A letter to a friend today: $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')******,
Thanks for your honesty on the phone today. Whatever else might happen, you've spoken your mind to me and appreciate that.
So, you think I have been listening to 'extremists" and have lost all sense of "logic" and "rationality".
National Geo
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm ... raphic.com Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/searchresults? ... ER%20HUBER (watch the ad for a 24 hour pass)
from the National Department of Energy
http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/bu ... /37796.pdfthe Economist
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.c ... =E1_RQNNSN (sign up for the free subscription)
CNN profiles Roscoe Barlett
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section ... toryid=994Richard Rainwater
http://www.energybulletin.net/11695.html Far from being a fringe theory, many "smart people" are coming to this awareness now, and you see PO articles everywhere. It's getting more and more mainstream all the time. Now if you think National Geographic, the Economist and Time Magazine would print a "extremist" articles then I don't know what you would consider conservative. Perhaps the CEO of Simmons & Co., the investment banker for Haliburton and the World Bank who sits on Cheney's energy task force - I'm sure he's an "extremist" too. Also BP, Chevron, Shell and Exxon have made announcements declaring that PO is a likely and while they don't always agree on the timescale are aggressively pursuing various strategies to deal with it, I'm sure these guys are also "extremists". I have an 83 page report from the "extremist" US Army Corps. of Engineers on how to deal with oil peak. Their solution involves encouraging massive investment in renewables and adopting a "powerdown" mentality. The Hirsh Report - a exhaustive study commissioned by the US Government and presented to Congress which founded the Peak Oil Caucus based on this report headed by Republican Congressman Barlett (I'm sure he's another 'extremist' too, after all he's a big money GOP). You're welcome to read it. Perhaps the National Department of Energy is too 'extreme', or the IMF and World Bank who have warned of $100/per barrel this year. Or billionarire Richard Rainwater, close friend of the highly "extreme" US President who declared in his State of the Union was are "addicted to Oil" and must find alternatives. I've heard a few pieces on this issue on CBC, read many many articles in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and many other conservative papers and investment sites worldwide. It has been on CNN, all the major networks and even the Daily Show. Far from being on the fringe, it is being talked about and debated all over by all kinds of folks, and more so eveyday.
http://www.energybulletin.net/13396.html As for the money supply, the US economy is debt based and highly leveraged against growth in the housing markets. As a way out of defict spending, the Feds do "print money", as evidence I refer you to the current M3 Money supply reports which suggest this is exactly what has been happening. I'm not an economist, but from Bloomberg -
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi ... refer=home "
Greenspan helped convince lawmakers to pass deficit reduction measures in 1991 and 1993. Today he cautioned government officials not to expect his successors at the Fed to bail them out by printing money if they fail to address deficits this time." I suggest you read the entire article as it is quite enlightening about how the economy is so closely tied to housing market as well.
There are many many articles available to you on all kinds of sites which talk about when and how the feds "print money" if you bothered to make your own search, but here's another on MSN money
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P139884.asp?Printer "
Of course, that's mostly because this Fed does not know how to tighten. It only knows how to change the cost of money. If the Fed sets the cost of money too low (albeit higher than before), it needs to print money in order to keep the interest rate it picked suppressed at the level it picked, which is sort of what is occurring."
Here's a smattering of links
http://www.safehaven.com/showarticle.cfm?id=4273; and
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boardDocs ... fault.htm; "Thus, as I have stressed already, prevention of deflation remains preferable to having to cure it. If we do fall into deflation, however, we can take comfort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and sufficient injections of money will ultimately always reverse a deflation".- Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke (this is the guy taking over the fed reserve from Greenspan); and
http://www.timingcube.com/012006/ "
By increasing the money supply, i.e. printing money, a Government devalues its currency, thus lowering the effective debt. If they are right, incoming Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will have no choice but to turn the money supply spigots wide open." 
Source: Federal Reserve Board, January 19, 2006
Whatever, obviously you don't want to hear any of this, and if you've made up your mind that I'm a kook then I doubt anything I have say will make a dent in that thick skull of yours, and I could send you links till the cows come home and it won't make one bit of difference.
For the record, I don't think your choices about how you've decided to live are "wrong" - it was right for you. You have tried to have what you think is a "normal life" and you wanted that. I've never judged you for it as it makes you happy. You believe what you have chosen is a "normal life" for all kinds of reasons. I don't aspire to it, but I know many folks do and I respect your choice - do you respect mine? My desire in telling you both about PO was so you could have the information to make choices to protect yourself and your daughter, and you're repaying me by shooting the messenger - thanks a whole hell of a lot. And, for the record, I've considered many differing points of view, and not all of them involve leaving the city
http://www.energybulletin.net/3757.html and
http://www.communitysolution.org/. R***** and I are currently considering many options not all of which involve bugging out to become farmers.
More importantly though, I don't appreciate your patronizing and condecending tone - trying to kindergarden me through an explanation of credit when I've been reading about the monetary supply for months is an example of your lack of respect for my intellect. You really demonstrated your low opinion here. As a friend I expect you to respect my opinions, even if you don't agree with them, as I have done with you many times.
In fact, I have thought about this deeply and for more than "one minute", have you? In fact I would guess that over the last 6 months I have spent hundreds of hours of reading and research into this subject with a healthy dose of skeptism I might add, and I might have come to the wrong conclusion (I doubt it), but uninformed I am definitely not. In fact, I've invested a damn sight more time than whatever you took, which I can bet was long enough to have a knee jerk reaction and make up your mind based on your desire to not have it be true. Understandable given you have a new baby and a big morgage, but you're not fooling me, even if you're fooling yourself. Your opinion is not based on anything more wishful thinking and a completely untenable techno rescue fantasy that you believe will happen because humans are so "creative". If you bothered to concern yourself with some details and facts you'd discover PO is a geological certainty, not a theory, and the solutions are not going to be quite so simple as you'd like. Hydrogen cars aren't going to happen and tar sands will only ever produce 5 million bpd by 2030 in a world that consumes 85 million bpd now and 120 million bpd by 2010 even though they'll make some investors money in the short run. Tar sands also has a negative EROEI (do you even know what that is - from all the vast research you did before you formed your highly informed opinion?). There's probably some other things you've convinced yourself will happen to mitigate this, but unless you have some big idea I haven't heard before (and I've heard most if not all), it just ain't gonna happen the way you want it to. I would have been happy to debate this with you but I don't think you're really interested in informing yourself, and until you do it's unlikely you can convince me I'm wrong. Big changes are coming and you'd prefer cling to your dream of a perfect life and to close the drapes. That's fine with me, at least you know in the broad strokes and if you want to hide behind a facade of normality that's your choice, but apparently my decision to believe it isn't fine with you.
Now that the cards are really on the table, I have no idea why you'd be disappointed in me, perhaps you don't know me as well as you think you do. Or you've concocted some pseudo-psychological bullshit theory about me leaving (former work), spending too much time at home and going batty (LOL), in which case R***** has too and half my friends who don't work from home. Maybe we're all batty then, and what's wrong with that? It can't be worse than believing everything's fine tralala. At least I'm trying to prepare and using less energy too. Then again from my POV our relationship has mostly been about listening to you rant and me offering plucky advice about your tiny problems on the way to the perfect life you're striving so hard for. I would be disappointed in you for holding this opinion of me if you knew me well, but even after all these years, you don't - so I think I can live with your "disappointment". Most of the people who truely know me would find it laughable to characterize me as someone who adpoted such an idea without throughly investigating it first, I'm a bit of a geek that way. I can tell you about car door thicknessness, and G******'s skull thickness! And regardless of all this, I do have a life and am not obsessing over this issue (that was a few months ago).
Don't contact me for a while. I can't recall being more pissed at you. I've always believed in basic respect and you've spoken your true feelings. I'm shocked and hurt your vitriol, and you've demonstrated you have little respect for me and that means more to me than the issue. I'd hate to let something as dumb as a disagreement over PO to end our friendship. On that score, time will tell over next few years whether right or wrong, and I'd be delighted to be wrong. I do need some time to re-evaluate what I am gettting out of our friendship and what it means to me.
I'm bummed. I should have expected it. I didn't.