[babystrangeloop]

chinese gdp 9.1%

Down from 9.5% in the previous quarter.

You can only collapse but so fast and this thread is about changes in the rate of collapse being cumulative. Please stop trying to derail it.

[evilgenius]

I take it that though you are providing a Yemeni example the feedback you are talking about is also something you are seeing where you are? Is that Hong Kong?

[babystrangeloop]

I take it that though you are providing a Yemeni example the feedback you are talking about is also something you are seeing where you are? Is that Hong Kong?

So you want to see a small, local version of a global macroeconomic issue? Sorry I don't have any miniatures to show you.

[Tanada]

In a post-peak world, we know things are going to change and change dramatically. But, how fast will the onset of peak-oil be? Who, and what will be affected first. As you all know, I see the airlines as the “canary in the mineshaft.” This will start a domino affect reaching out to the parcel carriers, aerospace industries, tourism, travel agencies, hotels, motels, restaurants, cruise ships, theme parks and many other forms of recreation. Fewer tourists mean fewer dollars and fewer dollars means loss of jobs in places where the tourist dollar is the primary source of income. Delivering mail, transporting raw materials to manufacturers and sending products bought over the Internet are just some of the everyday transactions that will take more time and money as carriers downsize and put fewer planes in the sky.

Leisure oil use activities will surely be hurt, especially the recreational vehicle industry. The demand for motorhomes, jet-skis, off-road vehicles, pleasure boats, snowmobiles, ATV’s, (motorcycles may be a growth industry, though) private airplanes, and the biggest industry of all—racing—will drop dramatically as shortages occur and fuel costs rise. Think of all the industries that racing and recreational vehicles supports: helmets, insurance, auto parts/repairs, etc, etc. Bottom line; a lot of people’s jobs are going to disappear almost overnight. It won’t be just about paying more for gas and using less as a lot of people think. Post-peak oil prices will start a pandemic that will spread throughout our economy like a wildfire fanned by a strong wind.

What will governments do? Will oil go to the highest bidder? Will we see countries like China, Japan, and the US competing for oil to meet their growing economies? Or will we see the US taking the oil by military force? Will there be hoarding? Will conflict we create exacerbate the crisis that peak-oil will cause? These are all questions with few answers.

Ten years on and some days I just wish the stinking shoe would drop already because the fear of the unknown is worse than the effects.

[AgentR11]

I think it just did, at least with regard to the last paragraph. The US, EU, China and tagalong Japan just competed for priority access to Russia's gas and oil and grain... and we lost.

Won't hurt for a while, but its a done deal. When Russia has to choose between selling to the EU or selling to China at some eventual point in the future; the grain, oil, and gas will go to China, even possibly at a slight discount.

Whats been more intersting is how the cap on oil prices has played out because consumers are much more sensitive to price in their non-essential energy usage than expected. That'll make the play out take longer, but be much more jittery along the way.

As to jobs... well.

EMRATIO

It can't be hidden.

[Subjectivist]

Some days it just feels like the dark shadow of consequences is hanging over us like the Sword of Damaclese.

[Tanada]

I think it just did, at least with regard to the last paragraph. The US, EU, China and tagalong Japan just competed for priority access to Russia's gas and oil and grain... and we lost.

Won't hurt for a while, but its a done deal. When Russia has to choose between selling to the EU or selling to China at some eventual point in the future; the grain, oil, and gas will go to China, even possibly at a slight discount.

Whats been more intersting is how the cap on oil prices has played out because consumers are much more sensitive to price in their non-essential energy usage than expected. That'll make the play out take longer, but be much more jittery along the way.

As to jobs... well.

EMRATIO

It can't be hidden.

I always suspected the people in charge were secretly playing the long game, but as we have bumped along the plateau for most of the last decade I see less and less forward thinking.

[ROCKMAN]

"...but as we have bumped along the plateau for most of the last decade I see less and less forward thinking." Actually there has been intense forward thinking especially by the US pubcos. The question is how you define that forward time span. For China it's probably much closer to decades. For many US pubcos it's been quarter to quarter. You've seen my posts before: the oil patch wasn't caught with its pants down by the price collapse. Again: almost all senior pubco management has been through at least 2 boom/bust cycles. Why would they expect this last boom to be any different? That's exactly why the pubcos borrowed so much capex: to drill as much as possible as fast as possible to increase the value of their stock and options as fast as possible. Virtually everyone of us old fart managers understood that this was going to be our last rodeo: none of us will be here when the next boom arrives.

I find it very funny that so many who call us lying bastards are just as ready to call us shortsighted. We aren't short sighted...we all knew the bust was coming. We are lying bastards that have reaped great rewards as we are checking out. LOL. Except for the Rockman, of course. Not the lying bastard part...that's true. But the checking out part: last week a vendor asked me about retiring since I'll be 65 next spring. I told him hell no: I plan to work until my MS kills me...or if something worse happens. Being a fellow old fart I didn't have to explain what that meant. LOL.

[Subjectivist]

"...but as we have bumped along the plateau for most of the last decade I see less and less forward thinking." Actually there has been intense forward thinking especially by the US pubcos. The question is how you define that forward time span. For China it's probably much closer to decades. For many US pubcos it's been quarter to quarter. You've seen my posts before: the oil patch wasn't caught with its pants down by the price collapse. Again: almost all senior pubco management has been through at least 2 boom/bust cycles. Why would they expect this last boom to be any different? That's exactly why the pubcos borrowed so much capex: to drill as much as possible as fast as possible to increase the value of their stock and options as fast as possible. Virtually everyone of us old fart managers understood that this was going to be our last rodeo: none of us will be here when the next boom arrives.

I find it very funny that so many who call us lying bastards are just as ready to call us shortsighted. We aren't short sighted...we all knew the bust was coming. We are lying bastards that have reaped great rewards as we are checking out. LOL. Except for the Rockman, of course. Not the lying bastard part...that's true. But the checking out part: last week a vendor asked me about retiring since I'll be 65 next spring. I told him hell no: I plan to work until my MS kills me...or if something worse happens. Being a fellow old fart I didn't have to explain what that meant. LOL.

I think plenty of people were farsighted depending on how you define it. I don't live near Toledo just because I was born there, it is on a major river that feeds into one of the five largest freshwater bodies in North America.

Politicians on the their hand don't look any further out than their next fundraising opportunity.

[Tanada]

I see this thread and the Collapse Probably Won't Happen thread as the two main sides of the so called Peak Oil Debate. The self styled Doomers believe collapse will be like a row of Dominoes, everything is now set up so that we will rapidly fall apart once the world can no longer get as much oil as it can afford to burn. On the other side of the coin we have the members accused of being Cornucopians collapse-probably-won-t-happen-pt-2-t71852.html in their outlook, that no matter what the problems are that arise we clever Hominids will find a way to work around them and carry on.

When I joined up to this website I considered myself a Moderate, I believed we would bang our head on lots of problems and find lots of solutions, but things would be far from Perfect.

The longer I have been here and the more life beats down on me the more I have shifted toward the Doomer side, though I am far from their deepest beliefs. We had this wonderful gift of a grace period on the plateau at the top of world peak. We did little to prepare for the down slope that I can see. Yes some people and businesses have installed wind/solar systems for their own microgrid use. Yes some people practiced gardening or planted food forests or did some other thing to be better prepared on an individual or family basis. Our culture on the other hand dug in its heels, threw money at maintaining BAU just as hard as it could and tried whistling its way past the graveyard.

The dominoes are all set to fall in rapid succession and here we are with little tremors and rising winds threatening to start the change reaction.

[kanon]

The dominoes are all set to fall in rapid succession and here we are with little tremors and rising winds threatening to start the change reaction.

I would like an analogy different from dominoes. I don't see a succession of events leaving everything fallen. I imagine more partial failures, with many people believing things can be restored and others not that badly affected It is always possible that fossil fuels could be no longer available due to war, natural disaster, etc. Perhaps crop failures will be the first cause of a system shutdown or perhaps a financial crisis. I think the largest failure area will not be any "system" or technology, but rather the inept social engineering by the handlers -- we simply will not know what to do or how to cope because it was not on TV.

[ennui2]

I think it's the failure of humanity to develop holistic thinking. We reach at simple conclusions instead. And so we'll continue playing whack-a-mole.

[dolanbaker]

The dominoes are all set to fall in rapid succession and here we are with little tremors and rising winds threatening to start the change reaction.

I would like an analogy different from dominoes. I don't see a succession of events leaving everything fallen. I imagine more partial failures, with many people believing things can be restored and others not that badly affected It is always possible that fossil fuels could be no longer available due to war, natural disaster, etc. Perhaps crop failures will be the first cause of a system shutdown or perhaps a financial crisis. I think the largest failure area will not be any "system" or technology, but rather the inept social engineering by the handlers -- we simply will not know what to do or how to cope because it was not on TV.

I've always preferred the analogy of the East Yorkshire coastal village, those nearest the coast will soon lose everything while those further away may never be affected (in a human lifetime). Nothing will save them in the long run.

[Ibon]

In another thread I recently commented that it is not our species that will collapse or go extinct but rather our narratives about how dominant and powerful we are. Adaptability is a hallmark of our species. Humility has been in short supply. The combination of adaptability and humility will emerge as the dominant narrative as a result of upcoming consequences. That is the prerequisite for long term sustainability.

That is the reason I have always been more an advocate that collapse wont happen. But as time has passed I have also tended to become more short term pessimistic as I remain long term optimistic.

To see a future narrative of a humbled and adaptive human self regulating seems to require short term consequences that may well fit the definition of collapse.

[Tanada]

I think it's the failure of humanity to develop holistic thinking. We reach at simple conclusions instead. And so we'll continue playing whack-a-mole.

It is the consequence of hubris, we have convinced ourselves that the world is really just like a machine. If we pull the correct lever or push the correct button everything will go just the way we want it. In reality the Universe is not a machine with a few hundred parts all working towards a singular goal. The Universe is organic in structure, not mechanistic. Every atom in existence has a gravitational influence on every other atom, the closer together they are the greater the influence. When you talk about ecological structures every one of them is a web involving both organic and mineral parts that all function as a whole. Remove some of the web and the rest can hold together and even regrow to replace what was lost, but remove too much and the web falls apart and a new web has to grow in its place, often using different components.

It is the height of human hubris to think if we pluck this or that string of the web everything will be just spiffy like we want it to be. We dump large quantities of all kinds of chemicals into the web stimulating some anchor components and down regulating others. At the same time we extract other anchor components completely through over exploitation or because we do not favor whatever those anchor components are doing. Ultimately when this thinking is applied to farms we end up with half dead soil depleted of vital mineral components and over supplied with others that has to be constantly stimulated to produce what we want while simultaneously suppressing the components we don't want. We have turned what was a wholly organic process of sowing, tending and reaping into a mechanistic process we convince ourselves is completely under our control.

Farmers for thousands of years knew that they had to respect the land and treat it properly and if they did it would respond with food and other useful biological materials like wood for building and heating. Then in the 1800's when fossil fuel driven industrialization took off we tried to convert everything into our machine model of the Universe.

Bad news gang, the Universe doesn't give a hoot how you want it to function, it follows the laws of physics and biology. You can stimulate or suppress to a limited extent, but just as soon as you stop doing so the underlying rules of physics and biology reassert themselves with a vengeance.

[onlooker]

Yes I also have read that Nature functions like an interrelated Web and it is resilient up to the point when too much of that Web is destroyed or harmed. That is when a tipping point or threshold is reached which brings down the entire system/ecosystem in question. Also, yes ever since the Enlightenment/Renaissance period Mankind seems particularly focused on the mechanistic cause and effect dynamic while also separating the various scientific disciplines. This leads inevitably to a non-holistic linear mode of thinking. In fact, Nature functions as a whole and most often in cycles based on immutable laws that as Tanada states eloquently always end up reasserting themselves. Tipping points or Thresholds are not linear events but exponential and involve not simple singular cause and effect dynamics but multi-faceted diverse processes that usually are interrelated. Equilibrium and stasis are always temporary as Entropy is always present pushing change albeit at times in very gradual time frames.

[Ibon]

I fight entropy every day in my storage room, in the weeds that persist in my garden, in the potholes on our 4WD road. It is a battle never won, only a temporary holding at bay.

This is a metaphor for our whole species, we are only holding at bay the inevitable correction. Patchwork solutions, band aids.

At times noble but profoundly ignorant. Kudzu Ape.

[onlooker]

That recalls Montequest, so persistent and consistent in his mantra of overshoot based on ecological principles in turn based on the laws of physics, biology and chemistry. Why did not humanity listen to the scientists and science from which all of this may have been avoided. After all, is not ultimately Science their to teach us and give us some wisdom in managing our affairs.

[SeaGypsy]

Science is like everything else, a business. Drawing the most leverage where is the most profit. Business & growth always come first, science which gets in the way will naturally be dismissed. Hence so much rhetoric about 'sustainable growth'- pixie dust, but the mantra allows the profit motive to continue.

[onlooker]

Science is like everything else, a business. Drawing the most leverage where is the most profit. Business & growth always come first, science which gets in the way will naturally be dismissed. Hence so much rhetoric about 'sustainable growth'- pixie dust, but the mantra allows the profit motive to continue.

Sent from my HUAWEI Y520-U33 using Tapatalk

I think Sea you just answered my question.