Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave an amazing speech in 1957 that predicted many of the energy-related issues we are now dealing with. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/02/s ... -peak-oil/
Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover is known as the father of the nuclear submarine. He was also instrumental in getting the United States started using nuclear power to generate electricity. He was an advisor to Jimmy Carter, who is known for his interest in renewable energy. The world would no doubt be much different if we had listened to Mr. Rickover’s ideas from more than 50 years ago and acted on them.
Excerpts:
-With high energy consumption goes a high standard of living.
-Whether this Golden Age will continue depends entirely upon our ability to keep energy supplies in balance with the needs of our growing population.
-A reduction of per capita energy consumption has always in the past led to a decline in civilization and a reversion to a more primitive way of life.
-The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In this respect our energy base differs from that of all earlier civilizations. They could have maintained their energy supply by careful cultivation. We cannot.
-For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost, are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.
-I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants – those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age.
Well guess what folks, we didn't get the memo and we missed the boat
PeakOil is You
Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by theluckycountry » Wed 17 Nov 2021, 21:06:48
We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.
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Re: Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by AdamB » Thu 18 Nov 2021, 00:28:37
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '
')Well guess what folks, we didn't get the memo and we missed the boat
')Well guess what folks, we didn't get the memo and we missed the boat
Not rich boomers who can afford pricey motorcycles like you Lucky! You've got it made, just like you've said!
So why all the whining? Let the rest eat cake, isn't that what you just said your "get yours" generation is happily doing?
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by ROCKMAN » Thu 18 Nov 2021, 16:52:18
Not to take anything away from Hyman but as I've pointed out many times over the YEARS this was the common anticipation amongst my experienced cohorts when I began as a petroleum geologist in 1975. My mentor at that time predicted the shit hitting the fan not to long after 2000. Just a rough guess he admitted but regardless of the exact timing it was inevitable. One has to wonder if Hyman gained some of his insight after reading the predictions published by a well known geologist in the 1950's.
The exact timing would be determined by a number of unpredictable factors. But the eventuality of PO itself was very predictable. Even to a 25 year old graduate student. But, then again, I was doing my master's degree under a professor who had retired after 35 years in the oil patch. He had all his student gather at his house one evening every week for pizza, beer, and modeling PO. Didn't really impact my thinking very much at the time. But after 5 or so years struggling to find significant oil/NG accumulations it became much more apparent.
The exact timing would be determined by a number of unpredictable factors. But the eventuality of PO itself was very predictable. Even to a 25 year old graduate student. But, then again, I was doing my master's degree under a professor who had retired after 35 years in the oil patch. He had all his student gather at his house one evening every week for pizza, beer, and modeling PO. Didn't really impact my thinking very much at the time. But after 5 or so years struggling to find significant oil/NG accumulations it became much more apparent.
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Re: Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by gollum » Fri 19 Nov 2021, 11:17:07
What a speech his insight in to history and predictions for the future were uncanny.
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Re: Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by AdamB » Fri 19 Nov 2021, 22:25:43
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gollum', 'W')hat a speech his insight in to history and predictions for the future were uncanny.
If all the other peak oil claimants had used half a century time spans to bracket their predictions, they wouldn't have ended up with so much egg on face and poisoned the entire concept.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by evilgenius » Sat 20 Nov 2021, 11:12:12
I think John Michael Greer, that Archdruid guy, talked about a long, slow collapse. Kunstler gets into some of that. They both rely on a sense of nostalgia to get their points across. They each want to rely upon going back to the past in order to face the future. Rickover is much more optimistic and forward facing. He was the same way about seeing how we might, eventually, get out from under the Cold War. He was more of a risk taker, I guess.
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Re: Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by theluckycountry » Wed 18 Dec 2024, 17:06:46
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'I') think John Michael Greer, that Archdruid guy, talked about a long, slow collapse. Kunstler gets into some of that. They both rely on a sense of nostalgia to get their points across. They each want to rely upon going back to the past in order to face the future.
Quite! I used to listen to those guys but at some point I came to the conclusion they were just aging Boomers looking for a fix so they could live out their latter years in comfort and security rather than the Hunger Games scenario. Each have written novels depicting a transition back to horse and cart and local farming, but with a sprinkling of solar panels so that their personal business models, feeding off income derived from internet denizens, could continue. It's a futile exercise in wishful thinking, a whistling past the graveyard but it sold books.
There simply is no going back from a collapse in energy abundance, as all the empires across recorded history clearly show. What happens, always happens, is a total collapse and abandonment of the collapsing system and a long period of anarchy. The very idea that our technology is a buffer against this is ludicrous since a simple loss of the electricity, or fuel networks, would instantly cripple every society across the Western World and doom a Billion people to a quick death. A good solar flare and associated CME would do it and you wouldn't even know it had occurred until you flicked the light switch or tried to start your modern car. What backup is there to feed the millions in our cities? To pump water in, transport food in? It takes roughly 20 years to transition to a new system of mass transport or energy production and that is with the new system working at full pace to bring it about. I don't see millions of horses waiting outside the cities to take over the duties of the 18-wheelers. There is Zero redundancy built into our societies.
We actually would have been a lot better off as a species if the digital computer had never been invented, or for that matter if oil had never accumulated in the ground. From my look at the history of the industrial revolution we were doing just fine on steam power. That coupled with electricity was transforming our lives and I have no doubt we would have eventually achieved much of what makes life great today with just those alone. Even a moonshot would have been possible, certainly modern transport and energy networks, medical advancements and the like. What we would have avoided was nations choked with cars and trucks, the internet of thieves and pornographers. Could I live without the internet and modern digital devices? I spent the first 30 years of my life without them and lived a very good life in the process. There was nothing wrong with bank books and cash, home phones, mechanical cash registers. No one complained and it was nice to go out for the day and not worry about the cares of the world because you didn't have a mobile in your pocket.
It's too late to go back I'm afraid but it's never too late to shun some of the more invasive aspects of the techno now. I'm off for a ride, I'll pack a cell phone, for all the good it will do me where I'm going, but it won't be turned on! My phone is never turned on when I travel, in the car or on the bikes. It's a simple matter of not being addicted, of going your own way and not the way the modern world dictates as acceptable.
We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.
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Re: Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech
by AdamB » Wed 18 Dec 2024, 21:23:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'R')ear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave an amazing speech in 1957 that predicted many of the energy-related issues we are now dealing with. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/02/s ... -peak-oil/
Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover is known as the father of the nuclear submarine.
Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover is known as the father of the nuclear submarine.
Rickover was certainly a real American. Can you imagine? He got a nuke sub built that Australians nearly 70 years later...can't. They can even buy the BLUEPRINTS from one of the Great Nations they suckle at the teat of, and STILL don't have what it takes to build a SINGLE knock off copy of 70 year old technology.
Thanks for pointing out some American exceptionalism Lucky....now...how about we talk about an Australian educational system that creates cretins all agog at American exceptionalism like you?
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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The Russians and Chinese are probably seeding the oceans with autonomous torpedoes, all with US sub signatures embedded in their brains. They can just float there under the surface waiting for their billion dollar targets to sail by.
