onlooker wrote:Yes Ibon. The panorama before us paints the picture of a total overthrow of existing structures both physical and mental. To guide the canoe wisely signifies to me, humans banding together under ideologies that stress unity of purpose and intention. To salvage our species will require humans to realize what challenges are ahead and rise up to meet them united in common thought and action.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tanada wrote:A large labor force is inherently redundant, a sophisticated automated process is inherently inclined to a single point failure halting the entire process.
To compensate for the natural disadvantages of building the system where single point failures are a strong possibility governments all over the place pay enormous subsidies for automation, and absorb the social costs of creating a large surplus labor pool.
Tanada wrote:...any real hard wind or ground tremor will collapse the whole thing.
Tanada wrote:Progress is best graphed on a Sigmoid Curve
onlooker wrote:Very interesting Tanada. I encountered this concept of Jevon via discussions of a book by Joseph Tainter "The Collapse of Complex Societies" In which his thesis is about what you are saying that any complex system reaches a point of diminishing returns when the complexity begets the necessity of even more complexity and this can and will reach limits which bring about a diminishing return dynamic.
understand the simple fact that we can get more efficient in how we use oil AND we can use more at the same time. But those both don't have to happen together.
onlooker wrote:So, in summary this merry go-round of economic activity utilizing our most potent and available energy source will continue until it cannot.
pstarr wrote:onlooker wrote:Whatever, I am not sure why you are parsing out my words so finely. Diminishing returns is a form of Collapse. Or is that too vague for you. Fine. Peak Oil will eventually lead to collapse of that I have NO doubt. Hope that is clear now. Also, my evaluation of Collapse seems a bit different than yours as I would NOT define what is happening now in rich countries as Collapse. I would say we are in the diminishing returns phase that leads to Collapse.
It seems you and Tainter are talking about phase-change, a thermodynamic attribute of highly energetic and complex systems. It is an idea that Whatever's mentor is quite familiar with. I am surprised that Whatever's does not understand that subtlety of your comment.
pstarr wrote:But we (among the few non-deniers at this site) do agree with Whatever's salient point: We are a wealthy country in collapse.
GHung wrote:"Resorting to? I was in Fredonia New York last week, looking for the marker for the first gas well in the US. Found it. The formation the gas came from? Shale. So we STARTED with shale, and if there is one thing I will bet a paycheck on, it is that a modern shale well is far better than that one."
And why the hell would someone go poking around New York looking for the first gas well? Some kind of pilgrimage?
onlooker wrote: As for the specifics here, those who deny the peak oil dynamic are delusional.
StarvingLion wrote:My gripe with the supposed Peak Oil believers is that their analysis of the situation is so superficial that it is entirely worthless.
StarvingLion wrote:But what really gets me frustrated is the wrong notion that Peak Oil is fundamentally a transportation problem.
StarvingLion wrote: The academic system is a propaganda system that convinces people that their entire income is NOT dependent on a never ending input flow of oil.
pstarr wrote: It seems folks would rather discuss the remote possibility of runaway global climate change then the certainty of ongoing peak-oil collapse.
AdamB wrote:StarvingLion wrote:My gripe with the supposed Peak Oil believers is that their analysis of the situation is so superficial that it is entirely worthless.
Mr Lion! Welcome back to our reality!!!!
onlooker wrote:I am glad Sugar you include all the planet. Because US Oil consumption has declined https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/ ... nsumption/
onlooker wrote:Yet this decline has more than been compensated by the increase in the so called developing countries like China and India.
onlooker wrote: You seem to be bemused by your quoted paragraph. Yet this statement is precisely relevant to Jevons Paradox. Efficiency gains have occurred but this in turn has prompted increased use in other areas ie. Countries. I suspect what you truly are struggling with is your question of why mankind in the aggregate is not using less Oil.
onlooker wrote:The reason lies beyond the boundaries of simple geological and physical realities, it lies in the socio-economic-pychological basis for energy . No country is looking to contract. Quite the opposite. So Oil and its miraculous concentrated energy has ingrained in mankind this laser like focus on growth as the marker of well being. Even our economic indicators reflect this via tabulating GDP and GNP. So, humans are wed to the paradigm of growth and consuming as being an indicator of well being. The other side of the story is that China and India with their enormous populations see no alternative to growth to employ, feed and house their populace. So, in summary this merry go-round of economic activity utilizing our most potent and available energy source will continue until it cannot.
SugarSeam wrote:I understand this. I guess what you're saying is that the kind of person I'm debating with on that site is delusional, and addicted to hopium.
AdamB wrote:SugarSeam wrote:I understand this. I guess what you're saying is that the kind of person I'm debating with on that site is delusional, and addicted to hopium.
Not quite. The person you are debating with on that site has a firm grasp on reality, and repeating peak oil dogma circa 2005 doesn't mark him...but you.
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