[Too old to worry]

Reading many of these posts, I really, really don't think many of you get it.

The current world population is supported by a "once in a planet's lifetime experience, i.e. an advanced critter figuring out how to tap finite stores of hydrocarbons, built up over a gargantuan multiple of the ordinary human lifetime". Never again will these resources, or for that matter the many other mineral resources, be so freely available to support this hydrocarbon form we call mankind.

It is really laughable to hear those of you who think that putting away a few month of food will solve your survival problem, or those of you who think that the downside of this exponential curve will be "life as we know it with just a few adjustments". Death will be the norm, more so than life.

Furthermore, I wish to point out that all the supposed saving discoveries are just psychological soothings to help you confronting the reality. The reality is that mankind, without stored hydrocarbon support, will be just what he has always been, an animal, competing with other organizations of energy for additional energy to sustain his form. Just pay attention to the fact that each of these supposed saviors (photovoltaic, biodiesel, hydrogen, nuclear fussion, etc. are all just unsuitable palatives to help you deal with the fact that the majority are doomed).

The overall picture is that we humans are out on a limb, supported by a tank of energy that is approaching 1/2 full, and that we must reach numbers that can be supported without this artificial infusion of energy. Then there is the idea of "overshoot" that will take us down in numbers to less that could be supported were we not falling off an artificially sustained level. Anyway you look at it, there is a terrible future for our children and grandchildren, beyond the willingness of of most to accept.

[EnviroEngr]

Ecologically astute observations...

Now what?

[adam]

This sounded pretty reasonable to me:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e’re actually in a change phase now which is so multi-leveled and inherently chaotic – our understandings of chaos theory and ecological change that suggest we’re at this big turnover point where things can go in many different directions all at once. What we should expect is that the pattern of the world becoming more globalised, certain aspects of that will continue into the future; the residue of globalisation. But we can also expect a counterflow of things starting to become localised and differentiated. So different outcomes in different places.
...
What that means is we’ll have everything from paradise to hell simultaneously in different places, that are not necessarily predictable. You can see that in the breakdown of the nation state and it’s power, from empowered communities in one area to feudal warlords in another.

[Guest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Too old to worry', 'R')eading many of these posts, I really, really don't think many of you get it.

The current world population is supported by a "once in a planet's lifetime experience, i.e. an advanced critter figuring out how to tap finite stores of hydrocarbons, built up over a gargantuan multiple of the ordinary human lifetime". Never again will these resources, or for that matter the many other mineral resources, be so freely available to support this hydrocarbon form we call mankind.

It is really laughable to hear those of you who think that putting away a few month of food will solve your survival problem, or those of you who think that the downside of this exponential curve will be "life as we know it with just a few adjustments". Death will be the norm, more so than life.

Furthermore, I wish to point out that all the supposed saving discoveries are just psychological soothings to help you confronting the reality. The reality is that mankind, without stored hydrocarbon support, will be just what he has always been, an animal, competing with other organizations of energy for additional energy to sustain his form. Just pay attention to the fact that each of these supposed saviors (photovoltaic, biodiesel, hydrogen, nuclear fussion, etc. are all just unsuitable palatives to help you deal with the fact that the majority are doomed).

The overall picture is that we humans are out on a limb, supported by a tank of energy that is approaching 1/2 full, and that we must reach numbers that can be supported without this artificial infusion of energy. Then there is the idea of "overshoot" that will take us down in numbers to less that could be supported were we not falling off an artificially sustained level. Anyway you look at it, there is a terrible future for our children and grandchildren, beyond the willingness of of most to accept.

[Viper]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('adam', '
')What that means is we’ll have everything from paradise to hell simultaneously in different places, that are not necessarily predictable. You can see that in the breakdown of the nation state and it’s power, from empowered communities in one area to feudal warlords in another.

[Barbara]

Viper,
we living in the Eden are 1.5 billions (EU, USA, Canada, Australia and Japan).

Toooldtoworry,
well, it won't be a walk, but we won't go into stone age. People in 1800 didn't use oil, but their life was not stone age. And also, we won't forget all the conquers of civilization... we won't believe again that earth is flat, we know antibiotics exist, we can use plastic tools for next 4000 years! And these are just examples.

[nigel]

Too old to worry -
I hope you're a bit more positive in your personal life than you are here. If not, sad life.

I agree that the survivalist stone age nutcases are wildly off beam -
a). because those kind of people are usually selfish dreamer losers in the first place. The so called alpha male types they imagine themselves to be are out there making it, not in here contemplating doom. They don't need to learn how to catch and kill a whatever with a toothpick and a bit of bamboo, they'll find someway of getting some other sucker to do it for them. THat's always been the way.

b). because they do not realise that the complete disaster they imagine will suddenly descend will not put them at risk. A bit of a joke that a bowie knife and a few acres of land will make them immune to the hundred million short-sighted townie types who will be armed and desperate and looking out for those cozy back to nature nesters to grab their food. The numbers would be against them.
c). It is not sudden nuclear war we are considering here, it's simply the peak of oil production and then the steady increase in the cost of energy. This will create serious problems if it happens today but if we reach peak in fifteen years time the troubles will be less etc. We are not talking the sudden end here, we are talking huge increases in costs of energy over time and a mad race to set-up and run alternatives. No one - Cambell included, has a clue when the peak will be. He does not even include under sea oil! Cambell and co keep saying it's next year, next year, next.. Obviously there will be a peak one day... It's far more likely that the peak will lead to depression, reduced energy use, recovery, new peak and so on until we ease off the gas and change energy use. Things change and people adapt. There's actually tons of oil. Peak is 'half' way.

d). How is nuclear energy unsustainable? Solar power? The new third generation photovoltaic cells involves spray-on organic compounds. See the UK Carbon Trust and in the USA at Princeton univ.
Solar energy ALONE could supply ALL current energy demand by using less than 1% of land currently used for agriculture.

WE WILL GET THERE.

The saddo Malthusians imagine we all breed like rabbits and then die-off. They seem to forget the fact that we have brains. The west is already reducing the no of replacements we make. My great grandparents came from families of 10-12 siblings. My parents 6+. My parents had 4 and I have 2 children. Malthus did not compute that intelligence could deal with the problem.

As to the terrible future - look at the recent past. In 100 years we have had two world wars. Not so hot then either.

One does not have to be a head-up-the-bum-cornucopian to be positive but to live fearing the end of the world is at hand or to die with such a miserable attitude - NO!

[notacornucopian]

Nigel - If you want to be taken seriously around here you're gonna have to back up that " Solar energy will provide all our energy needs using 1 % of land used for agriculture " with some pretty believable numbers[/quote]

[nigel]

quote was taken directly from the London Financial Times yesterday (SAT). Features: science and health. P12. Article on solar power slow dawn for the rising sun.


a few salient bits labouriously typed just for you ...

starts with an intro on Indian farmer whos been given a solar panel/pump kit ......."I haven't seen so much profit from farming in all my life all thanks to the solar pump.." More than a thousand Ind farmers and stallholders ..swopped kerosene lamps for solar lanterns..innovative financing scheme...Aurore... not for profit company based in Tamil Nadu..dev these schemes.. won enterprise category in the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy a prize created by the Sainsbury family trust ((big UK supermarket mega buck family)).

....Solar PV is very close to commercial viability in areas not connected to grid...but big Q ..can it cut costs enough to compete with elec gen from power stns....."Solar energy alone could meet world energy demand by using les than 1percent of land currently used for agriiculture" said Tony Blair, the prime minister last year.

But there are grounds for scepticism. (( hold on hard there you depressive die-off types and read the whole thing...)) Solar PV's curr mkt growth of about 30%pa is largely driven by gov incentives. At about 24p (UK pence) per kilowatt hour Solar PV costs about 10 times the average wholesale elec price. Also solar PV cells must typically operate betweeen 1-4 years to prod as much engy as was used to make them. Improved manufacturing techniques and large scale prod may continue to bring down costs. The Internat Energy Agency calcs that every doubling of the volume of solar pv has reduced costs by about 20 percent. If this rate were to continue, solar pv would compete with retail electricity by 2020.

(just remember computer development doubling you pessimists!!)

But even dev on this scale require concerted eff by govs. Toepfer, exec dir UN environ prog said ...(basically, that nout will happen unless more support for R&D)

it continues...Moreover, solar power may not become a viable alternative to fossil fuels soon enough to avert dangerous global warming ((Seen as more of a prob than peak oil by most )) ... also the view of eminent scientists James Lovelock who recently shocked the enviro movement by advocating more use of nuclear energy to combat climate change. he said (basically) that renewables might be a good idea in long term but they are a showy way for poiticos to claim to be doing something but it alrerady too late for it (renewables) to play a significant role; global warming is already happening and is likely to intensify.##In addition, some experts argue that the devel world's urgent need for enegry will only be met quickly enough using the cheapest avail engy sources. World Bank has just rejected the reccom by its Extractive Indust review that is should shift its funding from oil projects to renewable engy although it has promised to spend 20% more spend pa. ((No oil panic there either - but hope is at hand! ECO GLOOM instead!)).

But ((I like this bit)) the advantage offered by fossil fuels over solar and other renewables may be illusory. If the true environmantal and health costs of fossil fuels were internalised their price would become immediately competitive, according to a report published this week by the New Economics Foundation, a London based think tank.##Also, much of the cost advantage of fossil fuels is due to the large and indirect subsidies they enjoy says the NEF report. ((Think of war, the death and destruction, costs of aircraft carriers, road death toll health pollution etc etc. USA billions spent on protecting supply.)) By comparison, renewables are already good value "All sub-saharan Africa could be provided with energy from small scale solar fro less than 70% of what OECD countirs spend on subsidising dirty energy every year."

Then there's an added info box in which this info is found - again, not verbatim but almost ...

"The photovoltaic PV effect, the direct gen of elec from light first disc 200 years ago. ..PV research not t/off until 50's.. space prog.. power for sats.....Better manuf ... costs downsteeply in past 20 yrs. Ind now seeking tech breakthru... Most PV cells 1st gen crystalline silcon wafers. 2nd gen thin film solar cells use semiconductor... only few microns thick. Govs now backing 3rd gen research ... exploit... inov... lower cost materials. 3rd gen would be a complete breakthru. It is promising because it has the potential to bring costs down hugely says Tom Delay Carbon Trust UK gov funded co stimulating devel of low-carb techno. Several technols showing promise. Particular interest provoked by advances in "organic" solar cells made of small carbon based molecules. Researchers first created organic PV films in 1986 But the efficiency of the new cells stuck at just 1% compared with 15% for more conventional cells. Last September, electrical engineers at Princeton Uni reported a significant advance. By changing the organic compounds... they created devices with efficiences of more than 3%. If they reach 5% the news cells should be commercially viable they said.. Although much less efficient the new class of solar cells would be far cheaper than conventional ones and more versatile than conventional ones. Making the solar cells could be as simple as spraying the materials on to a roll of plasctic.

END


Instead of buying land for stone age living one might consider buying a house with a lot of sun facing walls and prepare them for spraying with 3rd gen PV to turn one's house into a power station!!

As for the gibe about being taken seriously WOW have you read the rascist, ignorant small minded stuff, the tyre levers, the die-off sci fi Rambo stuff, the negativity? There are some sensible thoughtful people on this site - which is why I rest here for a while - but the amount of tosh one has to swim through to fine it.....

Also, there seems to be a reluctance to acept overt criticsism - I had to post my jokey peice 3 times. Twice it was ripped down - censorship from the USA!!! - eventually it was allowed on but locked down.

Free thinkers you (some of you) ain't.

[Guest]

Instead of buying land for stone age living one might consider buying a house with a lot of sun facing walls and prepare them for spraying with 3rd gen PV to turn one's house into a power station!!

nigel, what direction should the house face, do you have suggestions?

[nigel]

Depends which hemisphere you live in!

Could have a large sloping roof - whatever. That was not the point.

[nigel]

notacornucopian -if YOU want to be taken seriously you'll address questions and doubts rather than silence people, ignore their perfectly valid and honest questions and block their site access.

CENSORSHIP is the last resort of the mountebank.

[notacornucopian]

I tried to post this earlier - nigel, I reread my post earlier in this thread and cannot understand why you think that I have attempted to censor you or block your site access. Please explain.

Also, you can save yourself some effort by simply noting the link that you were referencing and adding comments to the bottom of the post.

[WaterBearer]

And what you have there is a quote by Tony Blair, a politician. That's not data and it's not an argument, either.

I don't doubt that you've had censoring problems with this site. The mods here often appear to have way too much time on their hands because they endlessly play around with what stays on the boards.

I seriously doubt the veracity of Tony Blair's comment. For one simple reason: if Solar Power was that viable we would have switched to it already. It's cheaper to lose 1% of agricultural land (I'd guess a land area about the size of Texas, which you could probably come up with easily within the Sahara desert--which of course is neither populous nor agricultural anyway) than it is to go to war in the endless pursuit of mining hydrocarbons. Yet economics continues to drive us into the Middle East. Why?

[Cool Hand Linc]

To Old To Worry, The glass is half full? I think its half empty. I am rather pessimistic I guess on the issue of deletion at least. The information to be found from further reading of this site and others will lend merit to fossil fuels depleting.

It’s impossible to know how much oil will be available to produce food in ten years or 20 or 30. Old technologies do still exist. They have not been totally forgotten. Ropes are still tied by Boy Scotts that were tied 300 years ago. All is not lost if old knowledge hasn’t been totally forgotten.

People will survive. I can’t give numbers but I believe people will survive. Knowledge and ability will be needed to pull through.

So we have half a glass of water. What do we do next?

Peace out Yall!

Link

[PhilBiker]

Nigel, keep your chin up. Maybe you're right, and our brains will differentiate us from every other living species in the known world that all operate according to the same bloom/dieoff pattern. Maybe we're 'above' that.

I hope and pray to God every day that you are right.

But I don't think you are. I think there will be starvation and refugees among the unburied dead everywhere. It's not going to be nice. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope to God that I am.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he saddo Malthusians imagine we all breed like rabbits and then die-off. They seem to forget the fact that we have brains.

[nigel]

Point taken on brains - very droll.

On family sizes - a USA based view? In Europe state school education is free. Poor people with larger families recieve more state handouts the more sprogs they have and live reasonably well in state provided housing. Not luxury but not USA stlye hidden poverty either. Some small London family businesses are viable and prosperous only because they are large family run.

As for me personally, I could have had more kids with minimal economic pain but we made a conscious and purposeful decision not to. Even self-replacement was questioned as being short sighted but we thought one alone would be a spoiled brat.

And for the stone age stuff - get real! Doubling of oil prices might stop Americans wasting so much thus extending its life and providing the time to develop alternatives. There's supposedly lots left, it's production capacity that's the bottleneck. Dont forget, most of what the USA uses goes on travel. Not much of a hardship to swap the SUV for a Ford Fiesta 1.1 AND travel less.

I would not be at all surprised if the Saudis didn't put the squeeze on to stop USA gobbling it all up. If Ghawar is stuffed and it was mine that's exactly what I'd do. I wouldn't tell the world it was running dry, the Yanks would sail over and 'protect it for the free world' -

funny that...

[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ot much of a hardship to swap the SUV for a Ford Fiesta 1.1 AND travel less.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')n family sizes - a USA based view? In Europe state school education is free.