[Ancien_Opus]

Totally agree with rationale 1.

Rationale 2 does not work for me. This is the first time total energy available to the earth system will be in net decline. Technology is an artifact of abundant energy for example you must have someone hunting for you, if you're going to specialize in knapping flint arrow heads.

Liebeg's law and entropy dictate other circumstances for us. In the past the regional energy declines could be overcome by exploitation of another region or energy source. That option is closed to us, inspite of the much heralded break through in nuclear fusion, our net energy capacity is about to diminish.

I only hope that the central limit theorum holds and the slope on the backside will be similar to the slope on the upside. A long slide instead of catastrophic failure.

Nature will force us to live within the solar, chemical and geothermal energy budget of our planet. The bill for our energy excess is about to come due.

[Ibon]

I agree with the comments that innovation took on leaps and bounds once we hit the oil age and that previously innovations where modest and slow. All this being due to abundant cheap energy. What we sometimes overlook though is that our global energy consumption is not effeciently distributed toward our survival but rather wasted in immense quantities pursuing countless frivolous distractions and activities that are indulgences rather than requirements for our survival. Our ability to really innovate hasn't been tested since our survival hasn't been threatened in any major way that has harnassed our collective will power to survive. I think we can expect major innovations both culturally and technologically around our energy use once humans will have to narrow the focus of their innovation toward survival rather than the overly self indulgent applications we see in our current energy use. We are no way near any form of collapse in my opinion from a purely energy perspective.

Ecological imbalances, diseases, GW, etc. I see as a more immenent threat but also inherantly more unpredictable.

[Aaron]

Man...

Bet you guys are no fun at Christmas...

[green_achers]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')Second: unless TEFPAMOOHB (see Acronym thread); it is not a question of if, only of when.

[johnmarkos]

Another name for the Grandpa factor is The Law of Accelerating Returns, which basically states that technological progress gets faster and faster all the time, growing exponentially in a kind of analog to exponential growth in population and resource use.

Are we living in Ray Kurzweil's Singularity is Near world or are we living in Albert Bartlett's Essential Exponential world? Maybe both, maybe neither. Is technological progress growing exponentially or is that an illusion?

Personally, I think we can model neither growth nor progress with a simple exponential function. It may be that although technology can grow exponentially (a la Moore's Law), only the technologies on which we choose to focus the right kind of time and money grow in this fashion. Or maybe it's something even more complicated than that.

As for the Mike Lynch argument, it seems to boil down to two ideas.

1. People have not explored fully all of the places where they might find more oil.

2. Reserve growth will allow producers to squeeze more oil out of known fields.

I have no idea whether he's right or not but his arguments have called into question my own belief in PO's imminence. AFAIK, PO could have happened on Thanksgiving last year, it could be in the 2010s, as Rembrandt Koppelaar predicts, or maybe it could be 50 years from now, as Mike Lynch predicts.

Irrespective of when PO happens, humanity has a sustainability problem. Call it overshoot, whatever. One way in which I think Lynch's contributions are helpful is that they draw focus away from PO specifically and allow us to think about the more general sustainaibility issue. I find it intriguing that Lynch does view global climate change as a serious problem.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'M')an...

Bet you guys are no fun at Christmas...

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'S')ure oil production will peak... so what?

by Aaron Dunlap

There are two basic reasons why peak oil is quite irrelevant... & here they are:

I'm a big fan of deductive reasoning... For those of you who don't know about deductive reasoning, it's that "scientific method" stuff you missed while flirting with <insert name here> during science class in school.

Here's how it works...

All pregnancies end.
You are pregnant.
Therefore: Your pregnancy will end.

I don't need to know about your specific pregnancy, to know yours will end.

One of my favorite examples of this comes from William of Occam, many years ago.

Willy said:

"All things being equal, the simplest explanation, tends to be the right one."

Sounds reasonable...

So...

Reason #1 - The GrandPa Factor

My grandfather was born in 1902 in Indian Territory, Oklahoma. He taught me many things during our time together... how to fish the lake with a cane pole... how to bet the inside straight... & how to live a fulfilling life.

But he taught me something even more important than the tiny treasures of a 6 year old boy... without even knowing he did it.

Through listening to his stories, & seeing his long life in a complete arch, one thing seems obvious...

That for all our faults... people can be clever little buggers.

Imagine watching your world go from horse, to steam, to cars... to the moon!

Who could have predicted, back in ole '02, that men would play golf on the moon one day... the very idea would get you laughed right out the door back then. And yet that is exactly what happened...

In fact, if I look back on our collective human history, I can see the same pattern... over & over again. What seemed fantasy at the time, eventually came to pass.

[crapattack]

My Granpa was a great old fart too with lots of homespun wisdom and I loved him to bits.

It was our Granpas and great Granpas that got us into this mess thinking they could use up everything and damn the consequences.

Their "ingeniuity" was riffing and engineering with cheap energy and whether they were aware of it or not, through their choices they were betting that their kids would figure out a way to do more with less; or maybe they were just selfish bastards with lots of great homilies.

Sure, this is a cycle. Some Homo Sapiens Sapiens will survive after this first massive die-off, I'm sure. As long as CC is not worse than what we think, a few enclaves and islands scattered around will have a few thousand breeding pairs. What I wonder is if we are capable of learning from the lesson from this, or whether we will keep repeating the same cycles of boom/depletion until the planet is completely farmed out. Because if we don't learn this, and either don't or can't manage to exploit extraterrestrial resources, then we will eventually go species extinct.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', ' ')That is basically the message I have been trying to communicate on here for almost a year now.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', ' ')In the case of the current paradigm the industriul abundance has been from cheap petroleum products, once those are gone the next cheapest source will be called upon to fill the gap.

What will that source be?

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('crapattack', '
')Their "ingeniuity" was riffing and engineering with cheap energy and whether they were aware of it or not, through their choices they were betting that their kids would figure out a way to do more with less; or maybe they were just selfish bastards with lots of great homilies..

[JustinFrankl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'T')hat is basically the message I have been trying to communicate on here for almost a year now. I will say again, I think the average doomer on here has FAR too short a span of history in their grasp. History didn't start with the oil age, nor did technology, and neither will dissipear with the end of cheap oil either. Through history many civilizations have come and gone, but people always survived and built fresh on the ruins of the past, if things collapsed all the way.

[crapattack]

JF wrote:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')eople today are phenomenally seperated from fundamental processes about the world they live in. Most people think gasoline comes from gas stations (or oil companies), food comes from the store, and the heat, electricity, and telephone service come from the utilitiy companies.

[crapattack]

Pops wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Actually they simply thought it was progress and their kids would experience the same. We owe our softness to their choices – they were betting we would have more choices – maybe we won’t.

[Aaron]

Man...

You guys put the "B" in "Brutal Reality"

You're the bee's knees man.

Nothing like being brutally debunked on your own forum I always say.

In fact, my single redeeming quality may be my willingness to spontaneously abandon cherished ideas when confronted with irresistible logic.

Perhaps that's the only quality that really matters in the end... for all of us?

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', ' ')In fact, my single redeeming quality may be my willingness to spontaneously abandon cherished ideas when confronted with irresistible logic.

[mididoctors]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'M')an...

You guys put the "B" in "Brutal Reality"

You're the bee's knees man.

Nothing like being brutally debunked on your own forum I always say.

In fact, my single redeeming quality may be my willingness to spontaneously abandon cherished ideas when confronted with irresistible logic.

Perhaps that's the only quality that really matters in the end... for all of us?

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', ' ')In the case of the current paradigm the industriul abundance has been from cheap petroleum products, once those are gone the next cheapest source will be called upon to fill the gap.

What will that source be?

[mididoctors]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')
The American standard of living as defined by consumption is a falsehood.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'I')n fact, my single redeeming quality may be my willingness to spontaneously abandon cherished ideas when confronted with irresistible logic.

Perhaps that's the only quality that really matters in the end... for all of us?