Hi Leanan

I have a great deal of respect for your posts - you are one of the best here on this forum.

That said , I am going to dare to disagree on this one(go easy on me ! )

I think assessing how well a country copes based on whether they're an island nation or completely landlocked is a generalisation.

The UK does import a lot of gear, but we do a considerable amount of trade with the EU and this could be a lot higher. This can come by rail , road(chunnel) or by the sea. So we do not have the disadvantage of being totally isolated for trade.

Also one of the UK's largest industries is the food industry, and we have the agricultural capacity to feed ourselves. 63% self sufficient , with 38% being wasted with 15% of our crop land "set aside" under the CAP. Our European neighbours have far more land, so they will have the capacity to export way into the future( ie france 3.5 times more land, Spain 3 times more land , Germany 3 times more land etc etc).

We have coal, a lot CBM gas, nuclear power capability, oil shale(if we get really desperate we could use renewables to get round the energy negativity problem to process shale) and a growing renewables program also a rail network which extends to most, if not all the country. The latter could be fully electrified for £10bn. We could copy the french and have nuclear power running large sections of the rail network to solve the logistical problems post peak.

We can also still have a way to go in the north sea, depending on whom you believe , we could still get a couple hundred thousand barrels of oil out of the north sea for anything upto 2036. Indeed , if you go to the DTI's heavy oil matter website , they speculate that at high prices heavy oi could provide 200,000 bpd for a nominal 10 to 15 year period. Not enough to maintain our current system , but is more than enough to keep agriculture going(needs 1.4 million tonnes per year).

Another advantage of being an island nation (or semi in our case! ), is that immigration will be harder. You mentioned that we will have no where to run , but on the other hand we will not be overrun by the masses from poorer and maybe heavily armed nations!

There are so many solutions to prevent complete and total breakdown that I cannot see it happening for a long while. We are going to have to kiss goodbye to our standard of living and cars, but I do not think we are looking at a 90% population reduction in a short period. My money is on a 50% population reduction gradually over the next say 150 years driven by a low birth rate and a worsening death rate. Hell I calculated that if the death rate of the UK increased to 20 per 1000 (which is still far better than say the Eastern European average at 24!) the population would drop by a half by 2086!

We gonna have it bad , but it will better here than most places but not as good as others. Canada is the best place to be IMO, lucky beggers have energy coming out of their arses!

PB

Because they are islands. They are isolated. (Some more than others, of course. Hawaii is particularly isolated. Manhattan, not so much.) They are dependent on oil to get food and other supplies in. Of course, so are places on the mainland...but when TSHTF, they can switch to bikes or horses or what have you. Or, worse comes to worse, people can pack up and leave, looking for somewhere better.

Isolation alone isn't bad, and high population density isn't bad. It's the combination that's likely to result in an "Easter Island" scenario.

I've added my take on the recent UK data to my blog. The rate of decline is rapid indeed, falling by over a quarter of a million barrels per day that will have to be picked up by another supplier

On a lighter note - I managed to get an average of 75.8mpg on my 16 mile drive home from work on Thursday! Very light on the gas, coasting up to stop signs, sitting at 55mph behind a truck on the motorway.

wow! I saw you! You were that twat on the M5, sat up the arse of a lorry (It's _ lorry_ btw) taking a picture of his dashboard with his mobile (that's cellphone to some).

Hi!! ))

KevO

We are an island, but you can see France from Britain and we aren't technically an island since the channel tunnel was built.

Nevertheless, as I've said before a doubling of the price of a barrel of oil would have no effect if the tax was reduced by 20-30% In other places that doubling would cause a meltdown (like the Ukraine) whereas here it hardly features on the radar.

There's a huge amount of waste with food production and a large amount of land set aside under the EU CAP.

Despite being in the Highlands, I find my family doesn't need much heat every year. This is because our house is very old, and as a result is built to be habitable without a power grid.

Where in Scotland do you live?

Talking about Europe in general- France's agricultural subsides are amazing. Seriously, if I lived in France, we'd be able to afford a holiday abroad every year. As it is, goods from abroad make farming profitable only about every other year.

I'm surprised you're concerning yourself with ethnic violence in Britain, Leaf, considering the tensions in your country (which came into international view at your last election). While I think Eastern Europe will do better than Western Europe, you've still got a lot of violence to avoid.

I recently hearded of an english project based on taxing use of vehicules by counting how many miles are done a day (using satellites). It now makes sense to me regarding the thread title...

i live in linlithgow - birthplace of mary queen of scots! i am only about 10 miles from the huge grangemouth refinery and on cloudy nights the whole sky is light up with the fires from the flare off.

my house was built in the 1960's i think and originally had a coal fire, so i suppose it would be feasible to rip out the gas one and start using coal again - this also heats the water i think.

i can see a lot of people doing that, its not going to be good for the air quality anyway!

As wildwell points out we are connected to France via the channel tunnel , and even if that was not available, transportation by sea is actually more efficient than road freight AND can be run on other fuels other than petroleum! If you are in a landlocked country you have to rail or road everything so actually you could argue being an island is an advantage. As I said , using whether a country is an island on or not is not necessarily a relevant criteria on how a country will do post peak. Its a generalisation.

As for the 1% figure, well if we can produce 63% of our food with only 1% of the workforce , imagine what can be acheived if we used more than 1%! Also , recently a study showed that we throw away 38% of the food we produce, so technically the UK is 101% self sufficient despite 15% of our land being set aside. This is without any adjustment in the meat/veg balance in our diet , which in itself is very calorie inefficient. On top of this , the self sufficiency figures are based on 3500 calories being available per head, even though we only need 2500 calories per head of population , and of course this doesn't allow for babies and old gits who eat bugger all!

As for gliches, well you could argue this about any country, I do not see how "gliches " will effect us anymore than anyone else.



This is because of the employment market. Nobody wants to do the shitty low paid jobs in a full employment market, the result therefore is the attraction of migrants. Once opportunities dry up, so does immigration.

I think you are right about a backlash though, but this is more likely to be isolated to certain cities, and certainly does not mean we are anymore screwed than anyone else, after all many countries have mixed , multi cultural societies.(Ask the French, Italian , and Germans about their immigration problems and they have double digit unemployment figures!)

PB

But only because of oil. Otherwise, you'd have only one-tenth the currently population, most of them living in brutal poverty. At least judging from history.

While the chunnel is a lifeline to the rest of Europe, it could also be considered a chokepoint. If the French get tired of starving Brits pouring through, when they're having trouble feeding their own people, it would be pretty easy to close it up.

That's the problem with shipping, too. That assumes people want to trade with you. If they don't have enough for themselves, they aren't going to be trading much.

One advantage Europe does have is their socialist tendencies (at least compared to us). IME, more people there believe that helping the poor is a good thing. While here, we tend to believe that helping someone less fortunate is encouraging laziness or even propagating genetic unfitness. Still...I think I'd rather be in continental Europe than in the UK. (Much as I love the UK.)

LOL. now watch for the same thing to happen in North America as the USA plunders Alberta's oil/tar/bitumen.

Leanan,

There was a Soil Association/University project that showed we could feed the entire 60 m UK population organically. CLV101 also worked out the small percentage of natural gas needed for conventional fertiliser would last a long time.

The UK's strategic position, close to Europe, both physically and culturally, but with the advantages of sea trade and defence have served this country very well for over a thousand years.

So there are a few high points to being on an island. Even in the extremely unlikely event of no maritime fuel it will be perfectly possible to sail to the continent to trade. The only thing that puts people off is the congestion in the Channel, with Giant Supertankers etc.

I also think that some people don't understand the British mentality. While some of our people are fat Big brother watching slobs, some aren't. Whether its Ellen MacArthur or Sir Francis Drake. He sailed round the world in this:

The Golden Hind

I've been on it. It is Bleedin' Tiny. And the people who sailed with him were the same bloody-minded, stubborn, gallows-humour, don't-give-up Brits that you still can find here. I often think what we need is a bid of PO adversity to get us back on track. If you look at our history we thrive on adversity, and I don't think that has changed, just been submerged by trivia, and it needs to re-emerge. What we need is a good kick up the ar*e.