[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'I')n simplistic terms, I think that if Peak-oil and it's ramifications were made broad mainstream media by well-known and credible personas, it would create wide-spread socio-economical turmoil, and perhaps panic hoarding. Perhaps they have been told to keep mum.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Barbara', 'S')orry Cassandra,
my english is not that good so maybe you didn't understand my point.
I wrote that dieoff.org "was just a start": I've read their site and found it just great. But John Denver thinks we just believe dieoff.org like we have blinders, so I tries to demonstrate he's wrong. I personally read dieoff and much much more.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you say, "They are convinced, but they're pretending like they aren't because it's a conspiracy," then the early peak theory isn't really a hard scientific argument. It's a conspiracy theory, and you should frankly face up to that. That would account for why it is only believed by a small minority of informed people.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Permanently_Baffled', 'G')ood post Denver, you have also got to consider why the hell the Europeans , Chinese , Russians are all also condemning there people to economic armageddon if they know peak oil is 2005? Are they all convinced that PO is 20 years away or do they know and are all conspiring together?

I suppose the scariest explanation is that they have assessed the problem, concluded it isn't solvable and have stuck there collective heads in the sand

Its all so confusing....

PB

[rowante]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')As for "dieoff": I think the greenies believe in the die off not because they have blinders but because they are literally hoping and praying for a die off. They want lots of people to die, to protect their precious earth. Personally, I find that attitude repulsive.

Think about it: Why do they call it "dieoff.org"? It's like "dieoff" is a trendy new 'brand' for the product they are selling. The way they use it, it doesn't have any negative connotation at all. It's the hip place to be. The next step: dieoff T-shirts and latte mugs.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rowante', ' ')At the very core of the ideas on dieoff.org and say, "Limits to Growth", is that unchecked exponential growth of the human population will have disastrous consequences.Can you please explain how it can't?

[Guest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rowante', ' ')At the very core of the ideas on dieoff.org and say, "Limits to Growth", is that unchecked exponential growth of the human population will have disastrous consequences.Can you please explain how it can't?

[twxabfn]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'W')e will expand into space and feed off its energy sources. There are incredibly powerful sources there and we must go to them and work them.

Of course the die-off people have nothing but bile for the idea of humans colonizing space. It's wasteful, too risky, complicated, not pastoral enough, too expensive, and impossible, and even if it were possible, we'd just be spreading the evil cancer of "growth" into the pristine "environment" of the universe.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ho knows. But what we do know, and what this site (and all Peak Oilers, including Hanson, Kunstler, et al) is trying to get across is that we as a race have to fall down before we can get back up.

[rowante]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', ' ')We will expand into space and feed off its energy sources. There are incredibly powerful sources there and we must go to them and work them.

[Guest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e will expand into space and feed off its energy sources. There are incredibly powerful sources there and we must go to them and work them.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rowante', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', ' ')We will expand into space and feed off its energy sources. There are incredibly powerful sources there and we must go to them and work them.

[davidyson]

Sorry, JD, but I can't share your optimism for "space" as a new energy source at all.

It is actually such an immense nonsense that I would like to invite you to digest just a couple of facts:

- The joint space agencies of the US, the EU and Russia have a very hard time to keep even a tiny, simple research space station working and in orbit.

- Both NASA and ESA have a very hard time to send even a simple space probe successfully to its destination and have it operating there as planned.

- The most powerful and technologically advanced nation of the world, the US, had two major disasters with their space shuttle, mostly caused by the sheer complexity of the operation which leaves safety holes no matter what improvement program you will fund.

- Space is the most hostile environment that can be found for human beings (and for machines, too). Vaccum, hard radiation, particle showers and asteroid threads, ultra-huge distances, temperatures close to absolute zero or temperatures up to 150 degrees celsius, depending on whether you're exposed to sunlight or not, complex gravitation wells - and hardly any gas station around to fuel up.

- Go to http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/gpot.html and check out how much energy is needed to get even a single kilogram into low orbit (e.g. 360 km, as the ISS space station). It's about 1 kWh per kilogram, so 80 kWh for an average adult, 18 TW (yes, that's terawatts!) for 250000 people - per day!
So that's 18*365=6.7 Petawatts per year!
And that is not even counting the mass of the space ship, which might easily be 1000 times more. Now I see a severe inflation of zero in the resulting numbers.

Oh no, we are not talking about moving people out, but just moving energy in. In the form of methane from Jupiter? Beam petawatts of extra energy in from sqare kilometers of solar arrays?

Summary: GET REAL, MAN! (yes, I am shouting!)

Davidyson

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davidyson', 'S')orry, JD, but I can't share your optimism for "space" as a new energy source at all.

It is actually such an immense nonsense that I would like to invite you to digest just a couple of facts:

[mididoctors]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Such', 'A')ctually, I don't think we will see a single global production peak per se... more a long plataeu of several mini "peaks" and "valleys" as we approach the maximum capacity of the world. So, for instance supply disruptions due to events like Yukos, Venezuela, Iraq, hurricanes, etc.

[mididoctors]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', ' ')
a) There is no "jar" because the jar is not closed.
b) The fuel supplies are not limited because there is lots of fuel outside the jar.

[Soft_Landing]

It seems unfortunate that even a visionary such as Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky appears to see a die-off as the outcome....

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '1')5) Overcrowding of the Solar System and the colonization of the Milky Way (the Galaxy).

16) The Sun begins to die and the people remaining in the Solar System's population go to other suns.

[backstop]

There is a quote from Cheyney in the '90s on one of the threads showing a clear knowledge of peak oil (in terms of needing to find x Saudi Arabias by 2010).

Considering the absence of massive oil industry exploration-budgets since taking power, Cheyney was speaking of what he saw as an unredeemable position.

From that perspective there are few choices.

a. Pour funds into Renewables, Coal and Nuclear to soften the impact.

This is somewhat dangerous to the credibility of the oil industry (on which its share price rests) particularly from the perspective of global warming : affordable alternatives end the justification for using fossil fuels.

b. Await the inevitable impact of peak,

This means saying little or nothing about it since to acknowledge it is to collapse both global stock prices and the dollar.

c. Advance the date of the inevitable peak in order to gain relative advantage over other major economic powers.

This means undertaking extraordinary action, however dishonourable, to generate and expand an ineradicable fundamentalist threat to sterilize ME oil supplies. That goal is hidden for as long as possible behind a facade of the outcome being entirely 'accidental'. As in b. this means saying nothing officially & publicly about peak oil, but rather letting it leak out until it is gradually 'talked-up' into reality.

There may well be other options, which I'd be interested to see posted.

If not, take your pick of the above.

Of the above, given events since Cheyney came to power, option c. fits best in my view.

regards,

Backstop

[davidyson]

JD,

you are ignoring fundamental physical facts and limits that no research in the world will change.

I say maybe humankind could avoid a total collapse in theory, if everyone would behave accordingly. But my trust in human being's collective rationality is very limited.

Davidyson

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davidyson', 'y')ou are ignoring fundamental physical facts and limits that no research in the world will change.