Peak Oil is You
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Page added on July 11, 2016
The Next Steps Pt 5
It has been a main theme of mine—given the impact peak oil will eventually have on all of us—that small changes here and there, every now and then, by a few of us when we can spare the time, are not the optimal strategies for us to pursue. Conventional crude oil has been in many ways the most astonishing discovery in our history—all the more significant given how its many benefits have extended in so many directions.
While production totals are substantial enough for now, and most likely for quite some time to come, that’s not the answer. It is certainly not a good reason to postpone discussions until some undetermined date in the middle distance future.
LOW PRICES
The current low prices are, as I and many have noted, a pleasant change for consumers. I’m no different in that regard. Paying less for services or products, especially those relied upon so frequently and in so many ways, is not a circumstance we’re inclined to object to. But few things in life are free, and if prices for goods have dropped, there is another side to the story.
By now it should be understood and accepted—reluctantly or not—that there is a price tag attached to the low prices at the local gas station. Relying as we have on the unexpected, mostly unforeseen increase in fossil fuel production courtesy of hydraulic fracturing [fracking], which released millions of barrels of tight oil from the shale formations here in the United States, we quickly overlooked the underlying factors affecting conventional crude oil production.
That resource is largely responsible for ushering all of us into modern society with its astounding technological advances made readily available to billions of us—also courtesy of that same resource … the finite one whose production totals peaked a decade ago. Fracking not only helped maintain the production levels needed, it also increased totals much more than most of us ever anticipated.
HIGH PRICES
But a low cost environment is not what drives tight oil production. High prices do that trick, and we don’t have those now. Various reports and expert opinions in recent months suggest we’ll be in a low price environment for many months to come. If true, the suspension or cancellation of almost $400 billion worth of exploration projects reported earlier this year won’t be the last round. Since there is no magic associated with fracking, production cutbacks will in time lead to a diminished supply [recent over-supply noted, although that had less to do with the marvels of fracking than a need to pump whatever companies could to generate cash flow to pay down the high debt most carried].
Adjustments will be needed, and perhaps the initial round of reduced availability will affect others or other segments of society. But it is not just what may be a relatively short [?] curtailment of production that is of concern. If it were, we’d go right back to having all that we and everyone else needs for decades to come, and What, Me Worry? would be the mantra for just about every consumer of fossil fuels.
If only.
There’s an obvious downside to the high prices needed to sustain tight oil production. Consumers aren’t delighted, and higher costs impact most of them, and in many different ways. Most consumers do not have unlimited budgets, and so cutbacks in their own lifestyles will be inevitable. It’s difficult to predict how those dominoes will tumble.
GETTING INVOLVED
As I suggested in a recent post, the “arrival” of peak oil is not going to be an obvious, We-Told-You-So moment. The laws of physics, economic and geological constraints, and the normal challenges the industry faces in exploration and production will create all kinds of subset challenges. Few can be predicted with any great accuracy.
Ignoring them by a too-large segment of the industry and its related arms has been the norm for too long. The fact that peak oil’s impact may creep up on us slowly is just as much a motivation to embark on the long and complex path of planning and transitioning as any other occurrence. Now might be a good time to try something else.
We all have skin in this game, and since we cannot accurately gauge the consequences which will spill out across the landscape once we really start having to deal with the impact of peak oil in our day-to-day lives, we need to join in the debate. And as I have been urging throughout, that means we all need to become better educated about the facts and the risks. Relying on the feel-good pablum dispensed by those with interests at odds with our own is another tactic we should toss into the trash heap.
The knowledge and expertise of those who have long denied and/or misled need to be put to better and more beneficial use than serving the interests of the few.
10 Comments on "The Next Steps Pt 5"
rockman on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 6:01 pm
“…and since we cannot accurately gauge the consequences which will spill out across the landscape once we really start having to deal with the impact of peak oil in our day-to-day lives…”. And once again an individual hung up on a rather meaningless rate on the calendar (global peak oil) that appears to not recognize we’ve been dealing with the impact of the Peak Oil Dynamic for many years. Otherwise he makes some valid observations
Dustin Hoffman on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 8:11 pm
9 out of 10 of us more than likely won’t make it past the bottleneck. Shortonoil expressed nuclear suicide exchange and never mind toxic radiation from spent fuel ponds of nuclear rods explosions.
Of course, without chemicals and the fossil fuel to power the industrial
Agricultural complex, most will simply die from starvation or exposure.
Sure, prep now and wish you were dead later.
Sounds like a plan.
shortonoil on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 6:41 am
“Relying as we have on the unexpected, mostly unforeseen increase in fossil fuel production courtesy of hydraulic fracturing [fracking], which released millions of barrels of tight oil from the shale formations here in the United States, we quickly overlooked the underlying factors affecting conventional crude oil production.”
If we take a close look at Shale its impact has been very close to nothing. It has accounted for 0.3% of historical accumulated world production. At its present production rate it would require 1,074 years to match present accumulated conventional crude production. It has been conventional crude that has built, and still maintains the modern industrial society. Shale is a product that has had almost no impact on the overall world economy. It is a little bit of nothing with a great deal of PR to promote it. If Shale was as effective at driving the economy as its PR has been at effecting public opinion, the world’s economy would be growing by leaps and bounds. Believing that we can rely on Shale to save our civilization has been one of the best orchestrated mass illusions in the history of the world.
Davy on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 6:43 am
Dustin, look at the “prep now wish you were dead later” predicament like this. Are you a “work all your life” type of guy who suffers in a shitty high paying job to retire at 70 to an Arizona gated community with golf? The problem is when the guy gets there his health is shot, family gone, and his life experiences empty. Are you a “live for the now” type person who from a very early age has traveled the world and traveled his soul to go places and be things? When this person gets older he may not have much to speak of but he has had a life. He spent his life in the moment experiencing a full and special life at all his age periods. He has a wealth of experience and knowledge from this special life.
How about being some of both. This is what being a prepper and doomer is. In the end being a doomer is confronting the denial of death we all live in. We all understand death at its many levels of health, accidents, and violence. Few will take that understanding of death to the next level of the foundation of human civilization. All of us prep for the other dangers but not collapse. In collapse we may have no posterity to leave anything to. Our creations will turn to dust. Our family will die with us not live on in a blood line. It is the humility and existential anxiety that comes from the complete realization of death on all levels that opens one up to life.
Prep now for a range of outcomes because really there are so many possible outcomes. People who doom and gloom just default to mad max and NUK ponds on fire but that is an extreme and life is not always extreme. There are a 100M locals. I don’t know how many locals there are. I pulled that out of my ass but really every person is a local. Locals will vary greatly in the effects of the collapse process in the “where” and the “degree”. This collapse process will not only be bad. Some people will actually prosper in spirit and even some in riches. Many will die and many will suffer before they die. This will be an Armageddon for many locals even if the collapse process is more benign. We have so many locals that are so far into overshoot we know they are going to fail. We know a nation like Egypt is heading there. We know a city like Las Vegas is heading there. How about a small place in an area with good food and water potential. Maybe the worst of climate change unfolds over many years. Many places may not get hit as bad by it.
Some might think prepping is a person above who works all his life for just a small final enjoyment of retirement or maybe he never makes it to retirement. A prepper may find several months or several years of a better quality of life. If life is delicious to you as it is to me than one more day is worth it. If this goes to crisis and a crisis that stabilizes before a complete collapse then a prepper may have located right and had enough food to not panic and lose his place in life. Think about if the trucks stop and food is scarce. I can sit this out for months on what I have stored and my farm operation is significantly self-sufficient. Things may go mad max but maybe not for months. Those months are special. I live for the moment but I prep for life.
I think the most important thing about prepping is enjoying it. If you love prepping then you have both the lifelong experiences and the end reward. Prepping means becoming a “jack of many trades”. It is also wise to specialize in something. Sure continue to live your status quo life but take your discretionary life and make that into a prep life. Prepping is a wonderful hobby and life adventure. You need the doom to keep you focused. Prep without doom and you get lazy and drift into other activities with no future.
Those with no ability to prep I understand but there are some minimums you can do. Most everyone can have a collapse plan of sorts with some food stashed. The most important thing is have an understanding of what collapse means so if it starts to happen you have a meaning with what is going on. Many are going to panic. Many have no clue and live in a fantasy world that everything will work out like they want to believe and what they may have been told to believe. We have this phony cult of optimism in the world today that capitalism has sold to us that is pervasive and false. Reject false optimism and embrace realism.
My idea of prep is make it a lifelong passion you enjoy so in the end maybe it buys you a few months but more importantly it bought you a full life. If you are lucky maybe your local transitions satisfactorily to a new civilization paradigm of reduced population and consumption. In this new life you have a life plan you built up mentally and physically. Your specialty is useful. Think how many occupations people have that have no future? Maybe you will have prepped and someone comes to your doomstead and pops a cap in your head and you are dead never having realized all your prep efforts. What a waste you might think but look at it this way if your prep effort was a rewarding experience then you will have lived a life fully. This is what a prep lifestyle should be.
Personally I find it a matter of being realistic that the status quo can’t last much longer. This is becoming so obvious for so many reasons. I have explored so many fascist of life and all of them have overshoot, deflation, decay, and dysfunction dominating their foundation. Take that understanding and prepare for less prosperity. Prepare for danger and mayhem. Find a new life in a different paradigm. If the lights go out hard WTF does it matter anyway? You will have lived a good life embracing reality and doing something about it.
Davy on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 6:55 am
Short, your comment should be an “Eureka moment” for many. The problem is the many “theys” think shale revolution is a revolution and the future. They believe it wills scale up and is our salvation. What else is there? Fusion. We are running out of magic. Why the belief, because of the snake oil PR are you mentioned. Shale did happen at an important time when conventional was getting tight. It really smashed the industry because in my opinion the oil industry is a retirement party. Macro demand and supply destruction and deflation economics are now in play. This is because of oil but also systematic socio economic phenomena. Civilizations end and ours is ending. The momentum of this process is the collapse process. No amount of inertia can stop this momentum.
Dustin Hoffman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 7:33 am
Wavey Davey,
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive
Meaning
Hope and anticipation are often better than reality.
Origin
This phrase is a Robert Louis Stevenson quotation, from Virginibus Puerisque, 1881:
“Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
Stevenson was expressing the same idea as the earlier Taoist saying – “The journey is the reward
rockman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:13 am
“The journey is the reward”. A sentiment expressed by many drug addicts. LOL.
Dustin Hoffman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:24 am
Sounds like you had a good trip yourself “rock”man. LOL
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:29 am
None more so than the fossil fuel addicts who are killing their own children.
Even bright boy Bush saw it for what it is.
“America is addicted to oil”
Common Characteristics Among Addictive Behaviors
There are many common characteristics among the various addictive behaviors:
1. The person becomes obsessed (constantly thinks of) the object, activity, or substance.
2. They will seek it out, or engage in the behaivor even though it is causing harm (physical problems, poor work or study performance, problems with friends, family, fellow workers).
3. The person will compulsively engage in the activity, that is, do the activity over and over even if he/she does not want to and find it difficult to stop.
5. The person does not appear to have control as to when, how long, or how much he or she will continue the behavior (loss of control). (They drink 6 beers when they only wanted one, buy 8 pairs of shoes when they only needed a belt, ate the whole box of cookies, etc).
6. He/she often denies problems resulting from his/her engagement in the behavior, even though others can see the negative effects.
http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/hints/addictiveb.html
All boils down to suicidal dopamine seeking cancer monkey’s who are not in control of anything. A heroin addict will, lie, steal and OD himself. Fossil fuel junkies are ODing/extincting their entire species.
Davy on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:33 am
Yea, just like that hot piece of ass that isn’t so hot once you get her in the sack.