I have seen the future, and I doesn't like it.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Life after the oil crash.
Ok, last time, I went and pinned it on a vid that most people cannot read at work.
So I am letting y'all boot up something you can read quitely when you oght to be working :)

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

In case you have trouble reading graphs, this one has a Blue Peter style 'talk you through the implications' - complete with original sources, for those who wanna check.

It might seem like I am doom mongering , but I just want to say -
Let's put more into Planned Parenthood, make it optional, but make it a damned sight easier at home and abroad.

Let's have oil rationing, sooner rather than later. Let's also have everything rationed if it's made with oil.

let's try to be civilised about the few resources left and share them out among ourselves.

Let's start reducing consumption , reusing things and recycling more.

let's remember that civilisation as we know it will be over by 2050, if it lasts that long.

Comments

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

green_man_2010, meet (http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/tag/peak%20oil) babystrangeloop.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just. Wow (http://pics.livejournal.com/ddstory/pic/000041s0).

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

OK, he's over-productive, has inspiration and plenty of time on his hands. So?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

He missed 19th & 27th. :-)

Apocalypse maybe

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

You may already be aware, but if not, you might want to investigate Cuba's response to the disappearance of the Soviet Union (and the resulting disappearance of heavily-subsidised oil) as a practical example of what can be done in a post-petroleum world.

Harper's introduced me to the subject back in 2005 (http://harpers.org/archive/2005/04/0080501), but there is also more recently information available. (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N18149257.htm)

Point being, running out of oil will necessarily (well, barring cold-fusion or some other 'miracle' break-through) mean the "end of civilization as we know it, but that need not mean the end of civilization itself.

Re: Apocalypse maybe

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

Hey, I love they're methods of "No motors built after the revolution allowed" hell they still manage to keep mobile and use a shampoo/oil mix as brake fluid, I say bring that on here, let's go truely green instead of building "Green vehicles that cost 3* the earth in building than a conventional IC motor :)

Point being, running out of oil will necessarily (well, barring cold-fusion or some other 'miracle' break-through) mean the "end of civilization as we know it, but that need not mean the end of civilization itself.

I'll assume you've never considerred how people managed to "get about"/ do/build "stuff" 150-200 years back, FFS it's hard to believe we are the products of WINNERS (of the egg and sperm race). Is this really the best line of thought we can come up with?

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

Let's have oil rationing, sooner rather than later. Let's also have everything rationed if it's made with oil.

If you carry on like this I'll design and build a smoke-free high-pressure condensing steam engine and Burn all garbage to run the thing, Hell No Tax, little fuel costs (I'd be round the take-aways for oil and trash, and local dustbins for fuel), no MOT??? just regular boiler saftey /pressure checks, I'm damned sure 250Litres of water would be ample to carry, if one could get the condensor working well and a leak-free piston/rotor set-up:)

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

It is important to note that we are currently living in a post whale-oil world. Due to shortages of whale oil in the 19th century it was found that kerosene could be substituted for use in illumination. Upon discovering how to make lamp oil from crude oil, the next inevitable question was, "What else can we do with it?" The rest is history. Our standards of living are largely a product of the successful technological exploitation of this resource. It makes perfect economic sense when the resource is plentiful. Now that the resource is becoming scarce we need to start looking for the next replacement. But where is it? Where is the next energy source that has millions of years of the sun's potential energy stored in it? Answer: it doesn't exist, and will not anytime soon.

It is a simple energy balance equation: We have expended millions of years of stored solar energy in a few hundred. With that, of course our lifestyle has improved as any organism will expand to fill the available ecological niche. Along with making economic sense, it also makes thermodynamic and biological sense. The math is not wrong. Now as a result of these cold hard unforgiving equations in the future we will have no where near the amount of inexpensive energy available to us and to preserve our lifestyle things are going to get a lot more expensive and be very different.

The problem will eventually take care of itself through simple economics. How we prepare for this depends upon us. Given the projected scarcity of oil reserves, does it really make sense to simply burn it as fuel as opposed to using it to produce all the other products in the petrochemical industry? Perhaps, but not likely. Can we fill the energy gap with wind/solar/nuclear/biofuels etc? Perhaps, but it is important to note that these "clean" technologies all carry an inevitable ecological impact, and are not free because (with the exception of nuclear) they all use current solar energy rather than stored solar energy. Extraterrestrial technological solutions, like beaming microwaves to earth from orbiting satellites sound good, but there are again those pesky thermodynamic equations regarding adding additional solar energy to the planet.

All that being said, the only choice we have is to reduce consumption. You may not like it, but to deny it is to simply deny fact. We will either reduce consumption in a planned way to minimize impacts, or we will be forced to react to fuel prices exceeding $100 per gallon. Frankly, as with global warming I find myself in bizarro world. We have conservatives willfully denying the potential consequences, and liberals taking it seriously. Since it is largely coming from the liberal wing, it stands to reason that the solutions proposed are also coming form there. Conservatives SHOULD be taking this seriously. Being proactive is supposed to be what conservatives do.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

It is important to note that we are currently living in a post whale-oil world

I wonder if this explains the excess snake oil marketting these days? hehe

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

What you presented isn't an energy balance equation. The earth receives about 1.5 X 10^3 Watts/square meter from the sun, the world needs about 1.5 X 10^13 Watts to run. We need the energy that hits about 10,000 square kilometers to run the world. This is about three Rhode Islands, about 1/50,000th of the energy we receive from the sun.

The reason we're burning through millions of years worth of oil is that oil is an incredibly inefficient way of storing the sun's energy. Much of the energy is lost and much of the oil is not recoverable.

If we can get really good at capturing the sun's energy, to the point where we can capture about 0.002% of it, we won't have any problems. This ignores uranium, which is really a way of storing energy from supernovas, and fusion, which would be capturing the energy of the big bang (or the six day work week God put in 10,000 years ago if you prefer).

[404.livejournal.com]

Do you ever get tired of being negative?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Do you?

[thies.livejournal.com]

Too much crying wolf over peak oil during past decades, nothing going to happen until it really starts to run out for good.

[sgiffy.livejournal.com]

There is plenty of oil between deep water, shale, and other sources. The only reason we don't tap them now is because they are more expensive then current sources. There are also lots of places we haven't looked. In the US we also have plenty of coal, and coal can be turned into most of the same things oil can, its just an extra dirty process. Oh and lets not pretend we will keep exporting tons of food when we can turn it into ethanol.

No, peak oil is not going to save us from global warming.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

The problem is, it isn't enough.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

To extract shale oil, we would have to dig up hundreds of square miles of North America; and not one single refinery for processing shale oil currently exists. I would rather put my money on developing an interstellar warp drive engine.

James Burke would disagree

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Although in this case, he was citing the example of the 1960s black out in New York City, I think the parallel with the lack of plentiful oil is a valid one. This clip starts with the effects of the power loss in New York, with the implications for technology, he think goes into further detail about this happening on a larger scale. It's a long clip, but worth watching.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Sigh.

That's the problem with Greens, it is always doom and gloom.

You know what will happen as the price of oil rises? Other technologies capable of providing just as much energy that we have available on the shelf today but cost more will become economically viable.

The first and most obvious is Nuclear which contrary to the propaganda is just about the safest technology invented by man. Hell this current oil leak in the Gulf is a far greater economic and environmental catastrophe than Chernobyl and the death count between oil and nuclear makes it a no brainer.

Then is Solar, both ground based and orbital based become more viable as does wind, tidal, and the various forms of geothermal.

Then for the other uses of oil, as I said yesterday given a sufficient supply of energy (i.e. electricity generated by Nuclear/Solar/Wind/Geothermal/etc.) the lubricants and plastics can be manufactured from the base elements.

No, the end of oil (which is guaranteed whether it is 5 years or 50 years or 500 years from now) will not mean a catastrophe or collapse of civilization (or at least it need not), it will however mean some severe economic constraints during the transition and maybe some isolated starvation in the poorer countries who lack the technological base to transform their economies rapidly but there will not be another dark ages caused by it and nor will there be a mass die off of humans.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

there will not be another dark ages caused by it and nor will there be a mass die off of humans.

But the Greens (and others) will try their hardest to make it happen anyways.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

See my comment in the above thread.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I'm not worried about an oil crash. Oil isn't going to just suddenly run out one day with a global slurping sound. There are many issues with oil but an oil crash isn't one of them. The author gives no reason why oil would follow a bell curve as he states.

There is a scarcity issue as people fight to cling to the past and go to war over the diminishing supply of oil, but as oil increases in price, alternatives will be more affordable in comparison, and in the end, we'll realize that they are actually cheaper.

That is, of course, if we don't poison ourselves first.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Haven't we gone through this Peak Oil subject not too long ago in this forum with another doomsday prediction? This is a perfect opportunity to test out that Salt Water Fuel theory. Maybe we can work out a hybrid with Salt Water and Oil from the Gulf.

[fourth-moon.livejournal.com]

> let's remember that civilisation as we know it will be over by 2050, if it lasts that long.

Weirdly, that conjures up an image of 2050 - everything's different, I'm a wrinkly old woman, the teens of the day know of course everything "people back then" did wrong (mostly because they grew up knowing that water and energy are precious commodities just like we were brought up knowing they're dirt cheap) and complaining to me why I was so damn wasteful.

What the ...? I mean, I'm using either a bike or public transportation to get anywhere. Or I walk. I heat my rooms maybe one month out of twelve. I'm one of maybe three people in a fifty households apartment building recycling not just glass and paper but 90% of my waste. And it won't matter, in forty years time I'll be grouped with the people who chuck every bit of waste into one bin because changing habits is too much effort.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm a baby boomer and it's happening to me already.

"The pension funds - we are screwed!"

The previous generation had kids coz they had no choice.
my generation had a choice, but could see no incentives on bringing kids into a world where ' they' didn't care about the quality of human life.

So, there were fewer kids coming on stream.