[Lore]

Question is how will the next Great Depression find us dressed? Will fashion repeat the last one Great Depression with long drab wool overcoats, or do we get an update . . . bright polyester baggy shorts and hoodies

I’m opting for tight leather pants and a metal leg brace.

[americandream]

Combat fatigues a' la Castro.

[eastbay]

I just ran a web search for this report and it's being ignored by (with two or three exceptions) all mass media. I mean completely. We are discussing the most important commodity outlook report of the year and it's not mentioned anywhere. The Guardian and Der Spiegel. That's it.

But you can bet influential government and industry insiders are discussing it too. And planning their (personal) responses.

[Xenophobe]

Deleted: Off topic. We're on the German peak oil report.

[cephalotus]

I just ran a web search for this report and it's being ignored by (with two or three exceptions) all mass media. I mean completely. We are discussing the most important commodity outlook report of the year and it's not mentioned anywhere. The Guardian and Der Spiegel. That's it.
.

In Germany it was covered by many significant newspapers:

http://www.regionalentwicklung.de/blog

Btw, German government published the energy strategy for Germany till 2050 in a short paper:

http://www.spiegel.de/media/0,4906,24278,00.pdf

quite interesting to read (sadly only in German)

you will not find the word "peak oil" there, but you find lots of strategies to avoid fossil fuel use.

The paper talks about (trans) European super grids, new storage technologies, electric mobility, vehicles using methane, technologies to make and store hydrogen and renewable methane, zero energy buildings as a standard, longer run times for nuclear reactors (that's the main focus in the mass media btw), CCS in power plants and industry, lots of money for offshore and onshore wind and photovoltaic, stragies for efficent use of biogas, biomass use for planes and ships and so on...
There will be a monitoring every 3 years to keep the plans on track.

the plan is:

2020: CO2 -40% ; renewable energies: 18%
2030: CO2 -55% ; renewable energies: 30%
2040: CO2 -70% ; renewable energies: 45%
2050: CO2 -80% ; renewable energies: 60%

(2009: CO2 -21% ; renewable energies: 10%)

[Newfie]

BRIEF SUMMARY OF TOO LONG RANT: Trimming the fat is logical but counter to our nature. It would cause a great disruption and possibly collapse our culture.

I too have thought that we have a lot of "fat" in our energy budget that we could trim out. I think there is something of an analogy in our car fleet. When I started driving there were a LOT of beaters on the road (in my gang at least) and it was pretty amazing to get 100,000 miles on a car, or 6,000 miles on a set of tires. Now the cars go much further. In this economic downturn the US car fleet was in pretty good shape, so people could put off buying new cars for a couple of years, and the used car fleet has seen demand go up as new cars go down. But the US auto industry has taken a pretty good hit.

I think that there is tremendous waste at all levels of our society. I think about the waste in our medical insurance industry. I walk around downtown and see sky scrapers filled with folks busy 50 hours a week and the output from these factories is "service industry" and "financial." I can't eat services or finances. I can't build a boat or plow a field with their "work."

If we are so damn efficient as we in the US are supposed to be, and if we have reaped such benefits of cheap energy, then we should each be living like kings. The 24 hour work week and 50 year old retirement should be the norm. But it is not. The necessary jobs, such as agriculture which used to take up most of our work force is now almost trivial. But as a society we can't sit around and enjoy ourselves, we need to feel "useful." (Shades of a conversation in Matrix here, the first fake world was "too nice" and humans couldn't stand it.)

There is something fundamental in our nature that will work against us if we try to cut the fat. It will disturb the basic nature of our societal structure in ways that have never been tested.

[eastbay]

Yes, Newfie, you have an excellent point and it's something, when the horrors of this German report appear, that will be widely bemoaned as the scarcities appear. But it will do no good to complain because the terminal decline in living standards is on its merry way. if we think life is tough now as we delve deeper into recession, , wow, it's a life of unreal luxury and leisure compared to what's coming. Efficiencies will prove to be a very small speed bump in the tracks as this train rolls by.

[eastbay]

I just ran a web search for this report and it's being ignored by (with two or three exceptions) all mass media. I mean completely. We are discussing the most important commodity outlook report of the year and it's not mentioned anywhere. The Guardian and Der Spiegel. That's it.
.

In Germany it was covered by many significant newspapers:

http://www.regionalentwicklung.de/blog

Well I certainly hope so and am glad. But on this side it's a Big Zero.

[Nano]

The government/wealthy will feed us, as large production agriculture is highly automated and relatively inexpensive. We will have our gruel at least.

Exactly, we WILL have our gruel at least. And we can build from there. Increasingly, I'm starting to think that a likely outcome of peak oil will be a deep depression with 40% unemployement, followed by a low energy economic upturn, all in the space of a generation. But we will do it with information technology we didn't have in de 1930's. This should ease economic planning and increase accountability of government and political parties throughout the depression period. It will do this just enough to limit the growth of extremist factions, most probably. Yeah it will suck and it will be bitter etc. And it will be a huge let down for many people. But such is life. There is nothing new under the sun.

[Ludi]

It will do this just enough to limit the growth of extremist factions

Except for the growth of the extremely wealthy, who will get extremely wealthier (at least in the US).

[eastbay]

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/ ... il-crisis/

Well, well, well. The NYT covered this groundbreaking development. I am happily surprised.

[Pops]

The Green Blog is pretty good.

I did point out to them that the IEA isn't saying life is all roses like they have done for years. Of course they they'd linked to a story from 08 with the IEA saying everything is cool for another 20 years along with CERA/Lynch and the usual professional denialist witnesses.

[ki11ercane]

Good find. As stated, the article doesn't contain much new information but its publication at probably the most popular German news site is ominous.

If we first cut out the "loose fat" - replaced private automobiles with carpooling/buses/trains/bikes, stopped manufacturing and transporting non-essential items etc., I believe there would be enough oil for growing and transporting food, producing drugs etc. for quite a few years.

Of course this requires that national governments take over, at least temporarily, to handle the transition (as stated in the article).

Transportation et al accounts for 2-3% of total fossil fuels consumed. Carpooling/buses/trains/bikes etc. won't make a dent.

The majority of fossil fuel consumption is to produce energy (ie. electricity), production of "things" and all the steps and processes that goes from a raw material to a completed object, and the movement of "things" whether raw materials or completed objects. In other words, "everything else." It's the "everything else" that cannot be scaled back because doing so would destroy BAU

[Graeme]

Germany and the UK Prepare for Peak Oil

Why are the folks at the Bundeswehr Transformation Centre, a German military think-tank, already planning for peak oil? Probably for the same reason the British Department of Energy, in concert with the Bank of England and the British Department of Defense, has ordered similar -- and equally secret -- studies on its impact.

Despite repeated government assurances to the contrary, the global oil supply doesn't seem to be growing much anymore. In fact, the Bundeswehr Centre study says that oil production may peak this year.

Most people judge peak oil concerns by the prevailing oil price. That prices have plunged from their triple-digit perch is proof enough to them that we need not worry about any imminent peak.

What they forget is where we're coming from. The deepest global recession in the entire post-war period can cut oil prices lots of slack while demand is contracting -- peak oil isn't a problem if the economy it powers is shrinking. For the first time since 1983, world oil demand fell last year, bringing oil prices tumbling down. But recessions, even the deepest, only last so long.


Nevertheless, it's reassuring to know that at least some of our governments are thinking about peak oil, despite the fact that they still feel they must hide their concerns from their voters.

huffingtonpost

[Pops]

...the Bundeswehr Future Analysis Branch addresses the subject of finite resources and their potential security policy implications, exemplary using the scenario in which the global maximum rate of oil production has been exceeded. The second part of the study deals with climate change and demography.

PDF translation at Energy Bulletin - big thanks!