The IEA (International Energy Agency) agrees - Rated de
true enough.
Hubbert's curve is valid, however the wildcard has been the oil industries investment in EOE as the long term pricing of oil was climbing. That resulted in a deferral of the pain of the Hubbert curve. Liquid hydrocarbons remain the foundation of the civilisation we have on this here 3rd rock. There is a finite amount of the stuff gifted to us from the fauna/flora of ages past, and currently, we are not achieving effective direct conversion of any energy source into a storage medium as useful as liquid HC's. Capturing sufficient energy to provide an effectively renewable fuel supply is nowhere near in our future. The best options that exist, those that give us 20,000 years to sort out our problems are mired not in technical issues, but in political ones from lack of comprehension within the political masters as what is and what is not a safe system. The moving of the goal posts ever advancing in time in our current experience, which builds an expectation that the irrational use of energy on the planet can continue indefinitely has the potential to bite in the end. Historically, the problem with any system is it's limited ability to cope with change, specifically the rate of change. Given enough time, we can change what we do, but only if time is adequate to address the problem and implement the remedial actions. Every day we find new reasons not to implement change, and in fact we entrench the belief that there is no problem; the same as a frog luxuriating in a simmering sauce pan. We are in the halcyon days of low cost fuel at this time, where it is not a driving factor, even when it is between 24% and 50% of the total costs of the industry dependent on operational structure.
Hubbert did not incorporate the flexibility of the system in respect to exploration, EOE development, and elasticity of demand from economic slowdown/recession etc, which has been our saving grace to date, he looks like a pessimist until we exceed the ability of the system to accomodate the supply side constraints. The global economy is build around a house of cards; exchange rates float determined by a change of a fraction of the total currency in circulation, much as house prices, business valuations etc, they are all built on confidence in the system, and we accept that an appraisal based on a fraction of a percent of total value has meaning, and it does, until it doesn't.
Malthus wrote in various essays and manuscripts from 1798 onwards hinting on the inability of society to manage growth in a responsible manner, where there is an abundance of food, the population will grow to consume that. Today, our markets revel in growth, and despair of recessions, however if we were considering, say, cancer, that would not be the case. In the 50's a herd of wild animals in a remote island off the west coast of Scotland were left to their own devices, and in the absence of any immediate constraints, grew exponentially to a point where there population collapsed, and were nearly completely extinguished. Sustainability is not derided if a catastrophic collapse has occurred and has been recognised, and survived.
Does QF need new planes? why not. That will cure everything.
In the short term, the Delta fleet planning tactic which Qantas is similar to is valid, so long as fuel costs don't spike. The A380 is not such a bad aircraft for the ultra long haul, if that is what yo have to do, and as I have said before, the recent metric of efficiency used to consider relative efficiency is poor in method and application, Breguet range equation gives a rational basis for analysis of efficiency, pretty sure that is what Boeing intimates in their Jet Transport Performance Methods manual (Blake, 2009).
Its a nice day outside, time for some red wine.