Earth finds?
What's the next non-renewable scare...I need to watch for it in the news in the next few weeks. Julian Simon: When 400 years of history say the results ALWAYS work out the same way, and some scientist says: But I calculate we'll run out...believe the history.
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5 comments:
)400 years isn't that long in the big scheme.
)The curves are all downwards regarding resources it takes to extract further resources.
Your belief in the power of economics to deliver seems more along the lines of a religion.
RSF,
And that's where the difference lies:
What we've seen for 400 years (all of the modern age) is that resources don't EVER run out. There's always someone saying they will...but those of us who've just watched the actual world...we think those folks talking about stuff running out must have a religious belief. They're positing the unseen on the basis of their faith in something, when it goes against everything we've actually ever seen in the real world. Have you considered that it's you with the religion?
What we've seen for 400 years is that resources don't EVER run out.
Yet.
Our Neanderthal forbears walked the Earth for 3 million years. I'd like to have that much time to develop our sentience and technology, maybe spool up some space travel and such. If we spend our finite koolaid on high resource consumptive leisure lifestyles, that leaves less of a future.
Plenty of mines have played out, plenty of oil wells have been capped, plenty of areas have lost their top soil/fertility. I'm not sure what makes you think we haven't run out of resources. We can move on to new areas to mine and drill, but the Earth is finite no matter how you slice it, what comes next is harder to extract, even if the relative price is lower. You have latched on to a fallacy.
When someone, or a group of someones predicts something (like resource failure) for 400 years...one begins to suspect that they're just wrong.
I'll grant you that SOMEDAY, if we all survive, and continue we may run out of the bounty of the earth. My complaint is that you have no good reason to say that that day is within the next 3 million years (much less 100).
If your resource fears admit that we may run out in a million years, but we have no reason to suspect anything impending beyond the faith of pessimism, I believe we might be able to agree.
Personally, I'm a singulitarian, and I don't believe that we last as anything recognizeably human for 100 years from now.
Singularian, isn't that a sort-of religion?
We both agree there is a finite nature to resources, we seem to disagree on the time scale for depletion.
You put faith in technology to spool up new finds/recycling/better usage. I say prudence now in usage gives us a better chance to have that technological advance/singularism.
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