I don't believe there will ever be an "Ah Ha!" moment at all. And which truth do you refer to anyway?

I expect the majority will never understand during the period when the events that make up the fall of our civilization play out. Only later will a narrative to explain it evolve, and whatever that is might be something surprising to those of us here on TOD watching now - except that will be long gone by then.

This is not an event, it is a journey - a long and difficult one.

I think the question now is how much time before the general public finds out the truth and how will they react?

We humans, especially in the West, are insulated from both the natural world and reality by the System. Our interaction with both are through system interfaces that reside at all levels between us and the real world (even personal and intimate relationships are conducted via technological interfaces). Our perception and understanding of the real world are shaped by the interfaces we view it through (eg. the media, tv, internet, science, technology, politics, etc.).

When all our reference points are controlled by the System and we have no other choice than to accept what it is telling us, then 2+2 can actually equal 5.

We're important to the System, we have to be handled correctly to avoid us harming both ourselves and the System. Part of this process is that we are preconditioned to our present and future... there are no shocks, nothing is allowed to disturb the herd.

To answer your question, the public will find out the truth, but by then it will not matter. It will be simply accepted as part of BAU. Shit happens and we have an app to deal with it.

Don't under estimate the forces of BAU. Just look at Detroit. It declared bankruptcy last week and this week it announces plans to build a new Red Wings arena for $650 million ($450 million in new 30 year bonds). TPTB can keep BAU going for a long time. Some will loose. Some will win. It's all about who you are and how you play the game.

He's running for office in Texas. So basically he has to adopt the Texas GOP dogma orthodoxy and call climate change a hoax created by those evil god-hating liberals.

Re: Reuters’s global warming about-face from DB ...

Reuters isn't the only one; see also Fourteen Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

-Upton Sinclair

Give it time. From the EIA International Energy Outlook 2013 (Highlights) I linked to below:

Given current policies and regulations limiting fossil fuel use, worldwide energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rise from about 31 billion metric tons in 2010 to 36 billion metric tons in 2020 and then to 45 billion metric tons in 2040, a 46-percent increase."

It won't be long before these folks will look like the idiotic sociopaths they really are. I'm keeping an accountability folder of stuff to bomb high profile deniers with someday, just because I can. Pitchfork-wielding serfs will need some direction in the not-too-distant future.

"Since the attack isn’t conducted over the Internet, there’s no way to trace it"

And thus U-boat communication during WWII was unhampered by countermeasures. Triangulation is quick and easy; mounting a response would be the expensive part. Hmmm, higher prices for a pound of cure instead of an ounce of prevention, where have I seen that before?

Latest Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly (reduced in size for TOD. Full resolution at link)

Click for full-size image

The "going rural" is only a design issue if one is looking to self-capture photons to power electrical needs and capture photons via plants to become somehow food. There is a %age of coverage needed for photons -> liquid fuel as old man R. Diesel was pitching with his 'grow plants for oil, use oil in my engine' model. Cooking oil, alcohol via fermentation - all ways of capturing and converting photons.

"urban" is powered by external photons - some old as in coal and oil, some new as in food. Exactly how is the "urban" world going to get its photon import? And how is the "urban" world going to pay for that import?

Like it or not humanity has become an urban animal. It can no longer go rural anymore than a dog can become a wolf.

Nonsense. We're only about 50% urban now. And until very recently we've been primarily rural our entire evolutionary history.

And while 50% of us may be economically, culturally and locationally urban. I know of no evolutionary argument that we've evolved into homo urbanicus.

But there's an easier way to cut through all this. (1) Which one, rural or urban, would have a better chance of surviving a sudden, deep energy descent? (2) Can we re-learn rural skills? Well Boulding said if it exists, it's possible.

Maybe it's time to get cracking on reskilling?

@ crazyv:

... very little has been said about what society will look like if we don't have access to FF ...

@ Georg -- errr-- Eric Blair, re: urban vs. rural existance

I have a photo from the mid 1930's on my wall of my grandfather on his Northern Alberta homestead driving a team of oxen pulling a large wagon overloaded with hay. He looks happy grinning under his handlebar moustache and fedora, like he just finished counting his blessings: a very productive farm and timber resource despite the drought that decade; a devoted wife who had a huge organic garden, and who ultimately lived to 96; seven healthy kids to help out and pass down the DNA; hundreds of neighbours sharing labour and pooling resources; an abundance of healthy local food. He and thousands of other pre-WWI settlers from Eastern Europe paid $10 in 1908 for each quarter section of land -- a great deal to a former Romanian-Ukrainian tenant farmer on land subdivided down to the nub over the centuries. His life was remarkably low in fossil fuels and money, but they thrived with only two connections to the world: the train, which stopped in the nearby town, and the mail. Globalization and supply-side wasn't even an itch in Freidman's father's groin.

When I read the odd comment of post-collapse armed camps right out of Doomsday Preppers and the Walking Dead, I laugh, and immediately remember my grandparents who cooperated and shared and built enormously rewarding relationships with their neighbours to survive. They lived in a time of plenty, most of it self-generated, and had no cause for blowing off their neighbour's heads.

A worldwide economic collapse triggered by fossil energy depletion and debt will probably revive local and individual self-suffiency and make people get out and meet the neighbours, much as was the model in homesteading days. Modern homesteads could arise in much smaller scales in people's urban backyards (or even public parks, for that matter, in multi-family zoned areas) when, if you look at the suburbs on Google Earth, they consist of tens or even hundreds of square km of open space in every metropolitan area in North America. Urban farmers can trade a portion of their produce for use of one's backyard and city water supply. Some Northern Saskatchewan urban farmers developed techniques to grow produce in verticle plastic tents or small greenhouses heated with light bulbs or wood stoves and get four or even five crops to the local farmer's market by the mid-May long weekend, which is the traditional time to plant outdoors after the frost. When you consider the minus 50 winter temps and darkness of Edmonton or Saskatoon, that is really something.

A middle class suburban neighbourhood with 1,000 homes has about 100,000 m2 (~25 ac) devoted to backyards. If half cultivated them as above, not a lot of cash will be exchanged, and surplus produce (and where they allow it, some livestock like chickens) could be trucked a short distance to local farmer's market (which will no doubt multiply after a major collapse) and be sold with modest markups, or bartered. With lots of compostable kitchen and yard waste, mulching, greenhouse techniques, and the short transport distances, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and fuel for local food production would not be as crucial as with with large industrial farms, which may well collapse en masse as, at least in Western Canada, their products are destined for export.

With collapse comes road space suddenly freed up as the ubiquitous single-occupant-car disappears. Roads often consume 40% of a city's land base and if even a quarter could be alleviated for other uses ... well, there are many ways this huge acreage could be used more productively than for just dead asphalt. Moreover, the vast majority of urban land under the road networks is publicly owned. It is a huge public land bank, an asset that could be repurposed for transit corridors, linear parks, urban farms, allotment gardens, housing, etc.

Mortgage defaults will happen here, but I believe to a fraction of the extent than with those that were piggybacked onto severely over-leveraged US financial institutions. In BC it is illegal for cities to run deficits -- a very smart thing -- and it would be very unusual to see one pull a Detroit. It could happen, and no doubt the senior levels of government will have to participate in rescuing certain cities, but so much of the urban inefficiencies that developed with cheap oil may have to be written off. In this light, I see a lot of pain for the distant exurbs trying to maintain public services and utilties, though they may benefit significantly from decentralized power (rooftop PVs, smaller district heat/power plants ...).

Self-sufficiency starts with the individual and with families, then with neighbourhoods. In the context of a collapse, it is better for one to bury their guns and instead bring a few surplus garden zucchinis, a carafe of homemade wine and a toolbelt over to their neighbour's and offer them an afternoon of labour in exchange for some spare 2x4s and advice on wiring a PV panel. The government won't likely be able to help at that level, but should, if wise enough, encourage self-motivation and local innovation and offer what it does have: In the case of cities, land; in the case of provincial and national governments in the reality of severe budgetary contraction, establish first priorities, like eliminate all unecessary subsidies to industry and devote what funds they can to food production and distribution at the local level, protection of vital elements like fresh water, the development of clean energy and R&D into efficiency efficiency, and help the least able to help themselves.

"Like it or not humanity has become an urban animal. It can no longer go rural anymore than a dog can become a wolf."

Strange and clueless statements. There are still an awful lot of non-urban humans, so don't be so sweeping with your declarations of what "humanity" has become. For that matter, dogs can go feral faster than you would believe.

Now if you had said "urban humans have become urban animals", I would have agreed with you.

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/

The International Energy Outlook 2013 (IEO2013) projects that world energy consumption will grow by 56 percent between 2010 and 2040. Total world energy use rises from 524 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2010 to 630 quadrillion Btu in 2020 and to 820 quadrillion Btu in 2040 (Figure 1). Much of the growth in energy consumption occurs in countries outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),2 known as non-OECD, where demand is driven by strong, long-term economic growth. Energy use in non-OECD countries increases by 90 percent; in OECD countries, the increase is 17 percent. The IEO2013 Reference case does not incorporate prospective legislation or policies that might affect energy markets.

Renewable energy and nuclear power are the world's fastest-growing energy sources, each increasing by 2.5 percent per year. However, fossil fuels continue to supply almost 80 percent of world energy use through 2040. Natural gas is the fastest-growing fossil fuel in the outlook. Global natural gas consumption increases by 1.7 percent per year. Increasing supplies of tight gas, shale gas, and coalbed methane support growth in projected worldwide natural gas use. Coal use grows faster than petroleum and other liquid fuel use until after 2030, mostly because of increases in China's consumption of coal and tepid growth in liquids demand attributed to slow growth in the OECD regions and high sustained oil prices....

That fits in with the principle of "The Long Thaw", (by David Archer) which was afternoon reading under the pine trees on my camping trip. He thinks we've put enough CO2 in the air to stop the next ice age in it's tracks. If the EIA is right (for once) then the ice age after that will be stopped too.

By the way, speaking to the question as to whether humans have become basically urban, the camp ground was practically deserted. It was in the National Forest, and as such out of range of cell phones and the internet. Most of the visitors while I was there were picnickers. Several of the camp sites had clear evidence of no one being in them this season.

OK, now this should get somebody's attention. If things are going to hell and a handbasket, I darn well better be able to drink.

What! Why wasn't I told about this... heads are going to roll :)

Uh-oh. You don't want to upset these guys.

‘Militant’ winegrowers suspected in bomb attack

While no people were in the office during the explosion on Tuesday 16th July, the building is left with blown out windows, a collapsed ceiling and a damaged door. According to La Dépêche, the exterior walls of the office were spraypainted with the initials "CAV", a reference to the Comité d’Action Viticole, an action group for winegrowers.

Spain imports nearly 100% of Oil and Gas, almost all the Coal it uses.
We are sinking like a stone
The Energy bill is impossible to pay, not on top of the debt and other things

I think that Spain is about five years more advanced down that path, and that the UK is catching up fast

Our government is the most corrupt in the West, more like a Banana Republic (all right, a banana kingdom) or an African country than an European country
Do you need proof? The Accountant of this Mafia, a man called Bárcenas, has been caught with more than 40 Million euros, in Switzerland and a gigantic lemon farm in Argentina all graft paid by corrupt businessmen. He had been paying the President, and Aznar before him, and to most politicians of the Right a monthly salary, on the black of course.

There is another factor, very likely another Civil War because Cataluña may declare UDI from the Spanish State very soon.
(the Catalans have their own corruption issues, too. Mas, the head of the local government can very easily go to jail soon. Not that he will stay there)
Of course the British and Scots are much more rational, honest and clever people and they won't go down that particular path of destruction.

In retrospect the UK clearly made a long term mistake by being so dependent on external goods and energy, to a degree larger than that of other countries including even the US. They should have carefully managed the North Sea resources while building out wind and nuclear. Instead they went on a binge and allowed bankers in London to accumulate billions in mostly unearned wealth.

Well it can happen to the best of us, can't it. Can anybody think of anything the UK has to offer the world now?

It's possible that the UK and Japan, as island nations heavily dependent on imported energy, will be the first major countries to "go medieval" as JHK would put it.

Of course food from the USA is pollution free.

Food security seems to be becoming a major problem throughout the world. The three main problems of pollution, groundwater depletion and climate change seem to be coming to a head at the same time. The problem here for China and other countries is that as they start to become food importers the overall supply of food has become increasingly unstable. I have been watching the food index on and off for a couple of years and I have noticed that prices seem to be on a general upwards trend which will make net food importers weep for the cost of food as poorer nations start becoming cut off from an increasingly unreliable international food market.

Trouble is, such an escalation in the chemical war on weeds will likely only lead to more prolific, and more super, superweeds, along with a sharp increase in herbicide use.

It's called evolution... too bad most Americans don't believe in it.

Nearly half of Americans believe God created mankind in a single day about 10,000 years ago, a literal interpretation of the Bible, according to a new survey that shows the view toward evolution in the United States hasn't changed in 30 years.

About 46 percent of people say creationism explains the origin of humans. Just 15 percent say humans evolved without the assistance of God, a Gallup poll finds.

Advantage, Monsanto!

As the climate changes and the land becomes unsuitable for traditional crops, it becomes necessary to plant new crops better suited to the new climate.

But will the land be too poisonous for un-genetically modified crops?

I fear we are painting ourselves into a corner through hyper-specialisation, where the only things that will grow are super-crops and super-weeds, but the highly-bred super-crops won't be able to resist climate change.

Roundup-tolerant weed salad, anybody?

along with a sharp increase in herbicide use.

From Monsanto's standpoint, sounds like a dream come true. Cash registers ringing, ding, ding, ding.

All that PV is losing a little efficiency as well, though at least it isn't heating up the Rhine. Probably shading a few roofs...

The heat is on.

Less dense air would also affect wind turbine outputs.

money terms ......... biggest scams around

You act as if it's a surprise, given the individuals concerned. When the finance community and politicians get together, they will almost always create a fraud based system that can be gamed to the detriment of everyone else. Its like getting into a game of 'follow the lady' - you should KNOW that some tricks or slight of hand will be involved to make sure you lose.

The only way a carbon trading system works is if someone like a trustworthy scientist is put in charge - and you'll know it's working by the screams of anguish from the 'players'.

Frankly, abiotic oil is more likely.

The moment Goldman Sachs piled into the Carbon Credit market, you should have realized it is a system to divert money from the real economy into the financial economy without benefiting the natural economy (using Greer's economic model).