[Questionmark]

I believe the tipping point for North America will be when Mexico no longer produces enough oil to export, which may happen as early as 2010. Although even after that it may take a couple years before we reach any sort of doomer scenario. And by then we should be seeing some stability return as alternative energy sources start coming online and into play. Once PO becomes undeniable, we'll kick the oil habit real quick. And if we hold things together for long enough we may come out of the whole thing in under a decade and fairly unscathed.

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cipi604', 'T')he loooooooooooong emergency

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', 'I') recall predictions to the end of the world by x-mas 2008.

[Ayame]

I can guarantee that those still alive in 2050 will be living in hell. Last night I watched Horizon reporting on overpopulation with David Attenborough.

[Revi]

The slow crash is happening to people all over the place. There will be a lot of business as usual in a lot of places. The price of gas is about where it historically stays right now, but there are a lot of people out of work who don't make commutes any more.

The electric grid is still up, but there are a lot of houses boarded up with for sale signs on their lawns which aren't using any electricity.

There are lots of things like that going on.

[Rod_Cloutier]

I consider myself a moderate on this issue. Collapse is avoidable if we find another source of energy to replace fossil fuels. An enormous issue and challenge to be sure.

Fusion energy could be the stop gap, (if it could be achieved.) Extensive work has been done to achieve sustained Helium 3 fusion at the University of Wisconsin. They claim to have sustained Helium 3 fusion at a labratory level for 7 seconds, the previous record using Deuterium was 2 seconds.

Of course, I'm the poster here that started the 'Titan thread', I would add that I still believe if you look at all the vast reserves of energy, hydrocarbons, and metals on other planets in our own solar system, we could never 'effectively' run out of anything. Its a question of techologies that don't exist yet, and a function of cost. I would add here that if people were to hydroponically 'farm' Mars around its equatorial belt in giant domes, food production could be expanded tremedously.

Still were not presently walking down that road. Denial is everywhere and that denial is creating consequences. The space endeavours would have to be started soon, to at least delay a collapse, but that's not happening. Why spend billions on fusion research, mining the moon for Helium 3, ect, when coal is still unbelievably cheap?

I think at least a partial collapse in the status quo is necessary to wake the world up and set it on a different path. The collapse if it was severe, would however also destroy all hope of ever having enough spare resources to use and develop space based resource possiblities. In short, denial has delayed and destroyed all real hopes for progress and avoidance of the now inevitable collapse.

[Revi]

As much as I'd like to believe that there is something that could save us, I have to to agree with what Pstarr posted.

We are going to have to muddle through with a crumbling highway system and inadequate busses instead of trains and trolleys.

Food production is going to be small and local for most people.

If we're lucky.

[smiley]

Those who call this an "economic problem" need to get their history straight. Sure the financial collapse was an accident waiting to happen. However you have to realise what triggered it. In the end it was the rise in energy prices which did not only lead to higher costs of living, but also to higher interest rates hence causing the crash.

There is no way that you can seperate energy from economic issues. We produce 85 million barrels of oil a day, representing a value of $6 billion. Multiply that by a year and you get a number of $2.2 trillion, or 3-4% of the world GDP. And that is only the amount of money that is connected to the finding, recovery and distribution of crude oil. I bet that energy is the biggest single influence on the economy. So any changes in the energy production will affect us all. And indeed they have.

So the zombie hordes are not roaming the streets yet (at least not in my neigbourhood). However we have seen that the first minor dip in production has left the financial institutions in tatters, left several governments on the brink of default, led to record unemployment etc....

I never considered myself a doomer, but the way things are going now, I wonder whether I havent been too positive in my assesment of peakoil.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Repent', 'I') consider myself a moderate on this issue. Collapse is avoidable if we find another source of energy to replace fossil fuels.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')WG (Environmental Working Group) also urges the DEC to adopt our recommendations made at previous city council hearings. These recommendations include:

1) Requiring public disclosure of chemicals used to drill each well prior to drilling including chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and
2) Prohibiting the use of chemicals that could compromise the quality of water supplies and that are not demonstrated to be safe for humans and the environment.

The state should apply our recommended standards to all oil and natural gas drilling even if such drilling does not include “high-volume hydraulic fracturing” or horizontal drilling. Drilling for oil and natural gas involves extremely toxic chemicals that are harmful at microscopic levels. Just because drilling uses a lower volume of fracturing fluid or is strictly vertical does not mean that it is safer.

[Rod_Cloutier]

Montequest- I fully agree with liebig's law. Short term collapse is avoidable if we had a bridge energy source, such as viable Helium 3 fusion.

Liebig's law states that any population will be constrained by the limits of essential items for survivial, whether that be energy, food, water, habitat, shelter, ect. I fully understand that. I would not want to be alive in 2100 when many (if not all) of these limits have been reached.

In terms of present day reality, however, we are a long way from limitations of land availability, lumber availability, water availabilty, and so forth. We are without question facing immediate short term limits with energy and food production. Which ever limiting factor catches up with us first will indeed create a limit to our activities.

Last years crisis was an example of a limit being reached, it wasn't food or energy, it was financial credit. I personally had to sell my house to pay off my credit card debts and loans, a major personal loss. (Although I am now debt free, other that having to rent). My credit rating got shot in the process and I won't be buying on credit anymore. No more car loans, no more internet shopping, for the forseeable future. This has happened to millions of others, a prime example of Liebig's law in action.

A short term energy bridge, would create some time to confront other limits, such as food production constraints, time to clean up pollution and other address other limits. As I mentioned before however, we're not going down that path, short term collapse is now almost a certainty.

[leaflight]

The next year will be a intresting peak year of various peaks.

[efarmer]

Pstarr nailed it with his post so far as I am concerned.

We traded all the redundant and small scale tiles of commerce,
community, agriculture, and manufacturing that laid edge to edge
made our nation and ground them to bits to put into the multinational
corporate and government for hire machine and made into a cheap
and uniform carpet that is lucrative to install and impossible to maintain.

We scrapped what we came from and used it to build a Titanic,
and the investors and their government pawns are moving on
to emerging markets because this one is exploited.
They should travel in pairs, the government guy with his hat in
his hand asking for a loan in return for supplying consumers,
and the corporate guy looking for where to invest the money
he made from dismantling America, not wanting to lose it since
he knows it was probably a one time big score.

[Revi]

That's right. We're all scrappers. At least we may be able to extract some value from this hulk before it goes down.

Sometimes I think this might be what saves us.

We are so unsentimental towards the cheap version of America we have created that we can scrap it without remorse.

Maybe we can remake ourselves into some kind of a green machine.

Or we may just cling to the wreckage as it sinks, like the Titanic.

[Lorne]

I'd love to use the quote that we're in the 'dead cat bounce' phase of oil pricing, but I agree with Ian that it's a series of price spikes, demand drop, price drop, demand increase.

It's all covered in my book, which is freely available at www.lornegifford.webs.com and go to the 'Six Days' tab.

[Revi]

It may come in the form of food prices. Here's a great article about it:

http://www.countercurrents.org/romulous161209.htm

I like how he says that nobody is going to provide food without making some kind of profit.

Once the oil slows there will be skyrocketing food prices. Like Zimbabwe.

[3rensho]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', '
')Remember what happened with the Titanic?

The poor were locked below decks and the rich took off in the lifeboats.

The middle class passengers were treated to a band and snacks on the deck.

I think you can hear the music if you listen.