Inflation/Gas Prices/Rising Prices in General

[Mathgod]

Due to major supply chain disruptions and shortages of many commodities such as computer chips, coupled with soaring fuel prices, I don't think the current inflation can be solved simply through interest rate hikes. Fixing the supply chain issues is probably the only way things can return to some level of normalcy, and it'll likely take quite some time to get there. High inflation is probably here to stay for several years, unfortunately.

[_Q_]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

Due to major supply chain disruptions and shortages of many commodities such as computer chips, coupled with soaring fuel prices, I don't think the current inflation can be solved simply through interest rate hikes. Fixing the supply chain issues is probably the only way things can return to some level of normalcy, and it'll likely take quite some time to get there. High inflation will probably be here to stay for several years, unfortunately.

Sure, but high interest rates are meant to lower demand, which in turn will put less of a strain on the supply chain.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by blankall

There are large segments of Canadian society who think the oil sands should be totally shut down immediately. I don't know if its a majority of Canadians, but it might be.

Here's a poll that says its 13%. https://context.capp.ca/articles/202...ipsos-results/

Its not insignificant - but its not that large or anywhere near a majority.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by _Q_

Sure, but high interest rates are meant to lower demand, which in turn will put less of a strain on the supply chain.

True, but demand reduction would have to be very substantial to curb inflation in this case, given the current circumstances...

[blankall]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Here's a poll that says its 13%. https://context.capp.ca/articles/202...ipsos-results/

Its not insignificant - but its not that large or anywhere near a majority.

They've phrased the question in a way that doesn't actually get the pollee to consider the realities of expansion. If the question had been should Alberta expand the oil sands, you'd get a totally different answer.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by blankall

They've phrased the question in a way that doesn't actually get the pollee to consider the realities of expansion. If the question had been should Alberta expand the oil sands, you'd get a totally different answer.

Well of course you would - that's a completely different question. Shutting down the oil sands is not nearly the same thing as not expanding them.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by blankall

You've got this backwards. We aren't seeming more battery progress because there is more demand. There's more demand because there is more progress.

Once again, the lithium ion battery has been in the works since the 1970s, with virtually all of the big electronics, consumer products, and automobile companies in on the action. Do you really think that having members of the public telling them to work faster would have sped things up? Once again if a company like Sony had developed and patented a modern cell phone battery in 1985, they should have cornered the entire electronics market. That's not enough incentive? Instead having Joe Public say make it faster is what was missing?

I don't follow at all. Why did Sony dump money into battery research at the time? Because they saw market opportunity.

You weigh your odds of success against potential market opportunity, and see if you have fit within your current strategy, then allocate R&D investment as such.

This isn't the "public telling them to work faster". This is the potential market opportunity exploding, and as such, so did R&D efforts.

If just the original Sony team continued to work on LiOn batteries from 1970 until now, there is no question we'd be much further behind.

To Fuzz's point, the necessary material science advances this is dependent on are also seeing way more R&D because the market opportunity is massive.

The cancer argument is a poor one as well. That is a huge opportunity that has gotten a lot of money/time thrown at it:

[Fuzz]

My point on the cancer argument is I don't think we'd be much further ahead if we had thrown more money and research at it. There is only so much you can do with the tools you have.

If you read modern scientific papers, the techniques used just didn't exist, and couldn't exist earlier. Working with Crispr would require the human genome project to be done first. And that couldn't be completed without computers capable of crunching the massive amount of data. And those couldn't be created without advancements in microprocessor design.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Fossil fuels do need to end.

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Literally no one is calling for or expecting fossil fuels to end immediately

Regardless of the timeline, the complete end of fossil fuels will just not happen...at least not without a drastic and draconian decrease of quality of life (and for many, life itself, because the impact would be massive). I don’t think many truly understand how much coal/oil/gas increased our quality of life over the last 200 years, and how much of our entire modern existence relies on them. It's not just about life without gas powered cars. It's life without the entire car, and virtually everything else we use today. Life without plastic. Without industrial fertilizer. Without medicines. Without rubber. Without steel. Without microchips. All these things are built from, or with, the critical use of fossil fuels and minerals. I mean life did exist before these things, but it was a much harsher and shorter one.

Now even if you ignore all that, and you're ready to party like its 1799 because you only care about the environmental impact, I think it's critical to understand that while time marches forward and new technologies will replace older technologies, the end of fossil fuels use does not equal the end of us getting our hands dirty. Natural extraction is here to stay no matter what technology you champion. Society does not happen without something being removed, dug up, grown, or hunted from nature. Never has, never will. From the first caveman who picked up a rock, to building the bleeding edge renewable technology, we’ve been exploiting natural resources to survive and thrive since Day 1. Life is extremely energy intensive, and will continue to be so, regardless of your favourite technology you want to replace fossil fuels with.

[opendoor]

When people say we eventually need to stop using fossil fuels, they mean we need to stop burning them for energy. No one's saying we need to never use plastic or oil-derived hard goods again. Fossil fuel combustion accounts for the vast, vast majority of emissions. We could easily use oil for a million different things with little impact on climate change if we can get our energy sources to be low emission.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

I don't follow at all. Why did Sony dump money into battery research at the time? Because they saw market opportunity.

You weigh your odds of success against potential market opportunity, and see if you have fit within your current strategy, then allocate R&D investment as such.

This isn't the "public telling them to work faster". This is the potential market opportunity exploding, and as such, so did R&D efforts.

If just the original Sony team continued to work on LiOn batteries from 1970 until now, there is no question we'd be much further behind.

To Fuzz's point, the necessary material science advances this is dependent on are also seeing way more R&D because the market opportunity is massive.

The cancer argument is a poor one as well. That is a huge opportunity that has gotten a lot of money/time thrown at it:

You've really provided nothing to support the argument that oil companies somehow slowed down the development of computers, processors, batteries, etc....If oil companies hadn't been disruptive and Sony had 10 billion dollars in revenue to work with instead of 9 billion we'd be really far ahead in stopping global warming? I just don't even know what you're arguing about at this point.

These are all things that have already happened. Not even theoreticals. We know how things progressed, and unfortunately they had to go how they went. It was a combination of technological advancements from all the biggest corporations all competing against each other that got us to this point. What possible difference would providing those corporations with extra money have provided? Also, who is going to approve that? Global warming is an issue....the answer give more money to transglobal car companies and electronics manufacturers?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by jayswin

Wanna bet? Canadian Oil being dirty and in need of being shut down to help the world actually is a prevailing opinion when you go to most major cities outside of Alberta. Absolutely. I see and hear it all the time in BC and Ontario, with Quebec being on another level completely.

Prevailing? As in the majority of people believe that? I’d have to say that has not been my experience when speaking with people from those provinces, and a lot of people who I talk to probably fall under the category of people you would assume to hold those beliefs. While there certainly are people who think that way stoking the us vs them mentality isn’t going to help change that or promote compromise.

Now do they flat out make the connection that Saudi or American or whatever energy is better or call themselves "pro Saudi Oil"? No. But actions are all that matter and if they contribute to demonizing Canadian energy and their provinces get their energy from places like Saudi Arabia then the result is the same.

I think the situation is far more politically complex than most people want to admit. Personally I think most of the opposition stems from the residual effects of the political influence the oil and gas industry has across our country. It’s hard to convince people in Quebec that increasing oil and gas production in Alberta will be of benefit to them when the industry has a tendency to support governments that continually vilify them over transfer payments among other things. Right or wrong, if you were living in Quebec why would you be in favour of promoting an industry that tells you that them doing better will increase the money your province receives through those payments when they are actively trying to lobby the government to reduce those payments and increasing their profits will give them more resources to lobby the government with?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Table 5

Regardless of the timeline, the complete end of fossil fuels will just not happen...at least not without a drastic and draconian decrease of quality of life (and for many, life itself, because the impact would be massive). I don’t think many truly understand how much coal/oil/gas increased our quality of life over the last 200 years, and how much of our entire modern existence relies on them. It's not just about life without gas powered cars. It's life without the entire car, and virtually everything else we use today. Life without plastic. Without industrial fertilizer. Without medicines. Without rubber. Without steel. Without microchips. All these things are built from, or with, the critical use of fossil fuels and minerals. I mean life did exist before these things, but it was a much harsher and shorter one.

Now even if you ignore all that, and you're ready to party like its 1799 because you only care about the environmental impact, I think it's critical to understand that while time marches forward and new technologies will replace older technologies, the end of fossil fuels use does not equal the end of us getting our hands dirty. Natural extraction is here to stay no matter what technology you champion. Society does not happen without something being removed, dug up, grown, or hunted from nature. Never has, never will. From the first caveman who picked up a rock, to building the bleeding edge renewable technology, we’ve been exploiting natural resources to survive and thrive since Day 1. Life is extremely energy intensive, and will continue to be so, regardless of your favourite technology you want to replace fossil fuels with.

What does any of this have to do with the (half) sentence of my post that you quoted?

You clearly understand that there’s a difference between reducing/eliminating fossil fuels and eliminating oil production altogether. I don’t disagree that we’re going to continue to need oil even if we magically perfected electric vehicles by tomorrow so what is the downside in reducing the usage where we can?

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by opendoor

When people say we eventually need to stop using fossil fuels, they mean we need to stop burning them for energy. No one's saying we need to never use plastic or oil-derived hard goods again. Fossil fuel combustion accounts for the vast, vast majority of emissions. We could easily use oil for a million different things with little impact on climate change if we can get our energy sources to be low emission.

The problem is that governments and leaders (atleast the ones in the West) are looking to actively block or defund the exploration for new sources of oil and gas, which is going to affect all the uses, not just the ones you like or dislike. What do you think happens when resources become scarce or non-existent? Do you think that affects pricing? Not having any foresight for the future is partly why we are in a commodity supply crisis today.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

My point on the cancer argument is I don't think we'd be much further ahead if we had thrown more money and research at it.

My point is we are WAY further ahead on cancer because we threw an incredible amount of money and resources at it.

If there wasn't a massive amount of investment in cancer research, you think this would have happened anyway?

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by blankall

You've really provided nothing to support the argument that oil companies somehow slowed down the development of computers, processors, batteries, etc....If oil companies hadn't been disruptive and Sony had 10 billion dollars in revenue to work with instead of 9 billion we'd be really far ahead in stopping global warming? I just don't even know what you're arguing about at this point.

These are all things that have already happened. Not even theoreticals. We know how things progressed, and unfortunately they had to go how they went. It was a combination of technological advancements from all the biggest corporations all competing against each other that got us to this point. What possible difference would providing those corporations with extra money have provided? Also, who is going to approve that? Global warming is an issue....the answer give more money to transglobal car companies and electronics manufacturers?

If society at large was living in massive fear of climate change 30 years ago, and corporations saw a willingness and desire for people to drive EVs that were limited in their capabilities vs. ICE vehicles because of that fear, they would have seen a larger market opportunity for battery development, and thus dumped more resources into it, thus speeding up developments.

We have lots of examples including recent battery R&D and cancer to see that dumping a ton of money and resources into research results in faster technological development.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I don’t disagree that we’re going to continue to need oil even if we magically perfected electric vehicles by tomorrow so what is the downside in reducing the usage where we can[/B]?

The downside is that usage of oil/gas you're getting rid of needs to be replaced with something else...something that most of the time is less affordable, less energy-dense, less reliable across different climates, less transportable, and less scalable. Making oil go away does not mean the demand goes away too... in fact energy demand is only going up in the future.

The only renewable technology that is a clear upgrade over fossil fuels on a large scale is nuclear. And for some reason that's the one the environmentalists are against...

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Table 5

Life without plastic. Without industrial fertilizer. Without medicines. Without rubber. Without steel. Without microchips. All these things are built from, or with, the critical use of fossil fuels and minerals. I mean life did exist before these things, but it was a much harsher and shorter one.

So what you're saying is... we will never find ways to continue making these things without fossil fuels nor find suitable replacements for them? That seems a tad presumptuous...

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

So what you're saying is... we will never find ways to either continue making these things without fossil fuels or find suitable replacements for them? That seems a tad presumptuous...

What magical substance do you have in mind? Everything we've ever made or eaten or consumed has come from the natural resources around us.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

My point is we are WAY further ahead on cancer because we threw an incredible amount of money and resources at it.

If there wasn't a massive amount of investment in cancer research, you think this would have happened anyway?

No, I'm suggesting you eventually get diminished returns on your investment, as you don't have the tools to progress further. And I believe that's why we are where we are with battery development, and wouldn't be much further along if we had invested infinite resources.

Science builds off other science, it has for thousands of years. Da Vinci couldn't build a rocket to get a person to the moon in his lifetime, even if all the resources of the world at the time were thrown at that goal.