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Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Wed 25 Apr 2012, 21:15:04by Plantagenet
If our society completely collapses it is unlikely to rise again, because all the good deposits of near surface oil and minerals have been totally used up. There is so little left high grade mineral ore left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.
We'd better keep this society going, because there is no way we can start over with picks and shovels and find enough stuff to build another advanced industrial society up from scratch.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Wed 25 Apr 2012, 21:22:47by spot5050
Plantagenet wrote:There is so little left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Thu 26 Apr 2012, 00:45:55by scas
Peoples beliefs dictate reality.
If everyone agrees that we will burn all the fuel, we will probably end up collapsed in a 6+ degree anomaly world.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Thu 26 Apr 2012, 06:21:00by Tanada
Plantagenet wrote:If our society completely collapses it is unlikely to rise again, because all the good deposits of near surface oil and minerals have been totally used up. There is so little left high grade mineral ore left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.
We'd better keep this society going, because there is no way we can start over with picks and shovels and find enough stuff to build another advanced industrial society up from scratch.
A) you need more historical perspective, every culture collapses sooner or later and resets to zero or hand labor agriculture.
B) the Mega corporations only exploit deposits big enough for them to make a massive profit on to pay for all those skip loaders and huge dump trucks. Thousands or tens of thousands of small deposits that are of the type mankind mined by hand exist scattered far and wide because they are 'too small to be economic'. Almost all of those will still be around to be exploited at a later date. Even all the old coal mines that were hand dug in the past with the room and pillar method, then abandoned still have half their coal in the ground. Mining into them from a different direction using different techniques just isn't economical in the massive machine era, but set things at a low pace and take away the machines and Voila suddenly they are valuable to the local population again.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Thu 26 Apr 2012, 16:19:32by Lore
It's not coincidental that the exponential rise in human population coincides with the age of oil. The reset in population after we have depleted most all of the inexpensive fossil fuel resources that can be captured through mass industrialization will certainly be at a level commensurate with what can be pounded out by a few tribes that have rejiggered some of the mechanized skeletons of our past.
The survivors main problem is to overcome the crises coming at them from so many different converging future catastrophic events. Stripped of our once formidable technology it will be like taking a knife to a gun fight.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sun 29 Apr 2012, 09:10:27by ian807
Humans are just nature's way of recycling organic chemicals back into the ecosystem (Sorry, feeling cynical today).
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sun 29 Apr 2012, 09:34:58by SeaGypsy
Biggest waster of compost ever. Flushing it out to sea or down the river all our lives then having our bodies burned because worms creep us out. How bizarre we are.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sun 29 Apr 2012, 11:38:57by DomusAlbion
pstarr wrote:... billions must die to live off the scraps we have left.
And they will, Peter, they will.
We'll also see a return of slave labor. First it will be criminals from local prisons, then the unemployed then who ever is the PTB's favorite flavor of the persecuted.
Can't happen? Just look at recent history. During WWII those people in concentration camps weren't on vacation. They were making things for the 3rd Reich's war effort before they died.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sun 29 Apr 2012, 15:28:47by dissident
pstarr wrote:You two moderators (DomusAlbion, and Tanada) seem to agree that our dismal future will look like The Hunger Games with a wealthy powerful class that controls legions of hungry obedient poor. I kind of lean toward a Mad Max scenerio of complete chaos and population dieoff. My future is more reasonable for many reasons. We are armed. We are angry (and many are suicidal, as per 'Arab Spring') we communicate, and we see what is coming. They will not set up camps. The guards will slink on home.
IMHO there will be many fewer of us in the future living simple lives, with less industrial civilization. The stylish world portrayed in The Hunger Games depends on cheap fuel. I see folks dressed like medieval serfs, picking through their neighbors' orifices for vermin, before things play out in another dictatorship. Those slick costumes require such a fantastically complex industrial infrastructure. Centralized food production/processing/distribution (and waste management) requires an intact transport and refrigeration infrastructure---which is failing as we speak in 3rd-world countries. So does tertiary oil production. Fracting is a incredibly complex operation. Chaos is the rule on the downslope.
The Hunger Games is some elite wannabe's wet dream. They are not going to get it to come true. During the transition to smaller population there will be flowering of disease like we have not seen in history. The selection process will be based on whose genes are resistant to the new strains and not how much money they have in the bank. These survivors will have to find food which will be a real challenge due to the weather chaos that is already letting us know it is starting and that will get catastrophic by 2050.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sun 29 Apr 2012, 16:40:31by SeaGypsy
As I just mentioned in the die-off thread, lack of anti-biotics is all it would take to transition to rapid die-off. I am with dissident and Pstarr on this, the elite wet dream concept of the future is as unrealistic as techtopia or the book of Revelations. However I don't doubt TPTB will try to manifest maintaining their status at any cost. I do doubt their ability in the long run to control what happens outside city gates.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sat 20 Jul 2013, 09:46:44by Tanada
SeaGypsy wrote:As I just mentioned in the die-off thread, lack of anti-biotics is all it would take to transition to rapid die-off. I am with dissident and Pstarr on this, the elite wet dream concept of the future is as unrealistic as techtopia or the book of Revelations. However I don't doubt TPTB will try to manifest maintaining their status at any cost. I do doubt their ability in the long run to control what happens outside city gates.
Count me in on this POV as well, they will claw and scratch to keep power, but as you and Dis have both pointed out the survivors will be those with strong enough immune systems or natural resistance. The reason people in the worlds hell holes die so young is lack of access to clean food and uncontaminated water. In the west we take these things for granted, but the modern systems are all very energy intensive.
I do think we are headed at some point for a World Made By Hand scenario where diseases sweep away 10-40% of the population and the people remaining alive are needing to adapt to changed climate and lots of physical work just to feed themselves. It might not happen for many years if some of the technotopia dreams of cheap energy pan out, but the environment is straining to feed 7.2 Billion of us now. How much more can the world feed even if energy were free?
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sat 20 Jul 2013, 11:07:28by John_A
Lore wrote:It's not coincidental that the exponential rise in human population coincides with the age of oil.
And the advent of the scientific method, engineering as a full blown science relying on the ingenuity of humans to create higher crop yields, take advantage of more dispursed energy sources (wind and sun) create entirely new ones from scratch (nukes).
The rise in human population started long before oil was used for much more than lighting.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Sun 21 Jul 2013, 13:22:44by eastbay
Yup, we'll use all of it. It's well underway, folks. The easy to get NG, coal and oil's nearly gone. So we've moved on to what's next on the list of what we can burn:
* We burn half the US corn production in America's cars.
* We've clearcut half of the Malaysian rainforests so palm oil plantations can grow green renewable fuel to burn in bio-diesel trucks and cars.
* We're setting fire to the Indonesian rainforests to clear that land so palm oil can be grown and burned in Europe's cars.
* We're clearcutting the Amazon to, you guessed correctly, grow sugar to make green biofuels for cars and trucks. (and to grow soy and raise cows and plant other food for us and the 80 million people annually added to humanity)
* We now pump unpronouceable chemicals into the ground everywhere to frac out the last of the hydrocarbons.
* We scrape the topsoil off Alberta, and we'll next move on to Colorado and everywhere else to get at and burn the bits of oil trapped in topsoil.
* We'll start some wars over a few islands in the China Sea in order to see who owns the oil there.
* We'll nuke and radiate the oceans with leaks from coastal atomic energy plants because burning coal is too costly.
* We've started wars in all sorts of Islamic countries so the Muslims know who's really boss over the oil under their lands.
* We're well on our way to killing all non-human life on the entire surface of the Earth so we can burn fossil fuel to make people fatter and lazier.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Mon 22 Jul 2013, 20:33:55by Ibon
eastbay wrote:Yup, we'll use all of it. It's well underway, folks. The easy to get NG, coal and oil's nearly gone. So we've moved on to what's next on the list of what we can burn:
* We burn half the US corn production in America's cars.
* We've clearcut half of the Malaysian rainforests so palm oil plantations can grow green renewable fuel to burn in bio-diesel trucks and cars.
* We're setting fire to the Indonesian rainforests to clear that land so palm oil can be grown and burned in Europe's cars.
* We're clearcutting the Amazon to, you guessed correctly, grow sugar to make green biofuels for cars and trucks. (and to grow soy and raise cows and plant other food for us and the 80 million people annually added to humanity)
* We now pump unpronouceable chemicals into the ground everywhere to frac out the last of the hydrocarbons.
* We scrape the topsoil off Alberta, and we'll next move on to Colorado and everywhere else to get at and burn the bits of oil trapped in topsoil.
* We'll start some wars over a few islands in the China Sea in order to see who owns the oil there.
* We'll nuke and radiate the oceans with leaks from coastal atomic energy plants because burning coal is too costly.
* We've started wars in all sorts of Islamic countries so the Muslims know who's really boss over the oil under their lands.
* We're well on our way to killing all non-human life on the entire surface of the Earth so we can burn fossil fuel to make people fatter and lazier.
This is Kudzu Ape's legacy. And it will be what marks this age to future generations looking back, more than any of our technological wizardry or social achievements.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Mon 22 Jul 2013, 20:57:32by Subjectivist
The real legacy of humanity will be all the legacy of extinct species we are taking out of the ecosystem every day from no into the future.
Re: We will use all the fuel in the end
Posted:
Mon 22 Jul 2013, 21:20:47by eastbay
Subjectivist wrote:The real legacy of humanity will be all the legacy of extinct species we are taking out of the ecosystem every day from no into the future.
The ongoing destruction of the rainforests has me all jacked up lately ... and, much like with the peak oil catastrophe, there are times I feel like I'm the only one all jacked up about the horrific final clearcutting.