[onlooker]

Great article about our collective plight
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/tag/eroei/

[Newfie]

I’ve seen this site before, thanks for the reminder.

Nice rant.

[Tanada]

You do realize that the site you linked is from 2013 right? EROEI like many Doom theories has so far failed to deliver, as indicated by the fact that a five year old piece of opinion masquerading as information is seen as somehow relevant to current world circumstances. This was written back just before the glut of fracked oil combined with the EU/USA recession caused the price of oil to crash. It didn't predict any such price crash, nor did it predict that five years later we would basically be back to the same price band we were in before the glut. In point of fact it never even considers the possibility of a glut developing because the EROEI theory it is based on denies that very possibility from existing.

[Outcast_Searcher]

You do realize that the site you linked is from 2013 right? EROEI like many Doom theories has so far failed to deliver, as indicated by the fact that a five year old piece of opinion masquerading as information is seen as somehow relevant to current world circumstances. This was written back just before the glut of fracked oil combined with the EU/USA recession caused the price of oil to crash. It didn't predict any such price crash, nor did it predict that five years later we would basically be back to the same price band we were in before the glut. In point of fact it never even considers the possibility of a glut developing because the EROEI theory it is based on denies that very possibility from existing.

Tanada, with the fast crash doomer crowd, they tend to demonstrate ad nauseam that it's not about objective facts or realistic trends. It's about proclaiming "we are surely doomed, and real soon now", and spreading FUD to try to support that theory. (And to hell with real world data if it interferes with that vision of rapid doom).

They even go so far as to make stuff up out of whole cloth, supported by nonsensical Cassandra blogs. Or claim the facts are a conspiracy theory, supported by shadowy agents of evil like the government data reporting agencies, the mean old MSM (collectively), scientists seeking grants above all else, scientists being clueless compared to their own sense of intuition based on ignorance, and on and on.

Oh, let's not forget debt. Debt of any size, especially if growing, is automatically a whole herd of horses of the apocalypse. Never mind looking at whether the interest on it is likely payable, for how long, or why. It will collapse any time because, say, zerohedge proclaims it is so, and of course, zerohedge is a wonderful site to quote for insta-doom.

So you're right, of course -- but the obvious never seems to penetrate with the vast majority of these folks. Sorry for the rant -- the scale of the nonsense re insta-doom just irritates me from time to time.

...

Disclosure -- I am a long term pessimist re humanity's overall behavior re BAU growth and population expansion, and the unwillingness to seriously tackle big problems like AGW. (That's a FAR different thing though, than claiming frequently that "article X" or "blog Y" shows that the economy will be destroyed real soon now, MANY times a year.)

[onlooker]

Outcast and Tanada, it is not necessarily about immediate Doom. It is the downward stages that take us there. I am not aware of any on this site except for Shorty with his Etp who are putting a short term definite timeline to Doom. For the most part us on the more pessimistic side, are saying that certain trends and trajectories are quite obviously signaling a definite disintegration in our modern Industrial civilization and its support beams.
P.S. EROEI is one of them, not the most important but it does signal that more and more energy is needed to access energy and that surely is not going to be sustainable for too long.

[ralfy]

Did the energy returns of fracked oil or even conventional production rise dramatically sometime between 2013 and the present, thus making statements made five years ago irrelevant?