[killJOY]

a master of the ad hoc "argument".

Which is more likely--a dozen different reasons,
or one good one?

[Soo]

Turns out the author of the article works for a think tank called the Center for Resource Management. By all accounts it LOOKS like they are pro-environment, but i just don't get it. Perhaps they are just looking for ways around the New Zealand Resource Management Act.

I find it very funny that their Trustee is Alan Gibbs. He is the guy who created the Aquada boat/car

[Rincewind]

Owen McShane was trained as a planner but had a liberterian conversion a long the way. He hates the Resource Management Act (NZ's key environmental legislation), planners, conservationists and the concept of sustainability which is immoral.

Rincewind

[Geology_Guy]

He is correct about one thing-the oil age will end before we run out of oil.

Oil will become so expensive that we will wish for a big pile of shiny smooth rocks to hunt small game with!

The question is what cheap, dense, and relatively safe fuel will replace oil (and n. gas)?

[mortifiedpenguin]

See you in the bread lines, Owen!

[No-Oil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')"...future generations will be much wealthier than those of today, and their extra wealth means that they will be able to deal with the comparatively minor impacts of any likely changes. Humans are adaptable creatures and our adaptability is proportional to our wealth. Hence we should do nothing that destroys our ability to generate wealth now and in the future."

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'o')ur adaptability is proportional to our wealth

[RonMN]

Look at the bright side...a million years after the oil crash/die off...look at how much oil there will be (created from us). Then the newbies will begin the oil process all over again!

[PO_TimeCr0ss]

Wow. I was wishing that was a joke.

He's got some very, very bright dreams. Plants producing fuel oil directly from their roots?! Damn. Even if that is possible, that sounds as if it is DECADES off.

All I have to say is he shows the VERY clear reason why people don't take PO seriously. "We'll invent ourselves out of it!"

[tokyo_to_motueka]

Here's my favourite quote:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')hysicist Freeman Dyson predicts that genetic modification will soon make trees and plants much more efficient at capturing solar energy.

[newhunter-gatherer]

Hello folks, this is my first post. I have been researching P.O intensively for the past 2 years, and I have been lurking this site for some time too. After reading and feeling somewhat rattled by Savinar's LATOC, I have since been trying to disprove his predictions/hypothesis along with all the other P.O academics since, including Campbell, Simmons, Goodstein, Heinberg, Deffeys etc. And I have failed.Consequently, based on all the research I have done so far, I have come to the conclusion that Western Civilisation will be entering a new stone age as global oil production starts it's remorsless decline sometime this decade. The passages below suggest how utterly dependant our way of life is on cheap energy.

Resources for the humble pencil

Lets take your average HB pencil with an eraser attached to the end of it.
The wood is Californian incense cedar, from managed forests where the average tree lives for about 80-100 years from seed to harvest. Pencil 'leads' contain no lead metal, but are a mixture of graphite and clay, with harder pencils containing more clay: ordinary Hb pencils have approximately equal mixture of the two. (HB stands for 'Hard' and 'Black', and is the conventional centre point for grading pencils. Graphite is the very soft form of the element carbon. For this pencil, the graphite comes from Sri Lanka and the clay from Dorset. The baked clay and graphite mixture is impregnated with tallow (animal fat derived from sheep and cattle) to ensure the pencil is not scratchy in use. The lacquer on the pencil contains castor oil from tropical Africa (castor oil is a 'mineral oil' such as petroleum, which is extracted from rocks). The lettering is aluminium which is hot-stamped into the pencil from aluminium foil, mined from deposits in Russia. The eraser contains rubber and oil seed from Malaysia, a compound of sulphur and chlorine produced from inorganic sources by the chemicals industry, and pumice ( an abrasive volcanic rock) from Italy. The brass holder for the eraser consists of copper from Zambia and Zinc from Ireland. This ordinary pencil, manufactured in Mexico, thus contains physical and biological resources from at least nine other widely scattered countries.
If we take into account the materials and energy required to obtain the resources for the pencil, such as a saw to cut down cedars or a machine to excavate graphite, and then on through transportation, processing, and manufacture, to the coins, plastic or paper used in it's sale, a vast number of companies in various countries will have contributed in some way, directly or indirectly, to the existence of the humble pencil. It's easy to imgaine, but extremely difficult to anaylise, the immensly complex global network of connections required to produce a really sophisticated object such as a television or car. In addition to raw materials, two indirect resources are crucial to the manufacture of virtually everything: fuels (for energy) and water. (Earth's Pyhsical Resources, Origin, Use and Environmental Impact, Sheldon. P, 2005)



Life-cycle analysis of the microchip

The silicon microchip, used as a memory in a personal computer; about 80 billion of these are manufactured each year, and production is rising fast. Because of it's high value and small size, the microchip is sometimes given-misleadingly-as the prime example of dematerialisation (the idea that the technological progress should lead to smaller amounts of material and energy required to produce goods). Life-cycle analysis of a single 2 gram 32 megabyte chip that it's manufacture requires 1.2 kg of fossil fules, hundreds of different chemicals, including highly toxic etchants, and large volumes of water (32kg per chip). The silicon used in silicon chips is the purest product made on a commercial scale, having less than one part per billion of metal impureties. Relatively impure, raw silicon is intially obtained by removing oxygen from quartz in an electric furnace( which in itself is energy intensive) but the purification processes use another 160 times the energy needed to produce the raw silicon. the resource-intensity of a microchip can be put into perspective by comparing the ratio of the mass of fossil fuels and chemical inputs used during the manufacture to the mass of the final product. For a typical car, this ratio is around 2:1; for a microchip, it is about 630:1 (Earth's Pyhsical Resources, Origin, Use and Environmental Impact, Sheldon. P, 2005)




http://www.energybulletin.net/4740.html

[newhunter-gatherer]

Aplogies for the bold text error, only the passage heading was supposed to be in bold

[killJOY]

Very intelligent post. You're mind's in the right place.

I only object to the word "convinced."

I'm never convinced of anything. "Convinced" is the sound of a door slamming shut.

Indeed, the preponderance of evidence shows that we're in for a doozy of a time. I can't really be sure beyond that what exactly is going to happen, but "doomer" is my default mode in order to protect myself.

It's up to the nay-sayers, the cornucopians and utopian "alternative" pollyannas, to produce the evidence needed to refute the simple, obvious, coherent and consilient theory of peak oil, in the same way that the burden of proof is on the "creationists" to not only refute evolution, but to show evidence in support of their own thesis.


I KNOW that a car that travels into the fog, on a mountain road, at night, while traveling over the speed limit, is a severe danger, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're going to crash.

Therefore, buckle your seat belt and take your foot off the gas. Better yet, pull over to the side of the road and get your bearings!

I wouldn't bother trying to flag down the other vehicles at this point. We're pretty close to the edge, and they'll just think you're a nutcase.

[NEOPO]

Whoa wait a minute here.

Thats very disturbing really...

You mean to tell me that we have to apologize for the accidental use of bold in a post?!!?!?!?

Thats it!! I quit!!

I like Killjoy but I must ask him one question:
Are you convinced that you are going to die or will that door close shut when it closes shut?

Yes yes that is a very good post - almost as if it was written by an experienced Peaker

[killJOY]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')re you convinced that you are going to die or will that door close shut when it closes shut?

[gg3]

Yo, Newhuntergatherer-

Study the 1930s depression, and the ways people managed to get by during those times. That's a decent guide to what's going to be needed in the decades ahead, and the rest will come by adaptation.

Then study the history of WW2. The English people were strong, determined, ferocious on the war front, and resolute on the home front. Humanity in a dozen or more countries survived and fought and lived to see the day when the worst was over and the rebuilding could begin. Even in Germany and Japan, the epicenters of that global quake, where good and intelligent people had been overtaken by tyrannical rulers and pressed into serving their designs, the human spirit re-emerged after the worst was over and began the long task of healing and rebuilding.

In all probability you will not have to endure rocket and bomber attacks against your home. And as long as you are not being shot at, you can build, you can farm, you can find a way to sustain the spark of life and learning from one generation to the next.

And if all of the above sounds like an idealist's reading of history, here is an irrefutible fact for you:

Every

single

one

of your ancestors, without a single exception, all the way back to the first living cell in the primeval sea, was able to survive and give life to the suceeding generation.

You

are a product of that unbroken chain of evolution, all the way back to day one.

You would not be here except for the fact that 100% of those who came before you were able to make it, at times even through planet-wrecking catastrophes such as object impacts from space, supervolcanic eruptions, and climate shifts that make the upcoming changes look like a picnic.

I'd say that's a pretty darn good track record. I'd say we're pretty well equipped, with the cumulative wisdom of evolution, to make it through the times ahead. Not easily, but nonetheless.

Now you can commit yourself to building a future that's at least fit to live in. Gather up your family, your friends, your resources, and your knowledge and skills. We're all in this together.

[jbrown]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'c')astor oil is a 'mineral oil' such as petroleum, which is extracted from rocks

[newhunter-gatherer]

Thankyou for your positive responses to my first post, they are encouraging....to an extent

"When study the history of WW2. The English people were strong, determined, ferocious on the war front, and resolute on the home front"

The people of my generation in the UK today are not the same people that got us through WW2. Their priorities are expensive haircuts,designer clothes, material wealth, general self-promotion.. and their skills are limited to pushing paper around, text messaging, using an ipod and securing the best seat in a wine bar.

"you can build, you can farm, you can find a way to sustain the spark of life and learning from one generation to the next"

Surely I would need money to buy a farm? I am a skint student who can't afford a donkey, let alone a farm..well... I could probably stretch to a chicken

"Now you can commit yourself to building a future that's at least fit to live in. Gather up your family, your friends, your resources, and your knowledge and skills. We're all in this together."

And go where... with what...and who? My family would think I have cracked if I suggested lets pack up and go and live like some eco warrior in a tent on the moors.

[pedalling_faster]

hi & welcome

well, in a sense, your perception of reality has "cracked", in the sense of telling the truth about Energy Transition.

what it will be like depends so very much on our reaction to it.

someone pointed out recently that they have hope "because the American people have always mobilized in a time of emergency". yeah, and that emergency, most of the time, has involved W.A.R.

look at Sweden's reaction - quietly transitioning to alternative fuels from available local materials. and Brazil - cranking up the sugar cane production for alcohol for their cars.

the american (and british) governments' reaction to Energy Transition have already started. it involves some serious b*mb-slinging.

[newhunter-gatherer]

Yes i agree, the war in Iraq was Operation Iraqi Liberation..O--I--L... 'Oil War One', 'Oil War Two' will be with Iran.. I wonder if it will go something like..Operation Iranian Liberation O--I--L