[Dybbuk]

The only way to debunk PO is to change the definition away from the peaking of conventional oil (2006) to include everything else and not account the net energy needed for those other liquids

It seems to me that the important event is peak net non-renewable energy production. But that's not a very catchy name.

[Quinny]

Not very catchy, but I quite like it. Do you mean something like this?

http://peakoil.com/forums/what-future-for-petroleum-t67813.html

[Dybbuk]

Not very catchy, but I quite like it. Do you mean something like this?

http://peakoil.com/forums/what-future-for-petroleum-t67813.html

Yes, that's a good graph, and pretty close to what I was talking about, but what I'd really like to see is the graph of all non-renewables combined...meaning add in gas and coal, and maybe nuclear (since the fuel will ultimately be spent, even in breeder reactors). You can stave off the impact of peak oil for a while by substituting energy from gas and coal, but when those are on the decline too, the only choices are renewables and/or using less energy. (Unless they come up with some new miracle energy source like, oh I don't know, dilithium crystals? lol)

[Pops]

Hi Dybuk, here is a chart I did a couple of years ago:



"Other" includes everything from buffalo chips to firewood, hydro, nukes, wind, etc. Basically oil is for transport and everything else is for electricity and heating. We burn a lot of coal but it can't replace diesel locomotives. Same with nat. gas, great to pipe into the boiler and cooktop but not much good for container ships.

Regardless of the strawmen you see burning everywhere in these threads (a potential energy source?) the idea isn't that we're running out next week and that we'll all go Mad Max to get enough fuel to drive to the Quik Sac. The problem is that the modern global economy is based on cheap transportation and there is no replacement for the cheap oil the system grew around. Oil is simply too dense an energy source and is itself too easy to transport to be replaced by anything less than dilithium crystals and hopium. All the pie in the sky notions notwithstanding, if there were a ready, cheap replacement technology it probably would have surfaced considering oil is now at record highs, up 600% or so in real dollars the last decade.

Which isn't to say "We're dead!" but that we're in for big changes

Here are 10 basic facts about peak oil.

[MrEnergyCzar]

Great graphs guys. I'd love to use them on one of my future Peak Oil News Videos. They'd make great background graphs. Here's what the format of the news video looks like....

http://youtu.be/ogosyGzSwFU

MrEnergyCzar

[Dybbuk]

Great graph, Pops! That's worldwide and not U.S., right?

Which isn't to say "We're dead!" but that we're in for big changes

Well, maybe we're not dead, but it's not too much of a stretch to say that somebody will be dead, is it? Just like there are marginal businesses, there are also marginal people. Some segment of the world population could be on the cusp of whether they are viable or not, and the difference between expensive energy and cheap energy could be all it takes to push them over the edge.

But if you think that one single person could ever die from energy scarcity, that makes you a "doomer", right?

[Pops]

No prob MrCzar, production numbers are from the 2011 BP Statistical Review, I can't remember where I got the population number...

Here are some charts from the 2012 report

2012 BP report energy per capita.jpg

---

Dybbuk,
Yes, that is the wold average.

Hyperbole and predictions whip up the "base" but turn off the moderates. The people who were hollering a few years ago that oil was going to be $500 or $1,000/ bbl overnight and we're all gonna starve did more harm than good. It's like someone here said, if the reasoned argument doesn't persuade someone of the problem and convince them to take some action, haranguing them with threats of doom will only serve to turn them from an agnostic to an atheist and eventually to a debunker vowed to disprove any concern over, well, anything. Witness the threads here "proving" that production hasn't declined and repostings of glorious PR stock market fluffertations about amazing new discoveries not to mention stock market rallies and economic rebounds, I think there were posts about how fast the economy was recovering from the moment it started failing.

Which is why, I think, the more successful "convincers" point out the basic facts and leave the conclusions and predictions to the listener.

[Dybbuk]

Which is why, I think, the more successful "convincers" point out the basic facts and leave the conclusions and predictions to the listener.

Yeah, I get it. There's a happy medium somewhere. Maybe there's an analogy to hurricane preparedness. I get irritated by the people who believe we should essentially "err on the side of hysteria", or else folks won't listen. We have to scream from the rooftops that you're going to die if you don't evacuate, and if it convinces a few more people to evacuate it was worth it, even if we were lying to them. When in reality, all it does is make people jaded and then maybe the next time you cry wolf they won't listen to you, when they really ought to.

I can't say what the happy medium is vis-a-vis peak oil. Obviously, saying "billions of people are going to die in the next 50 years and there's nothing we can do about it" goes too far. But does it go too far to say "there's a wide range of possible outcomes, and if a lot of things go wrong, billions of people could die in the next 50 years"? i don't know the answer.

[ennui2]

Maybe the answer is not to bother being a Cassandra at all, considering that we're all just individuals and not omnipotent prophets who can gather the attention of the masses at our feet. We all have to step away from the keyboard eventually and try to carve out a life worth living in the moment, and if you want to have a miserable life, there's few things that will make you more miserable than consuming your day to day thoughts about die-off and trying to convince people in vain that there are limits to growth.

[Econ101]

If the past is any indication we will do just fine as long as we dont sucumb to the type of idiocy that caused the uswashed masses to destroy the libraries at Alexandria and Constantinople.

Unwashed masses did not destroy those libraries. Military men did, and they were most likely relatively clean, by the standards of the day. That they were engaging in idiocy is not in much doubt - they were likely looking to secure resources, because their own were dwindling and their societies were unwilling to live in a sustainable manner - a manner to which they had been unaccustomed for some time. The reason they engaged in destructive idiocy was most likely that they had foolishly listened too long to folks telling them that everything would be just fine. We will grow to understand that sort of idiocy shortly, despite your assurances that everything will be just fine.

Comedy gold!

[Econ101]

If the past is any indication we will do just fine as long as we dont sucumb to the type of idiocy that caused the uswashed masses to destroy the libraries at Alexandria and Constantinople.

Unwashed masses did not destroy those libraries. Military men did, and they were most likely relatively clean, by the standards of the day. That they were engaging in idiocy is not in much doubt - they were likely looking to secure resources, because their own were dwindling and their societies were unwilling to live in a sustainable manner - a manner to which they had been unaccustomed for some time. The reason they engaged in destructive idiocy was most likely that they had foolishly listened too long to folks telling them that everything would be just fine. We will grow to understand that sort of idiocy shortly, despite your assurances that everything will be just fine.

Comedy gold! Despite your best efforts to tell everyone things are falling apart the reason those libraries were burned were political. The armies were political tools, the masses useful idiots. The resources themselves were of no concern and certainly not in short supply due to any natural limit. It was the ownership of those resources, the politics, that dictated that history just as it dictates ours.

American oil production dropped in the 1970s because of politics not any real physical shortage, yet people look at those curves and graphs and are inclined to agree that the drop is the harbinger of the end. They won't take the time to consider other forces that are really shaping the graphs, necessarily political forces known as peak oil politics.

[ralfy]

Maybe the answer is not to bother being a Cassandra at all, considering that we're all just individuals and not omnipotent prophets who can gather the attention of the masses at our feet. We all have to step away from the keyboard eventually and try to carve out a life worth living in the moment, and if you want to have a miserable life, there's few things that will make you more miserable than consuming your day to day thoughts about die-off and trying to convince people in vain that there are limits to growth.

It's the other way round: realizing that "that there are limits to growth," which even doesn't require being "omnipotent prophets," is what will allow one to learn "to carve out a life worth living in the moment." Otherwise, one will only be "miserable" by "consuming" "day to day" and imagining that that will go on indefinitely.

[Dybbuk]

American oil production dropped in the 1970s because of politics not any real physical shortage

Questions:
1. If "politics" supposedly disrupted energy production in the past, what's to stop it from doing so in the future? From what I've read, your viewpoint is that a die-off is next to impossible, because market forces will prevent it. OR, is your view that IF a die-off happens, it will be the fault of politics? If so, that's not very comforting, considering how politics seems to dictate everything these days, and there's no sign of that stopping anytime soon.
2. A lot of the sniping back and forth around here can be essentially be summed up as "my prediction will beat up your prediction". I haven't quite figured out what your prediction is, Econ101, except a general notion that "everything will be OK". Do you think that there will never be a "physical shortage" of oil? Will oil production never peak? Will it go to 100M barrels a day, then 150M, then 200M? Or will we be able to scale renewables up enough to substitute for them? Or will we find massive efficiency so that we don't need as much energy? Or will we invent some magical new energy source? Or will fertility drop enough to shrink the world population, so that less energy is needed? Humor us with specifics.

[Quinny]

Good question Dybbuk.

I'll be very surprised if you get a coherent answer.

[SeaGypsy]

Dybuk, welcome aboard. Shorty mark 7 (Econ101) has been banned about that many times for 'various trollery'. He loves us so much his ISP must be getting tired of being asked for a new address! (Or he's on a proxy.)

I take the view that Shorty's ilk should be tolerated and humored, as they represent a large swathe of our brethren: mature enough to no longer believe in Santa, but immune to logic when it comes to energy unicorns.

I believe the take is something like:

1/ Humanity is not yet near it's technological zenith- a glorious time when we will think things into existence, LOL around all day indulging in our favorite pass times like Krishna & the cowgirls.

2/ Civilization is supreme over nature. One way or another we will subdue the environment into providing our needs, more or less for the life of the planet & the Sun.

3/ Modern lifestyles can be lived on a far smaller ecological footprint per capita than as under current practice. When this is achieved, modernity will spread to the third world and women will begin to have a sensible number of children: hence the population explosion will be reigned in before a global die-off becomes possible. Regions suffering die-off in the interim will be blamed for their own demise; as having not enabled one or other modern empire machine to exploit whatever resources available- leaving themselves outside the loop.

4/ Politics are almost always the 'real problem'. (IMO there is more validity to this point than any or all of the others- politics & religion.)

This is not an uncommon set of views from my experience. On the surface logical, but largely immune to discussion of specifics.

[dorlomin]

That is why it is rejected by the mainstream and only mentioned within political contexts like this forum. It is a political tool like global warming.

But facts arent important to people that have dogma on their side

Alchemy, turning pure irony into comedy gold?

Comedy gold!

Comedy gold!

Seems to be an echo.

[dorlomin]

The resources themselves were of no concern and certainly not in short supply due to any natural limit.

The 642 destruction of Alexandria was during the Muslim conquest of Egypt.

Anyone who thinks resources like water were in bountiful supply and unconstrained by natural limits in the Arabian peninsula needs a long hard lesson in water and semi arid ecosystems.

[Keith_McClary]

If the past is any indication we will do just fine

If the past is any indication we will keep on multiplying and consuming exponentially forever. There might be a slight dip in the exponential curve when we consume all the resources of Earth, and again when we consume all the resources of the Solar system. Going further to the Galaxy, the speed of light limits exponential growth, unless Economics 101 has secret powers unknown to Physics.

[ennui2]

IF a die-off happens, it will be the fault of politics?

That seems to be the sentiment expressed by the Alex Jones illuminaughty crowd. You know, the Bilderbergers are gonna neuter us with flouride in the water.

It's ultimately a chicken-and-the-egg thing. If we had lived within the earth's limits, we wouldn't get ourselves into situations in which government might contemplate the need to intervene to keep the system going. However, the fantasy narrative of the paranoids, which is never explicitly stated, is that if we just removed the govt. boogeyman, then ecological limits would not exist. In other words, anyone who warns about overpopulation and limits to growth is a misanthrope and a shill for the NWO who would love to oppress society or see an engineered genocide to fix the ecological accounting.

You see what I mean? You can't separate the emotion from the equation. We're too close to the problem and we can't quite get a handle on it because we are too busy trying to classify people as white hats and black hats. Ultimately ecology provides refuge from this trap because ecology is amoral. Hence the "nature bats last" phrase. You have x number of solar BTUs baring down on the planet, x amount of stored sunlight, x amount of ecological diversity, and you can now actually watch the machine of life on this planet crumbling before our eyes, and we're all in some way participating in it.

However, human beings are NOT amoral, and therefore we're left to contemplate different trajectories of BAU and how going one way or the other will create more suffering, or shift the hot-potato from one group to the next. And so we're ultimately all trapped having to grab hold of an ideology and run with it, or just shrug it all off and grab the popcorn.