Weekend Hyperbole Reading - The Coming Oil Crunch

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

Looking for some weekend hyperbolic reading to kerfluffle your feathers?  Here ya go. 

Maybe try enjoying 4 cups of coffee before reading it if you want to maximize the hyperbole effect.  Or not - I'm not your Mother.

Why The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Looking for some weekend hyperbolic reading to kerfluffle your feathers?  Here ya go. 

Maybe try enjoying 4 cups of coffee before reading it if you want to maximize the hyperbole effect.  Or not - I'm not your Mother.

Why The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World

Does not kerfuffle me at all.  Our boy Chris Martenson is fat-out wrong.  But you already knew that. 

First, even if all the proposed parameters, as t oil consumption and drilling time lag and so forth, were accurate, Chris fails to understand the concept of substitute goods.  For example, he moans about steel rebar inside poured concrete rusting and busting up the concrete.  And yes, rebar rust is the Achilles Heel of concrete structures.  And yes, concrete manufacture and handling consumes vast amounts of energy. 

However, concrete can be substituted.  One substitute good for concrete is wood.  A concrete bridge can easily be replaced by a wood bridge. The wood bridge uses laminated beams for underneath and cross-laminated timbers for the roadbed.  The result is a watertight, road-salt-proof bridge deck and structure that will last a century.  You think wood is not as strong as concrete and steel?  Think again.  The Canadians  (Quebec) recently build a wood bridge across a rather large river for use by heavily-loaded lumber trucks.  Instead of 80,000 lb or 110,000-lb trucks, this bridge was designed for loads of 180,000 lbs.  It was constructed exclusively of local materials, cut from trees in the local area.  The result: a magnificent bridge, strong as you could possibly want, quite capable of serving the primary purpose of a truck road for felled timber logs being hauled in those double-trailer set-ups by a 650-hp tractor.  Here it is, 160 meters long in Mistissini, Quebec:

I am working on promoting this concept for replacement bridges in the State of Vermont, with the twist that they be topped with a traditional "covered bridge," so that it keeps with the historical flavor of the State.  Just think: no road salt, lasts forever, looks great, and stronger than concrete.  What's not to like?

And in the same vein, I am working on a project to manufacture entire building panels out of super-plywood, measuring 7 inches thick in glued-up layers. You set the walls in place and then layer the floor panels over the top, then put another row of walls, etc.  These buildings go up at the rate of a floor a day, using a crane of course, and you can go to 19 stories (already done). 42-story buildings are on the drawing boards already.  Here's the kicker: no steel structure, no concrete  (unless you want it in the foundation instead of say granite blocks). 

Her is an example of the inherent flexibility of timber, as opposed to concrete which cannot do this:

 

And the same truth is there for Chris' ideas about oil production.  The USA has the world's largest reserves of coal.  Processing coal into gasoline and diesel is a mature technology, we know how to do that.  Building such conversion plants is also a mature technology, and yes those can be built much faster than the 5-year lag cycles Chris moans about.  So the idea that Substitution is not out there to deal with issues of scarcity is just fantasy. 

And that is why Chris has no real credibility with me.  Cheers.