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Survivor Peak Oil: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Unread postby avo » Mon 11 Jul 2005, 01:15:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('holmes', 'h')ey avo dont sweat it bud. This is how bad it is: In my small town last night some scumbag went into my truck and stole my toolbox.


Ouch! Very sorry to hear that.

Yeah, there are a lot of a**holes in the world. And maybe some rough justice will be dispensed post peak. It will be a wild ride however it plays out.

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Unread postby Claudia » Mon 11 Jul 2005, 08:45:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The_Toecutter', 'I') stand corrected, Montequest. I'm wondering why I thought that. Maybe projected future population growth of the non-immigrant population for these is negative?.


Maybe because of the shape of the population curve. The generation giving birth is not the same generation doing the dying. These two different cohorts are of different sizes. Because the population has been gradually increasing in the past, the oldest cohort (say age 70-90) is still smaller than the 20-40 year-old cohort.

Pretty soon we'll see a shift. The dying cohort (baby boomers) will be larger than the birthing cohort (Gen X and Gen Y). Then you'll see a net decline, if they keep up their 1.3 fertility rates.
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Unread postby mgibbons19 » Mon 11 Jul 2005, 10:25:57

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Raxozanne', 'O')k so the problem is growth.

Monte says that any species will multiply until it reaches the limits or goes above the limits and then nature will cull us back.

Ludi says that some cultures have managed to avoid unlimited growth and therefore (I presume) avoid this cycle of boom and bust. (sorry for quoting Ludi I hope you don't mind)

I found this article on the Tukano tribe. It suggests that they knew about how they population would have an effect on the environment. Here is the link to the article (well actually its an extract from a book). You only need to read the bit entitled 'The Tukano: A Primal Adaptation'.

I was wondering if this is an example of people being able to avoid the boom and bust through culture? Maybe there is some hope??? Any comments?


Many, if not most, indigenous populations have/had some methods for limiting their population, because their territories were finite and they were very aware of the cost of fighting with neighboring tribes.


Note also that our culture is essentially pretty young. We (americans) are only two hundred years into this nation thing, and us westerners are only 400 or 500 years into enlightenment-style thinking. We haven't run into this problem so harshly yet. Many indigenous populations have been around for thousands of years and have learned how to deal with limited resources. Whether we learn or not, and whether we survive or not is yet to be seen.

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell" -Ed Abbey
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Unread postby Bandage » Wed 30 Nov 2005, 20:34:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ardalla', 'Y')es, I agree with the points you make. I think our best hope for a relatively soft landing is that a crash program to develop a combination of new energy sources will help fill in the gap between diminishing supply and a demand trying to increase but constantly coming up against the reality of PO.

A wonderful idea. How about a solar panel array with a surface area equal to that of the State of Utah? That's how much we'd need to electrolyze enough hydrogen to run hydrogen fuel cell cars. Now...how much conventional fuel would we need to dedicate to the fabrication of that much solar panel?

And given that the warranty lifetime of solar panel is only about 20 years, maybe we'd have to reinvest that much fuel again, and again, about once in each generation. Which means we'd actually need solar panel much larger than Utah, because all the replacements for worn out solar panels will have to be made with hydrogen fuel cells diverted from transportation.

It's like the "rocket problem." A lot of people forget that unburned fuel must be accelerated, too. (I'm a celestial mechanic, and I've been guilty of that particular oversight once in a while.)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ardalla', 'N')o single "new" energy source can do it alone.

And neither will all of them together.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ardalla', 'T')hat's the most optimistic scenario I can come up with. I am not nearly as worried about PO per se as I am about how people will react to it long term.

Right. If you're already prepared to weather a long outage of commerce, the next thing you need to worry about is a long period of civil unrest. You're not in or near a city, are you? Your neighbors don't know that you have food, do they?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ardalla', 'I')n the near term there is likely to be a 'circle the wagons' approach. It all depends on how steep the cliff appears to be.

From my point of view, the steeper the better.

A quick crash will kill the unprepared and the insufficiently prepared before they can migrate into where I am to challenge me for possession of what is mine. A quick crash will bring down the government so that they can't organize a round-up of slave gangs and an expropriation of "hoarders" (like me).

A slow crash will give urban dwellers with IQ's of 85 or so enough time to figure things out and colonize/raid the countryside. A slow crash will keep the government in power, probably as a dictatorship, which will rob everything worth having from everybody, in the name of "the people," but in fact for the benefit of the dictator and his army.

Prepare, and then pray for a fast crash.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ardalla', 'I') hate to say it, but much could depend on how well governments are abel to spin this. People will need a positive vision of the future.
Until they are dead, yes, they do.
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Unread postby Bandage » Sun 04 Dec 2005, 12:29:48

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ardalla', 'N')ature, it seems, has created an animal that can destroy much of organic life on this planet. Is Nature suicidal? If I believed that Nature was a conscious being, I might be inclined to think so.


Except not all humans have behaved as we have.

Any culture based on endless growth is doomed to fail. Not all cultures have been based on endless growth.

This is important. We do have an economy that requires unending growth in order to maintain a given standard of living. The reason for that is our money system. It is based on debt, which means that bankers fabricate money as accounting entries - i.e., they conduct a massive, legalized counterfeiting operation - i.e., they award themselves all the money they want without doing any work to justify the income - and then loan this money at compound interest to governments and to businesses and to people. This money system was devised long ago as a means by which lazy people can steal the productive energies of working people.

As long as those "energies" could be kept expanding more or less exponentially, they could be made to keep pace with the debtors' legal obligations to service their debt to the bankers. But as soon as the supply of energy started to slack off, the incongruities between the real world and the money system would cause the economy to become dysfunctional.

Now. When things go wrong in a big way, it is not always the case that someone is to blame. It's possible that everybody did their best with the best intentions, and somebody made an honest mistake, or miscalculated, or there was a system glitch, or an oversight. But at other times a bad situation is, yes indeed, the result of someone's evil schemes. And that's the case with the money system. It wasn't an accidental oversight. We got the money system we got because of the malevolent rapaciousness of bad people.

Think. Which people were they? I'll give no hints. You'll find plenty of them from your study of history, as you trace the evolution of debt-money systems from the middle ages to the present day.
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Unread postby Bandage » Sun 04 Dec 2005, 13:11:16

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mark', 'A')h, yes...growth.

No, Aaron got the cart before the horse. Growth - or, rather, the incentive for cancerous economic growth - is the result of a money system based on interest-bearing debt. The money system is the cause. Find the authors of the money system, and you will have found the wreckers of our world.

I said that I'd give no hints, but I'll quote a line from Mr. Orwell: "To know who are your rulers, first know whom you may not criticize." That is the test by which you separate the truth from the distractions of politically safe pablum.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mark', 'A')s true as that is, growth seems to be the natural condition of the human species. The first two humans would have been awfully lonely if not for growth. Any two who come together (OH oh) desire to procreate, is it not in our genes?

All species experience growth, but only mankind has accessed the Earth's supply of fossil energy. With the correct political structure, that access could have been regulated in such a way that the great mass of people were never softened by materialism, never corrupted by comfort, and remained for the most part within an agrarian, rural class. Most people would have always been farmers using oxen to pull plows and draft horses to pull wagons, going to bed at sundown, and lighting candles at night only at great need. The environment, rather than being despoiled, would have been augmented. Every man and woman would value his nation more than himself, just as most people once did, before people became soft and selfish, and, when the time came to die, most people would be content with the lives they'd had.

Unfortunately, we did NOT have the correct political structure. We had the worst one possible. Dictatorship is better than democracy, but aristocracy is better than dictatorship. Whatever became of Europe's old aristocracies? But there I go giving out hints, and I said I wouldn't do that.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mark', 'P')erhaps un-intelligent growth would more accurately describe our present prediciment. But then some would ask, what is intelligent growth? How do we manage to both grow as intelligent beings and maintain a sustainable economic civilization? What's the ultimate answer to life on earth?

Chaotic growth is a better description. Believe it or not, intelligence was involved in the inception of both Marxist and capitalist growth patterns. In fact, it was the same intelligence in both cases. But the purpose to which it was applied, the reason for the chaos, for the use of materialism to dissolve nationalism, was an evil purpose: to harness the greater part of the world's people to the service of a lesser part.

Which lesser part? That's for you to answer.
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Re: Survivor Peak Oil: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.

Unread postby MfromAmsterdam » Sun 11 Dec 2005, 17:26:26

Hello Bandage,

Why are so negative about my Queen Beatrix and her likes here in the Old World? They just indulge people in their sins. it's either they or sombody else. It's the sheeple that gotta change. As long as they WANT a market there are possibilities for power and abuse I think.

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Re: Survivor Peak Oil: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.

Unread postby MonteQuest » Fri 23 May 2008, 01:31:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'T')he oil futures market has already accepted the long-term "bull market" in oil prices due to increasing demand. What they don't yet grasp is the coming "supply" problem. When this begins to dawn on them, and it could absolutely happen as quickly as within the next few months—given the current shortfall projections I have been reading as of late—then seemingly overnight the world will start to come apart at the seams. Crude oil prices will go through the roof. The commodity traders live solely by anticipating conditions and events, not by debating them.


Are we starting to come apart at the seams? Speculators are chasing the trend, not setting it.
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Re: Survivor Peak Oil: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.

Unread postby FreedomSlave » Fri 23 May 2008, 03:08:05

Glad to see you back, Monte.

I think we're getting a taste of how quickly sentiments can change - a warning shot of how fast things may unravel. Throw in a catalyst event, and I think the threads will be ripping apart pretty quick. Otherwise, we may be able to bob along the plateau for a while longer, but not much. Denial about PO and the psychology of previous investments may be strong enough to keep things glued together until some "shock" event motivates the herd to dump dollars, sell out financial positions and head for the hills. Short of a trigger event, I look for getting confirmation of substantial and consecutive declines in oil production, maybe only over the course of a few months, to make the downward spiral become an avalanche.

Time is short.

Didn't you say in another post something like, "if peak oil is already here, Katy bar the door"? Prophetic words...
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Re: Survivor Peak Oil: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.

Unread postby MonteQuest » Fri 23 May 2008, 23:31:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FreedomSlave', ' ')
Didn't you say in another post something like, "if peak oil is already here, Katy bar the door"? Prophetic words...


Yes. I said, "Like I have said before, it's all about rate and magnitude. But I think the scenario will be a long drawn out affair due to our precarious economic climate which will induce some major demand destruction long before peak oil hits. One caveat; if peak oil is already here, Katy bar the door."

Peak oil isn't actually here as yet, but the market sees it coming now. That is what has changed.
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