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Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and die

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 10:38:53

baha wrote:The money doesn't talk because the FF industry sluffs off their expenses in the form of CO2, ocean dead zones, and asthma. There is cost to society that is not represented in the price. And yet Solar is still catching up.


This is true and underscores the long held position by environmentalists since more than four decades that the externalities of pollution are shifted over to the environment and future generations.

The big inflection point that is punctuating the change so fast now is that we are in the here and now of deferred consequences.

There are costs. They are here. Money talks. Now let's see if all those still in the old consensus reality that this is an ideological struggle can practice what they have always preached and get with the program. Money talks. The favorite mantra of pro business constituents have to now step up the plate and re assess their long position that business has to come before the environment.

Tomas Regalado, The Republican mayor of Miami is challenging the head of the EPA Scott Pruit who stated yesterday that this is not the time to talk about climate change when those suffering the consequences of hurricane Irma need immediate aid and support. Tomas Regalado, the Republican mayor fired right back and told Pruit THIS IS THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE.

So we see an accelerating shift in the long held polarized positions.

Trump is back in the 20th century on this topic
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby onlooker » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 10:55:50

Yes, in our societies unfortanately, decisions get made on a mostly economic basis. So, now that disasters are becoming more expensive and affecting more people economically, that can serve as a catalyst for change. But at a deeper level our flexibility to make the truly needed change that is to forgo Fossil fuel use is limited because of how central and crucial these energy sources are to our Economies. So, we will be attacking the symptoms of the disease but not getting at the true cause.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 11:52:35

onlooker wrote:Yes, in our societies unfortanately, decisions get made on a mostly economic basis. So, now that disasters are becoming more expensive and affecting more people economically, that can serve as a catalyst for change. But at a deeper level our flexibility to make the truly needed change that is to forgo Fossil fuel use is limited because of how central and crucial these energy sources are to our Economies. So, we will be attacking the symptoms of the disease but not getting at the true cause.


Onlooker, this has been the long held position of many who advocate a major overhaul in our economic, social and cultural system. I think I held this position for quite a long time.

I don't anymore. The inertia of our current economic system that needs to support 7.5 billion does not permit a complete reinvention of our economic system. If our global dilemma was a board game then yes you could sweep all the players off the board and start from scratch.

We can't do that. Change has to happen from within the existing economic paradigm where external consequences will drive and tweak the direction we are headed. We can't however stand on our soap box and tell the world that we need to start all over with another economic , cultural social, environmentally ethical model. It wont work.

Civilization is committed down the road it is on. There are no alternatives. There are however major external forces driving things forward. This process is generational.

If you keep yourself in this place where you focus on how the macro economic system is dysfunctional you will be permanently disappointed.

You know the saying you can't see the forest for the trees. In other words you are so focused on the individual trees (short sighted) that you lose sight of the forest (far sighted).

The opposite is also a problem which is what I am trying to warn you about. Switching it around "You can't see the trees for the forest" In other words your are staying so fixed on the far sighted macro problems that you interpret every economic, energy, political event through the lens of the macro and come to the hasty conclusion that we are fighting symptoms and not the disease. You might miss something with this perspective.

Say for example all these efforts to electrify transportation advances all the associated technologies like batteries etc. and this coincides with continued contraction of fertility rates. Add a few correcting wars and pandemics. Add a few more disruptive technologies and extend this out a couple hundred years and we may very well find some balanced plateau without ever having addressed the macro issues.

Sometimes life happens when you are making other plans. This can apply to a civilization as well.

Chaos is the spice here. Unintended consequences as well. Both good and bad. There is no designer here. Probably better this way.

Think of it this way. Nothing we have today in our global civilization was premeditated. We are all following a momentum established because of a series of unintended consequences.

Believing in a controlling elite is a bit like believing in the invisible man in the sky.

No one is steering this ship. And no one can dictate that we start over from scratch.

We can sing about it but we really can't stop this train from moving

"Stop That Train"

Stop that train: I'm leavin' - today!
Stop that train: I'm leavin' - anyway!
Stop that train: I'm leavin'. And I said:
It won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong;
I said, it won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong.

All my good life I've been a lonely man,
Teachin' my people who don't understand;
And even though I tried my best,
I still can't find no happiness.

So I got to say:
Stop that train: I'm leavin' - oh, baby now!
Stop that train: I'm leavin' - don't care what you say!
Stop that train: I'm leavin'. And I said:
It won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong;
Said, it won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong.

Some goin' east; and-a some goin' west,
Some stand aside to try their best.
Some livin' big, but the most is livin' small::
They just can't even find no food at all.

I mean, stop it:
Stop that train: I'm leavin' - leavin', mm-hmm.
Stop that train: I'm leavin' - I don't mind!
Stop that train: I'm leavin'. And I said:
It won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong;
I said it won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong.

Stop that train: I'm leavin' - leavin'!
Stop that train: I'm leavin' - can't take it!
Stop that train: I'm leavin' - got to be better!
It won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong;
I said it won't be too long whether I'm right or wrong. [fadeout]
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Cog » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 11:55:27

As long as the train is going in the direction that is beneficial to me, I'm cool with it. Just saying.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 12:00:08

The underlying cause of all our problems is population overshoot. Understand that the present state-of-the-art in alternative and renewable energy sources is totally inadequate to support a society of 7.5B created with cheap fossil energy.

As a member of a First World country with even a modest income, you represent the only class of human on the planet who has the luxury of choice when it comes to lifestyle and energy sources. If you use the power grid without replenishing it via renewables, you are a planet-killer. If you own a vehicle into which you pour liquid petroleum fuels and the model year is 2007 or later, you are a deliberate planet killer, because viable EVs ranging in size from lightweight bicycles to busses and trains and ferry boats have existed that long.

Yet most of you are obsessed with the Blame Game. You would blame "Big Oil" or "the Republicans" or "the Government" for the choices you are making to kill the planet. Notice that I did not say that alternative and renewable energy sources are cheap or easy to use in place of fossil energy. It will cost you in both cash and convenience to abandon your energy hog Western lifestyle. But it is up to you.

So do something, don't just talk about it, and you don't actually have any right to complain if you do not clean up your own act.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 12:08:12

Cog wrote:As long as the train is going in the direction that is beneficial to me, I'm cool with it. Just saying.


ANother song comes to mind. I am a rock, I am an island....

Me me me me me. and only me. No ones impressed Cog.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 12:12:11

KaiserJeep wrote:
So do something, don't just talk about it, and you don't actually have any right to complain if you do not clean up your own act.


I agree with human overshoot as the over riding problem. Fine.

That in itself kind of means you can't do much to clean up your act.

I look at it like this. You and I and each and everyone of us are kernels of corn embedded in a turd that is moving through the intestine of human overshoot. The whole demographic dynamic of population correction is a factor of time and generational. Just like you can't force that turd out of a butt hole before digestion is complete you can't really force any real trend change in over population until the turd of human overshoot plays out through generations letting external consequences do the correction.

What can one kernel of corn embedded in a turd really do Kaiser?
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby onlooker » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 12:32:55

Actually Ibon, I am in total agreement. The tangled web we have woven cannot be undone. I think I was just trying to show the main reason . The pillar of our Economies is FF and we as you said are not going risk our survival and lifestyle for the sake of posterity. So manmade CO2 will continued to be spewed no matter what that ultimately signifies for the future habitability of the planet
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 12:34:38

Ibon, it seems to me that you and I have both done a LOT of things to be proud of, in terms of our impact on the environment.

You live in a cloud forest powered by a water turbine. I would guess that your little community has less impact than the average American, driving 10,000+ miles per year and eating out of plastic packages made from petroleum.

Now that I am retired, I am living in a house that would not need the power grid, if I had one of those Powerwalls that baha has. My only use for the grid is a big limitless battery. During the anticipated 90+ degree F heat today, I will run the A/C guilt-free, and still return almost 1500w to the grid while doing so from my solar roof. I need to do laundry and I will use a clothesline. I am already making a list for next week's grocery run. Yesterday I got a new tooth crown glued in and combined that trip with the bakery, the supermarket, and the hardware store. During yesterday's driving the warning light on the gas guage told me I have 4 gallons left, so I will be buying another approximately 18 gallons in October, my fourth tank in 2017.

We made our choices, and not for the sake of convenience or economy. If all our fellow citizens did the same, we would not have the problems we have. The First World CAN AFFORD to renew infrastructuire, we only lack the will.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 13:18:24

Not saying that the folks in FL deserved Irma but of all the states: they are the 3rd largest consumer of gasoline, the 5th largest consumer of NG and the 10th largest consumer of coal. Collectively that ranks those fossil fuel CONSUMERS as the 6th largest direct PRODUCERS of CO2 in the country. Of course not as big as Texas. But with respect to the externalities of the cost of fossil fuel consumption and recent hurricane damage karma seems to have kicked in.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Cog » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 14:03:11

Ibon wrote:
Cog wrote:As long as the train is going in the direction that is beneficial to me, I'm cool with it. Just saying.


ANother song comes to mind. I am a rock, I am an island....

Me me me me me. and only me. No ones impressed Cog.


The deal is Ibon most people are entirely disingenuous about their own selfish desires. Oh they proclaim they want equality and social justice or some other mythical utopia. But in reality, they want equality as long as it doesn't affect them. True poverty and hardship is nothing they really want to share with others. I'm at least honest about the fact its Cog I'm concerned with, and not humanity as a whole.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 14:20:47

KaiserJeep wrote:
We made our choices, and not for the sake of convenience or economy. If all our fellow citizens did the same, we would not have the problems we have. The First World CAN AFFORD to renew infrastructure, we only lack the will.


What you are doing, what Baha is doing, what I am doing, ok, these are efforts that of course are choices that we willfully made. The analogy of the turd though are those inevitable 90% plus who consume because they are not questioning and not choosing just moving along in this involuntary peristalsis. This is the nature of probably all social groups, having this bulk (turd) that just moves along without willful agency. Sheeples or what ever you want to call them. Preoccupied with chasing material dreams, "willfully" living very low frequency lives, dumbed down, not questioning, diminished, spiritually impoverished, with little relationship with the natural world, staying in their mind numbing media and mediocre entertainment worlds. They are truly the peristalsis of human overshoot.

The volume through time and generations will subside. Technologies will get slowly cleaner. Environmental feedbacks will do their dirty work, sometime up ahead, a few hundred years there will be some equilibrium whether it be 1 billion, 2 billion or just 10,000 of us. Whatever.

I agree with you Kaiser that every one of us should be acting to the very best of their ability to have a positive impact.

I go back to that Republican mayor in Miami challenging the new head of the EPA about climate change. One converted climate change Republican politician is worth 10,000 liberal socially and environmentally aware democrats. They represent real impact.
I am focusing on that actually, these forces that dissolve the established polarity.

Of all the symbolic issues that define the political and cultural divide I am betting that climate change will be the first to dissolve away as a polarizing topic since the impacts do not belong to one or another party or cultural orientation. Hurricanes are not racist, not elitist, not republican, not democrat, not anti immigrant, not homo phobic, do not target one's faith, have no isms, etc. etc. :)
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 14:26:13

ROCKMAN wrote: But with respect to the externalities of the cost of fossil fuel consumption and recent hurricane damage karma seems to have kicked in.


All those neighborhoods with no electricity, no air conditioning. They moved to Florida for the sun and the beach and they insulate themselves enclosed in air conditioned artificial environments. Many condominiums and hotels do not have windows that even open.

Sweltering in their karmic retribution for days until the lights come back on. That is actually an excellent way to chisel away against the denial of climate change :)
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 14:28:20

Cog wrote:I'm at least honest about the fact its Cog I'm concerned with, and not humanity as a whole.


Your daughter who flirted with Bernie Sanders is an extension of you, represents your legacy moving forward after you are gone. Her offspring carry Cog forward. Think of them.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Cog » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 14:35:07

Ibon wrote:
Cog wrote:I'm at least honest about the fact its Cog I'm concerned with, and not humanity as a whole.


Your daughter who flirted with Bernie Sanders is an extension of you, represents your legacy moving forward after you are gone. Her offspring carry Cog forward. Think of them.


Young people flirt with liberalism and socialism until reality sinks in. Then they become capitalists unless the left brain-washing overcomes common sense.

The way forward is progress. Economic and scientific progress. Its not regressing to living in a hut and calling it good. Its overcoming nature and making it our slave.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby Revi » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 14:43:08

We need to move beyond using oil as a thing to burn, and use it as feedstock for plastics, etc. There are lots of ways to move people around that are many times more efficient than individual people getting around with the otto cycle engine. The Chinese are preparing for the obvious future, when they will have to figure something else out. Look at other places that are working on it. Scandinavia, India, Quebec, even Dubai and others are already figuring out ways to move beyond oil for a lot of reasons. It may have seemed like the end of the world when trains went from steam to diesel and then to electricity, but they are now going 200 mph and transporting lots of people.

We need to move on. The smart countries are doing so.
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 15:00:50

KJ - You and the others certainly have much to be proud of. But y'all still have benefits made available by the huge infrastructure of this country that many in the world lack. Such as medical care including a ride in a Life Flight Chopper if needed, a local and national protection force that wasn't available to the 800,000 Tutsi that were slaughtered in Rwanda. And the list goes own.

Certainly not begrudging you those benefits. But they are due in large part to the US very disproportionate consumption of the world's fossil fuels. The world would be in a better place if many in this country tried your lifestyles. But would you still have all the benefits you have now if they did? Would you still have a grid available to use as a battery. Did y'all mine and forge all the material used to build your power generating systems? Insulation? Make any of the drugs we old farts tend to be on?

Again what y'all have done is admirable. But how much would have been possible without the infrastructure that exists as a result of our voluminous fossil fuel consumption? Some credit should be acknowledged, don't ya think?
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Re: Death of Peakoil: China looks at plans to ban petrol and

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Tue 12 Sep 2017, 15:21:23

So here is what one does, and the exact actions will be different for every person.

1) Prepare to live in an energy-constrained future, one where energy costs vary from 10X to 100X what they are today. Figure out a place and a lifestyle that allows this, and make it happen.

2) The new cost of transport and agriculture will impact everything you consume, as pretty much all of it is transported by petroleum fuels, from LNG to bunker fuel for a Chinese tanker.

3) One of those new expensive things is food. If you cannot pay 10X to 100X your present food costs, best figure out how to grow or gather your own. But any future based on wild game or fish should be planned with the certain knowledge that there will be 10X to 100X the numbers of hunters and fishermen that now exist.

4) Complete the above actions in the next decade. It's unlikely you will need to do so before then, and likely you won't be able to after that, as everything will be in short supply.

There, I told you. Either take care of you and yours, or decide that you will die without a struggle.

Rockman, I don't disagree with what you said. I benefit from being born in the largest and wealthiest First World nation, as do you. But this country was once populated with hundreds of millions of savages who were still in the Stone Age, before European diseases pretty much depopulated the continent in a time before the theory of germs existed. The USA for all it's promise was also a Turd World nation until WW2. But before that we fought for and won our independance from the European oppressors.

That still is an option for everybody else. You after all get to decide whether to fight or flee and become a refugee. But nothing in the US Constitution says that we must give away our lifestyle and wealth to others. The inscription on Lady Liberty says:

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

....but it's a poem called "New Colossus" and not any founding document or legislative action.
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