by h2 » Tue 30 Sep 2014, 14:43:11
These kinds of threads are filled with so many strawmen that it becomes almost comical. I have no idea what the poster above is talking about re the archdruid, jm greer, it's clear that whoever is making up things about what he is writing about is living ins a fictional world, since his entire project over the past years has revolved around pointing out the historical absurdity of the doomer world view, in favor of looking at historical examples of declining empires. When he sticks to this, he's been really solid.
The overall concept of peak oil that I first became aware of, though it's total obviousness did not take long to register, given that a finite world is not infinite, and given I am capable of grasping the simple basics of exponential growth, and what that means in terms of totals of consumed resources, unlike say, the shill type copious a blather, ie, the big picture is really not hard to understand, nor was it ever hard to understand.
As rockman noted I believe in the beginning of this thread, nobody ever doubted that higher oil prices brought on by a global peak in production would bring on further resource production, ie, the stuff that was not economical to produce at pre peak prices, at least nobody who has a clue about how things work doubted that, nor is it a surprise that the country with the largest by far number of oil wells drilled would be able to take advantage of a fracking bubble caused by hiigh oil prices caused by global peaks in petroleum production.
But the real strawman is the pretense that a bunch of doomers, who jumped on the peak oil train because it lets them be doomers, have anything to do with the serious discussions done mostly by real petroleum geologists (not stock market shills trying to squeeze the last sucker bets out of the suckers before the fracking bubble pops) always put the peak at around 2005 (worst case) around 2012 (mid case) and about 2020 (best case). You can cherry pick sources all you want, but when I first read dieoff.com, which had a nice collection of articles by guys like campbell, deffeyes, etc, that was what I learned, and that has never changed. Campbell for example, was very realistic about the scenario of what would happen globally when peak production hit, and what he thought would happen is precisely what did happen, which is kind of obvious if you grasp that money is just a way to give access to resources.
Further, a bumpy plateau was predicted, caused by exactly what we are seeing globally now, high oil prices caused by declining production brings on new production, aka, fracking, but then the high prices begin to disrupt economies, which were built on cheap energy prices, demand drops a touch, new production is pulled off line, rather, drilling is stopped, production begins to drop, prices begin to rise, blah blah, and so on. In other words, exactly what we are in now. You can paint all the pictures you want of your strawmen doomers you want, they have nothing to do with the actual issue, they are just like appendages, the barnacles that gather on convenient surfaces as a boat goes through the ocean.
Greer has been really good about working out the ongoing psychology that drives those barnacles, but he has never at any point taken them seriously beyond them being a historically interesting phenomena, worth writing a book on since they repeat through history so delightfully, and consistently.
I further have absolutely no idea about the comments re Heinberg, clearly some people are not reading a word that is being written by these guys, preferring instead to just pretend that bau is really going to happen, that's usually for financial reasons, ie, your paycheck and lifestyle depend on that belief being maintained, that's also normal, in fact, one of my favorite oil drum quotes they would have on their quote box was the observation that if your livelihood depends on not seeing something, you are very likely to not see it. I dont' do the quote justice, but it's true.
My feeling after reading endless copious abundance comments is that he's a stock shill of some type, because he does this very typical shill thing of always using strawmen, and NEVER responding to valid points, particularly not when it comes to prices or economics. And always misreading and misrepresenting the real people here and elsewhere while focusing his attention on the flakes, as if they have anything to say or do about peak oil as a physical event.
Sure ther'es a blog scene filled with flakes, nature bats last, I used to read that until mcpherson was stupid enough to confuse his desires for reality, specifically to say there would be no cars on the road by some date, I think it was 2012 or 2011, I don't remember. But he's a poorly read guy with no historical education at all, who really wishes humans would stop destroying the planet, a position I cannot fault anyone for taking, but it's important to not confuse your fears and desires for reality.
Long descents are too boring though, we want drama and explosions, we want to pretend we can live in our little compounds and hold off the enemy with our stockpile of guns etc, as someone noted a long time ago, that's just another way to create a new consumer, it's not a solution, just another market to exploit.
What's interesting is that greer some weeks back noted that usually when a bubble is about to pop, the mainstream begins to attack the voices that have been warning all along, this has historical precedents, and lo and behold, someone from the mainstream began to first attack the arch druid, then heinberg, for their ongoing comments that fracking is a bubble that is about to pop, most likely. No timelines, but the fact that major mainstream guys begin to feel it's worth their time to attack highly marginalized people basically means the messenger and the message is starting to get a little bit too close to home. I buy this, I don't pay any attention to doomers or survivalists at all beyond noting how easy it is for a guy like greer to write a book on the history that mindset, they are present around us here, but they don't matter in any way in terms of long term culture, it's just a fear of change as far as I can see, and a somewhat exaggerated sense of ego etc, ie, the feeling that you are so important that you actually matter in the midst of a massive material historical shift.
Long term, we'll get back to something sustainable, since non sustainable things can't sustain, but it won't look anything like what we want it to, and it certainly won't be reached by trying to sustain the non sustainable in terms of population and resource extraction. I'm as big a fan of mad max movies as the next guy, but those types of eras last a few years at most, in San Francisco for example there were a few episodes of criminal activity taking over the town in its early days, the COMMUNITY gathered and basically hung enough of the gang guys to put a stop to it, and that was that. History is useful if you want to understand the past and present and future.
