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Putting Peak Oil In Perspective
Posted by Glenn on October 31, 2005 - 11:26pm in The Oil Drum: Local
We've had two recent conferences in New York City that have sparked a healthy conversation within the community that is aware of peak oil on just what kind of world we should work toward and what we should expect. The Petrocollapse Conference sponsored by Culture Change featured classic outsiders like Jan Lundberg, James Howard Kunstler and Michael Ruppert. Then there was the NYU conference "Winning the Oil End Game", which had ultimate insiders like former CIA director James Woolsey, Mississippi Governor and former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Altman and Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
As peak oil goes mainstream, I expect that many of the original advocates of peak oil awareness will be overtaken by more pragmatic and constructive people who don't revel in the idea of economic collapse or advocate policies that will result in a "Last Man Standing" scenario where humanity engages in an unending war for the remaining supplies of energy.
There are two recent articles written by local observers that add some needed perspective to some of the more narrow and extreme views on both the left and right sides of the political divide that have emerged in those conferences.
If Peak Oil theory is now mainstream, splashed across the front page of USA Today and the theme of Chevron and BP ad campaigns, then Petrocollapse is a secular, left-wing, non-fiction version of Tim LaHaye's Christian Apocalyptic "Left Behind" series. The gospel according to Petrocollapse is that Peak Oil is coming, and it's coming soon. The transition to the post-carbon world will not be gradual, it will be sudden and massive. And when it comes, the sinners--those profligate American consumers and the corporate whores who oversee them--will all be swept away in violent social turmoil, starvation and environmental disaster. But there's good news too. After the tumultuous mass die-off, a new society will arise from the burned out SUV hulks and melted plastic detritus. In this post-carbon world, humans will have no choice but to live sustainably, in cooperation with each other and in harmony with nature. Those who get religion and accept Peak Oil into their hearts soon enough--they may be among the lucky survivors whose children grow to live in this new and better world.
In Grant Causwell's cover article for the NY Press, "The Coming Petrocollapse" he discusses the nature of a movement that is continually preaching the "The End is Near":
The peak oil movement is, right now, no matter how many write-ups it receives in the New York Times Magazine, a movement of people who have already lost, just as all survivalists' movements are. (I suspect Jan Lundberg would have done well for himself giving speeches about the need for fallout shelters 50 years ago.) Those who have the least worry most about losing it. In this case, it's those least tethered to the hectic crash and race of motorized life, those who not only despise it, but tremble with anticipation of the glorious day when the ones tethered to it and secure in their place are similarly lost, who drive the movement. They're the ones who buy books like "When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance & Planetary Survival" or "Strategic Relocation: North American Guide to Safe Places" (hint: you want "a climate which can sustain life in an energy crisis but won't attract marauders"), and pay Michael Ruppert $50 a year to read his lurid fantasies about crack-dealing spooks and economic collapses that are always, from what I can tell, just a few weeks off.
The public will not follow someone who continuously preaches doomsday scenarios - nor will they donate money to them.
We need to stay grounded in all realities. We need to continuously evaluate and re-evaluate all the evidence in front of us and act on hard information. There should be no place for "beliefs" in peak oil - it's about science and geology, it's not a religion. It does not require "faith", but rather a skeptical nature that is willing to ask for hard evidence when others say that the faster we eat the cake, the more will appear in front of us.
Personally I think we are headed for a pretty rough time ahead starting sometime in the next 2-10 years, but I think how we react to it will make all the difference. There are many possible paths ahead of us and we collectively have a large degree of control over which path we go down. The easiest ways to squander that opportunity to adapt is to do nothing about it.
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You're so right - this is a time for reasoned evangelism.
Speaking of the NYU conference, did you ever get any linkable material from them?
Which in the long run, is probably worse. It will give us a lot more time to burn ever dirtier coal, cut down every tree in sight, drill the entire planet in search of hydrocarbons, pollute the oceans and rivers, build nuclear power plants and solar panel factories with ever decreasing safety standards, etc.
We may not even notice the actual peak when it comes. Just ever rising prices, more and more people falling out of the middle class every year, an ever shrinking economy. Until we're just another Third World country.
I'm quite optimistic about Venezuela's chances. They might very end up in better shape than the US - at least those who don't spend their money on second homes in Florida.
But he was the only populist they could blame things on, so he got the blame.
We aren't a country similar to the 1930s, when a lot of people lived on farms or small towns where they were fairly self-sustaining. People in those days tended to save for rainy days. Right now the U.S. savings rate is zero, and the government is into deep deficit spending to try to keep the economy going.
That's why I can never discount the "cliff" theory. We don't have a parachute if the debt bomb goes off.
What we might find (one possibility) is that we slowly slip into a decline that we can only diagnose long after the fact when it might not be fixable.
If you haven't read Jared Diamond's "Collapse", I highly recommend it. Not all Collapses are the same. Some take weeks, some take years, some take many generations.
Collapse is great. I also recommend Guns, Germs, and Steel, his previous book (which won him a Pulitzer). It's sort of the complement of Collapse: it explains how Western civilization came to dominate the world.
If we can ever band together enough to elect an administration with a mandate to bring them home and abandon our doctrine of "military presence" to secure oil, then we might be able to focus on alternative strategies. Until that happens, no matter what the sound-bytes may be or what kind of pork-enriched energy bills get passed, Washington's policy remains self-evident.
Quickly clarification. Military efforts in the Middle East are not aimed at literally taking the oil. Rather they are aimed at maintaining and creating a market system in a free society that facilitates the maximum extraction of oil. Military efforts are also the tip of an effort that incorporates diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic efforts as well.
Yes, we are stabilizing the region (Middle East) from which we are dependent upon to receive oil. Yet so-long as we are also furthering the interests of that region's residents, we should have few qualms with securing our economic interests.
Alternatives are of course the best solution, but they are also a long-term solution, and, until they are implemented, the reality remains that our economy is dependent upon oil and most of that oil lies in a politically volatile region, requiring some stabilization on our part.
The fact that the stabilization has been very poorly executed and that the alternatives are not forthcoming are two very big counts against the current administration, but their solutions remain vastly superior to abandoning the Middle East to focus on alternatives.
Alternatives take time, and in the interim, we will still need oil. This on top of the fact that the instability of the Middle East also produces terrorism, it is in both the United States economic and security interests to continue stabilization until it is a prosperous region, and we have developped alternatives.
Military efforts in the Middle East are not aimed at literally taking the oil. Rather they are aimed at maintaining and creating a market system in a free society that facilitates the maximum extraction of oil. Military efforts are also the tip of an effort that incorporates diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic efforts as well.
Yes, we are stabilizing the region (Middle East) from which we are dependent upon to receive oil. Yet so-long as we are also furthering the interests of that region's residents, we should have few qualms with securing our economic interests.
Sounds good but it's Pollyanna horse shit. U.S. aggression in the ME are aimed at establishing large military bases from which to protect the flow of oil from that region to the U.S. and other points west. It will take two generations of war and occupation to have any long term influence on how the Arabs view the Western world, and by then it will be too late - the oil and gas will be long gone.
That's a very contestable point. These viewpoints are not so fixed as one may imagine, and had the war been properly carried out, I imagine that we would already have succeeded at putting Iraq on the road to modernization, and thus establishing a cultural base which might influence the rest of the Middle East.
But that misses the larger point, that it is probably solely due to US intervention that the Middle East is as stabile as it is, and if it were not for our presence its' citizens would be much more miserable and the oil would not be flowing. For over a decade now it has the been the US that has been key in maintaining a balance of power amongst the nations, and to simply withdraw, as you propose, would be to pull the carpet out from under them, screwing the Middle East, the United States, and ultimately modern society.
By the way, the fact that we are obliged by current economics to create and maintain such efforts (military initiatives, support for dictatorships, etc.) in the Middle East is one of the best reasons to develop alternatives to oil. But we've got to stop consuming oil before we stop supporting the Middle East.
Fear is a big motivator.
I agree that it is not a belief or faith issue.
Reality... but whoms?
So...
you continue to declare the times are a changin...
upon deaf ears? ... you say.
MSM and the public yawns.
Explosive price increases and the public awakens.
save yourself first.
Exercise some will power and break
you're other dirty habits, ie. smoking , drinking and driving, nail biting, over - eating,sleeping,talking. Get your sh@t together man.
The truth be known we say.
You can't save the world if you can't save yourself.
perspective... huuummn...
uniquely human
i am but, one small piece of the bigger puzzle.
what does this big puzzle picture look like?
what if we (billions of pieces) all agreed?
what if Elvis is alive in Kalamazoo
whew...
think small, think fast, peace
You mean he isn't?!?!
1) Real estate meltdown
Some large REITs, and Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac are perilously close to bankruptcy. Fanny is still having trouble getting a definitive audit out. This problem might take a matter of months to play out. Fanny's debt is I think 1.2 trillion - many times its market cap. The default of over a trillion dollars of real estate debt is possible and would bring the US economy to a sudden halt. The fact that the auto industry is also on the verge of bankruptcy does not help. This crisis would be exacerbated by energy shortages, but not caused by them.
2) Currency meltdown due to huge derivitive losses
I have no idea what the chances of this are. But Chris Laird, writing writing on GoldEagle.com, seems to think it is a very large risk. Due to massive currency derivitives, set on automated trading, he claims a currency collapse could spread very rapidly: url=How A US Currency Crisis Can Unfold[/url].
This year much of the slack in US treasury purchases by foreign banks has been taken up by purchases from unidentified "Carribean nations". I have read that this can mean two things, either hedge funds are buying massive treasuries, or the Fed is simply buying its own debt in a secretive manner (!!). If it is hedge funds, remember that all they want is huge returns, they do not have a vested interest in the US consumer economy (like China does) and their computers will sell off in a split second.
3) International crisis affecting oil deliveries.
Its not hard to think up scenarios. Al Queda blows up a tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. War in or with Syria/Iran/Saudi Arabia. Crisis in Venezuela (i.e. Chavez is assasinated, South America becomes a new Middle East).
4) Climate related calamity.
These would not happen suddenly, but would be more permanent and scary crises. The 2 that come to mind first are:
- gulf stream disintegrates, sending northern Europe into an ice age.
- drought and energy shortages make the American southwest uninhabitable.
Thats all I can think of right now. The real question is "what are the odds that none of it will happen"?Given that Ford and GM's debt is rated junk and their sales are very weak... what happens when they join United and Delta in bankruptcy court? What industries necessarily follow them down?
The dollar will be in for a rough ride at that point. A lot of foreign investment will bolt.
Well, in all liklihood for GM... the shareholders get screwed, the PBGC takes over the pensions with substantially reduced payouts, and the retirees lose their health insurance and (for the most part) depend on Medicare/Medicaid. GM continues to operate, and sheds the $1200 or so per vehicle cost that the retiree expenses currently impose. The biggest result will be that Ford and Daimler-Chrysler will have to make the same trip through bankruptcy in order to remain competitive.
Many people ask the question, "Where will we find the workers to fill the jobs when the Baby Boomers retire?" They should be asking, "Where are the jobs that the Boomers will need when they find that they can't afford to retire?"
The probability is quite high that if either one of all these happens will lead to a chain reaction triggering the other ones. I think the RE bubble is the least problem of these and can be overcome with a short recssion/depression at worst.
The good news is that it would probably be not such a disaster as we are imagining now. Stripping these nice dollar denominated clothes off the economy will leave people without savings, great unemployment, poverty etc. But most probably in several years US will recover and have the chance to make a clean start (by then it would be obvious we need to get rid of oil dependance).
The worst case scenario is US invading Iran, Syria etc. or/and using nuclear weapons against them. This would make impossible for EU, China and Russia to stand by. The resulting USD demise will be the least problem we would have to face.
Doomsayers are good, because they are there to tell us one possible outcome. If you put a hand on your heart you can not say "well this is impossible" a priori - just like you can no throw away the market will save us idea a priori.
Both are completely possible and I don't see a reason to reject either one. It is from our actions from now on which will be the path to go. You are right that repeating the same old song will not raise awareness among the majority of the people, who are motivated much better by emotionally apealing arguments. When you think of it it is inevitable that in such situation you will see extremes in the opinions; I think somewhere in the resulting discussion solutions will be born and will start to accelerate from the thought phase to the real world.
I've said the same thing. There are two sides to the Peak Oil Community (not "movement"). One side models oil depletion and looks at available discoveries, reserves, production and demand data trends etc. The other side (eg. Jim Kunstler, Jan Lundberg, Michael Ruppert) acts to alert people to the social consequences of their unsustainable energy practices. But if you are not aware of the detailed modeling work done by serious people and just pay attention to Kunstler's rants, well then, yes, you could conclude that we're a bunch of doomsayers crying wolf. Many people at TOD think Peak Oil is a real concern but have no use for Kunstler or Ruppert.
Unfortunately, the two authors of the articles cited here do not seem to be aware of any theory and data behind our concerns about Peak Oil (the "hard evidence"). They are merely journalists going to a conference that has the word "collapse" in its title. A serious person would ask - "why do these [PO] people believe what they are saying?"
It is certainly ironic that mainstream economists and others (eg. CERA, IEA) make statements all the time that seem to be based on nothing more than blind faith in the markets, politics & technology to deal with the world's oil depletion problems but we are accused of being a doomsday cult no different than the loonies that think people like me will be Left Behind.
Hurry up!
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2005/1031/122.html
Basically, it argues that energy returned over energy invested is not the same thing as money returned over money invested...and that money will trump thermodynamics.
Sadly, I don't think the average American can understand what's wrong with that argument. The U.S. has become so scientifically illiterate it isn't even funny. Most people probably think you can cool down your kitchen by leaving the fridge door open. They see creationism as just as valid, if not more valid, than natural selection. They have no way of telling whether or not oil depletion modelling is more "more scientific" than hydrinos or cold fusion or zero point energy or dilithium crystals.
Let Kunstler rant on. He's more likely to convince the "Left Behind" crowd than any charts or graphs. As for the rest...they'll find the science on their own.
"They" have let Hubristic Huber out of the Liberal Arts Loonie Lockup again.
Did $35/barrel-soon Steve Forbes give a stamp of approval this new Clucker of Thermodynamic Defiance?
(Definition: Clucker of Thermo-Defiance: One who thinks that Adam Smith's Deuce of Dumbness trumps Mother Nature's Ace of Universal Laws.)
In Steve's defense, the Huber-ubber ill-piece is listed as having been published on Halloween --a.k.a. All Saints & Sicko's Eve. So maybe it's just a joke?
How can a guy that has a "Mechanical Engineering" degree say that that "Return on dollars invested" trumps thermodynamics?
Maybe they did something weird to him in law school?
Maybe they brainwashed him?
It does not add up.
Maybe this explains it: he thinks it's curtains for ME's:
from: http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/features/endofme/endofme.html
In these dire times, we definitely need more pirates!
http://venganza.org/
;^}
I guess, based on his "logic" then the amount of energy we get out of oil is infinitesimal too since the total energy in oil is defined by e=mc squared.
Huber is a free-market economist which, given where his writing appears, should come as no surprise. My understanding of EROEI is the total amount of FUNGIBLE energy input to produce a unit of FUNGIBLE energy output. The fact that the nuclear reactor doesn't use all the potential energy is irrelevant. What is relevant is the energy cost of mining and refining the nuclear fuel, amortizing the cost of the reactor, eventual decommissioning, etc. Those are the real energy inputs.
Presumably the NG beneath the tar sand deposits could be piped to market if it exists in sufficient quantities. It also can be liquified and trucked to market. I'm not prepared to do a cost analysis here but it seems to me that the NG being used to crack the tar sands cannot be considered free or even "cheap" just because it is proximal. If there are sufficient quantities of NG to allow a significant portion of the tar sand to be processed into distillates then there certainly ought to be enough NG to make a pipeline financially rewarding. Perhaps a calculation will reveal that the value of NG at the site is only 75% of the value at Henry Hub due to transportation costs. It's still not free by any means. Two pipelines running side by side can be built for not much more than the cost of one. Given that the product of the tar sands is a liquid then we should expect that building a pipeline to transport it makes good sense. Building the second pipeline to transport NG would just be a free ride. NG is pressurized and requires no pumping stations. Hence it requires a very simple infrastructure to move it long distances.
Naturally the Hubers of the world aren't going to point this out because suddenly their "cheap energy" source would suddenly command a much higher price because it's no longer locked in.
Remember that NG would be used in a dual capacity for processing tar sands - it must supply heat for the cracking process as well as supporting hydrogenation. We're talking significant quantities here.
In the same article he's blathers on about using "cheap energy inputs" to produce "expensive energy outputs." Mr Huber, apparently, has never asked for a quote on a nuclear reactor. Nor has he troubled himself pricing out the cost of running a water pipeline for hundreds of miles to supply the required hydrogen. I'm not saying the idea of building a nuclear reactor close to the tar sands is a bad idea. It probably is a good idea. But the way to find that out is by classic EROEI calculations taking into account current market prices.
As a first approximation I think it makes good sense to ask how many joules of energy are returned for each marginal joule spent. If some adjustment needs to be made because some of those joules are less useful to the current market than others, fine. Don't discard the method. Refine it.
Notice how completely unhelpful Huber is in this regard. Note that his solution is to let the "free market" do its magic and just keep out of the way. I'm sure Steve Forbes finds this advice particularly comforting.
Huber is obviously sponsored by corporate clients and charged with the task of pooh poohing people who are raising concerns about the medium and long term sustainability of our life style in the face of escalating energy costs. He creates a veneer of flawed logic atop an agenda of corporatism that collapses into a grim foretaste of the future. He may be serving tripe but that tripe is currency to modern economic thinking. Never underestimate the power of malinvestment to separate fools from their dollars and lay waste to our world in the process. I'm sure there were compelling reasons the Easter Islanders cut down all their timber to the point where they couldn't build a boat for fishing. They must have said to themselves in the latter days, "I wonder if we really need those totems to the gods more than fish from the sea."
But by then it was too late and then they starved to death.
I would simply venture the opinion that what we are faced with today is a very serious problem that will require many delicately nuanced judgement calls. Huber IS right about EROEI being inadequate as the sole means of deciding our energy future. But it's part of the toolkit. Necessary but not sufficient, as they say.
And quality does matter. We're like someone tearing through a billion dollar inheritance, telling ourselves we can get a job at McDonald's when the money is gone. The job is "money positive"; we can earn money doing it. But it's not going to enable us to maintain the mansions and SUVs and jet planes and yachts we bought with our inheritance, let alone keep buying them.
You present a very lucid argument. Using easily obtained fossil energy to liberate hard to obtain fossil energy so that some fraction actually gets to the rest of the world. One facet of discussions here at TOD is the ever increasing cost and scarcity of oil and fossil fuels in the future. As an example it is irrelevent that a Billion barrels of oil is in a deposit if only a net 250 mb will get to the end consumer (because the other 750 mb was used to liberate the net 250) that deposit should only be on the books as a 250 mb deposit. I am playing fast and loose with numbers here but the concept is what is important.
Models that use ever more energy to liberate hard to get fossil fuels are really headed down a decreasing EROEI slope. It would be better to take the limited easily obtained fossil energy and use it to build some other energy capture system that would have an increasing EROEI over time.
If a greater and greater % of the total energy budget of the planet is being used to liberate the remaining energy, when will there ever be a surplus to switch away from fossil? This is a real economic as well as thermodynamic puzzle. I see a need for a critical mass of non fossil (conventional energy and fuel) before there can be a self sustaining replication of that system. Until then the infrastructure is dependant on fossil fuel cost and availability.
And since the energy density of fossil is greater than just about everything else, how can you ever put together a spreadsheet that says using fossil energy for anything other than liberating more fossil energy will give as high an EROEI? At some point we are going to have to use non fossil to create more non fossil energy (via manufacturing, agriculture, etc.), but we are a long, long way from that point because we don't have enough energy from those sources to substitute for fossil.
There are project numbers where they USE some of the Energy in the Barrel of "oil" to extract or Coke, the next Barrel down the Line.
Both using outside NG, Or Energy from the Tar sands to Coke (adding the extra atoms, that turn kerogen into crude oil) Damage the water supply.
For every barrel of Oil you get, you waste 4 barrels of water. Even if they can recycle the water, They will waste it over time, and increase costs.
Given that there might be As many have quoted an estimated 175 Billion Barrels of Crude Oil in those sands, Over the time to extract this oil, you will waste between 175 billion barrels of water to 700 billion barrels or water. And could use 175 Trillion Cubic feet of NG.
But at most you still get 1 to 4 million Barrels per day out. You won't be able to plug the gap in World depletion of Conventional Oil. But you could Fall far short by running out of the NG or the Water to process this Kerogen and sand mixture.
Right off, he disses Hubbert, saying that he went wacky in his later years with peak oil. Then he contradicts himself in the next paragraph by allowing that Hubbert had fixed on peak oil-like ideas as early as 1949, at the modest age of 46.
Huber somehow forgets to mention Hubbert's great triumph with the accurate prediction of North American peak oil, over a decade in advance. He states that peak oil is junk economics, in my mind an inflamatory statement.
In the next paragraph, Huber thumbs his Cornucopian nose at matter-energy constraints.
Surely, as an ME, Huber must know that when any expotential process is tied to a physical system, something has got to give, eventually. Surely, as some sort of economist, he must know that expotential growth is baked into our current financial system with its non-negative interest rates.
Huber's main point seems to be to criticize the concept of Eroei. He does make a good distinction between cheap and low quality energy (like hot water maybe) versus more valuable and high quality energy, like gasoline. He justifies the disconnect between economics and resources by the fact that you can use lots of cheap low quality energy to produce a profitable amount of high quality energy.
Of course, in the next paragraph, Huber gives a terrible example of how this works with tar sands.
They are using valuable and clean Natural Gas to bake rocks to squeeze out and transform some nasty bitumen.
Just think of all the homes that could be heated and all of the kWs that could be generated with the NG used to make a single barrel of tar sand oil. I don't think that NG prices will need to go much higher before tar sands sit on their hands. Why should tar sand conversion continue when every other NG-based chemical industry in North America has closed shop for the Winter?
Finally, Huber totally misapplies the Eroei concept in a few examples to try and discredit it some more. He mentions an Eroei deficit when he should really mean a fractional Eroei. It is never negative and always relevant. He substitutes thermodynamic efficiency for Eroei, a seemingly elementary error. At least both quantities are unitless and are based on ratioes of energy variables.
For power plants, he looks at the large amount of heat going up the stacks and into the cooling ponds, and compares that with the more modest amount of electricity generated to get his fractional "Eroei". He has calculated thermodynamic efficiency here, which can never be greater than 1 (you can't get more energy out of the plant than you put in as fuel).
Real Eroei has a wider scope. It sums the energy needed to build the plant, mine the coal/uranium, transport it to the plant, and burn it. This sum, the energy invested, is compared to the electricity generated, the energy returned. Eroei is usually greater than 1 (you can use a little energy to release greater energy kindly stockpiled for you by Mother Nature).
In that high quality energy must be invested for mining and transport, to first order, energy quality should not be a factor for Eroei, since it is equally in both the numerator and denominator.
My main point in refuting Huber is that our economy generally invests a little high quality energy to get a larger amount of high quality energy back. I don't think we really have much experience investing low quality energy like Huber suggests.
Huber states that Eroei is a sophomoric metric. Judging from his performance in this article, Huber is still in the freshman class.
We already worked over his same article back on 10/15/05:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/10/15/154533/15#76
What economists claim has nothing to do with science it is pure voodoo show for the public. The zombied crowd is watching how obviously smart people are throwing around obviously smart sentences having absolutely nothing to do with reality.
This is just a product like everything else in the market economics. The people need somebody to tell them that everything is/will be OK, that there are smart people in charge that have thought everything over and over etc. and there you are - the market provides economists.
That's why I pay $50 a year to read his lurid fantasies. I evaluate the information they're based on, and incorporate what cross-checks with other sources into my worldview. He might be diagnosably paranoid, but he digs up some really interesting information out of MSM sources. I take that information, and generally disregard his analysis of it.
Interestingly, it's Ruppert who indirectly got me interested in PO. A conspiracy-minded friend started posting his articles on a list-serv, and I started doing the research I needed for a big debunking paper.
Needless to say, that paper never got written.
Given the complexity of the problem, I sometimes think we fool ourselves that somehow we might be able to write an equation that will tell us what will happen. But even if we had such a model, we have nowhere near enough good data. Yes, it is still important to try, we'll need all the insight we can get. But I suspect that a good sense of intuition may be just as accurate.
If you want to move people, remember that the End-of-Time thing grew out of a damn book series. Sometimes a good story is far more effective than couple of hundred graphs - maybe not to us, but at least to "normal" people!
The ideas that:
A. Peak Oil is a legit analysis, and
B. Lundberg's version of Petrocollapse is a slightly insane and not particularly useful analysis,
are not at all mutually exclusive.
Guess which parts will be quoted by whom?
But there is more here than Y2K. The issues of exponential growth and limited resources are inescapable realities. In an exponential growth scenario, when 50% of the resource is used up, it's really too late. I can choose not to believe in the Old Testament mumbo jumbo, but I cannot choose not to believe in exponential growth. So I am caught between the Y2K nut and the ideas that the stability of my father's world might indeed be passing, between trying to anticipate change so I can take care of my family and over-reacting, between wanting to help others understand but not having the facts. It is a difficult line to walk.
In the end it all comes down to the details. Oil will peak and decline. When? The results of this will be significant changes in the world. How rapidly will this occur - will we notice? I think these are the keys to it all - how soon and how rapidly - rapid changes cause the most disruptions, and more time to prepare is of course always helpful. But I am very dismayed that there is no big effort by society to figure out he answers to these questions. Are we just too early in our concerns?
So what to do on a personal level? Keep my eyes open, gather data, try to understand and not get carried away. Try to make changes in my lifestyle that will leave my family better positioned. Make no assumptions about what the future holds, what is a safe investment and what is not. And try to have confidence in my own abilities to adjust to whatever comes. And try not to spend so much time reading TOD that I miss time spent with my kids!
BTW, Ruppert has a link to a Peggy Noonan article over at FTW. I'm no fan of her's, but it's a good description of a national mood I sense as well.
"In the end it all comes down to the details." Not when the problem is a paradigm shift. Our entire system of debt/money creation depends on annual 2% economic growth--not the other way around. Consider what happens of supply restraint stymies this growth--money disappears. We have never lived through such a pertubation.
Lack of FOOD is the biggest single catastrophe that looms. I was recently in an Oakland Safeway where half the shelves were bare due to a trucker strike. An eerie experience with all the fluorescent lights, humming refrigerators, milling people, and almost no food! China has so wrecked their own ag that they are now gross importers of grain for the first time ever. Price of bread? And grain is extremely sensitive to rising temperatures. Scientists estimate that every 1 degree increase causes a 10% loss in grain yields. Now mid-west farmers are howling about the tripling price of artificial fertilizer (made from NG). Who knows what surpries Global Warming is cooking up for us--especially considering the latest expert worries that climate can flip in a matter of years.
For my crumb of hope, I look to the sea change in politics resulting from the Great Depression. It was not FDR that originated all the New Deal programs that gave govt a powerful role and reversed the dog-eat-dog business philosophy that had reined (and is back with us). FDR, contrary to hysterical conservatives, was no socialist. He was pushed and prodded by an angry, hungry America to initiate the New Deal. The point is: it took a hard kick in the gut to move the masses politically.
We have become fat and complacent - Stuck on Stupid - as we barrel along toward the A-Pork-Collapse. The question is - when PO really gives a good kick in the teeth - what direction do we take? Is it Last Man Standing/King of the Mountain? Really the only way we can prevent a massive chaotic die-off (you starve without food) will be in a far more socialized environment--accepting various kinds of rationing, parking the personal car for good, implementing policies that equalize rich and poor (for everyone's benefit!), and creation of thousands of community organic garden/farms. I.e, 180 degree turn from modernday capitalist America. Moreover, we have to somehow radically decrease the population. At 6.5 B we have at least 6 times too many people on earth. Without oil and natural gas we can never feed the teeming billions. Better stop here - I was trying to stick on hope.
Greer calls it "catabolic collapse":
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wtv/powerdown/greer.htm
While naturally optimistic, I wonder if we can shift from hydrocarbons to nuclear, and then to solar, quickly enough and smoothly enough to maintain the energy resource (and, hopefully, society)? At any rate, most of us will see how successful technology is in making the transition.
I guess the critical time is right now, because new nukes will not come on line before crude ouput begins to diminish.
We are living in interesting times.
Maybe we should all "step back" a bit and separate the issues rather than blurring them into a massive fog of confusion.
These things do not all logically belong together:
- Peak Oil Awareness
- Energy Shortage Crisis
- Collapse of Civilization.
Keep this in mind:A) "Oil" is not the only form of extractable hydrocarbons or of chemically stored energy.
B) "Oil" is not energy, it is merely one of many methods of storing energy.
C) Collapse of Civilization is rarely due to the "one big thing" (paraphrasing Curly of City Slickers). More often it is due to a rigid society that is incapable of adapting to changed circumstances.
D) There is no shortage of energy.
Planet Earth intercepts a minute fraction of the total energy radiated out into to space every minute by that big fusion pile in the sky (a.k.a. the Sun).
E) American civilization is rigidly frozen in its worship of Adam Smith and the belief that "the markets will provide". It is this religous belief more than anything else that will bring America to its knees. We do not need help from terrorists. We do not need help from bird flu.
F) We are going to do "it" (collapse) all by ourselves, just like the Soviet Union did it all by itself. (Sorry Ronald, you're fantasy space rocks did not knock the Ruskies off their roost. Your Big Berlin wall speech did not trumpet-blast the concrete monolith off its foundations. It crumbled from the other side, from within. It wasn't about "you", it was about "them" and their internal problems.)
G) We are going to do the collapse thing on our own because "we" (meaning the proudly ignorant majority) do not understand that the exponential function (a.k.a. compound interest) and Mother Nature do not mix.
H) We are going to do it because "we" do not yet understand that Mother Nature always wins. It is not a debating issue. It is the way the Universe is put together.
I) Our noises (words) will not change the rules. Other species have come and gone. The gone ones are those that did not adapt --Darwinian style. Whether we stay or go depends on whether we adapt or not. Infinite population growth is not a "negotiable" option.
So let's all step back and not confuse "PO-Awareness" with "Energy" or with "Collapse of Civilization". Yes, Peak Oil is a huge problem. But so is our "unpeaking" Polar Ice Caps. At the bottom of the pile lies our rigid social order, unable to learn and adapt (perhaps).
You mean stick to one at a time or it gets too confusing for the listener? All three are intertwined, we just don't know how it goes yet.
IMHO, "Peak Oil" is just one minor symptom of the bigger disease: Collapse of Our Civilization
The fact that it is hard to get friends, family and neighbors to even listen about PO is indicative of the fact that they are mesmerized by the gold and can't see beyond.
By "gold" I mean that each of them thinks he or she is "special". Each thinks he/she will win the lottery. Each thinks he/she will be picked as the next "American Idol" etc. etc. Each thinks "oil" is not his/her problem and that the "they" out there will solve the problem in the background. (The markets will provide)
Our economy is built on debt, and if it doesn't constantly grow, we can't pay the interest on that debt.
I suspect that's the reason the ancient world considered usury (charging interest on a loan) to be a sin. Cato equated it with murder, Islam allowed commerce but not usury, a Jew who charged another Jew interest would have all his possessions stripped from him. And Jesus wasn't too keen on "money-changers." In a steady-state economy, it would be awfully hard to repay interest.
http://www.museletter.com/archive/149.html
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic1362.html
It's called "Debt-based money explained."
From elsewhere:
"Quote:
It would be nice if peak oil aware types come up with their own counter sound bite type arguments that resonate with the public.
The counter argument has been around for years. Campbell, Laherrere, Deffeys, Simmons, and others note that new technology cannot put more oil in place than geology did. A finite resource is a finite resource, and the mathematics of exponential growth of production rate will always guarantee that the depletion date will be a lot sooner than the cornucopians are able to comprehend.
tinnerman"
http://p088.ezboard.com/fdownstreamventurespetroleummarkets.showMessageRange?topicID=15368.topic& ;start=1&stop=20
We are a combination of genes and our experiences. A "classic outsider" like Michael Ruppert was a policeman dealing with narcotics gangs. Why ridicule him for expecting the worst?
This is from Jay Hanson, who years ago did most of the PeakOil heavy lifting. He started Dieoff.org. He doesn't do conferences.
"(please forward to interested lists)
Recall that President Jimmy Carter was moral, understood energy (he was a nuclear engineer), AND he understood "limits to growth" (GLOBAL 2000, 25 million copies).
President Carter's experience shows quite clearly that unless some horrible disaster strikes us which neutralizes our Constitution, our government is powerless to change "business as usual". In other words, our Founders locked us in a rail car with a giagantic, insatable parasite -- that consumes 90% of our natural resources ("the market") -- and sent us racing down the track towards a horrible, country-destroying collision with thermodynamic laws. All we can do now is to start digging personal fallout shelters and wait for the inevitable gene/thermodynamic collision.
Jay" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_dieoff_QA/message/4735
To find a path to the other side of Peak Oil and survive will take a combination of trillions of individual acts. The mass of humanity are not engineers and scientists, so here those with management and "people" skills become supremely important. How to convince enough people to choose both the common good and their own self interest?
Point #1: It is a fallacy to believe that Dilbert and other "engineers and scientists" think "rationally". If Dilbert were rational, he would not have chosen a line of work that enslaves his ass to Catbird's whims. All human beings are irrational. To believe otherwise is to put yourself in a state of denial.
Point #2: Those with "management skills" are not going to save us. Part of their indoctrination into the Masonry of Management was a complete brain cleansing in the dogma of Adam Smith. As far as "management" is concerened, there is no problem. The markets will provide. Technology (a.k.a. Dilbert & friends) will save us.
So it's all up to you.
OK, not you alone.
Us.
We need to figure out how to alert the other, also irrational, humans that PO is a problem.
We need to come up with a new mentally-manipulative method (a new religion?) that encourages the masses to do the right thing rather than the selfish thing.
Anybody with ideas out there?
Anybody .... ?
This somewhere point is the adoption of Christian Religion by Roman empire which started using the way all states use religion - to justify the current regime.
It would be interesting what kind of twist will have to be made by the state when it faces the need to adopt the Peak Oil paradigm, being in fact a private case of the more general sustainability theory (or idea or whatever you may call it).
We need to come up with a new mentally-manipulative method (a new religion?) that encourages the masses to do the right thing rather than the selfish thing.
Anybody with ideas out there?
Anybody .... ?"
I should have left it people skills. And managing humans, not management. And scientists because they can think rationally ...as per 2nd law of thermodynamics is not at present optional. As in how do we go from asleep at the wheel to wide awake fast?
In a fantasy future as presented by the TV series Star Trek there is no money. Hard to imagine. We are firmly placed in our hierarchy of vested interests; with our consumer not citizen brainwashing. The dogma of the market is inculcated into us. Those with the most money call the shots. This is what Mike Ruppert meant by the remark that failing to change the way money works precludes any change.
The wisdom of crowds is just a step away from mobs, will groups make better choices? Maybe small groups will.
Humans are rational in some ways but not always, the mind does not always rule the heart, or our greed. We can even seem irrational when we can see perfectly what is happening but seem powerless to do anything about it. A train takes time to stop if hurtling toward a bridge that is out. We may learn the bridge is out and try to stop the train but cannot in time. On the surface it looks irrational but we see the coming consequences with a calculating rationality, and yet know what we do will not be in time and the train continues to hurtle forward.
Despite the possibility it is to little to late, we will still try to stop the train, in hope. I am doing my part, not as a scientist, but as a manager and am surprised with the line of posts. It seems to partition people into types or an us and them but it is us and them together on the train.
No manipulation is needed. I saw the truth and changed. I am seeing others changing and questioning more. Continue to tell the truth or what you believe and others can judge for themselves... and change.
Good answer.
Our "energy situation" is not a train with mass and momentum.
On the other hand, our society does have mass and momentum in that so many people are "indoctrinated" into believing incredible things like: "The Markets will provide." and "Technology will save us".
We need to develop a Critical Counter-Mass: enough people to shout the other way. Maybe then, the engineer in the locomotive will start applying the brakes instead of pumping the throttle for more "growth". Choo Choo whew !!!
And what we the masses were taught about how to act is the kinetic momentum that keeps us rolling with maximum inertia toward the precipice. Worry not. Move to Suburbia young family. The Markets will provide.
If set to grow and take over values being established with centuries a crash with our true God (Nature) is of course inevitable. The final battle will be with ourselves :)
Example: Detroit corporations lobbied to have SUVs declared to be light trucks, exempt from many fuel economy, safety, and emissions standards. Congress complied. Individuals bought SUVs in enormous numbers. Each group was self-led, acting in what they perceived their own best interest to be. Result: huge gasoline and steel consumption, more emissions, lots of rollover and collision deaths, Ford and GM dependent on a class of vehicles probably doomed by high gas prices. So:
--We have many easy technical improvements to save oil, but no real home runs that will come anywhere close to fixing the problem.
--We also have no political leadership on this issue anywhere in the world. Consider the political focus that we've seen on H5N1 bird flu to the amount of attention peak oil receives.
--And there is very limited social leadership on the peak oil issue as well. The world has far more concern about whales, fur seals, nuclear power plants, GM food ...
Peak oil will result in a massive market failure, and by definition the markets can't fix a market failure. If we want a soft landing, we'd better develop some leaders.
But their allegiance is to the country they live in, hint it's not America.
Which remote control do you think linked into the Bulge in the Back during those 2004 election debates? Do you honestly think it was someone who had the best interests of the American people at heart, or some other folk?
No, I'm not into conspiracy theory.
I'm into brainwashing theory.
We have been brainwashed, or "indoctrinated" if that softer word makes you feel comfy. We live in the Matrix. We consume oil. We keep growing new roadways and paying for them via taxes. Our programmed behavior helps somebody. Hint: it ain't us.
Treat the collection of "Peak Oil" facts and opinions as ideas -- not ideology. Otherwise, its too easy to get in a mindframe of "debunking" any new fact that does not fit your ideolgoy. And that new fact just may be the one bit of useful information that could have been invaluable to you.
.
Higher prices are killing new projects, not generating them, the opposite of what free market thinking would have predicted.
No, no direct mention of Peak Oil. But fingers are starting to point in that direction.
Chevron is running those WillYouJoinUs ads round the clock.
I'm at home with a family member.
The guys in the dessert come on the tube.
One goes down the hole with the dipstick.
Comes back X hours later.
It's at half-past-empty.
The voice over comes on.
We will burn more and faster than we ever did before.
End of TV ad.
I ask the mesmerized family member, what did that mean?
Huh? What did what mean?
the humble toilet paper roll...
who amongst us has not used it at least once?
wink... most prefer to use its daily,
on a regular basis, in a manner that is
shrouded
in secrecy.
The young and or ignorant with out a thought
assume there will be T.P
when they need it.
I eye the roll it is still full.
later... I eye the roll it is half gone!
I eye the roll there is enough to fill my needs.
I sit upon my throne and attempt the deed.
I reach for the roll of little heed,
what is this upon my finger?
depleted...
can i not with only three sheets
finish this job
paper work completed!!!
So - somebody grab me another roll.
oops ! no one home but, I ...
you can make up the rest of the story from here.
My kingdom for a diaper wipe !!!
adapting ain't pretty
Think small, think fast, peace
Why is life like a roll of TP?
It seems to run out faster near the end.
A flock,no make that a swarm of locust,
a really big black cloud of them are airborn
leaving behind a barren waste land freshly devoured.
When one locust says to the other,
"Hey you know we're gonna eat it all and then what?"
second locust yawns and answers,
"yeah I know but, thats what we (locust) do!!!"
point... ouch... a locust gotta do what locust gotta do.
I don't wanna be locust !!!
Think small, think fast, peace
Many excellent posts in this thread ... too many to decide which to reply to!
All pessimism is fully justified until there is widespread acceptance of the reality of overshoot, and effective policies to bring about population reduction (by which I mean incentives to reduce birth rate, and reduction in immigration where that is a major factor, as in the U.S.). (And I doubt this will happen: too many people are incapable of thinking rationally in this sphere. But we should be trying to reach all those who can.)
No economist's handwaving argument that population is not a problem should be accepted as long as the world is living on capital - fossil fuel, fossil water, and virgin land (think burning rainforests). I was going to say, the burden of proof should be on their side, but it is not really possible to prove an assertion that 6.5 billion people can live sustainably on this planet without actually doing it - and climate change will step in to make everything much more difficult.
Here is my compilation of some of the big picture insights:
1. "[Slow Collapse] ... in the long run, is probably worse. It will give us a lot more time to burn ever dirtier coal, cut down every tree" (link)
2."We aren't a country similar to the 1930s, when a lot of people lived on farms ... fairly self-sustaining. People in those days tended to save for rainy days." (link)
The same culture was mostly successful elsewhere in Polynesia. There might have been exogenic environmental changes. The island is very far from the Polynesia proper and the Polynesian culture and economy did involve lot of contacts with other islands. Extremely isolated communities are generally in danger to degenarate or die out.
Eastern Island is an interesting and also tragic story, but probably there was no way to avoid it. This is not in any way encouraging - the consequences of stupidity or distorted social systems could be avoided, but if these things have no relevance here - what then? If we have no way of knowing before it is too late?
Peak oil just happens about now because there is this much oil in the ground. If it were half that much or double? Before Hubberts time nobody really knew. Research on fusion energy started 50 years ago. At time most scientists believed that it would be in commercial use within that half a century. Nobody has been very stupid. Now the task is to make the best of the situation.
Diamond does note that one reason Easter Island was so hard-hit was that it's far from the equator - a different kind of island than most of Polynesia, in a colder, less hospitable climate. But other islands with similar problems were supported humans sustainably for thousands of years, and other more typical Polynesian islands suffered dieoffs worse than Easter Island's.
Diamond discusses this in detail in his book, Collapse. One thing he takes pains to point out is that "primitive" peoples were no better, and worse, than we are. They are exactly the same. We're fooling ourselves if we imagine that they were "noble savages," somehow in touch with nature in a way we aren't. We are also fooling ourselves if we think we are somehow superior, and would never do what the Easter Islanders did.
This is probably my favorite part of the essay:
Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.
The Easter Islanders didn't intentionally cut down all the trees on the island. They weren't stupid. But they ended up doing a stupid thing.
When they were cutting the second third they were confident that they always can stop cutting for a while and let the trees regenerate (but life is going on and we need this wood, let's leave that for next year (or generation), OK?).
In the last third, until they did that seemingly insane thing with cutting the last tree they were simply desparate.
I suspect "the tragedy of the commons" had something to do with it as well. "If I don't cut down this tree, someone else will, so I might as well do it."
Humans seem not to the do the right thing. Oh some of us have noble ideas, and noble gestures. But given a bit of unsettled times, watch how we scramble like rats in a sinking ship to get out, harming others to save ourselves.
If the Oil cliff is just a hair to steep, we will only fall all over ourselves and others trying to get that last loaf of bread on the store shelves.
I see a stagnation of sorts setting in, Maybe its the people know, but it seems to be getting worse, even without the "peak oil" debate, or time frame.
I think we will squander glady. And not even notice till it is to late.
Having read this thread it strikes me that we have only one problem at the heart of all of this. The propensity for humans to strive to reproduce, as is their biological programming, pushes us onwards to greater and greater numbers. The question that needs answering is can WE realistically decide to stop that trend Or will nature eventually correct any overshoot to her own satisfaction.
I think most of us will not be around to see the answer...
http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2003/000034.html
Message: 12
Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 23:18:25 -0800
From: lifeduringwartim@sbcglobal.net
Subject: Michael Lynch vs Peak Oil
[ Jay: I debated Lynch for a couple of months a year or two ago. At bottom, he has only two arguments:
#1. People were wrong about "running out of oil" before.
#2. He just can't believe it.
People who have the ability to reason, know these are meaningless arguments. Nevertheless, they are sufficient to place the herd of "sheeple" back into a coma -- just exactly like Julian Simon did when he was still alive.
I once asked Lynch if he would support a crash effort by the National Academy of Sciences (or something like that) to discover precisely when oil would peak. He was opposed to it. I concluded that Lynch was paid by people unknown to place doubt on the "peak oil" hypothesis. All you need to overcome a bunch of experts with bad news is doubt. Sheeple are extremely easy to control -- just lie and go to a "prayer breakfast". ]
Michael Lynch is perhaps the most vocal and tireless critic of the
'imminent' Peak Oil theory. The article is worth reading as a succinct
summary of his most repeated points. He makes one good point at least,
that the research base for imminent Peak Oil is very small, consisting
primarily of the Hubbert-inspired work of Colin Campbell and Jean
Laherrere of ASPO, Kenneth Deffeyes, Ali Samsam Baktiari (who uses ASPO
data), Richard Duncan, and a few others (see experts at
<http://hubbertpeak.com/experts>hubbertpeak.com <http://hubbertpeak.com>).
The Hubbert style methods are supplimented by the quite different
approaches of people like Chris Skrebowski and Mattew Simmons who reach
similar alarming conclusions. But all in all, the core work on
predicting Peak Oil is done by a remarkably small group of scientists
and researchers. What does give their work some added credibility
however is the incredibly dubious assumptions and methods used by the
international energy agencies, as best summed up in this excellent
article by Werner Zittel et al.
<http://www.energybulletin.net/2544.html> An average high school student
could easily understand the problems, and it is this, as much as the
rising oil costs which has given Campbell et al. a well deserved public
platform in the media.
I find it fascinating that these guys mention that there are so few
people talking about Peak Oil. Every once in a while, I just have to
wonder if I'm a total rocket-fuel genius to figure out that this was
right, or if I'm just delusional. How can it be that I'm so much
smarter than the branch managers of Morgan Stanley I've spoken with, and
a senior American Express executive, etc. Among those that think the
same way I do are a very wealthy friend of mine that can't figure this
out either, a couple of Mensa members I know, and my old hippie lesbian
aunt.
You'd think the Green Party would have this as a huge platform plank for
any election they have. Why is it not in huge red letters on everything
they have?
How is it that we can do the simple math and extrapolate a little, and
99% of the people I know just can't do it. They look at it and then
look away and say No, that's just ridiculous. Can't be. Football.
Is there some kind of gene for... forecasting? Applying logic? What is
it we're doing here?
Hey I don't know about you, but I'm special. I going to live forever. Fame. --It's called "denial".
Almost all human creatures do it.
Kind of hard to go on without denial.
Therfore, if someone pops the Peak Oil picture up, the denial screens fly quickly in front of the pictured reality.
Oh Hubbert? He was an old man. He "lost it".
When you look back you clearly see all the prerequisites of the crisis unfolding brightly one after another. And when you also see that the more obvious it becomes the more is the noise e.g. government telling you it is OK. And people listened because this is exactly what they wanted to hear.
In Europe the energy problems are masked behind the Climate Change talk and Kyoto agreement. Not much talk about the Peak Oil, but no aggressive denial either.
I tried to explain it to my collegue but he dismissed it saying that everyone will buy more economical car and it will be all fine. The fact is that people go as deep as they want to and you can not make someone want to face bad realities.
It happens to all of us.
You don't realize how far you have come since you took that first step into accepting that Peak Oil might possibly, possibly be a for-real thing.
It's not a good idea to throw the hot oil right in a friend's face. It might be better to start with nonthreatening analogies, like, "Hey you ever consider that good things never last forever, like the Friday donuts in the kitchen or the coffee in the communal coffeee pot or other such stuff. Some can be replenished, but other stuff cannot .... it's a shame life is that way."
Friend, "What do you mean?"
I have a DVD copy of End of Suburbia. I am going to see if my neighbors will take it and watch.
Personally I believe that PO would be a non-problem if we did not have that inertia, that short-sighted thinking in which you trade tomorrow's problems with today's peace. It's like a very lazy student, so self-confident in his intelligence that does not start to study for an exam until the evening before the day... the difference is that the worst that can happen for the student is going out of school while we can easily go out of history.
I think in Civ3 they included resouce depletion, but you still could easily substitute one resource with another (substitute oil with stone?). This would require much more complex simulation than the game is right now.
http://www.civanon.com/
Seriously though, I was listning to NPR the other day and they were talking about the use of games to promote certain ideas/causes/etc. The Army's game was one example. A game like Civ would really illustrate the effects of resurce depletion well. A pity I don't have the skills in that area.
They would also need to measure how much of the resources you consume are from natural capital and how much are renewable. If you overshoot and exaust a vital non-renewable resource you get a die-off until the system reaches equilibrium at much lower state (renewable production - loss of production due to natural capital losses - losses in corruption and chaos during the transition). Unfortunately the game itself prerequisites growth (because of the competition with other civs) so it looks like it would always lead to humans overshooting their environment.
this summer at an estate/garage sale. the old geezer was into libertarian - JOHN GALT stuff, and had a great collection of old stuff. The P.S mags were from 1939-1965.
The popular science August 1953 issue had a piece on global warming due to carbon dioxide, and almost every issue mentions Atomic power....
At least 50 years ago the science community was declaring
war on the man, but too few voices were heard.
Now the man is sticking it to us!!! Again ...as always
If a vote was taken at this time , a show of hands how many
know that Peak Oil will arrest your lifestyle? And that is followed by will it hurt?
Hurt...because inside we suspect that "The Man" is a machine
capable of total destruction, which is MY own perspective, being it is the will of the machine to self destruct.
50 years +++ and the cycle of violence is no more nearer being broken than before, in MY opinion the slippery slope to disaster is only approaching faster. The T.P roll is nearly gone.
Oh Boy... who gives a damn.
eat your humble pie and shud up!
love your self , love your friends,
keep trying to fly away.
Hey atleast it's not the TITANIC i am aboard.
Meaning there is hope in yet unknown history to be written.
You don't have to pray about it.
You've allready thought about it...good enough.
one day at a time
think small,think fast,peace
fact... we all live until we die
this group therapy thing really isn't working out .
Now i find myself talking to/and answering myself.
all for now friends