[Revi]

I think I went through the stages of grief a long time ago, but I am still dragged back into them from time to time.

[Revi]

The stages can be abbreviated to 5 quite easily.

The first stage, Shock is something we have all had to deal with when we heard about Peak Oil.

The Denial stage is when I got a big truck and tried to put the reality out of my head.

The Anger stage is inevitable, and most of us have been through it, but the vast majority of people are still either on the first two steps or haven't gotten to them yet. When they all get angry it could get ugly!

Bargaining is the stage I just left. I felt that if I built a better electric car, or got solar panels, grew a bigger garden, etc. that it would save me and mine. I began to realize that there is nothing that can be done to avoid our fate.

Depression is the state that I am still in from time to time, but that stage where we really feel powerless to change our situation. I think I am emerging from this into the next stage now.

Testing is where we seek realistic solutions. I guess I am around here now...

Acceptance is a hard pill to swallow, but I am getting around to it.

How about your journey? I first found out about peak oil around the year 1999 or 2000, so it's been at least 15 years...

[Paulo1]

Been about 10-12 years for me. I used to a lot more freaked out about it than I am now. Today, I am in the testing stages doing my preps as a matter of lifestyle and getting ready to adapt to whatever. For years I was worried about tools and stores, scrounging hand tools, buying 50 lbs boxes of galv. nails, deck screws, etc. I even 'borrowed' a roll of plastic bags to use as bread bags. Over the years I have gotten more relaxed about it all because my position has modified/matured.

I live in Canada. I am quite sure we will always have a base supply of fossil fuel products even if the Govt has to step in and exert some kind of crisis control. We currently produce just over 4 million bbl/day and export to US slightly more than 1/2 of that. While new projects are currently mothballed, prices will eventually rise to make modest improvements viable. We will have enough oil for transportation, even if it becomes more basic and constrained. Under NAFTA we are still required to export to US what we do now, but trade agreements come and go and NAFTA is unpopular in both countries right now. Screw NAFTA. The exports might stop, Keystone XL was stopped, anyway, and any excuse will do. We have enough food, water, and land. Canada (and my family) will be fine going forward as far as I can determine.

I bought a brand new Stihl professional saw if that is any indication, but don't plan on too many more purchases. I have been thinking about replacing my 30 year old Toyota PU with a used mini-truck from Japan; either a 3 cyl diesel or a 660 cc gas engine. I am waiting for my truck to burp before pulling the trigger.

If the Market keeps tanking, or the housing bubble bursts (as it should any day now), I don't really give a damn. I think those players are absolutely nuts and due for a spanking, anyway. We'll be okay in Canada. Guestimate lifestyle at maybe 40% of what it is now for most folks. The dining out and air travel vacations will come to a grinding halt for current profligates.

[GHung]

I never went through the "stages", I guess because my parents saw this coming in the 60s-70s, and I was reading stuff like Limits to Growth as a teen, not to mention studying in the well-into-collapse Soviet Union. We started on the family homestead @1972, and have had a quiet certainty about peak everything for decades. Time-frames didn't matter much, but every "progression" our economy has gone through since I was young confirmed, in some way, that infinite growth and progress were the pipe dreams of non-systemic deluded thinkers, especially the political and investment classes.

I've literally travelled around the planet a couple of times, and nothing I saw gave me hope that humans would do anything more than attempt to grow their numbers, their consumption, and the consequences of unchecked economic expansion. Along the way, folks like Albert Bartlett and Joseph Tainter thoughtfully added to my conviction that our current human civilization had an expiration date, whatever that date may be. Maybe my initiation was as early as the duck-and-cover days of my childhood, and a strong sense of history didn't boost my optimism much.

The "stages of grief" are born from one's expectations. My expectations have been very different from those of my contemporaries, and generally unaffected by the bullshit narratives my society, and species, expects me to live by. In spite of all the good things about humanity, we're basically a clusterfuck specie with no over-arching hivemind to guide us. We've repeatedly created grandiose stories and 'mandates' as to how we're supposed to behave; how to conduct our affairs; then invariably proceed to ignore those, collectively. As our population continues to explode on a shrinking planet, the math is about as simple as it gets.

Welcome.....

[Lore]

The problem is not where you're at, but the rest of the worlds population. Most people haven't even reached the first stage yet.

[Pops]

LOL, I find it hard to believe you all are grieving anything. Every few month for 10 years one of us declares peak and collapse imminent.

Storage is full to the brim globally and the price is lower than any time since this board has been live and yet there are more peak threads active now than ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA

[GHung]

@ Lior: The problem is when you let it be a problem. Again, it goes to expectations, and there's little I can do about what expectations the rest of humanity has. The hard part is letting it go.

[pstarr]

The problem is not where you're at, but the rest of the worlds population. Most people haven't even reached the first stage yet.

Then it is shock and anger on a massive scale. I can hear it now, "nobody told me", and "they said it could never happen", and "I thought we has scale gasoline" (hint: shale), and "can't we make more?", and "what's crud oil?", and "why are you telling me now. We have to go out and I am changing. Where's my Spanx?"

and that is only the first stage.

[Tanada]

LOL, I find it hard to believe you all are grieving anything. Every few month for 10 years one of us declares peak and collapse imminent.

Storage is full to the brim globally and the price is lower than any time since this board has been live and yet there are more peak threads active now than ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA

Yeah pretty much. With storage nearly full up to the brim even if we declined 1,000,000/bbl/day from 1/1/2016 to 31/12/2016 we would hardly notice, and that isn't even counting the additions coming in from Iran through the year. At this point it would take a massive event or an agreement between producers to set a price to cause much to happen in the short run.

[GHung]

LOL, I find it hard to believe you all are grieving anything. Every few month for 10 years one of us declares peak and collapse imminent.

Storage is full to the brim globally and the price is lower than any time since this board has been live and yet there are more peak threads active now than ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA

Gosh, Pops, consider it a hobby. And some of us see "storage full to the brim" as a symptom; not as salvation. Those of us who look at a bigger picture (peak everything), realize that peak oil, or even the glut, as just one more sign that our collective behavior hasn't changed at all, and is unlikely to until the "Great Forcing" comes about. What the current glut says to me is that we're as determined as ever to keep burning shit, and a lot more of it. Seeing that as some sort of positive thing is a bit grotesque from my point of view.

[pstarr]

LOL, I find it hard to believe you all are grieving anything. Every few month for 10 years one of us declares peak and collapse imminent.

It's not just one of us.

Storage is full to the brim globally and the price is lower than any time since this board has been live and yet there are more peak threads active now than ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA

So what. Short-term storage is anything but a macro indicator, statistical noise that does't reflect ELM, TOD, EROEI, or TEOTWAWKI. Jeez but I thought you knew that

[Cog]

We were always going to burn all the oil regardless of price. Now we can at least happily motor on knowing that any oil shortages are not apt to develop any time soon. Revel in your time.

[ennui2]

So what? So peakers need to go through their own grief cycle before they can actually acknowledge the current situation at ground level rather than continually trying to shrug it off.

[pstarr]

We were always going to burn all the oil regardless of price.

You obviously don't understand how chaos and war impacts oil production. There will be plenty of crude left over for Alcanivorax borkumensis.

[Pops]

Gosh, Pops, consider it a hobby.

No Doubt! lots of those PEAK! posts are mine, LOL

Those of us who look at a bigger picture

Yeah, I know the theme, pessimism=realism, anything else is denial... blah
So let's be real, I'm pretty sure no one here has lost anything so isn't a PO wake a little premature?

This could easily be the beginning of the great contraction, no doubt. THe first leg down could actually head-fake the peak of mankind, "Oh Look! Glut!"

gotcha!

LOL

--
None of us have any idea what we will lose
.

[hvacman]

LOL, I find it hard to believe you all are grieving anything. Every few month for 10 years one of us declares peak and collapse imminent.

Storage is full to the brim globally and the price is lower than any time since this board has been live and yet there are more peak threads active now than ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA

Pops - well, I guess peakoil.com has more threads than ever now because band width is so cheap now. PO.com is the luxury SUV of online forums. We members feel so time-wealthy we can hang out here and write and respond to various arcane and inane posts! We post so much that we are polluting "the Cloud" with hot air, creating digital climate change...perhaps "hot air" is not quite accurate....something more methane-ish...

[Outcast_Searcher]

If you don't include the step where doomers incorrectly claim the peak is nigh many, many times, your list leaves out a big chunk of reality.

[Outcast_Searcher]

If you don't include the step where non-doomers point out that the peak doesn't seem to have arrived yet, given high production, lots of oil in storage, and cheap oil prices, your list leaves out a big chunk of reality.

(Hint: why don't we wait until we see a lot of objective evidence for 5-10 years that the peak likely has actually arrived, and THEN try coming up with a list -- when the grief might actually be appropriate?

[dolph9]

I don't have any grief about peak oil, because I don't like the hubris of the modern world, and peak oil is the corrective.

It's actually going to be interesting to see every cherished political, economic, and social belief torn to shreds. You might think this is going to be really bad, until you realize that we had to go through a similar process after Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, etc.

It's about time we recognize the limits to growth.

[ennui2]

I don't like the hubris of the modern world, and peak oil is the corrective.

Wonderful admission above! This is the fuel that powers the residual doomerverse. It's an ideologically driven hate of BAU that leads to wishcasting (Great word I picked up recently here) collapse predictions regardless of the actual facts on the ground.

This culminates to the "up is actually down!" topsy-turvy Alice in Wonderland logic in which oil prices going DOWN and oil inventories going UP is now the new peak-oil indicator rather than the traditional Mad Max Mutant Zombie Biker narrative.

It's about time we recognize the limits to growth.

I know the long wait is torturous for some, but collapse will come when it's good and ready, not when doomers want it to come. You'll find yourself sucked into one "this is the big one!" mania after another if you insist on "wishcasting" rather than actually studying the issue objectively.