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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2500 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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We are basically already at peak oil and we hit peak copper this year.

Claims of being ‚at peak X right now‘ decompose into two elements, one is a completely unsupported and constantly falsified prediction of decline, the other the correct statement ‚we now produce more X than ever‘, which is hardly supportive to the doomer‘s central thesis. Despite the abundance of resources (as in, there are many types of useful resources), you never see these global peaks in hindsight, they‘re always hiding right around the corner.

IDK man, copper is pretty convincingly in decline. We basically haven't found any new large scale copper discoveries in the last 15 years. Grades are continually declining. We're currently mining ores that are 0.6% copper!!! And this is only going to continue to get worse. Unless we find an extremely large easy to exploit source of copper approximately ~now, copper production is guranteed to fall in the next 10 years.

Source

But are you long on copper futures?

Yea dude, copper has been way outperforming the SP500 for the past few years. I'm long on copper futures and my portfolio has been doing excellent.

HGW00 is up 57% over 5 years and the S&P is up 87% in the same timeframe - but at least your money is where your mouth is.

Copper is up 20% this year and S&P is only up ~17%. I only got into the copper futures around Feb.

You should have gotten into silver or even gold.

Those are different trades, though. (Warning: speculation on the price fluctuation of assets) The gold rally is due to a combination of "debasement trade" (the idea that current debt levels are unsustainable and the only way out is via printer) and a bet on multipolarity (USD status as reserve currency being threatened, due to a variety of reasons), silver is a speculative derivative of the same trade, as far as I know there is a lot of silver to mine everywhere still.

What @thejdizzler is talking about is a structural undersupply of copper, long term. I'm not actually sure if copper futures are the best expression of that trade, I assume you've bought the longest dated ones available?

Those are different trades, though.

Yeah. And? An investor should always seek to compound their money as quickly as possible, rather than sit with weaker performing assets for long periods of time.

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I've just bought an index fund that's supposed to track copper futures. CPER is the ticker name. I believe it is a basket of futures up to a year out.

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I’ve struggled to find a good commodity fund for gold that isn’t really expensive per unit or isn’t just a gold mining ETF. I’ll look into this in the New Year more.

A line-go-roughly-up price graph, a list of things copper is useful for, and price forecasts by banks and mining companies, that‘s your evidence? Not worth the paper they‘re - not -printed on.

Of course the grades have been getting worse. The grades of everything (coal (less anthracite more brown) , oil (less sweet more sour) , copper, uranium etc) have been getting worse since humans thought of something to do with them. The total amount of copper on Earth is around 1014 tons in the top kilometer of Earth's crust, which is about 5 million years' worth at the current rate of extraction. The only reason they don‘t find more deposits is because they aren‘t motivated at current prices.

Every time I have to ask the same question: What makes this moment special? People could have, and HAVE made, the exact same argument for the last 200 years at least. They were all wrong. You have your theory/intimate conviction that says ‚at some point we‘ll run out‘ on one side, and on the other you have empiric proof of your ideological forefathers being wrong every single time. We're observing a physical phenomenon, and you have a theory that sounds convincing but always fails , while I can predict exactly what happens - shouldn't you give up at some point?

Let me try and lay it out how I see it. The extraction of every nonrenewable resource is defined by a tailed Gaussian curve, where the easy to harvest resources are mined/harvested first. The really easy sources of fossil fuels and minerals were harvested a long time ago because they didn't require large expenditures of energy. High grade ore and high-pressure oil deposits are no longer readily discovered as those have been exploited and exhausted by lower tech civilizations (the Romans for example exhausted much of the easy to access mineral resources of Europe). With better technology lower grade sources of these resources can be accessed, but these usually require more of an input of energy. To go from PA or Texas gushers to fracking for example requires a higher input of energy because you need to pump water into rock at high pressure to get the oil out, refine it more, etc. Same with copper and other minerals: more energy is required to get copper out of lower grade ores than higher grade ores.

This would not be a problem if we had unlimited energy. We literally could filter seawater to get the copper we need. The problem is that we are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels for pretty much all our energy, and they have been getting more expensive to extract since about 1970 due to declines in easy to access oil/coalfields. You can see this in the behavior of oil prices: steady if declining real price until 1970, and then consistent if ragged increase in price since then. This increase in the cost of energy is one reason why mining companies don't want to invest in exploration: the energy cost of extraction is continuing to rise, meaning any new mine with low ore grades may not be worth the investment because of associated high-energy costs.

To answer your last question: I don't think now is special. I think we've been in a slow decline since the 1970s. Real assets (houses, cars, most real foods) have had a real increase in price over the last 50 years, reflecting a real chipping away at living standards here in the west. I think this reflects increasing costs of energy, the fundamental basis for human society. Of course there are other explanations for this phenomena on the forum, many of which may contribute as well. But I think energy is primary. The "peak" I think will merely be the point where it gets difficult to deny this.

Of course if we successfully invent fusion power, I will be wrong about this. Then we can access effectively unlimited materials here on earth. In that case pollution will be a more limiting factor, which we can theoretically solve with unlimited energy as well.

I don't know man, I think my way of looking at the world has pretty good predictive value. My copper futures outperformed the S&P500 this year. I also would predict real global increases in the cost of material goods: which also has happened over the last 50 years, with notable exceptions in electronics. In addition, the increased energy expenditure required to get these resources is having terrible effects on the biosphere: global warming, ocean acidification, and loss of wild animal biomass. All of these graphs are going in the direction that my view of the world would predict.

Of course if we invent fusion this all could be moot, but even then, given the history of how human society has dealt with increased energy availability, its doesn't seem likely to me that we would actually solve our ecological problems.

Real assets (houses, cars, most real foods) have had a real increase in price over the last 50 years, reflecting a real chipping away at living standards here in the west.

Houses are more expensive (in some countries due to government policy aiming to secure this outcome as part of retirement planning for boomers), the food thing is going to be a goalpost moving exercise, but you're simply wrong about cars. Median nominal earnings growth has vastly outstripped growth in car prices for decades.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1P71E

This is just throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks. The (also false) ecological destruction argument is entirely separate. If we run out of energy and resources, the ‚destruction‘ will cease.

Fusion? What about fission? We already have hundreds of years of proven uranium reserves, and it‘s a small part of nuclear energy generation cost.

According to your EROEI math, the romans, and then the 19th century english, were richer than we are, since they had access to high-grade resources they could mine for less energy.

This is just throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks. The (also false) ecological destruction argument is entirely separate. If we run out of energy and resources, the ‚destruction‘ will cease.

Incorrect - the "running out" of resources means that we will have completely shifted the Earth's climate and seen immense changes to global temperatures and environments. The environmental damage is only just goin to get started when that happens, and the human infrastructure damage will be immense. Every single port city is going to be underwater and new ports will have to be constructed. Shifts in climate means that the areas which receive rain and the areas which are habitable for humans are going to be very different to what they were in the past - which is going to be a big problem, given that our farms and other infrastructure are located in places where they are most efficient right now, as opposed to the world we're going to be living in once all that carbon is back in the atmosphere. Not to mention the terrible weather events we'll get during the transition - and which are already starting to show up.

Fusion? What about fission? We already have hundreds of years of proven uranium reserves, and it‘s a small part of nuclear energy generation cost.

I'll believe that nuclear fission is a viable answer to our energy needs when you show me a nuclear plant capable of generating energy at a profit without government subsidies of one kind or another. Good luck! Nuclear fusion has been twenty years in the future for the past eighty years, so you'll have to forgive me for not being too excited for it.

According to your EROEI math, the romans, and then the 19th century english, were richer than we are, since they had access to high-grade resources they could mine for less energy.

No, they didn't have access to fossil fuels. Technically they were richer in the sense that they could have chosen to use those fossil fuels responsibly, but we already know that in reality they didn't.

Incorrect - the "running out" of resources means that we will have completely shifted the Earth's climate and seen immense changes to global temperatures and environments. The environmental damage is only just goin to get started when that happens, and the human infrastructure damage will be immense. Every single port city is going to be underwater and new ports will have to be constructed. Shifts in climate means that the areas which receive rain and the areas which are habitable for humans are going to be very different to what they were in the past - which is going to be a big problem, given that our farms and other infrastructure are located in places where they are most efficient right now, as opposed to the world we're going to be living in once all that carbon is back in the atmosphere. Not to mention the terrible weather events we'll get during the transition - and which are already starting to show up.

All I hear is "very slow process with ample time to adjust".

We're talking about time frames in which humanity went from inventing electricity to landing on the moon. Time frames in which the world population multiplied several times over. Time frames in which humanity survived economic depressions, world wars and a cold war, and the invention of several novel types of superstimulus. And in such a time frame, we'll have to...move agricultural production to new areas, possibly plant different crops in old agricultural areas, and account for a few centimeters of sea level rise when we inevitably have to do maintenance on infrastructure anyways. Some people will need to adjust to more or less wind than previously. More or less rain than previously. Different temperatures. Over a time-span of multiple generations of humans. OK. I'm very confident that we will manage to deal with this. I'd bet money on it if I expected to be able to collect my winnings at the end of the century.

How do you figure every port city will be underwater? Total sea level rise since the 19th century is estimated at 15-25 cm. It's a joke.

Heat and CO2 have resulted in greater agricultural productivity for our plants already,and it's only going to get better from here. Gigantic areas of canadian and russian tundra are going to slowly become available for crops and human habitation.

France has had cheap electricity thanks to its nuclear power plants for decades now.

The 19th century english and americans had access to cheap, high quality fossil fuels - why weren't they richer than us?

Apologies for the delay! I've been very busy with Christmas and the like - seeing family ranks a bit more highly on my priority list than the culture war.

How do you figure every port city will be underwater? Total sea level rise since the 19th century is estimated at 15-25 cm. It's a joke.

There's no real academic or scientific debate on this subject - I'm not saying that we're going to have to start building Noah's Ark tomorrow, but the projected sea level rises over the next few hundred years are going to do this with ease. Complicated systems like the global climate are also vulnerable to sudden shocks - if something causes a large glacier or ice-shelf to drop into the ocean we could be seeing those levels rise faster than predicted. Again, this won't be a problem for us - but it will have our descendants cursing our names in the future.

Heat and CO2 have resulted in greater agricultural productivity for our plants already,and it's only going to get better from here. Gigantic areas of canadian and russian tundra are going to slowly become available for crops and human habitation.

You're right - Russia is a big winner of climate change. But what you're missing is that the increase in global temperatures is also going to drive a massive increase in adverse weather events. While the equitable climate on the other side of climate change is going to be very nice for a lot of people, the transition period is going to be rather nasty. Existing farming infrastructure will have to be moved and there are going to be a wide variety of extreme storms, floods and other natural disasters.

France has had cheap electricity thanks to its nuclear power plants for decades now.

France had to bail their nuclear power system out because it wasn't economical - and up til now they got their uranium for a 50th of the price thanks to their colonial holdings in Africa. If you scroll back up I've actually had this conversation before, in this very thread even.

The 19th century english and americans had access to cheap, high quality fossil fuels - why weren't they richer than us?

Do you think this is an actual argument? "If a doctor earns more money than a janitor, why is this doctor fresh out of medical school with tons of debt poorer than a janitor who is retiring after saving and investing for their entire life? Checkmate, liberals." I am legitimately struggling to understand the argument you're making here. Ultimately, they were richer in the sense that they had potential to do a lot more than we did. Personally I think going to the moon again would have been a better use of those fossil fuels than vastly inflating the American population then rendering a vast majority of that population clinically obese - a society that did NOT make that choice would actually be unironically richer in my opinion.

"There's no real academic debate about what might happen hundreds of years in the future" - Okay .

I know some academics are prone to dramatic predictions of doom, but you know you don't have to take everything they say at face value, right? It honestly reads like you never double-check anything, do the barest of common-sense questioning.

Questions such as:

  1. How can you reconcile 'all ports being underwater soon' with 'actual sea level rise for a century and a half being 0.2 m'. 'all ports Underwater' to me means 'dozens of meters', at least. How do you get from one to the other, when the straight extrapolation falls far short?

  2. Why, if we are on a 'nasty transitory period' is, as always, the productivity of farmland increasing?

  3. Why, if nuclear energy is 'uneconomical', does France have such cheap electricity compared to 'nuclear-exiting' Germany, and why does it export so much of it?

  4. Why, if EROEI is determinant, were past societies with better EROEI so much poorer than we are?

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CO2 have resulted in greater agricultural productivity for our plants already

do you have numbers for it? Is it greater at high altitudes where one could expect CO2 increase produce larger impact in %?

do you have numbers for it?

Since the industrial revolution we went from 290 ppm CO2 to 424 ppm.

From 2002 to 2014, plants appear to have gone into overdrive, starting to pull more CO2 out of the air than they have done before.[33] The result was that the rate at which CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere did not increase during this time period, although previously, it had grown considerably in concert with growing greenhouse gas emissions.[33]

A 1993 review of scientific greenhouse studies found that a doubling of CO2 concentration would stimulate the growth of 156 different plant species by an average of 37%.

A 2005 review of 12 experiments at 475–600 ppm showed an average gain of 17% in crop yield, with legumes typically showing a greater response than other species and C4 plants generally showing less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_fertilization_effect#Observations_and_trends

We report a strong enhancement of photosynthesis across the observational network (9.1 gC m−2 year−2) and show that the CFE (CO2 Fertilization Effect) is responsible for 44% of the gross primary production (GPP) enhancement since the 2000s, with additional contributions primarily from warming (28%) .

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8915860/

Here we use three long-term satellite leaf area index (LAI) records and ten global ecosystem models to investigate four key drivers of LAI trends during 1982–2009. We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004

Is it greater at high altitudes where one could expect CO2 increase produce larger impact in %?

I don‘t think so. According to this map, the CO2 fertilization effect is stronger at the equator, where there are more plants, more primary production already (rainforest) . Then less as you get further away from the equator. The quote above suggests plants at high latitudes need warmth more than CO2.

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I don’t have the energy to debate the earlier parts because I’m frankly getting a little tired of the snark and lack of real argument. Give me a couple actual claims that we can debate rather than just telling me my argument suck.

However, one the last part I will disagree. My theory does not state this because neither the Romans tbr 19th century English had access to oil reserves with crazy EROIs of 1:100. It’s only in the 20th century that we got that and only really after world war 2. I will go to bat for a higher standard of living between ~1950-1970 in America than now in America.

Paging @FirmWeird on nuclear.

I don‘t think I was snarky, but in any case I don‘t mean to be. In fact, I have a dear friend who believes similar things to you, and it makes him miserable, and I really want to convince him. I‘m trying to do the right thing here. Aside from spreading cheer to my friends and fellow mottizens, I‘m interested in the psychology of this particular discussion: they say it‘s hard to get a man to change his opinion when his self-interest depends on not changing it. But for the green/degrowth people (and also communists , feminists, various doomers and conspirationists etc) , it would be far more advantageous for them to adopt a more optimistic, practical ideology!

Yet they don't. Which to me indicates that those cynical explanations are weak; people generally really believe what they say they believe because they think it's true, without ulterior motives.

Anyway, your argument is very theoretical , syllogism-like (1. resources are finite. 2.etc) , so I had to respond in kind – we‘re not disagreeing on actual figures of copper production.

I will go to bat for a higher standard of living between ~1950-1970 in America than now in America.

Okay, this is a concrete claim I disagree with. As evidence, I have (per capita) :

  • inflation-adjusted salary
  • number of household appliances and various luxuries
  • number of cars
  • square footage of dwelling
  • life expectancy
  • years of education

I don’t know, I don’t think it makes me a very cynical person. I enjoy my life a fair bit as you can maybe see from other posts on here. I think it just makes me a bit less naive about tying my future plans to economic growth. I’m still invested in the stock market, but have been trying to avoid the AI boom for example. I’m still going to finish my PhD, but maybe not work in academia when the whole system is going to fall part because of demographics and lack of surplus to pay for basic research. I’m thinking about how to continue to live my life without buying a car so I don’t have to worry rising fuel and associated costs. The future is going to be what it’s going to be: one of us will be right, and there’s very little either of us can do about it as individuals, which I think is what depresses many doomers. They see the doom and gloom as taking away things, I see it as freedom. Guess what can’t happen in a declining energy environment: woke police states, AI takeover (either through what we’re seeing now or AGI), or continued global homogenization. All the atomization, hyper stimulation and specialization that modernity has brought will have to be scaled back and I think that’s a good thing. By trying to build my life around those things, even if you are right about energy/material abundance, I think will end up happy.

Anyway, happy to debate this more another time. I will make a top level post on a culture war thread in a few weeks with my thoughts better laid out with more data and we can debate there.

I do believe you‘re a religious ascetic-mystic of some sort.

  • you starve your body of real food
  • you deny yourself common comforts like cars
  • you punish your body by extensive running
  • you limit your mating prospects with exorbitant restrictions like your dietary and mobility vows
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I’m thinking about how to continue to live my life without buying a car so I don’t have to worry rising fuel and associated costs.

Enjoy your pilgrimage, sinner. Your conception of happiness is being eaten by wolves, because then at least you‘ll never have to experience being eaten by a bear. Sure, we can discuss it another time.

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