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PeakOil is You

THE Limits to Growth Thread

Discuss research and forecasts regarding hydrocarbon depletion.

Unread postby holmes » Mon 09 May 2005, 08:45:01

earthship biotechture utilizing thermal mass principles with local manufacturing and agriculture base. Manufacturing with a utilitarian thought process. Not a flawed bloated greed induced brain dead coma type of thought process. But as Monte says nothing is even coming claose to being done. LOL. Im pretty close to knowing how Ma Nature "works" for the most part.

the status quo should have ended years ago. Intlligent creativity and planning of all industry and developement should have been implemented. But get in that spaceship and go to the other planets. Hit it.
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Unread postby holmes » Mon 09 May 2005, 08:50:02

holmes wrote:earthship biotechture utilizing thermal mass principles with local manufacturing and agriculture base. Manufacturing with a utilitarian thought process. Not a flawed bloated greed induced brain dead coma type of thought process. But as Monte says nothing is even coming claose to being done. LOL. Im pretty close to knowing how Ma Nature "works" for the most part.

the status quo should have ended years ago. Intlligent creativity and planning of all industry and developement should have been implemented. But get in that spaceship and go to the other planets. Hit it.


Oh and forget about the population thing. Its going to kill most of us or our genes on this board. serious killer. YOw! Its growing each day and the landfills of diapers and palstic toys just doenst get smaller. Mommy why are things getting worse? Just pray real hard Jimmy and all will be just fine. as the hoards consume all resourcers and hack people up with machetes.
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Unread postby holmes » Mon 09 May 2005, 08:52:11

holmes wrote:
holmes wrote:earthship biotechture utilizing thermal mass principles with local manufacturing and agriculture base. Manufacturing with a utilitarian thought process. Not a flawed bloated greed induced brain dead coma type of thought process. But as Monte says nothing is even coming claose to being done. LOL. Im pretty close to knowing how Ma Nature "works" for the most part.

the status quo should have ended years ago. Intlligent creativity and planning of all industry and developement should have been implemented. But get in that spaceship and go to the other planets. Hit it.


Oh and forget about the population thing. Its going to kill most of us or our genes on this board. serious killer. YOw! Its growing each day and the landfills of diapers and palstic toys just doenst get smaller. Mommy why are things getting worse? Just pray real hard Jimmy and all will be just fine. as the hoards consume all resourcers and hack people up with machetes.


sorry i just spent 4 days in the wilderness on my 50 acre woodlot surrounded by forever wild land so i have a fresh otlook on the whole doomed society we live. actually met some folks out there and discussed the whole peak thingy.
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Unread postby FatherOfTwo » Mon 09 May 2005, 15:28:37

present their solutions to peak oil..

I’m no expert, but I do believe that I’ve got a pretty firm grip on reality, plus I don’t have an agenda to push and I’ve educated myself a fair bit on the issue - so I’ll offer my $0.02.

The “problem” of peak oil can be defined in many ways, and you haven’t defined what that problem is. If you define the “problem” as maintaining the status quo, which is accurately defined as never ending economic and population growth, then that is a tall order to fulfill. It requires exponential amounts of energy - fusion or some other essentially endless and bountiful supply of energy. (Either that or we have to branch out to other planets, which is so beyond our current abilities it doesn’t deserve any further mention.) So, the energy “solution” for making things work on this planet must be much more energy dense and/or much more bountiful than fossil fuels. It would also need to be an exceptionally clean technology. Instead what we’re going to turn to is a hodgepodge of all of the other fossil and non-fossil fuel technologies out there. And, lucky us, we are going to be rewarded with a fraction of our current energy use and we’re also going to make the planet that much more unhealthy.

If the problem of peak oil is how to prevent catastrophic collapse, then I think most here would agree that the key is obtaining sustainability. Maybe if fusion was rolled out in the next decade we could consider the 6 billion on this planet a sustainable number. Given enough energy we can be very clever and invent our ways around problems (although you won’t see me holding my breath.) But if fusion was rolled out prior to a worldwide recognition of the problem of our runaway population growth, then we would likely continue on our “never ending growth is good” cycle creating a whole other set of problems – peak topsoil, peak water, whatever.

So we need sustainability. Now, we can have some very fruitful discussions about how we maintain sustainability, but if one accepts the premise that our current worldwide population isn’t sustainable without that endless and bountiful supply of energy, then we necessarily must ramp down.

So, we need sustainability, and our current numbers aren’t sustainable, so we need to ramp down. So how do you ramp down? Well one type of way is the forced way through wars, disease, starvation etc. Not fun. Is there a gentle way to ramp down? Sadly I think the answer to this is a resounding NO. Those in power, those with the most wealth have no desire to “gently” ramp down? Why? Because a gentle ramp down necessarily implies having a means by which to equitably and fairly implement that ramp down. Those with the wealth and power would have to willingly give it up. The utopia ramp down would be that everyone on the planet agrees to an equitable distribution of wealth and they would also forgo control of their reproductive systems. I think we’ll all agree how ludicrous that idea is. So what is the utopia-1 scenario? There isn’t one, because at utopia-1 the equitable and fair requirements have necessarily been abandoned. Someone, somewhere is deciding who gets to do what. In reality we all know that those with the most power and wealth will be dictating what will happen and they are obviously going to look out for their own interests. Now let’s throw a few doses of reality into this peachy scenario – how about, oh, religious fanaticism, historical grudges, ideological conflicts etc. What a love fest! I can’t see any scenario whereby we’re going to obtain a pleasant ramp down on the way to sustainability. Wars, starvation and disease are coming - the wars will likely be triggered by resource demands but will likely also aggravate all of the other issues of our time. The million dollar question is, how severe will these wars be? Will those who survive have an environment that isn’t destroyed, and will we be able to maintain some of our amazing advances in knowledge?

To me, there is no solution. It's a reality, deal with it. I’d dearly love to be wrong on this. Can anybody out there logically tell me how we are going to ramp down in a “decent” way??? Please??
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Unread postby smiley » Mon 09 May 2005, 16:26:21

I think a lot of people gravely underestimate the effect of conservation. Let me just give one example.

The current amount of cars is 600.000.000
The annual growth is 3%
The average lifetime of a car is 14 years
The oil production is going to decline by 2%

Let's say the oil peak happens exactly now. Right now the gasoline production is going to decline by 2 percent a year.

Lets assume that every car that is bought from this moment onwards is twice as efficient as the average car on the road now. This is really is not a technological challenge as the average car is more than twice as inefficient as the most economic models on the market.

Nothing else changes. The amount of cars that are sold annually keeps on growing like it did before at 3% annualized.

It is fairly easy to calculate that the limit of sustainability has been delayed from 2005 to 2020. If we decide to buy no more new cars we can push the limit back to 2040. If we all decide to drive a bit less we can push the peak even further. Each 10% we drive less gives us an additional 5 years.

2+2 = 4 even for an optimist.

Now 20 or 30 years isn't much, but time is of the essence here. The fact that the society doesn't necessarily has to collapse at the moment we hit the peak means that we have time to work at sustainability. Because fatheroftwo is right that there ultimately is only one solution, that is to stop expanding.

So if we want we have time, all we need now is the will and the vision. Unfortunately fatheroftwo has a strong point here also. It is doubtfull that our leaders will commit to this cause.
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Unread postby bobcousins » Mon 09 May 2005, 20:22:52

You are looking for a solution, but what is the problem? It is not Peak Oil. Maybe we can solve Peak Oil, but we will then run into Peak Something Else.

The problem is that humans are a dumb animal, who think they are smart. It is in the nature of all animals, from the lowest bacterium, to reproduce as much as possible. The organism is merely a vehicle for replicating genes. The only "purpose" of genes is to replicate. This is what life is. But rather than use his smartness to understand that, he has used his smartness to reproduce as much as possible.

The automatic, underlying assumption, is that increasing population is mandatory. How many humans does the planet need? Does it actually need any? Whatever that number is, it is currently a lot more than the number we can sustainably support with our current technology. The problem we need to address is how to manage with a reduced population.

Ok, maybe we will have a global depression, famine etc. Maybe we will build lots of fission reactors or fusion reactors if we work out how. There will be enough people around to continue civilisation. But that is not the real problem.

The real problem is that in a few thousand years or so we will enter the next glacial period, when ice covers everywhere except the equator. It turns out those scientists predicting an ice age were right, its just that they were off by a few thousand years. An eyeblink on the geological scale.

Burning fossil fuels is causing a small, but measurable blip in the global temperature. When we stop doing that, the Earth will resume its inexorable descent into an icy grip. This has happened many times over the last 2 million years. If there is anyone to make the tally, humans will be on the endangered species list. 1 billion humans? No chance.

It is no concidence that our civilisation has emerged in the warmth of the inter-glacial period. Global warming is not a problem. In fact we need to pump vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere to counter the glacial cycle. Perhaps the glacial cycle started because so much carbon got buried. Therefore, what we need to do is dig up as much carbon as possible and release it into the atmosphere. Otherwise we need to prepare for something a lot worse than Peak Oil. (Anyone read Helliconia trilogy?)

By the way, sorry about the Industrial Revolution. Our bad.

http://courses.eas.ualberta.ca/eas457/Ruddiman2003.pdf
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Unread postby bobeau » Mon 09 May 2005, 20:23:31

I started a thread on this forum and unfortunately it was moved to the Economic section - yeah, it had to do with taxation, but taxation as part of a transitional 'soft landing'.

I say unfortunately cause none of the big guns stepped in

http://peakoil.com/fortopic7708.html

"What if the U.S. government decided to place a heavy tax on fuel for private vehicle use (bringing it more in line with European prices), and used the tax as subsidies for commercial uses?"

If you want to rebut, please at least read the thread first.
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Unread postby smallpoxgirl » Mon 09 May 2005, 20:34:24

jato wrote:
i second the challenge.
anyone who says they should head out to a lesser populated area with a stock pile of food, water, and fire-arms should automaticly be disqualified.


I have been disqualified.

I don't see any solutions. I only see pain. :(

I guess I'm some sort of amalgum of your position and Monte's. On a systemic level, I think that peak oil is a very important and beneficial thing. It is the first sign of hope I've seen for restoring humanity to a state of balance.

On a personal level, I think it's going to hurt like a mother. It will also be good, because the pain and privation will be balanced by a more natural state of existance on the earth and less stupid buracracy. Pain is not always bad. Sometimes pain brings enlightenment.
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Unread postby jato » Mon 09 May 2005, 21:02:29

Pain is not always bad. Sometimes pain brings enlightenment.


True.

Image

Wolf at the door

Once we reach the bottom of the slope and we more or less come back into a sustainable balance with our environment, I will be happy. Unfortunately (for me) I will also be dead. It is going to be a bumpy ride, but I will try and hang on for as long as I can!
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Unread postby jeffvail » Mon 09 May 2005, 21:05:59

A solution to peak oil? I think the first thing is to view peak oil as a symptom of a larger problem: we're using energy faster than it is being accumulated as surplus here on Earth.

Simplistic, I'll agree. The Earth is essentially a closed system--with the notable exception of energy input in the form of solar radiation, some minor donations from asteroids, etc., and some loss of gases and heat to space. I'll ignore for the moment the theory (unfounded, in my opinion, but...) that the Earth's core is a suststained fusion reaction of some sort.

So if we use energy (and complex molecues/substances created by that energy) in excess of the rate at which our Earth system gains this energy, then we will eventually run into a Peak-X situation of some sort or another. The surpluses built up over the last 4 billion+ years will run out. It may take a millenium to reach "Peak-X", or it may have happened last year--that part is actually quite inconsequential (except for the impact on OUR lives)--the impact on humanity will not change no matter which "expert's" numbers that we believe.

Fusion seems to present one solution. Personally I'm not optimistic that it will solve the Peak-X problem, but in theory it could, as the surplus energy could be used to continue to import fussionable materials from outside of Earth, delaying Peak-X virtually indefinitely. This solution banks the future of humanity on the possibility that we can develop fusion power--or a substitutable alternative.

Solution 2 is to evolve to a society that uses surplus energy as it reaches the Earth--passive solar, fuel-wood, etc. Of course, in order to do this, society as a whole will need to change. I have written elsewhere about this. I have even made a few suggestions that may be regarded as "solutions". However, I have also written that I think that it is unlikely that our society is capable of changing paths: hierarchal, integrated societies are evolving entities that are structurally designed to go in one direction. I am not convinced that it is possible to alter the structural course of an industrial society. For that reason, I have recently written about the possibility of instigating collapse. I am not yet suggesting this--in fact, my personal feelings mirror that of a previous post suggesting the desire to fight against this--but I feel strongly that this is a potential solution that must, at a minimum, be discussed seriously. Instigated collapse may be the only realistic route to implementing a solution based upon using passive solar energy to fuel humanity. It may not be possible to wait until a collapse happens on its own, as the rise in human population, the potential environmental damage at that point may have passed a critical point.

Lots of unknowns. A few links:

The Logic of Collapse

Energy, Society & Hierarchy

A Theory of Power (free online version)

~Jeff

www.jeffvail.net
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Unread postby MonteQuest » Mon 09 May 2005, 21:54:31

FatherOfTwo wrote:
present their solutions to peak oil..

I’m no expert, but I do believe that I’ve got a pretty firm grip on reality, plus I don’t have an agenda to push and I’ve educated myself a fair bit on the issue - so I’ll offer my $0.02.


Father, I agree with your 2 cents. Good post. Saves me elaborating. :-D
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Unread postby 0mar » Mon 09 May 2005, 22:51:20

Gather 6 people in a room and shoot 5 of them. Repeat this a billion times.
Joseph Stalin
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. "
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Unread postby NevadaGhosts » Mon 09 May 2005, 23:04:18

Overlyhonest wrote:Massive population reduction.
I do not have the heart, or lack of it to support bringing it on though.
In fact I will stand up and fight anyone who tries it. Haha, how is that for a catch 22


Yes, this is the only true solution. Oh well... 8O
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Unread postby oilcanboyd » Mon 09 May 2005, 23:15:34

Father, I believe you hit the nail on the head, Look at the tools we needed to expand at the begining of the industrial revolution- the start of the peak rise.

One commonalty is the 10 kids or 12 kids to a family. They were needed out in the fields clearing the lands of bush etc for food production. That was the start of energy peak rise. Farm land rapidly expanded because the energy was the horse and mankind. Agriculture slowly declined as machinery was brought in.

So we will have to decline and then learn how to can food and preserve everything in our daily lives like our ancestors did in the beginings.

Make everything last more than one life cycle.
That is not my opinion but my hope anyway.
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Re: Challenge to Moderators and "Experts"

Unread postby BiGG » Tue 10 May 2005, 04:54:07

Graeme wrote:I challenge the ...........



The solution? The first thing is ask yourself whose opinions you should be giving credibility to. Like are doomsayers selling books & videos? Are they just blowhards with no real knowledge other then how to spin a tale filled with generalities? Do they have any real experience regarding the issues they are spinning or are they just repeating information from select others and missing the big picture? Do they really know what they are talking about, where are their credentials?

The next thing I would do is start checking out the many, many opinions of the knowledgeable scientists and others with experience & credentials not trying to sell you a book actually involved in the fields dealing with all these issues & new technologies. They have solutions; it’s just a matter of implementing them. Start here with truly knowledgeable experts like former Senator Jim Rubens

Check out others like Institute for the Analysis of Global Security

It's not that we cannot change, we need change bad and everybody pushing for it. Alternatives exist right now that will not cost US over $5.00 per gallon for gasoline! Don’t listen to anybody spinning tales about how they don’t!
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Unread postby MonteQuest » Tue 10 May 2005, 10:05:44

Please don't feed the trolls!
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Unread postby Battle_Scarred_Galactico » Tue 10 May 2005, 10:13:09

Unless it's with Biodeisel, they love that.
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Unread postby Graeme » Tue 10 May 2005, 18:30:46

I appreciate all comments espceially those by Malthus and Bigg. As expected I got a wide range of comments from ridiculous to sublime. It is hopeful for all of us that a few contributing here are willing to make changes and not perpetuate doom and gloom
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Unread postby Ludi » Tue 10 May 2005, 18:40:59

Some solutions are thoroughly described in Bill Mollison's book "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual"; more solutions in the works of Masanobu Fukuoka, and John Jeavons.
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Unread postby johnmarkos » Tue 10 May 2005, 18:58:00

FatherOfTwo wrote:To me, there is no solution. It's a reality, deal with it. I’d dearly love to be wrong on this. Can anybody out there logically tell me how we are going to ramp down in a “decent” way??? Please??

I finished The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update yesterday. When I was about halfway through this book, I was quite hopeful, thinking something like, "This is an excellent explanation of the resource problems the world faces. They're going to do a thorough analysis of these problems, then provide policy suggestions and concrete ideas for moving towards sustainability." Unfortunately, once I got to the "solutions" part of the book, I thought, "Is that all there is?" I feel myself sliding back towards the doomer camp. Where's groundless optimism when you need it?

On the other hand, I have been thinking that a loss of energy density, if PO were only that, might have a silver lining. The applications of dense energy (such as petroleum for cars and jet fuel) are some of the worst culprits in overshoot.
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