Raise the Hammer

re Burbs: Fear not, the wrecking ball cometh and will do the same job it has always done - demolishing perfectly good stuff to make way for denser living according to higher land values dictated by higher fuel prices. I mourn for the severe downgrading of the resultant waste that was so recently some fools's pride and joy. The signs have been around for a long time for anyone to see but fools are still disbelieving and buying. Sigh. Really though, the process is never ending - going from single family to basement apartment to duplex/triplex torn down to put up new condos and eventually high rises/ office towers. In the meantime, the economy is forcing people to double up, reversing a decades long downtrend in people per household metric. This more than anything else may be the doom of surburbia. Immigration is the only solution to this one.

re peak oil: Ryan: To my eye, looking at your graph, we have not yet reached peak oil - best fit straight line would still be trending slightly up, not flat at least post 2006 or so. Your elastic and inelastic curves are valid at every point on the curve ie. was true in 1920 (or any other year) at lower levels. It just shows the price of trying to expanding the supply at any given time and says nothing about future times.

But Turbo did not win the argument although he came close to the truth in bringing the economy into the picture. Both parties are confused. To my eye, looking at Ryan's chart, the price of oil has fallen sine 2006 , drastically, in real terms, after accounting for real inflation, not the bogus numbers fed us by media shills. I believe this will soon reverse - but not because of peak oil. We are in the beginning phase of the next shift. As you see the price number change, one should not think oil is going up, but rather fiat dollars are becoming worth less - worthless?? Our ability to afford oil is diminishing and China's is increasing. And we still want their stuff!!! I watched this play out with the Japanese for decades with lots of jawboning but no real solution. So Turbo will experience the effect as if it were peak oil, even if it is not peak oil. Yet.

While some comments posit that energy saving will compensate for price rises, I don't believe they will compensate for price rises PLUS billions of new consumers who want to live just like we do. Oil may not peak just yet because more people are looking more desperately but unless we discover a way to mine the stuff more efficiently that poking straws in the ground, peak oil will come. (something like 2/3 of the oil is left behind.) To prove this, Ryan, you may want to show a chart or two of the energy cost of energy. I think it was the Chris Martenson site had some good stuff on this but i ran out of time for this post.