PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT
spikes stand out at the beginning of each downturn of the energy cycle.
These spikes are so pronounced compared with the usual day-to-day
price fluctuations and are so regularly spaced that they inspire confidence
in setting forth some daring forecasts. For example, neither pricefixing
nor hostilities among the oil-producing countries should succeed
in raising oil prices to the 1981 levels for longer than a few months at a
time. The price of oil will stay around 20 1996-dollars a barrel well beyond
the year 2000. Energy prices are due to hit a high again around
2030 and will mostly reflect the price of natural gas, which will be the
dominant energy source of the time.
Cesare Marchetti noted that periods of increasing energy consumption
coincide with economic growth leading to a boom. This growth is
preceded, and probably caused by, periods during which basic innovations
abound. Innovations are like flower bulbs that sprout and bloom
into industries during the boom. To check this further, he looked at the
growth of the automobile in the world market and found an extreme
regularity in the way populations of cars grew to fill their niches. Like
species, they followed natural-growth curves to reach ceilings calculable
ahead of time. Moreover, latecomers, such as Japan, grew faster so that
in the end they would all reach their saturation level at about the same
time: the mid 1990s. In the major Western countries, registered cars
have practically completed their niche, just like the American and the
Italian niches discussed in the beginning of Chapter Three. A general
saturation of the growth of automobile populations across Europe coincides
with an economic recession.
———————————————————————————————–
FIGURE 8.3 (next page) Annual averages for the price of energy are obtained
from two different sources for the two periods indicated. ∗ The substitution of
energies at the bottom is obtained from Figure 7.6, with the addition of animal
feed for the U.S. (intermittent line). The small black triangles point at the peak
of each primary energy source’s dominance. These points in time coincide with
price flares and the beginning of economic decline. The little black dots on the
price graph represent updates.
∗ Fuel and Lighting prices from Historical Statistics, Colonial Times to 1970, vols. 1
and 2, Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C. Oil process from World Energy Outlook,
Chevron Corporation, Corporate Planning and Analysis, San Francisco, CA.
182