[AgentR11]

Not to be too morbid but it’s my sincere hope that your lads are never conscripted in military service to help defend “our oil” in those foreign lands where it happens to exist.

I doubt we'll ever have conscription again. We are able to fill the ranks of an absolutely massive armed forces with volunteers, and we fire tons of them before they want out.

Personally, I'd feel nothing but honor and pride if mine chose to serve, enlisted or officer, either way.

[C8]

Be of good cheer C8.

1000 years from now there will still be humans living on earth. Probably a very different earth and a very different civilization, but everything humanity is going to go through in the next 100 years will just be a paragraph in the history books.

Thanks for the thoughts. Luckily, I have a naturally happy predisposition. I remember reading a quote from Abe Lincoln to the effect that "people are as happy as they make up their minds to be" and I have found this to be true for me at least.

I do not tell others about PO or AGW though because I find many are strongly depressed afterwards. Once, I gave a 2 hour PowerPoint presentation I made for some professionals, a woman later told me she was depressed for weeks afterwards. It is hard for people to cope with- most need an optimistic forecast to be happy.

But think back when all the oil was being discovered in the 1920's- good times ahead eh? No- what followed was the Great depression, WW2, and the Cold War with the terrifying threat of nuclear winter (why do we never talk about all those missiles anymore? Aren't they still ready to be launched?) Point is: people will be bad whether there is a lot of energy or a little. And in every situation there is something to appreciate and smile about.

So I look forward to my life and the lives of my kids- considering each day a gift and not asking any guarantees from the future. But I don't talk about what I know to my friends or family- I keep that to myself because I know that I can handle it and stay happy. I am not so sure about others and do not want to depress them. what if that woman at the conference had died soon afterwards- I would have been responsible for depressing her in the last two weeks of her life- and for what? So I don't give presentations anymore.

[ian807]

Emphatically and absolutely not. Admittedly, I would prefer a more benign energy source but peak oil will eventually kill billions.

[Newfie]

Sorta like asking if you would rather hang or be shot.

Kevin Anderson addresses this point quite well. Accordingly we have two choices...
A ... Wreck our global economy right now by shutting down ff use. .. Or
B ... Destroying thr planet for future generations.

I don't get to decide but as an old codger who has had the best our generation can provide, I think it only right that future generations get a shot at survival. If that mans short term chaos then so be it.

But remember, it's not a question of IF billions will die, they surely will in either scenario. The only question is if future generations, however small, have a chance.

Beautiful day here. Wonderful pleasant weather. Good meal cooking, sucking a glass of wine. Mind of like the day Churchill and Rooseveldt met at Ship Harbour to discuss the war and make agreements. This was the summer before Pearl Harbor. Churchill quipped that is was such a lovely day, in the bay, on his brand new battleship, that it was hard to remember that England was fighting for its survival. A few months latter the Prince of Wales was sunk by Japaneese aircraft, the Captain drowned, and America drug into the war.

Reality sucks.

[John_A]

Just curious- with all the discussion about PO here, whether it will happen, how fast, etc. I wondered what people actually desired. Do you want Peak Oil to happen? I realize many will say its already happening, and this is true, but not in the dramatic way as envisioned 5 years ago. For the sake of this discussion, I will qualify Peak Oil to mean world supplies to start declining rapidly soon. Do you want this?

Of course it is a good thing. People being people, they certainly will not change their behavior without some sort of stimuli, and peak oil and its accompanying skyrocketing prices will drive exactly the sort of change the environmentalists want, most humans in the modern world need (less dependence on fuel for transport and more on their lungs, heart and legs), and has no real downside other than the discomfort of the change to a less liquid fuel future itself.

I once read a treatise on how it will lower divorce rates, stop the growth in obesity, require people to interact more with each other rather than the incessant virtual world children seem so enamored with, all sorts of good side effects, was in Nature a year or two back? Must look it up, was quite thought provocative.

[KingM]

I will answer first, I very reluctantly say "yes" and this is because I am very concerned about global CO2 emissions. My kids can live through PO, I am not so sure about AGW.

AGW will take place over decades and centuries. It will probably mean some coastal cities succumb to the oceans (again, over a period of generations), while civilization gradually spreads into some of the millions of square miles that are currently frozen wasteland. It may also mean staving off the next glacial epoch and global drying, which would be far more destructive to civilization.

PO may involve a rapid collapse, but more likely it would involve a somewhat painful transition to a post-fossil fuel economy.

In short, I'm not convinced that either PO or AGW are on the net negative for human societies.

[ROCKMAN]

C8 - "... its just I feel a little more confident in getting them into a non-combat position". And my sincere wish that your hopes are fulfilled. We are not much more than our experiences. And those experiences paint our expectations. My expectation is that your children and mine won’t have such experiences. But ours are not the only children in play. As far as someone not expecting the draft to be revised almost no parents in the 60’s expected it either.

I still find it interesting that there’s almost no expectation of PO seriously effecting any of the commenters. It certainly won’t have any negative effect on me in the time I have left. So what the heck…bring it on. Being glib is easy when it isn't your butt on the line. LOL.

[Ibon]

When you really take an honest look at what Kudzu Ape has done in terms of their daily behaviors since exploiting the wealth of fossil fuels, only those with no integrity or dignity would really want this parasitic, lazy, shallow, consumer oriented, socially and culturally retarded paradigm to persist.

I will now press the submit button and spew this wisdom into the cyberworld.....wow, I do feel self righteous this morning.....

It's not a bad idea to stand in front of that mirror and ask those hard questions about how you assess your own inner resolve in living a life of dignity and meaning. In how much you are contributing to your family, village, nation, planet in representing an alternative to the parasitic Kudzu Ape we have become.

It really is not so much Peak Oil that we want but rather the consequences that it can provoke in shifting cultural values and in preventing our fellow flora and fauna from further abuse.....

Dignity is defined by how you tread upon the earth... as an individual and as a species.

[kuidaskassikaeb]

Peak oil was an interesting intellectual game. Sort of the immovable object (certain geological facts) vs. the irresistible force (capitalism). There was some suspense.

I think it's been basically a tie, with AGW calling time out.

[Loki]

What I want in life is usually irrelevant, I learned that lesson a long time ago To quote my favorite Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, “Of things, some are in our power, and others are not.” I'm pretty sure preventing peak oil is not within my power. But how I react to it is.

I'm as prepared as I've ever been to deal with a sudden, catastrophic crash, should such a thing happen. This gives me some tranquility of mind.

But I think the gradual impoverishment of First Worlders is more likely than a definitive civilizational crash. Since I'm already fairly poor, I'm not too worried about that scenario either. Getting a bit poorer wouldn't be the end of the world.

What I “want” would probably be the most realistic best-case scenario: a deep, decades-long global economic depression resulting in a drastic reduction in GHG emissions. This could also drag out the peak oil plateau, perhaps allowing us to avoid the hypothetical cliff on the other side of Mt. Hubbert. And this economic collapse wouldn't be so bad as to lead to die-off in poorer countries, just bad enough to put the brakes on the industrial economies and shift us into reverse for a while. Avoidance of WWIII would also be peachy.

But I have no say in these matters. I try to stay happy chopping wood and carrying water.

[ROCKMAN]

Loki - You seem to epitomize my favorite philosopher: "To be, not to seem". Or as said in a dead language: Esse quam videri ...To be, rather than to seem to be

[Pretorian]

Yes, of course I want it to happen - and the sooner and harsher the better. In my opinion, anyone who doesn't want it to happen has a death wish for the human race. Our only way forward as a species is if we reduce our emissions of global pollutants now, but we are not capable of doing this voluntarily. Peak oil and the collapse that follows are the only way I see out of the mess we've gotten ourselves into.

Human raceS will be fine for quite awhile peakoil or not. But other species won't. I personally am not comfortable being a part of this mass murder. Somehow, converting non-human biomass into human biomass does not appeal to me. Therefore I want it to happen. The faster we will burn it all off, the better.

[careinke]

I'm kinda hoping for a huge EMP burst from the sun, large enough to take out all electrical systems. The resulting speedy, and large, human die off would paradoxically provide the best hope for mankind.

[Tanada]

I'm kinda hoping for a huge EMP burst from the sun, large enough to take out all electrical systems. The resulting speedy, and large, human die off would paradoxically provide the best hope for mankind.

I used to be firmly in the camp that if an act of God like a solar EMP were to wipe out our civilization I want it to happen during the coldest snowiest winter on record so that all those big city types around me freeze in place instead of flooding through the countryside and doing a good impression of a plague of locusts.

I am no longer sure even that would save me and my loved ones, but then again we would be staying somewhere with a fireplace, a wood stove and a wood pile to keep us from freezing if it did happen that way. Also northern hemisphere winter is the perihelion so the EMP would be strongest then.

[Lore]

I'm kinda hoping for a huge EMP burst from the sun, large enough to take out all electrical systems. The resulting speedy, and large, human die off would paradoxically provide the best hope for mankind.

Kind of like the Y2K bug? Burn industrial man and leave us hippies to our paradise

Yes, Industrial Man must die, after all, it's only natural.

[Loki]

Pretorian, I do agree with you on the tragedy of biodiversity loss and other environmental affronts. It kills me. But I just can't agree with the whole “the human race needs to go” sentiment. I'd prefer a staircase model, one step down at a time.

I feel guilty for “wanting” economic collapse, though it's not a matter of want, just a matter of choosing from a set of bad outcomes. No way in hell I'm going to wish for a spasm of mass suffering the likes of which has never been seen before.

Not that there's any point in wishing for this or that scenario. What happens will happen. Most of this cake is already baked, the only question is how long 'til it's done.

[Loki]

Loki - You seem to epitomize my favorite philosopher: "To be, not to seem". Or as said in a dead language: Esse quam videri ...To be, rather than to seem to be

Haven't heard that one, but it sounds like a compliment. I went through my idealistic phase in my 20s, spent far too much of my time pondering the deep thoughts of philosophers, historians, et al. Now I'm at the end of my 30s I'm doing my best to think and act as pragmatically as possible. To be, I suppose, rather than to seem.

Focusing on self-sufficiency is about all I can do to “prepare” for a really uncertain future. Farming, canning, brewing, and all the various other DIY stuff I do to fill my days. But if I was a billionaire, I might take a more ignoble path, buy my own island and hire a harem of beautiful women to look after my every need while I surf the internet all day. Probably just as well that I'm a poor farmer

[ROCKMAN]

Loki - Maybe better to put it terms from my world: Actions talk...bullshit walks. IOW it doesn't matter whether I agree with another person's path they chose but if they actually follow their words. You appear to be such a person.

Either that or you really have a good line of BS. LOL. But I doubt that.