[killJOY]

NEOPO

I HATE green tea. Furniture here is WOODEN, not wicker.

See here: no one is going to help us.

Let me rephrase it: no one is going to help you.

Let me rephrase it again: no one is going to help anyone.

The more you learn how to do, the better off you ll be .

I dont give a fark about "technologies". I have lots of cool technologies rightchere: wood stoves, bee boxes, iron shovels and rakes, hand pumps, drier racks, manure spreader....

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Coolman', 'L')OL dukey. I remember that game...

[Aaron]

[stream]http://www.peakoil.com/sample/apoc3.wav [/stream]

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'a')lthough many of us do love trees this is not our agenda per se.

[NEOPO]

Now what Is that suppose to mean Ludi?

I do not want to give the masses an excuse.
"See they are tree huggers with an agenda".
Surely they will find excuses anyways but giving it to them....

Like I said, many of us may be greens yet that is not the primary reason we are here spending time attempting to educate...is it?

[KingM]

The longer I'm here, the less Doomerist I become. One major factor is how anxious some of the Doomers are for the apocalypse. They don't just expect the end of the world, they crave it. They want the consumerists to die, they want to live a Red Dawn lifestyle. They find something immoral in the present way of life and they can't wait for it to end. All data is reinterpreted to fit this world view. It makes their point of view just as ill-considered as its cornucopian counterpart.

I say 1 in 4, PO is a non-event, a la Y2K. 1 in 4, it's a slight disruption. 1 in 4 we've got a Great Depression. 1 in 4 we're royally screwed. Hence, I'm hedging my bets, which means funding my 401K for my retirement while buying some gold on the side in case the word "retirement" becomes meaningless.

[NEOPO]

I do not think you should allow yourself to be swayed either way by the optomists or the pessimist.
Doing so is allowing them to define you.
Yet to not be swayed by valid arguments is another matter entirely which verges on denial and rationalization.

I say this because of what you stated was a "major factor" in your position.

So what if certain people wish to greet it with open arms, that does not mean I will cross mine.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KingM', 'T')he longer I'm here, the less Doomerist I become. One major factor is how anxious some of the Doomers are for the apocalypse. They don't just expect the end of the world, they crave it. They want the consumerists to die, they want to live a Red Dawn lifestyle. They find something immoral in the present way of life and they can't wait for it to end. All data is reinterpreted to fit this world view. It makes their point of view just as ill-considered as its cornucopian counterpart.

[retiredguy]

Hey, the word retirement is not meaningless to me!

It has occured to me that doomers and non-doomers are more alike than dissimilar if they both subscribe to the PO theory.

A true doomer, in my book, is one who gets up in the morning and decides that life is no longer worth living. Next stop the suicide express. If suicide is not the choice, then the doomer, by default, acknowledges that there is some reason to remain alive. Maybe it is just out of morbid curiosity to see his/her pessimistic vision of the future come true.

But most doomers that post here are making life-adjustments to adapt to the future that they see. Are non-doomers that much different? If they believe that oil is a finite resource and that increased consumption cannot continue infiintely, they must agree that mankind faces a challenge of an unprecented magnitude. And what are they doing? Making their own plans for the future based on their understanding of the facts as they interpret them.

Are the two camps that dissimilar? Both would agree that the true losers in the future are those who blythely or ignorantly refuse to see the coming crisis and make changes to adapt to it.

Just a thought. Skewer me if you think I'm way off base.

[killJOY]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he longer I'm here, the less Doomerist I become. One major factor is how anxious some of the Doomers are for the apocalypse. They don't just expect the end of the world, they crave it. They want the consumerists to die, they want to live a Red Dawn lifestyle. They find something immoral in the present way of life and they can't wait for it to end. All data is reinterpreted to fit this world view. It makes their point of view just as ill-considered as its cornucopian counterpart.

[sameu]

who needs a plan when you have the markets and technology to solve any problem 20 years too late

[malcomatic_51]

To be honest with you C_S, I found the doomer link far more realistic than the optimist link, and even the optimist accepted that things would get very bad if the post-peak decline rate was high.

He made the statement: "People may be stupid, but they aren't that stupid.." Yes they are that stupid. If they were not, there would never have been WW1 or WW2, for starters. The data support the stupidity of humans. Look at the transport system in most English speaking countries - a muddled, haphazard planning system combined with state deference to mass motoring and road haulage leads to insufferable gridlock everywhere. Yet what is done about it? More roads, more cars and trucks and more gridlock. These are the cultures that are supposed to organise their way out of Peak Oil?

NO CHANCE.

The one thing that characterises the Anglo-Saxon culture is social stratification. It amounts to feudalism, but adapted to an industrial world and softened by many decades of social protest. The owners of land and equity are socially distinct from everyone else, due to the alienation possible through stock markets (which means you can extract surplus value from industry without actually owning a factory or knowing anything about anything; all you do is buy and sell bits of paper). When things get hard the Top Dogs will connive with the Police and the armed forces to ensure that land rights and capital rights are maintained. If that means the hoi-polloi starve, tough luck on them.

I anticipate that the ownership will use PO to take back much that has been dragged from it with the rise of mass mobility. Expect to see many former Public Highways and Rights of Way being quietly revoked, to establish greater security of country property. Also bans on the overflight of any aircraft.

The situation in Europe is likely to be a lot more collectivist, thanks to the C18th and C19th revolutions that ended the rule of the remote elite. I am continually impressed by the absence of any significant private school system in most European countries. As an example, Wernher von Braun, who was the son of a baron, attended the local school on the Frisian island where his father had an estate.

Another point is that the dashed ambitions of many countries that today are on the crest of "making it" will provoke dangerous political movements.

Always recall that the British National Party see PO as a once in two hundred year opportunity to get into power. They won't be alone in grasping for the trust of the people, especially if the banking sector fails.

Clang - clang - clang......

Interesting times dead ahead, Captain!

[malcomatic_51]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KingM', 'I') say 1 in 4, PO is a non-event, a la Y2K. 1 in 4, it's a slight disruption. 1 in 4 we've got a Great Depression. 1 in 4 we're royally screwed. Hence, I'm hedging my bets, which means funding my 401K for my retirement while buying some gold on the side in case the word "retirement" becomes meaningless.

[KingM]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('malcomatic_51', '
')Bear in mind that Y2K was foreseen and billions spent to correct it. Nothing happened because enough was done in time to neutralise the threat.

[TorrKing]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('malcomatic_51', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KingM', 'I') say 1 in 4, PO is a non-event, a la Y2K. 1 in 4, it's a slight disruption. 1 in 4 we've got a Great Depression. 1 in 4 we're royally screwed. Hence, I'm hedging my bets, which means funding my 401K for my retirement while buying some gold on the side in case the word "retirement" becomes meaningless.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'N')ow what Is that suppose to mean Ludi?

I do not want to give the masses an excuse.
"See they are tree huggers with an agenda".
Surely they will find excuses anyways but giving it to them....

Like I said, many of us may be greens yet that is not the primary reason we are here spending time attempting to educate...is it?

[KingM]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')What I mean is, Monte has been discussing for YEARS how the only appropriate response to peak oil is to powerdown and devise a new way of life based on the Earth's life systems... As far as I can tell, the only reasonable response is to realise our way of life is going extinct and we must find another way, a way that works.

[CrudeAwakening]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KingM', ' ')Look at the huge stresses in resource loss alone that GB, Russia, Germany, and Japan suffered in WWII and these societies did not collapse. Further, we built an intercontinental rail system with coal as our primary fuel. We've now got nuclear and huge (if possibly declining) oil resources.

[KingM]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CrudeAwakening', '
')You can't compare the situation in 1945 to our situation today. For starters, there were 4 billion fewer people on the planet. There was less environmental damage, global warming was in its infancy, and there weren't 3 billion people in the developing world all striving to attain the same standard of living of those in the developed world, placing massive strain on the world's finite resources.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KingM', 'T')his is what you want to happen. That doesn't mean it will.