$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'L')eanan has already posted this story on the front page but I would like to repeat it here because I think it sums up why there is the breadth of opinion from members posting on this board.
Evolution, Global Warming, Doomsday and the Afterlife
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') recently wrote a book partially treating evolution and the afterlife, and an earlier one analyzing global warming and possible doomsdays, and have lately been busy reading up, responding to and organizing virtual discussion forums on the economic collapse, peak oil, global warming and doomsday. The participants tend to be the more scholarly facet of our society and hardly represent the masses. Yet, many of them have devoted their professional lives to these subjects and are the best and brightest, so their views are important and can't be totally discarded.
I would say something like 10% to 20% of this eclectic group actually believe the combined crush of the economic collapse, peak oil and global warming will be so severe that society as we know it will NEVER recover, our lifestyles will be seriously compromised and survival could become a life-or-death issue. Some have purchased land and are initiating self-reliant communities. There are blogs to prepare individuals living in these uncertain times. A few of my friends are actually looking forward to this new kind of adventure. Most in this forum, though, are like me, in that we rather enjoy our current mode of life, but are beginning to get mildly concerned.
Anyway, how can anyone get so traumatized by this latest series of existing and potential catastrophes, for in the 70's we muddled through the population bomb, limits to growth, potential nuclear winter, the Vietnam War, acid rain and two energy crises...and somehow recovered. In fact, nearly two decades after the Second Energy Crisis, crude oil in 1998 fell to the lowest on historical record ($15.52/barrel in 2008 dollars, even lower than the $18.29 of 1972), and there was nothing government, academics or politics did to orchestrate this drop. Further, another decade later the United States is now supremely unchallenged and oil is heading back to almost historic lows. Nuclear holocaust? Iran and North Korea will not precipitate a World War 3. Aside for this inconvenient economic collapse, things seem generally okay today.
PeakOil is You
THE Peak Oil & Climate Change Thread (merged)
Re: Evolution, Global Warming, Doomsday and the Afterlife
by vision-master » Sun 08 Mar 2009, 09:54:39
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-takahashi/evolution-global-warming_b_168827.html
Check this out. http://2012forum.com/forum/
- vision-master
THE Peak Oil & Climate Change Thread
by Tanada » Sun 22 Jan 2017, 03:50:25
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zensui', 'I')s the world commerce more interdependant now than ever before? If so, isn't a depression very possible due to domino-effects from USA, China, India, Europe,...?
Yes the world is more interdependent now than at any time in the past, in the 1920's it was siamese relationships with NA/Europe being one and Europe/Africa-Asia being the other. When the Great Depression hit the USA it took down Europe, which in turn took down the market colonies in Africa-Asia.In the 1970's when the USA went into recession Europe was not hurt as badly and Japan used it as an opertunity to move into the damaged parts of the USA economy.
Things have spread out, if the USA goes down the place most hurt will be China, because we are their market. Without us buying cheap plastic goods they will have to find other buyers, or suffer depression along with us. At this point Europe/Africa/Australia/Japan are not nearly as tied into the US economy as China is. The Middle East is totally tied into the USA but can sell petroleum to the other powers that be if we depress.
Unless the next depression takes out all the economies trade between Europe/Japan/India/South Africa/Australia will remain healthy and globalization will roll on.
IMO of course.
I look back at this statement from a decade down the road and plead foolish narrow minded thinking.
At the time I wrote it I was certain Peak Oil was just around the corner and that petroleum and all its products would soon be too expensive for use in anything except vital industries like transportation between nations. Shipping is so incredibly energy efficient compared to other modes of transport we will still be able to afford sending people and cargo places by water long after aircraft and long haul trucking are no longer viable. I have always believed TPTB will extend some version of BAU as far as they can to keep their cozy positions at the top of the political power structure, no matter if they are Saudi King's or the mayor of my local small town.
Recently I have been debating the role of the USA in an isolationist minded world as a major exporter of food calories. In that sense because grain shipped by bulk freighter is still a wonderfully efficient use of oil to trade with countries outside the USA I think that we here in the states will keep doing it so long as we continue to have surplus crops year after year. If climate changes messes up the rainfall patterns and stops us from dryland farming in the Great Plains then for a while we will deplete the Ogallala Aquifer at an even faster pace. Once the aquifer runs dry it is hard to even guess what we will do, but that is still decades in the future even with severe climate change. Ogallala Aquifer will keep crops growing for a long time, and that means even in dry conditions Kansas and Nebraska and all the other states that can access it will remain big food producers which unless we double our population rapidly means the USA will remain in large food surplus, especially grain foods that ship well.
On the other side of the coin I think Globalization is dying, not because of the cost of shipping cheap Chinese junk to the USA for sale, but because our world culture pendulum is swinging away from the whole concept. Globalization in the modern sense of the work really grew out of the post Viet Nam international politics movement, the whole concept of if we make our enemies into trading partners they will no longer want to be our enemies.
The problem for Joe6P American/Canadian is the elites bought into the concept to the point that they were willing to make deals that were damaging to the average voter so long as it 'strengthened international trade'. Once the big money people discovered how profitable it is to throw Joe6P under the bus in the name of multinational investing profits with the blessing of the Internationalist Elite political movement it created something of the perfect storm. Deindustrialization of the west has proceeded to the point now that the middle class has been effectively crushed compared to what it was 40 years ago, and it is barely a shadow of what it was in the 1950's boom times. The new industrial powerhouse of China only wants two things from America, a market for their exports, and a source of raw materials for their industry.
the Internationalist/Globalist/Elites forgot something very important. Something Henry Ford taught the rest of us a hundred years ago. When Henry Ford opened his first large assembly plants in Michigan he made a very strong statement, he wanted his cars to be cheap enough and his workers to be well paid enough that they could be consumers of the machines they were producing for his company. Up until that time automobiles and farm trucks were luxury item, so expensive that only the wealthy and governments could afford to buy them. Henry Ford paid his factory workers so much more than his competitors that he never had a problem attracting employees no matter how odd a lot of his rules and regulations were. His Employees used that vastly greater than average income to become the first generation of mass consumers, and the more cars he sold the cheaper Henry Ford was able to make them, because of the economies of scale. In fact he was able to cut the price of his Model T Ford by 65 percent over the course of a decade, to the point where even men working for other factories at lower wages could afford to buy his cars.
Maybe the naysayers are right and America can never be great again because we consumer too much oil to prosper in the post peak world. But the naysayers said Henry Ford could never prosper because he was too good to his employees, and the same kind of mindset said the USA would need a decade to win World War II if it were even possible (we did it in 4 years) and the same mindset said we would never send men to the moon and we did that in less than a decade from basically a standing start, and they said the USSR would outlast the USA and so on and so on.
There are two fundamental ways to look at it, Climate Change and Peak Oil could crush us, and from time to time I think they will. Or we can yet find a way to persevere and adapt to the point we keep the vital parts of our world functioning and use the effects to reduce waste instead of reducing civilization.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Tanada
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