[Jack]

All fine books, certainly....but perhaps the small volume "Get anyone to do anything" by Lieberman would be a useful addition. I suspect that simple manipulation of those one comes into contact with will have some value in the days ahead.

[TheTurtle]

Wow. There really IS a doomer camp here on the Peak Oil forums.

I'd just like to point out that not all of us who think the dominant culture is hurtling toward the brink of destruction also necessarily think that the best response is to "lock and load" and become utterly ruthless.

Still, having read all three of Ayoob's suggested books, I am even more certain that the transition from Peak Oil is going to be ugly. I feel the need to get off my computer and go out to the woods for a while to hone my craft.

I will leave everyone with another book recommendation to hopefully balance the others:

Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing by Robert Wolff.

[MicroHydro]

Summer Peak Oil Reading:

Kurt Vonnegut Galapagos

Aldous Huxley Island and Ape and Essence

H. G. Wells The Time Machine

Stephen Baxter Evolution

[Tyler_JC]

It's a pity we don't live on a self sufficient island with cable TV...

It would have been awesome to watch this unfold on CNN. Oh well, I probably would have gotten bored anyway. We still might get to see the first decade of chaos in the third world before it's lights out time in the USA.

[Barbara]

LOL Ayoob
despite all that people saying we peakoilers are a bunch of depressed waiting for apocalipse, I've never enjoyed my life like since I've discovered PO.
I have your same thoughts everyday. I enjoy the cleanliness of our cities (can you imagine a middle-age road?), the luxury of our houses, the advances of our schools and health system (and think here in the EU it's FREE!!!), I find myself looking around amazed like I come from a time machine.

I'll never thank enough this PO business. It really opened my eyes about the wonderful life I live.

[Pablo2079]

barbara -

I 've been walking around looking at society as if it was already history. If you can separate yourself from the "doom" aspect, it will be very interesting to see how it plays out. I know it sounds clinical, but I really can't help but be transfixed by it.

Maybe it's the same as driving by a car accident. You don't want to look on one level, but on another you're drawn to it.

[I_Like_Plants]

Yep nothing like Peak Oil to make a person appreciate Peak "Civilization" which we're in right now. I got to see the moon rocket go up when I was little. I got to go on the last-ever Open House at JPL (9/11 was shortly after). I've flown on too many planes and my dad flew on the Concorde at least once. I've wandered around with $5000 in my pocket. I've been in giant sports spectacles held just for me-oh-me and a rather select bunch of other ath-a-letes. I'm using a computer von Neumann could have only dreamed about, and in fact this beast may not be exportable due to restrictions on "supercomputers". The forests are thick in "preserved" areas here because no one *needs* firewood. The illegal immigrants here never go hungry because there are fish for the catching in our reservoirs and drainage canals and bay because no one else needs to catch them. Acorns fall from the trees and no one gathers them but the crows. And the biggest problem is obesity.

Once I studied electrical engineering. Now, I "schpit" on electrical engineering, most jobs outsourced and those few around come with too much institutional BS. I'm an electronics hunter-gatherer and being a hunter-gatherer is pretty sweet! But even that is going to pass, and the thing I most want to get a degree or "degree" in is in botany, or as I'd call it, in plants. I want to get a degree in plants.

Peak Civilization means being surrounded by manmade things and having to follow a million rules made to protect the machines more than us, it's been fun and I sure appreciate it but I like to think that in the long downfall we can hang onto some of the tech, I find it hard to imagine losing all knowledge of helpful fungi like penecillin, practical hygiene, being able to make basic things like basic microscopes, bicycles, and radios, and we should always have things like basic newspapers and radio comms even if our networks use morse code. And we'll get to do things that today most of us have to pay a lot of money to do, like:

Walk along the beach (while gathering a bit of seaweed, clams, or catching some mole crabs for a bit of nice soup)

Walk in the forests and fields (foraging or Welcome Mr Squirrel you're invited to dinner!)

Watch our gardens grow.

Mess with bugs. Right now, you have to go for a degree in entomology to get away with messing with bugs as an adult. In the future it will be ok to mess with bugs, since we'll be picking them off of the crops, and/or gathering them to eat. That's one taboo that will be better off gone.

Play play play! Surfing takes a light wood board, bodysurfing takes um, having a body, diving in requires a slightly higher place to dive from, etc. No ski-doos, scuba gear, Evinrudes required, most fun in the forests and fields and water take little or no equipment at all. It's the fun we were built to have.

Peak Oil will help us appreciate the riches we have now, and the different life we'll have sooner or later. Not all *that* depressing when you think about it.

[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')lay play play! Surfing takes a light wood board, body surfing takes um, having a body, diving in requires a slightly higher place to dive from, etc. No ski-doos, scuba gear, Evinrudes required, most fun in the forests and fields and water take little or no equipment at all. It's the fun we were built to have.

[Tyler_JC]

Aaron, your eternal optimism never ceases to amaze me.

I play "Storm the House" on addictinggames.com, so I guess I've been trained on how to kill vast armies of stick people...by clicking on them with my mouse .

If the army ever needs to wipe out a legion or two of stick figures from a computer screen, I'm their man.

But seriously, life will suck if Aaron's right.

PS. why can't we just nuke these f***ers and steal their oil from under the molten glass ?

[Antimatter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') play "Storm the House" on addictinggames.com, so I guess I've been trained on how to kill vast armies of stick people...by clicking on them with my mouse Evil or Very Mad .

If the army ever needs to wipe out a legion or two of stick figures from a computer screen, I'm their man.

[bobdrake]

"Olduvai station" is mentioned in the Doom movie description at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(film). Olduvai was not mentioned in the videogames themselves that the movie is based on. The writers may be saying something about what is going on by calling the station "Olduvai".

[PhilBiker]

They also may be just naming it after a famous geographic feature with historical significance and a cool sounding name.

[Lukethedrifter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bobdrake', ' ')Olduvai was not mentioned in the videogames themselves that the movie is based on.

[advancedatheist]

I've read that South Africa, which has to endure a colder-than-normal austral winter in the new few months, faces the threat of repeated blackouts and fuel shortages.

Just another one of those miner's canaries the cornucopians will try to ignore, I suppose. They can blame SA's problems on bad government and the lack of capitalism. But Japan, a developed country with a functioning market, had to cut way back on its fuel use over the boreal winter as well. I suspect Europe will face similar problems in the coming winters, especially because Russia wants to screw its customers over its increasingly valuable gas supplies. And then the problem comes to the U.S. and Canada . . .

[SoothSayer]

To save you time Googling I have done it for you:

The word boreal denotes "that which relates to the north"; the word austral, denotes "that which relates to the south."

They are about as close as you can get in form and meaning to oriental and occidental, however, they don't carry the same connotation.

[advancedatheist]

It would surprise you to learn how many people in the Northern Hemisphere don't know why we have seasons, and that the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere run in the reversed way. A few years ago I heard the ex-wife of an infamous tele-evangelist express surprise that South Africa would get snow in July, which in her mind meant "summer." The ignorant woman didn't know basic facts of geography and astronomy.

[advancedatheist]

link$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Power shortage plagues South Asia Sunday 28 May 2006, 6:17 Makka Time, 3:17 GMT:
As South Asia enjoys unprecedented economic growth, soaring summer temperatures have highlighted a chronic shortage of electricity that is crippling enterprise and leaving millions to suffer without any hope of respite.

From India, the world's second fastest growing major economy after China, to impoverished Bangladesh, which has enjoyed 5% annual growth since the early 1990s, governments are plagued by the problem of growing demand for power combined with inadequate supply. In Bangladesh, where nearly half the 140 million population still gets by on less than a dollar a day, the anger of farmers unable to get power to irrigate their crops has led to violent clashes and the death of at least 17 people.

Meanwhile business leaders have warned that the shortages threaten the nearly 20% growth in the garment industry. The sector constitutes more than three-fourths of the country's total exports. Earlier this month almost half of Bangladesh was plunged into darkness for several hours as the national electricity grid tripped shutting down most of the country's power generation units.

[Sys1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')I felt like we had gone back to the dark ages. Normal life was really disturbed," said Sabita Shrestha, a 19-year old management student from Kathmandu.

[deafskeptic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Battle_Scarred_Galactico', 'A')nd remember that only 36% of personal energy use is in the form of electricty (which of course depends on a fossil fuel base, but don't worry about that minor point for the moment). What about the other 64% directly dirived from oil for transport ? Even if this electricity ramp up can be done, the economy is still finished.
I fully expect it to be attempted whatever happens (emphasis on attempt), but the most it will do is keep lights running, at a huge cost to the environment.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Cooking and laundry without light would be quite straightforward.
Old fashion stove (or a gas oven if you want to be more modern) would be used for first task and handwashing (still used by my wife for woolen clothes) for the second.
Driving would still be as easy as now, but staff of petrol station would have to turn to more archaic means to fill up your car.
Countless safety rules would be undoubtfuly forgotten (and not only on petrol stations by the way).