[Loki]

Something to keep in mind. Modern civilization is predicated on global trade with resources going one way and consumer goods going the other direction. If you knock enough of the players out of the game the network comes apart.

I don't equate civilization with the global economy. Civilization will persist even if global trade frays at the edges, then suddenly comes undone. The modern global trade regime is a new development, one we've only lived with for a few decades. It's unraveling can be survived (by most of us, at least).

Another Great Depression is bad enough, no reason to fret about silly stuff like imminent human die off

[vtsnowedin]

can only do their best to prepare individually.

There's nothing you can do to prepare, with the exception of a few month of food storage which you should have anyways in case of any disaster.

The idea that you can prepare and "survive" a bottle-neck where 90% of humanity dies leaving behind a brave new world of peace and beauty worth waiting for is nonsense.

You live now! Enjoy life and its opportunities now.

I see nothing wrong of planning and preparing to be included in that ten percent that survive. Certainly if you don't plan or prepare your chances of making the cut are greatly reduced. If you die early the chances of your children or grandchildren surviving are reduced. Enjoy life now but make prudent preps for the next disaster. If they prove to be unnecessary you will be out a few days effort that you might otherwise have wasted on scratch tickets.
Congratulations Pstarr !! Ten years of wading through the trolls to have serious conversations with truly interested people shows a dedication to a goal. I expect you and yours will be in the surviving ten percent.

[ennui2]

I see nothing wrong of planning and preparing to be included in that ten percent that survive

That depends on what constitutes "planning". What kind of sacrifices will be necessary to insure your ticket through the bottleneck, and will the world you inherit after emerging from the doomstead really be worth living to witness?

It's a deeply personal series of questions to ask, and there's no one-size-fits-all answer, just as there's no way to tell people how they should deal with their overall inevitable mortality (as the end can come unexpectedly at any time).

When I took the red pill almost 10 years ago it sent me down a very negative spiral of fear and anxiety, culminating in an anxiety attack about 5 years ago. After that moment I realized that my overall outlook on life was a more imminent threat than peak oil. If I wasn't able to pull myself away from the doomer blogosphere and start making my way through my bucket-list, I'd likely die prematurely just from the cumulative effect of feeling permanently in fight-or-flight mode.

I've also experienced pain just as severe if not worse than doom anxiety from events in my personal-life. I care, don't get me wrong, but it's way too much for anyone to expect to carry the weight of mourning the pending death of the planet, and that's what I felt I was supposed to do, otherwise I was being callous, denialistic, or a co-conspirator.

I think humanity really is incapable of really grasping it, because at our core, we seek to maximize our pleasure while we're here. People, by and large, do not want to live as ascetics or survivalists for that matter. We want to make the most of our lives and that means if we have enough value to society to afford to live above one human footprint, that's what we're gonna do.

I've flown more than I should. Bought more gadgets than I should. Worked jobs with FF ties more than I should. Used more electricity than I should. Driven more than I should...as a red-piller. And if I can't break free of the system, how can I expect the rest of the billions of us blue-pillers to do so?

That's why I think it's hopeless. There's only so much give to people's lifestyles to move towards a lighter footprint before it feels like a real hardship. That's why the Dervaes family are considered circus freaks, by how hardcore they are, but they do what they do via a lot more man-hours than I could ever invest in closing the loop on my food supply. It would be nothing but a net loss financially. Instead I work for white-collar wages and get endless free snacks in the break-room. I do what I do because of where I sit on the economic pecking-order.

Believe it or not, but I have a geodesic greenhouse in my backyard. I never finished building it and when this house sells it will probably get torn down anyway. The reason I didn't finish it is because whatever gain I'd get from stuff growing back there would be mostly symbolic. It would be a place to hang out, sort of a sanctuary, but it would never ever pay back what it cost to buy the kit. And I never would have been able to afford it in the first place had I not made stock option money from the dot coms in the first place. The people who will need to grow their own food the most will be least able to put together those sorts of greenhouses. They probably will be in some flea-bitten apartment anyway--if they're lucky.

So all the feel good green-tech stuff I used to absorb myself in, like a guy who charged his EV-converted beetle from panels off his roof, it's all just rich people's toys. I'd rather they buy those sorts of toys vs. a Lear jet, but they have little relevance to most of us.

[vtsnowedin]

I see nothing wrong of planning and preparing to be included in that ten percent that survive

That depends on what constitutes "planning". What kind of sacrifices will be necessary to insure your ticket through the bottleneck, and will the world you inherit after emerging from the doomstead really be worth living to witness?

It's a deeply personal series of questions to ask, and there's no one-size-fits-all answer, just as there's no way to tell people how they should deal with their overall inevitable mortality (as the end can come unexpectedly at any time).

Yes a personal question or set of questions. I don't think it is a sacrifice to do some prudent prepping. I eat the food grown etc.and if I were not doing that I'd probably have to waste time and money in a gym trying to stay fit. Also I am aware that my own personal timeline is into the final third so I won't be around to see life at the bottom of the cliff. But my children, and nieces and nephews and hopefully a grandchild or two will and I'd like to leave them a viable place to live in a post peak and post population crash world. I don't think life here will be all that odious without fossil fuel and I think in America it will get very expensive but never be totally unavailable.
Basically I see a return to the New England subsistence farming of my ancestors with the knowledge of soil biology, organic fertilization and erosion prevention being applied to improve results. Fuel consumption might reduce to 200 gallons per year with much of that run through chainsaws to provide the wood heat I already use. The house will already run without electricity with the exception of lights so a PV panel or wind generation system is a consideration to avoid dependance on candles.
Devoting a few acres to a biodiesel crop is a possibility to provide tractor fuel but a more likely use will be for a cash crop to buy expensive real diesel. Hay to over winter livestock can be put up by hand if needed but again I think fuel will be available to do it with the tractor. The tractor is just two years old and has a life expectancy of twenty years or more .
If I get around to it I will build a new barn for the livestock and their hay plus a garage or equipment shed to keep all the other equipment under cover. A greenhouse heated with wood is another possibility and might grow another cash crop , perhaps tobacco even though I don't use the stuff.
All things done in a calm deliberate way that does not incur much of any debt.

[Quinny]

Pete
If I see you've posted on a topic I always take a look. Tend to agree with most of the stuff you post - except the crazy gun stuff, but think that's a US hangup

[midnight-gamer]

I see new faces here. Some advise I'd offer to people just learning about weighty subject matter. Take a step away from reading this stuff if it effects your personal life negatively.

The future is not set in stone, we have ideas and some predictions are unpleasant, but it's unhealthy to dwell on the bad stuff too much.

[copious.abundance]

Gee, I almost hate to rain on p-the-starr's little celebration here, but since he started it, I just couldn't help but do a wee little search through some of his, well, predictions. Just for fun.

This one from Jul 05, 2009, is pretty funny. And yes, by now p-the-starr is looking pretty much like that asshat I predicted.

Check out this one from Nov 1, 2007

Peak North American natural gas has occurred.

Oops!

And this one from June 8, 2009 is my favorite

I am not predicting much of anything,

Oh really? I'd be more than happy to point out how many times recently you've told us:

1) We are past peak

not a prediction. We are.

So you see, 10 years - or certainly at least 5 years ago - p-the-starr thought we'd never see a new record in oil production, he thought unconventional oil and gas would amount to nothing, he thought (or at least hoped!) the economy would never recover from the recession, and so on, and so forth. And guess who kept telling him he was wrong? (sorry, I do not give autographs)

[Pops]

Luckily all that oil you found came in and we're tooling around burning 50¢ unleaded.

[efarmer]

Paleo Bacon Fete? You're out there partying and some poor caveman
is walking around looking for where his hog went.

[PeterEV]

Hi Pstarr,

I think we will all finally wake up when we get hit across the head with a 2 by 4. Some of us are already PO aware and are doing things to mitigate our circumstances. I see more people riding bikes and scooters as well as taking the bus. My town is putting in a lot more bike lanes and trails. There is hope.

A mad dash into mitigation would clog up the solar/insulation/etc. pipelines. Denying it gives the PO aware time to do things. More people will peel off the denial meme as the messages gets through.

I look at the amount of time my wife and I have left and we see there are predictions of pumping 65 Mbod in 2030. More walking, riding bikes, scooters, EVs, solar heating, PV and conservation will enable us to contract our oil usage as our output declines. There is some time. The numbers are there.

I look at WWII. Back then, anybody who was looking closely saw WWII coming. Did we wait until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? No. Those who saw this coming were making plans and preparing. There were deniers back then too. When the first Japanese "2 by 4" hit, we were still behind the power curve. We refocused and got the job done. That's my optimistic scenario for PO.

Here in the SE USA, we are blessed with a lot of sunshine and mild temperatures; enough to heat our homes, and provide power to an EV. Some things are already done. There is much more to do.

I was reading where GM has made progress on a Lithium Sulphur battery that holds 5 to 8 times as much energy/kg as a regular Lithium Ion battery. For a Tesla, thats at least 5 x 265 miles or 1325 miles. After 600 cycles of testing, it had only lost a small amount of its capacity. For a Tesla, this translates into about 800K miles which is a lifetime of driving. To me this is a game changer and will allow a lot of overnight energy storage and/or EV miles.

There is a company called Semprius, a start up, that is gluing PV cells that respond to different wave lengths of light in hopes of achieving conversion efficiencies above 45%. If they are doing that, I know others are also doing similar research and development. We see the problems ahead and there are good people working on potential solutions. There is hope.

In the meantime, I would suggest we address our own post PO needs while spreading the message. There are more and more coming over to the PO side each day. Avoid the rush.

Please make a wish and blow out a few candles for us all. Take care.

Ex Long Islander who's father also commuted on the LIRR.

[Keith_McClary]

I wasn't going to bother oilfinder, but you wasted years of our time mis-reporting new finds and lying about reserve growth. Screw you.

Mostly his time.

I'm told that in the Arctic they wont even drill a prospect unless it looks like over a billion barrels. OF had trouble finding press releases touting that much.

[PeterEV]

Hey Pstarr,

I was as down as you about 10 years ago. GM had killed the EV1, lots of GW deniers, and too much BAU. I fought them. I'm going solar and the numbers are working for me. I figure I can generate about 95% of my winter time heat energy. Maybe that is too optimistic. It is going to cost $$s but if we are running out, what else is there? I also run the numbers to see if there is a payback. 30 to 40 years is a long time but the number is positive. It can be a lot less by refueling an EV.

I have no illusions that things can get rough but part of getting through this mess is preparing -- mentally. The 23rd Psalm has always been there when times have gotten tough but I am not eat up with religion. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want..." Some think a Smith and Wesson plan also helps.

I ran some numbers where I asked the question (and without political overtones): What would the $1.7 trillion spent on the Iraq war buy us toward energy independence? I wrote this a while back:

In some ways, this is a “no-brainer”. For instance, the purported cost of the Iraqi War so far has been $1.7 trillion (1.7 x 10^12). Disregarding whether we should have been there or not, what those funds buy us in terms of installing solar panels for recharging electric vehicles? What does a “back of the envelope” set of calculations indicate as to whether such an investment would be viable and possibly pursued further?
Assume for discussion purposes:
1) Each panel is rated at 250 watts. (Ref: http://www.suncityenergy.com/solarpanelratings/) This is in a common size (+/- a few watts). The rating assumes a standard irradiance of 1,000 whr /m^2.
2) Each panel costs $1250 installed which is $5/watt for a commercially installed panel.
3) Each panel receives an average of 2 kwhr/m^2/day. This is doable in almost all parts of the lower 48 States and Hawaii in December, the worse month for solar over all. The Puget Sound - Portland (OR) and Alaska areas are the two exceptions. Most areas referenced below are well above 2 kwhr/m^2/day; some with a factor of 3 or greater.
(Ref: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/ns ... book/atlas)
4) How far will an electric vehicle go using 1 kwhr of electricity.?
• Pickups can travel roughly 2 to 3 miles.
• Sedans can travel roughly 3 to 5 miles.
• A Tesla Model S with an EPA rated range of 265 miles with a 85 kwhr pack onboard produces a calculated average about 3 miles per kwhr.
• A range of 3 miles per kwhr was used below as an average
To derive the amount of mileage that can be driven in a day electrically, the above panels and factors were multiplied together like so:
$1.7 x 10^12 * 250w panel * 1 kw * 1 hr * 2 kwhr sol m^2/day * 3 mi
$1250 panel 10^3w 1 kwhr std m^2/day kwhr
This produces a result of 2.04 billion miles.
How does this equate to miles driven per day using an equivalent gasoline powered sedan?
Assume for discussion purposes:
1) The USA uses 20 million Barrels of Oil Per Day (BOPD). In recent years, this figure has decreased to about 18 million BOPD.
2) Each barrel of oil can be refined to produce 18 gallons of gasoline. This is close to the actual production figure.
To derive the amount of average car miles that can be driven in a day using gasoline, the above factors were multiplied together like so:

20 million BOPD * 18 gallons of gasoline/BOPD * 20 Miles/Gallon = 7.2 billion miles/day

We drive roughly 7.2 billion miles per day.

21 million BOPD over 7.2 billion miles driven per day produces a rough factor of 3 (x10^-3). If we multiply 2.04 billion electric only miles driven times this factor, we would equate this to using about 6 million BOPD. This is roughly the amount of our oil imports.
While a $1.7 trillion dollar investment in solar panels will not be a substitute for all the oil we use, it would likely reduce our energy consumption by 6 million BOPD; enough for us to be ‘energy independent’.
How long would it take to pay this investment off?
If electricity, through net metering, is $1.00 per 10 kwhr and gasoline is $4 per gallon, and a vehicle can be driven the same amount of miles on either 10 kwhr of electricity or 1 gallon of gasoline, the difference is $3.00 which would be allocated to paying off the $1.7 trillion dollar investment.

We use 360 million gallons of gasoline a day, (20 million BOPD * 18 gallons/Barrel). $1.7 x 10^12/(0.360 gallons x 10^9 * 3) = 1.574 x 10^3 days or 4.31 years. Not too shabby.
This is a very simplistic scenario where a lot of details and other costs that have to be worked out such as the cost of a pack; electrical storage, production, and transmission issues; (in)efficiency issues; weather related issues (the sun does not always shine); and utility regulatory/business issues. The bottom line is that this looks like it is doable financially with potentially solvable issues.
****
The numbers are conservative but they give me more hope that we can transition to a solar based era.

After that, GM announced that their scientists have found a way to store "5 to 8" times the amount of energy in a Lithium Sulphur battery as compared to a converntional Lithium Ion battery. If this is so, then this is a major game changer. The battery will be cheaper and use a lot less Lithium per kg. To give you an idea of what this means, a Tesla model S would be able to go 1325 miles on a charge instead of 265 miles. Their 85 kwhr pack would store 425 kwhr. To put that into perspective, before my solar installations, I was using about 1200 to 2200 kwhrs/month. So this pack would be able to store a 1/6 to 1/3 of my **monthly** usage before solar. Enough to cover a lot of cloudy days and still drive (or bike) to pick up a gallon of milk

I am a lot more hopeful than I was 10 years ago but I am reminded that the results of a rain dance is all in the timing...

[PeterEV]

Hey Again Pstarr,

You said: "Especially since I see no basis for the slow decent post-peak. EIA (or is it IEA?) reminds us that currently producing fields (in aggregate) decline 6.7% per year. (and shale much faster). I just don't see 65 Mbod in 2030."

Predictions are all over the map. I just read where oil was discovered under the Kara Sea. I also know that the Fischer-Trope process can be used to create gasoline from coal. During WWII, Germany fueled their tanks and planes with it. I am not worried about the 65 Mbod figure. After the Japanese bombed Peal Harbor, we turned our economy on a dime (rather wide dime). Everyone was mentally "at war" by the evening of December 7th. We can do the same. It takes leadership and acceptance. Right now, I think the PTB want to get the last bit of profit out of selling spark plugs but if they want to stay relevant in the future, they have to build EVs. Kia just announced that they are coming out with an all electric Soul. VW is beginning to sell electric Golfs on the West Coast. Every major manufacturer is delving into alternative propulsion. They see the writing on the wall.

It is late in the petro age and early in the solar age, but people are waking up to the fact that we have to transition. I used to think we couldn't or wouldn't. I am growing more confident that we can. I hope that I can convey that to you.

[jato]

I am checking in for my 10 year!

Hello fellow PO.com veterans!

[Pops]

Woah Man, almost 6 years!

[ennui2]

Here is the thing about going solar, etc...

Anything you do to green your house, while good, ignores one pertinent fact. If you don't own your house free and clear you are counting on having your job so you can continue to pay your mortgage. If the first casualty of collapse is the economy, you will lose your job and your home in the process. Utility bills will be irrelevant at that point and you will huddle in some flea-bitten apartment and bag groceries or clean bedpans in an old-folks-home for a living.

You see what I mean? This tunnel-vision exists where people think everything in their life will remain as it is except really expensive gas or heating oil bills. It is this self-serving caricature of doom where you can somehow buy your way out of doom where you can then safely watch Rome burn from the comfort of your white-collar cubicle. It won't work that way. The economy will tank and people's earnings will tank with it. So you have to look at where you are most vulnerable in your month to month expenses. That means debt and the #1 source of debt is your house.

The top prep is to get out of debt, which runs headlong into the desire by preppers to whip out the credit-card and tank up on green gadgets.