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Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Is peak oil the tip of the iceberg?

Yes, it is a symptom of a greater disease.
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No, it is just a stepping stone in energy history.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Tue 29 Nov 2005, 22:20:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gary', 'W')e have "foolishly blundered" (Wilson's phrase) into this bottleneck by refusing to understand our relationship with the earth, by refusing to reflect on the possibility that we could exhaust resources or render the environment toxic to our own species.

If we are treating a symptom in peak oil, is the deeper, causative disease a matter of being stuck, refusing to evolve beyond the level of thinking of ourselves and our "tribe" (however we may define this) in terms of immediate security, comfort, and pleasure? This trait has often served us well, but could it also be the Achilles' Heel which brings civilisation after civilization down?

Does this make any sense to others? Monte, is this anywhere near the point of this topic? (I hope so.)


Yes, spot on. And what we have done is construct a "system" that supports this while refusing to accept that there are limits and be damned to those who sugggest there are!

You can't use the same system that caused the problem, to solve it. :roll:

Or, as Einstein said it:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Last edited by MonteQuest on Tue 29 Nov 2005, 22:43:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Tue 29 Nov 2005, 22:35:59

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GreyGhost', ' ')Hear, hear. Monty it's obvious from the start you've been pushing option 1, and you try to use that to prove that option 2. must be wrong. But why can't peak oil be both symptom of a greater disease, *and* something we should try to solve using our ingenuity?



Because it was our ingenuity based upon a world view that is not supporte d by the ecological facts that caused the problem.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou monty promote the "Ecological Paradigm" - is this not some attempt to solve the problem, meaning you are also in option 2?


No, if you read the entire text:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')n the other hand, how many see peak oil as just another problem to be solved by man’s ingenuity? His course is sound, he just needs a new energy source to “stay the course”. Tomorrow the stars with JD?


And the poll question:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')o, it is just a stepping stone in energy history.


An Ecological Paradigm addresses the issues I raised in the original post.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Tue 29 Nov 2005, 22:40:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') think there's a lack of communication going on.


I'll keep posting this quote until it sinks in:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Montequest', 'I')deologically, we need an ecological worldview; a paradigm shift in our thinking about the world about us. Which brings us to a conundrum: it is difficult, if almost impossible (even in scientific discussions) for people of one paradigm to communicate with those who perceive and reason in terms dictated by another different paradigm. We all need to be on the same page and we are not.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Doly » Wed 30 Nov 2005, 07:29:24

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')So, if peak oil is a symptom of a greater disease, what is the disease in your opinion, besides poor planning?


Short-termism.

Now, what is the disease according to you? Technology?

If we are going to have a meaningful discussion, we can't leave things just at "it's a symptom of a greater disease". We have to specify which is the disease we are talking about.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby EnergySpin » Wed 30 Nov 2005, 07:32:15

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')So, if peak oil is a symptom of a greater disease, what is the disease in your opinion, besides poor planning?


Short-termism.


Complacency?
Contentment?
Lack of responsibility?
Immaturity?
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Wed 30 Nov 2005, 22:08:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')So, if peak oil is a symptom of a greater disease, what is the disease in your opinion, besides poor planning?


Short-termism.

Now, what is the disease according to you? Technology?

If we are going to have a meaningful discussion, we can't leave things just at "it's a symptom of a greater disease". We have to specify which is the disease we are talking about.


I guess you didn't even bother to read my initial post , then? :roll:

This disease stems from a worldview that is not supported by ecological facts.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Montequest', 'T')he mass below the surface of peak oil is the expectations of infinite growth in a finite world. Driving this false premise is a debt-based monetary system that services past debt only with future growth. Changing the cultural direction and asset inertia behind this is tantamount to trying to turn the Titanic on a dime. Never happen; no matter how hard you try.

So, the transition we need to do is not from fossil fuels to renewables, but from an infinite growth mindset to one of sustainability based upon the received solar flux and the earth’s ability to absorb our impact through the environmental sinks. We are already burdened with un-repayable debt, unbridled population growth, rampant environmental toxicity, increasing loss of biodiversity, scarcity of resources, and alarming reports of increased global warming; all consequences of our collective hubris. We need to address all of these issues, not just energy production.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Wed 30 Nov 2005, 23:18:11

Ecological Paradigm

In another thread, Ludi asked if there was a thread on an Ecological Paradigm. I thought I would put a brief synopsis here.

The essence of an ecology-based paradigm recognizes that the long-term sustainability of agricultural and natural resources production will ultimately be regulated by those ecological processes that govern an ecosystem's capacity to produce and recycle them.

The Ecological Society of America articulated this concept as follows:

"... strategies to provide ecosystem goods and services cannot take as their starting points mandated yield goals, timber supply, water demand, or arbitrarily set harvests of fish—instead, sustainability must be the primary objective, levels of commodity and amenity must be adjusted to meet that goal."

In other words, sustainable supply dictates the level of demand or consumption permissible; not demand creates supply. This is 180 degrees from our current “laws of supply and demand” paradigm. This sets limits based upon ecological principles of sustainability, not policy or economics. Distilled to its simplest form, an ecology-based paradigm for ecosystem management constitutes working within the limits of the ecosystem in order to maintain ecological sustainability.

An old Chinese saying captures the essence of our earth-connectedness by stating that, "man despite his artistic pretensions and his many accomplishments owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 01 Dec 2005, 09:36:42

Reality will impose itself regardless of how one argues. We all seem to agree that fossil fuel depletion will be a disruptive event. It is very possible that Peak Oil will bring about mitigation strategies that will create a world that consumes less, is more energy effecient, but that nevertheless does not move us out of the current paradigm for many decades as we use still abundant energy assets to hold on to an ever diminishing supply and demand economic paradigm. Somewhere far (or near) down the road is a sustainable balance because by definition anything short of this means an eventual extinction. Ultimately human beings will live in a sustainable paradigm on this planet or they will go extinct. There is something so fundamental about this concept that it is in fact not a concept, not a philosophy, nor an idealogy. It is simple reality. Montequest is ultimately correct but it may be that we will not willfully shift our philosophy to an ecological paradigm. It is more likely that reality will impose this on us as we impose our will on our environment which seems to be somehow the essence of our human culture since we learned agriculture some 12,000 years ago. Or maybe this has deeper roots, somewhere in our brains. Who knows. But at this very moment, on a global scale, we are on a collision between our planets limits and our culture's hard wiring to impose our will on our environment.

Ecological reality (our finite planet) is acting on us at this very moment even as we have the hubris to think we can design our away around limits. That does not mean that ES is wrong though because as reality (our finite planet) continues imposing it's limits we will struggle to exist with important new technologies eventually being interwoven with what is inevitably going to lead us to a sustainable paradigm. I don't see a dichotomy here. A sustainable paradigm is the end result though or we all become fossils.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Ludi » Thu 01 Dec 2005, 09:42:14

Ibon, what you're saying is we will arrive at a sustainable paradigm or we will die, those are the two options. Is this correct?
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Dezakin » Thu 01 Dec 2005, 17:31:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n other words, sustainable supply dictates the level of demand or consumption permissible; not demand creates supply. This is 180 degrees from our current “laws of supply and demand” paradigm. This sets limits based upon ecological principles of sustainability, not policy or economics. Distilled to its simplest form, an ecology-based paradigm for ecosystem management constitutes working within the limits of the ecosystem in order to maintain ecological sustainability.

But demand does create supply. We could, for example if demand were high enough, build vast greenhouses for hydroponics crops.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Thu 01 Dec 2005, 20:13:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', ' ')But demand does create supply. We could, for example if demand were high enough, build vast greenhouses for hydroponics crops.


Demand cannot be allowed to create supply in excess of what is sustainable.

Vast greenhouses, while technologically feasible, may not be sustainable.

Permit denied, if that is the case.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Ibon » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 11:12:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I')bon, what you're saying is we will arrive at a sustainable paradigm or we will die, those are the two options. Is this correct?


When you dissect things so finely you can really miss the forest for the trees. Humans live under the same ecological principles as all other organisms. Just because our species has mastered the ability to manipulate our environment for food and fuel and twinkies doesn't mean we can stand outside the principles of sustainability. We have just gone on over 100 years of never having supply constraints and this has distorted our view of reality to where we think we are immune to the dynamics of carrying capacity, over population etc. Actually we have achieved 6.5 billion people following ecological principles but at a cost of taking net energy away from other life forms or using reserves of energies that have been stored 200 million years to create the "balance" of having 6.5 billion people today. It is a balance however that is temporary, an anomaly in the history of our species, yes a bloom of sorts in the petri dish... All of us happen to be alive at this fortuitous moment when supply constraints from energy, water, soil etc. are converging on our exponential growth and this reality will eventually act on our species and our population will plateu or most likely drop at some sustainable level or we will go extinct. We will power down, we will start to consume within the constraints of a sustainable paradigm, and we will have many humans like Energy Spin and millions of others actively trying to maximize our energy and mobility within these constraints but in the end a sustainability will be reached. There is no real dichotomy here. It would be wonderful if all 6.5 billion people would wake up tomorrow with Montequest's understanding of sustainability and that we could then willfully transform with intelligence. But this wont happen. It will be a natural selection type of struggle in our culture between proponents of growth and proponents on powering down until a sustainability is reached. This will be the great cultural struggle of the next decades and this thread demonstrates it. But reality (our planets limits) will impose itself as the "natural selection" of these belief systems struggle for dominance. In the end we will reach a sustainable paradigm, how many species are lost and how much human suffering until we get there is unknown. But this struggle defines the very notion of evolution...cultural in the case of humans but ecological in the sense that our planet's capacity to indulge us as we figure all this out have now reached limits whereby this departs idealogy and philosophy and becomes a force to mold our realities. We have had the anomolous situation for the past 100 years of creating our own reality without regard to our planet's limits. But as Richard Heinberg stated this party is over. But that doesn't mean we stop dancing...
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby FatherOfTwo » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 12:28:14

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I')bon, what you're saying is we will arrive at a sustainable paradigm or we will die, those are the two options. Is this correct?


When you dissect things so finely you can really miss the forest for the trees. Humans live under the same ecological principles as all other organisms. Just because our species has mastered the ability to manipulate our environment for food and fuel and twinkies doesn't mean we can stand outside the principles of sustainability. We have just gone on over 100 years of never having supply constraints and this has distorted our view of reality to where we think we are immune to the dynamics of carrying capacity, over population etc. Actually we have achieved 6.5 billion people following ecological principles but at a cost of taking net energy away from other life forms or using reserves of energies that have been stored 200 million years to create the "balance" of having 6.5 billion people today. It is a balance however that is temporary, an anomaly in the history of our species, yes a bloom of sorts in the petri dish... All of us happen to be alive at this fortuitous moment when supply constraints from energy, water, soil etc. are converging on our exponential growth and this reality will eventually act on our species and our population will plateu or most likely drop at some sustainable level or we will go extinct. We will power down, we will start to consume within the constraints of a sustainable paradigm, and we will have many humans like Energy Spin and millions of others actively trying to maximize our energy and mobility within these constraints but in the end a sustainability will be reached. There is no real dichotomy here. It would be wonderful if all 6.5 billion people would wake up tomorrow with Montequest's understanding of sustainability and that we could then willfully transform with intelligence. But this wont happen. It will be a natural selection type of struggle in our culture between proponents of growth and proponents on powering down until a sustainability is reached. This will be the great cultural struggle of the next decades and this thread demonstrates it. But reality (our planets limits) will impose itself as the "natural selection" of these belief systems struggle for dominance. In the end we will reach a sustainable paradigm, how many species are lost and how much human suffering until we get there is unknown. But this struggle defines the very notion of evolution...cultural in the case of humans but ecological in the sense that our planet's capacity to indulge us as we figure all this out have now reached limits whereby this departs idealogy and philosophy and becomes a force to mold our realities. We have had the anomolous situation for the past 100 years of creating our own reality without regard to our planet's limits. But as Richard Heinberg stated this party is over. But that doesn't mean we stop dancing...


Great post.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby creg » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 12:45:46

Thanks Monte for the repeat of the Ecological Paradigm. So on a practical basis the question for us is; for the ecological system we are part of, what are our needs/wants and what can the our ecosystem supply of our needs/wants( without destruction to the ecosystem). Supply and demand ( our need) kept in balance.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 13:12:46

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I')bon, what you're saying is we will arrive at a sustainable paradigm or we will die, those are the two options. Is this correct?


When you dissect things so finely you can really miss the forest for the trees. Humans live under the same ecological principles as all other organisms. Just because our species has mastered the ability to manipulate our environment for food and fuel and twinkies doesn't mean we can stand outside the principles of sustainability. We have just gone on over 100 years of never having supply constraints and this has distorted our view of reality to where we think we are immune to the dynamics of carrying capacity, over population etc. Actually we have achieved 6.5 billion people following ecological principles but at a cost of taking net energy away from other life forms or using reserves of energies that have been stored 200 million years to create the "balance" of having 6.5 billion people today. It is a balance however that is temporary, an anomaly in the history of our species, yes a bloom of sorts in the petri dish... All of us happen to be alive at this fortuitous moment when supply constraints from energy, water, soil etc. are converging on our exponential growth and this reality will eventually act on our species and our population will plateu or most likely drop at some sustainable level or we will go extinct. We will power down, we will start to consume within the constraints of a sustainable paradigm, and we will have many humans like Energy Spin and millions of others actively trying to maximize our energy and mobility within these constraints but in the end a sustainability will be reached. There is no real dichotomy here. It would be wonderful if all 6.5 billion people would wake up tomorrow with Montequest's understanding of sustainability and that we could then willfully transform with intelligence. But this wont happen. It will be a natural selection type of struggle in our culture between proponents of growth and proponents on powering down until a sustainability is reached. This will be the great cultural struggle of the next decades and this thread demonstrates it. But reality (our planets limits) will impose itself as the "natural selection" of these belief systems struggle for dominance. In the end we will reach a sustainable paradigm, how many species are lost and how much human suffering until we get there is unknown. But this struggle defines the very notion of evolution...cultural in the case of humans but ecological in the sense that our planet's capacity to indulge us as we figure all this out have now reached limits whereby this departs idealogy and philosophy and becomes a force to mold our realities. We have had the anomolous situation for the past 100 years of creating our own reality without regard to our planet's limits. But as Richard Heinberg stated this party is over. But that doesn't mean we stop dancing...


A simple "yes" or "no" would have sufficed.

You're preaching to the choir here.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Revi » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 14:10:44

Why can't some of us evolve and live sustainably now? We can at least lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. We could not use them simply to entertain ourselves at least. Learn how to live in a more sustainable manner. Get rid of the monkey on our back.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby DefiledEngine » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 15:37:42

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Why can't some of us evolve and live sustainably now? We can at least lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. We could not use them simply to entertain ourselves at least. Learn how to live in a more sustainable manner. Get rid of the monkey on our back.


I don't see why you couldn't try to live independently and sustainably now. I do think that it wouldn't affect the overall depletion, though.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 16:09:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'W')hy can't some of us evolve and live sustainably now? We can at least lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. We could not use them simply to entertain ourselves at least. Learn how to live in a more sustainable manner. Get rid of the monkey on our back.


We don't need to "evolve," we just need to have different priorities and live accordingly. Lots of folks are doing it.
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 20:21:37

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', ' ')A simple "yes" or "no" would have sufficed.

You're preaching to the choir here.


Ah, but more than the choir is listening. :-D

Really eloquent post, Ibon. :)
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Re: Peak Oil: The Tip of the Iceberg

Unread postby MonteQuest » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 20:26:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('creg', 'T')hanks Monte for the repeat of the Ecological Paradigm. So on a practical basis the question for us is; for the ecological system we are part of, what are our needs/wants and what can the our ecosystem supply of our needs/wants( without destruction to the ecosystem). Supply and demand ( our need) kept in balance.


Well, if we assume we are in overshoot, and there is no evidence to say we are not, then the ecosystem cannot meet our needs and wants without a drastic reduction in footprint or population, or both.

To let the earth heal and continue to support this large a population would require austerity never before seen.

Third-world conditions or less. Basic food clothing and shelter.
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