by EnergySpin » Thu 16 Mar 2006, 03:28:27
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('julianj', '
')FYI - EnergySpin is referring to William Stanton - now there's a crank's crank - who has been published 3 times I think in the ASPO newsletter,out of 689 stories so far (Mar 06 No. 63). So I don't think ASPO is racist or kooky in general.
I was mainly referring to W Stanton, but also to CC himself, since he is the editor of the ASPO newsletter. A couple of years ago, he wrote an article for an academic journal (Ehrlich, Pimentels etc frequently publish in that journal) which gave you a pretty good insight about what his personal viewpoints. If you can get a hold of the paper read it: Colin Campbell, Petroleum and People,
Population & Environment v. 24, n2, 2002
and I will be happy to debate the specifics with anyone.
Regarding the interpretation of the ASPO stats (3/689):
CC never said "I'm sorry, it slipped through" when confronted about the Stanton piece, which raises the big question: Why?
In any case, reflecting back to the whole PO/hydrocarbon depletion business, it is yet unclear to me why prominent features of the "movement" never mention technical solutions to specific problems concerning:
a) fertilizers/synthetic chemistry (the ammonia thread in this forum is a give away isn't it?)
b) liquid fuels (cellulosic ethanol/methanol are obvious examples)
c) wind and nuclear power generation technologies.
yet are keen to bring the population down to 1 billion or less, to keep some sort of party going with the remains of hydrocarbons (tar sands could keep the party going almost for ever @ 5-7 million barrels per day).
It is also unclear to me, why they are adopting a rather different viewpoint about the population issue, compared to (climate) scientists I know personally. From their perspective, fossil fuels have to be phased out ASAP i.e. petroleum/coal/NG usage has to go down at an obscene rate (>10%). But if one buys into a direct, determining connection between petroleum/people/agriculture then it does not matter why FF usage declines, right? Yet very few, if any,climate scientists resort to predictions such as the following from the 52th ASPO Newsletter:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')How India will fare during the Second Half of the Oil Age is hard to predict, but disintegration is a possible outcome, as people revert to their old communal and religious identities, a process which will probably be accompanied by much bloodshed and suffering.
Clearly, the present population far exceeds the carrying capacity of the land, but the Indian is blessed by a smiling, benign spirituality that helps.
To paraphrase the paragraph with an emphasis on the sentence in bold: "The Indian savages will kill and eat its other, but it is ok because they will keep smiling while they are eatening/being eaten , killing /being killed to offset the Growing Gap"
Unless someone provides a satisfactory answer to the questions I raised, here is an appraisal of most peak oil figures: they are not (and never did) promoting awareness, but they do promote a particular message.
it really does not matter why and how the FFs usage will decline or whether the trendologists are right. For reasons that relate to climate change, national security and the health of the general population, FFs have to be phased out. Alternatives DO exist, in the form of nuclear power and (mainly) wind power generation (strike out coal,NG), and carbon neutral liquid fuel cycles based on cellulosic ethanol and methanol,biodiesel (strike out gasoline) which coupled with certain cultural changes can sustain a population double the current size for a few thousand millenia/million years. All the available numbers say that this is possible ... but all the numbers also say that we've got to bite the bullet and be the ones that go through a 10-20 year long difficult period before we see the light at the end of the tunnel.