Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bouchart]

But that doesn't explain the large price increases in copper, oil, precious metals, non-food agricultural products like cotton, and lumber.

[Tilla]

But that doesn't explain the large price increases in copper, oil, precious metals, non-food agricultural products like cotton, and lumber.

Which are also subject to supply and demand and exist in finite numbers..and which are not really mentioned much in the article.

[Sowelu]

When's the last time copper got less expensive?  It's always been like that.

[Bouchart]

When's the last time copper got less expensive?  It's always been like that.

We're talking up 50% in 6 months.

[alway]

Copper is barely higher than before the economic depression (peak of 3.95 in March of 06, adjust for inflation and it becomes just about equal).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper#Reserves
As for oil, increasing demand from China and the US as it comes out of its economic depression as well as our being more or less in peak oil. And merely due to supply and demand is expected to rise to about $5 per gallon in the US by the end of this year (or was it summer, can't quite remember).
Can't seem to find any universal price index for lumber, so please provide links showing stated increase.
Precious metals, again, higher demand; China has also been stingy recently in matters involving exporting of rare earth metals and various other raw mineral materials.
As for cotton, again, rising demand and inadequate supply.

The current world production figure is 115.5 million bales and the current world consumption figure is 116.6 million bales, indicating a production shortfall of 1.1 million bales in 2010/11.

Traders can make things worse and prices higher, but they aren't the ones who set the trends.

[Tilla]

It's REALLY a simple concept that I'm frankly surprised a lot of conservatives who seem to care about economics and capitalism ignore outright:

We have one planet tops and that planet consists of a finite amount of natural resources such as water, earth, ores, oil, and more. Some can be renewed but there is no free ride in nature. Failing to put nutrients back into the earth when farming - as all factory farms fail to do now - leads to future crops being malnourished for example.  Other resources such as copper have very finite supplies, even if we have not approached the current supply limit there is one somewhere in the future. Also limiting supply is the known locations of ore veins and accessibility.

No matter how much you like the Economy it can not magic more Copper into the planet later.

[Nikov]

What a lot of liberals who seem to care about recycling and the enviroment ignore outright is that modern industrial agriculture is more sustainable than what it was a hundred years ago with triple or quadruple the yield, and a reversion to organic methods will only close down the atmospheric nitrogen fixation plants and replace them with industrial fishing and disease-ridden manure. Or, for that matter, how the cost to produce a ton of steel from recycled stock is less than to produce it from new mining and since the Copper Age recycling has been the primary source of stock.

Besides, thanks to Capitalism! one day the profit incentive will be there to just grind the landfills through huge metal-reclaiming machines for precious, sweet copper. If someone doesn't come up with a replacement for copper in its usual functions. Or just starts mining the moon.

Trying to calculate how many tons of copper are on Earth broke my calculator, however. Needless to say I'm not worried.

And people still talk about peak oil? That's like... 70's doomsday nonsense that just doesn't go away. Every time you reach the point where no oil can be economically extracted, suddenly the price of oil goes up and guess what! It's economical again. You might as well worry about peak gravel.

[Tilla]

What a lot of liberals who seem to care about recycling and the enviroment ignore outright is that modern industrial agriculture is more sustainable than what it was a hundred years ago with triple or quadruple the yield, and a reversion to organic methods will only close down the atmospheric nitrogen fixation plants and replace them with industrial fishing and disease-ridden manure.

From what I understand of agriculture - and I am not a farmer by any means as I am disabled - this whole statement is patently false. It is not in any way sustainable, the larger yields are a factor but only in the short term - it has become more apparent that these practices in the long term deplete the soil of any nutrients, and future crops become less and less able to nourish or even defend themselves. Likewise a dependence on barely tested chemical pesticides leads to the death of the creatures that make the soil livable in the first place - worms, insects, fungus, and more that make it possible to grow anything at all. Of course The Union of Concerned Scientists can go into greater detail as I feel like I've already wasted more than enough time talking to you today. http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/

[Nikov]

My parents are farmers, their parents are farmers, both my parents went to an agricultural university, my father is in the agrichemical business, I stand to inherit farmland...

Oh yeah. I am also disabled.

That the same farmland worked in 1960 produced double or triple or even quadruple the yield in 2010 should be an indication that 'long term' the systems are perfectly sustainable. Meanwhile thanks to those increased yields farmland is being recovered by forests as less desirable ground is allowed to return to nature. Reverting to 'sustainable' organic farming would require us to plow under a landmass the size of South America to feed the current population, at least. More if we assume that organic farming won't magically produce 1960's mechanized but not yet computerized yields.

Of course if you're comfortable with mass starvation we can happily adopt the wisdom of an unelected bunch of busybodies. Also it's a pleasure speaking to you and I hope you deign to repeat this honor for me again.

[Mysteriousbluepuppet]

Yield is usefull to nourish the population, but you could not keep that yield without good amounts of chemical fertilizer, wich is made from potash wich is not in any way endless.  Current agriculture is moslty based on cheap corn in the west. It's mostly derived off a few different strain wich make it especially vulnerable to a sweeping plague, and would remove most of the avalaible feed for cattle.

[Nikov]

At current production rates with current reserves, it will take 500 years to run out of potash assuming no new reserves are found and no improvements in efficiency are made. And I can assure you, at $1500 a ton by 2020 that will not happen.

You may also be interested to know, Tilla, that 'no-till' methods of growing crops by using white radishes to break up the soil between plantings have been developed not out of any concern for sustainability or being enviromentally friendly, but because farmers hate buying gasoline almost as much as they hate worms, insects and fungus. All farmers are keenly aware of risks to their crops and livelihoods. Many I've spoken to feel they are stewards of the land they work and would hardly consider their land exploited and depleted after three or four generations of working the same land for improving yields every decades.

[Phmcw]

Don't derail this thread.

It will be interesting to see how Tunisian fare with democracy. The transition is usually difficult .

[Eugenitor]

Making potash is easy, all you have to do is have the right workshops and cut down enough trees. Elves might bitch but who cares?

And you can't run out of copper unless humanity really is trying to use more copper than exists on the whole planet. I foresee widespread landfill-mining in the future. It's not like fossil fuels where we're guaranteed to run out of it (and the major oil-producing countries are lying about how much they have, because of the way OPEC works). Either we manufacture it through thermal depolymerization or similar technologies, or one day we stop using oil. The Economics Fairy isn't going to magically put more of the stuff into the ground.

Back on topic, the Western media is finally, slowly, starting to pick up on the Tunisia story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/world/africa/15tunis.html

[Aqizzar]

The only thing I know about the ousted Tunisian leader is that he apparently gave a televised address about how he was still in charge, while a phone kept ringing in his office.  It sounds like nothing, but when you think about the tiniest amount of preparation you'd need to make a televised address go off without distraction (so much as muting his office phone while on-air), and you realize just what a harried and crumbling personal sphere he must have had, right before he was ousted.

[Phmcw]

Anonymous was involved ,too. (If that mean something given that anonymous can be anybody.)
There are involved in Iran, too.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)