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Energy & The Economy - Why Society Will Be Forced To Become Less Complex
Submitted by Adam Taggart via Peak Prosperity,
In the past few chapters on Energy Economics, Peak Cheap Oil, and the false promise of Shale Oil, we've gone into great detail to show how our economic growth is deeply dependent on our energy systems.
Here’s how it all sums up.
There are some knowns:
We know that energy is required for both growth and complexity. We know that surplus energy is shrinking. We know that the age of cheap oil is over. And we know that because of this oil costs will consume an ever-greater proportion of our total budget.
And with these known facts, come along specific risks.
There is the risk that our exponential money system will cease to operate in a world of declining energy surplus. It is designed for a world without limits – a world of endless growth.
And there is the risk that our society will be forced to become less complex - a loaded statement if ever there was one.
Each one of these known facts adds to each one of the stated risks and that is what The Crash Course is about: assessing those risks and deciding what, if anything, a prudent adult should do about adapting to these realities and facing these risks.
Putting these together, the predictions in video below become so easy to make they don't feel like predictions at all; just inevitable facts.
* * *
For those who simply don't want to wait until the end of the year to view the entire new series, you can indulge your binge-watching craving by enrolling to PeakProsperity.com. The entire full new series, all 27 chapters of it, is available -- now-- to our enrolled users.
The full suite of chapters in this new Crash Course series can be found at www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse
And for those who have yet to view it, be sure to watch the 'Accelerated' Crash Course -- the under-1-hour condensation of the new 4.5-hour series. It's a great vehicle for introducing new eyes to this material.
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Abiotic oil is generated deep within the Earth at all times, there will be no energy shortage.
Perhaps there will be oxygen shortage, knowing our "leaders"...
Warning Thread hijack!!
A nice use of a few gallons of HiTest...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qanlirrRWs#t=716
Things get too serious here on the Hedge and every once in awhile, a diversion is needed!
DaddyO
Wonder how much he paid the city to let him do that.
THORIUM YOU MOOKS!
Sheeeesh...
Then we need the time to overcome the engineering tasks for scaling thorium reactors up and making them truly safe, which takes time. Then, after that, we need the time to build the infrastructure to support the thorium reactors and the reactors themselves. After that, there is a storage issue. We would need either need a massive leap in battery technology, or we would need to build the infrastructure for reverse combustion, because liquid fuels are mighty convenient.
All of that is technologically feasable, but the problem is that we should have already been heading in that direction for a decade or two to avoid the problems that we are going to face. We may yet face a bright future, but not without a massive amount of pain in the interrim period. There will be a very dark period in the meantime.
Well there is concept called liquid fluoride thorium reactors (look it up). These are safer then other types (they operate at atmospheric pressures), they can be even made into "walk away type" (one can abandon them, and if anything happens they will shut themselves down).
The catches:
-we have to rebuild our infrastructure;
-there is not enough thorium for operating Fisher-Tropsch reactors for our fuel consumption.
Right, we built one working reactor. That's proof of concept. The reactors can work. That's still a far cry from replacing oil. The problem isn't that it is technologically impossible to do, the problem is that we should have had working and tested designs a decade or two ago if that was the route we were going to take.
Thanks for being rational. Hedgers are as prone to magical thinking as the next lot of sheeple. "Thorium will save us". Sure.
As for a massive leap in battery tech, Pretty unlikely. Incremental improvements, sure. But the periodic table rules out massive leaps. As you say, a massive leap would be necessary. Reverse combustion, I assume you mean hydrogen generation. Hard to store, that stuff, and transport. Much more so than gasoline/liquid fuels, as you say. And fuel cells are no panacea.
Which brings us to the one solution rejected by all: use less fucking energy. By choice as opposed to having it forced on us. Dunno why that is so hard to figure out.
Hydrogen generation is part of the process that I'm talking about with reverse combustion, but not all of it. I'm talking about breaking the CO2 down as well, and using the C and the H and whatever else makes nice liquid fuels and then taking a better chemist than I am and putting that stuff together to make liquid fuels. It would take a lot of energy to do, but if you want mobility with our current technology and understanding of physics, that's about what it would take.
As for the "use less fucking energy," good luck with that. I'm not bagging on you, I'm bagging on all of the people out there who don't realize that they're using energy every time they flip on a light or the TV. I'm also bagging on all of the people who don't have a clue where their food was produced and that it took a lot of energy to grow, harvest, ship, process, package and then ship again. Relocalizing a lot of our food production would be one way to use a lot less energy, but people would get pissy when they couldn't just go to Smith's or Albertson's and get a box of hot pockets. Just think about all of the dumbfucks who couldn't cook a meal from scratch if their lives depended on it. Also consider the profits that would be lost by the industrial agriculture system and the lobbying pressure that they'd put on congress if they thought that local food production was taking over. No, voluntarily using less energy is not in the cards because of shit like this, so we'll get it forced upon us.
It'll be forced upon us by costs. But, it'll be great. I drink Cold trail blonde ail, it's a one man operation. Lots of creativity in the human brainome. Rocket stoves for everyone, small spaces to live in , noone needs a Mcmansion. It'll be forced upon us and we'll be better off for it.
Resonance. We should all be running our homes off of hydrogen right now. Seems everytime there is a breakthrough, that person disappears or stops talking. I wouldn't dare call it a conspiracy. Just strange how many coincidences there are. I dunno. Probably nothing. Right?
Your assumption is that we will wake up one day and all the oil and gas wells are suddenly dry. It will be a one to two decade process when it happens and energy prices will keep increasing until research into alternative fuels is economically feasible.
Thorium Energy is probably one of the more brightest frontiers and one of the safest.
It's not happening in the next 20 years.
Nope, Headbanger. But you keep dreaming of a world of endless growth.
Malthus had a similar idea only he thought that human population and society was limited by food production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe
Replace food with enery in his arguments and its the same thing. And it hasn't happened. Yet.
Keep yer head buried...
Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapsehttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-wa...
BTW - According to your logic no one should ever get cancer because cancer had never happened to them in the past.
It hasn't happened. Yet. Keep in mind, it only has to happen ONCE. It will.
Bacteria in a test tube.
In thirty years and watching 1000s of bacterial colonies growing in Petrie dishes, never once did I see them use their resources judiciously. No, just exponential growth until resources and space was gone and then death due waste build up and lack of nutrients. But, then again, maybe I shouldn't compare thinking rational humans to bacteria.
Miffed
Easter Island says that perhaps you should compare us to bacteria.
We are worse than bacteria, because we are better at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence. Bacteria can not blow up their petri dish with atomic bombs!
Best post since ZH inception award goes to RM! For the fucking score!!!!!!
There is no evidence currently that humans are smarter than bacteria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1x4RljmnE
Exactly, and Bacteria are inherently smarter acting than humans.
Population control is the only solution. The only question is will it be controlled or forced by either war or the environment?
Your appeal to authority has completely trumped the argument that I never made. Touche'.
Moreover, Seer, it may well finally turn out to be the case that burning all the fossil fuels as fast as we could was the worst thing we could have possibly done ...
It is a hyper-complicated issue, whether or not, or to what degree we could assert that it is correct that Humans could be blamed for climate change ... I think that changes in more cosmic factors, such as changes in the Sun's and Earth's magnetic fields, are giving us a "lucky break," which is preventing the greenhouse gas mechanisms from having already caused the possible runaway positive feed backs of runaway climate change, which were summarized in this 17 minute video from 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ktYbVwr90
Climate change is simpleI have discovered that climate change is NOT simple, after one adds in the consideration of more cosmic factors that nobody fully understands. However, the basic greenhouse gas mechanisms are understood, and would tend to cause those to go into positive feedbacks, initially triggered by human beings burning all the oil available as fast as they could.
Although I currently believe we are getting some more relative cosmic good luck, that is preventing the greenhouse gas mechanisms from manifesting as bad as they otherwise would have already done, there continues to be no good reasons to doubt that eventually human beings burning all the fossil fuels that they could, as fast as they could, is going to drive climate change to become catastrophic on a scale we can not now fully comprehend.
One can always fit our problems into nested Chinese boxes, or Russian dolls. Most people naturally only care about the the short-term, or maybe the medium term, while the longer term does not really worry them. People making money inside of the fundamentally fraudulent financial systems only care about the degree to which they can do that now, and in their foreseeable future, regardless of the longer term consequences.
Military conflicts over the control of natural resources are similarly short-sighted, and imperatively so. The longer term consequences of climate change causing the extinction of the human species is a quite possible outcome of the ways that we have burned all the fossil fuels we could, as fast as we could, because human societies were dominated by lies, backed by violence, or enforced frauds, which cared about nothing but that.
The Limits to Growth continue to be the closest to what is actually happened, as you already quoted above, Seer:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
Limits to Growth was right.
New research shows we're nearing collapse.
By Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander, September 2, 2014.
"It may be too late to convince the world’s politicians and wealthy elites to chart a different course. So to the rest of us, maybe it’s time to think about how we protect ourselves as we head into an uncertain future."
The epidsode above of Martenson's Crash Course came to a similar conclusion at the end ... Nothing else has been done to prepare for the future, other than the ruling classes staging more inside job, false flag attacks, in order to start more genocidal wars, and get ready to impose democidal martial law. The only apparently realistic "solutions" to our problems, that do not rely upon technological and political miracles, are the mass murders of human beings, getting worse and worse, until the human species has finally committed collective suicide.
Of course, for those who only care about the short-term, or medium term, maybe that does not matter to them. Meanwhile, the longer term considerations have no effect upon the established systems of enforced frauds, which drive economic developments to become insanely based on being able to back up lies with violence, which automatically destroys the future, the more successful that becomes.
I REPEAT WHAT IS OBVIOUS TO ONE WHO LOOKS:
THE ONLY WAYS THAT THE ESTABLISHED SOCIAL PYRAMID SYSTEMS ARE ADAPTING TO THE LIMITS TO GROWTH ARE BY PREPARING TO START MORE GENOCIDAL WARS, AND IMPOSE DEMOCIDAL MARTIAL LAW.
The only genuinely better resolutions to the limits to growth are different death control systems. However, those are practically guaranteed to become runaway death insanity spirals, whose final consequences are quite possibly the extinction of the human species, unless there ARE some technological and political miracles that happen before that!
yes Radical Marijuana "you keep slapping that bass" ; ) (MEAN'S COMPLIMENT)
YES, Adam, we know we know we know we know and Michell Jarraud says the same thing "We KNoW" : ) Applause is not something we see at these press releases and then to see the chairman lean back and give his co-sponsor a 'thumbs up'?!? BTW following Jarraud's comment is a comment from the Environment minister from Peru...
Now what? Well just like clockwork we're at that "then the politicians got involved" phase that James Burke described TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO now that The Fifth Assessment Report is in the history books. I sincerely hope that if there is any more ARs, they will devote more to studying less core GHG mechanisms and do a little more on potential cosmic influences etc. For example, there was a super expensive payload that went up to the ISS on one of the last few STS missions that was going to research (I'm gonna mess this up but Flak knew what I was driving at) anti-matter or dark energy (was it called MERS?) Whatever it was I remember the lead on the project being interviewed on launch day and I could feel the sense of possibilities. Wonderful! Now as you say RM, in the context of bullshit backed up by violence, maybe the genesis of the module was weapon oriented but Humanity might be surprised with what the super-sciences will come up with in the future, and the possibilities expand if we can move beyond endlessly studying the more basic stuff.
Now I'm confused when you say "different" death control systems. It's the same old death control systems that will lead to death insanities, if the debt insanities we are witnessing are the canary in the coal mine? (if you'll excuse the expression lol) Which they are. Did you mean to say better resolutions are "better" death control systems?
If this were a baseball game, I'd say Peru is stepping into the batter's box and Paris (the political miracle) is on deck : ) Lots of "I stopped reading when IPCC" and "UN lulz" comments here lately. I agree with you RM that these organizations were born under a bad sign or have been corrupted more with each passing decade and operate within the rigged system to keep the system rigged, but when Jarraud comes before the world and says things are known, and BUSINESS as usual MEANS risking things spiralling out of control to such a degree that they can't quantify it, then perhaps the politicians are going to put the pieces together; debt insanities + natural systems insanities = death insanities.
After COP15 it's hard not to guess that Mighty Casey will strike out but I think COP 21 is a very different ball game LULZ!
\/ \/
"Better" death controls is extremely problematic because, historically, the best death controls were done through the maximum possible deceits (and the controlled opposition got into the same groove) which created a double whammy that the current human death controls are taboo topics, despite their central importance.
I am merely attempting to maintain some intellectual integrity towards understand general energy systems, when those manifest through human beings, as natural selection becomes artificial selection. Of course, as I just said, the historical murder systems were done by those who lied about doing those best, while their controlled opposition groups agreed to go along with that, which makes any genuine progress towards better death controls extremely difficult and dangerous.
IRRATIONAL HOPES FOR
SOME FINITE MIRACLES
&
TRANSCENDENTAL HOPE
IN THE INFINITE MIRACLE:
ENERGY WILL BE CONSERVED.
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/dennis-meadows-collapse-is-inevitable-now-2015-2020/
Dennis Meadows Collapse inevitable 2015-2020
Posted by Energysceptic, June 14, 2014
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/dennis-meadows/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2oyU0RusiA
Dennis Meadows ... no longer believes in sustainable development, it is too late for that. Meadows currently holds that collapse is now all but inevitable, but that its actual form will be too complex for any model to predict. “Collapse will not be driven by a single, identifiable cause simultaneously acting in all countries,” he observes. “It will come through a self-reinforcing complex of issues” — including climate change, resource constraints and socioeconomic inequality …
Indeed, collapse is too difficult to predict, because that will primarily manifest VIA Peak Insanities, mostly Death Insanities. Nothing significant was done to deal with real problems, because society was really controlled by lies backed by violence! The actual future shall continue to be primarily the result of the
series of psychotic breakdowns through insane murder systems.
http://dieoff.com/page185.htm
... "It was not the methods of science that were appropriated by the early neoclassicals as it was the appearances of science, for the early neoclassicals possessed a singularly inept understanding of the physics they so admired … [ Neoclassical economists attempt ] to reduce all social institutions such as money, property rights, and the market itself to epiphenomena of individual constrained optimization calculation. All these attempts have failed, despite their supposed dependence upon mathematical rigor, because they always inadvertently assume what they aim to deduce … Conservation principles are the key to the understanding of a mathematical formulation of any phenomenon, and it has been there that the neoclassicals have been woefully negligent."
Economists are trained to believe that "money" is to the economy what "energy" is to the physical world. This leads them to believe that whatever is "economically" possible is "physically" possible too. What economists fail to realize is that the economy is a subsystem of the physical system, and thus constrained by universal physical laws that they have not studied. Economists do not know that something must be physically possible before it can be economically possible. Since they only study money, they have no idea where the physical limits, and thus, economic limits are. ... Once the economist's neurons and dendrites are fully programmed (usually for life), economists serve as robotic broadcasting devices explicitly designed to hide the political nature of the economy from the public. In other words, the economist serves no function in society except to protect the ruling elites from public scrutiny while they loot the planet. ...
Mainstream economists deliberately ignore how the money was based on enforced frauds, because they deliberately ignore the death controls that were behind debt controls. The limits to growth, provoking collapses via overshoots, will intensify the manifestation of deceitful death control, while better death controls will be the only real solutions,
no matter how problematically paradoxical that would be.
Better death controls are what theoretically ought to be achieve by greater use of information, enabling higher consciousness about those death controls. They are still operating as energy systems, where energy is never created nor destroyed, but only transforms. In order to have better death controls we would have to go through intellectual scientific revolutions, to recognized the degree to which we reversed the meaning of the concept entropy. Human beings operate as entropic pumps. The most basic death controls are when we kill and eat other animals, or plants, and that included that some human beings killed other human beings, within the overall context of how human beings lived by killing other living organisms.
The profound problems are the degree to which we understand all of that in utterly backwards ways, and thus operate inside of a Bizarro Mirror World, where everything appears proportionately backwards. The most important thing that human beings do is operate the human murder systems, as the most conscious form of the human death controls, which are central to every other sort of artificial selection. We have presented all of that in ways which are as backwards as possible, or as dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view as possible. That includes the controlled opposition, of course, such as all the significant religions and ideologies, which do not propose better death controls, but rather tend to propose that there should be not death controls, or, at least, none that human beings are conscious of operating.
The actual death controls are done through the maximum possible deceits, and that has resulted in no possibly better scientific militarism. Therefore, we HAVE weapons of mass destruction, based on progress in sciences such as physics and biology, while there is NOTHING like that in political science, in order to examine the purposes behind the death controls, and how we could achieve those purposes better.
Better death controls would require changing the language that we use, to move past the typical dualities taken for granted in our languages. We should endeavour to replace the false fundamental dichotomies and related impossible ideals with more unitary mechanisms. (I.e., almost everything that our culture calls "birth control" are actually forms of death control, and therefore, should be integrated into the overall better systems of death controls after perceiving that.)
Better death controls would require a profound series of intellectual scientific revolutions in basic philosophy of science, which would apply to political science, and therefore, to militarism operating its death controls. The development of weapons of mass destruction should motivate us to transform ourselves, changing our politics enough to be able to survive the development of those weapons, whose continued use through the maximum possible deceits, and resulting maximum evil deliberate ignorance, is not conducive to longer term human survival ...
The actual interactions will continue to happen between the infinitely bigger forms of natural selections, driving the artificial selection systems that human beings develop, with the human murder systems necessarily being the salient center to that processes, although all other death controls, manifesting as social facts throughout every kind of cultural activity, continue to also play roles within the overall death controls. Better death controls would require an overall better science, paying more attention to the social facts, and the social engineering that followed upon facing those facts.
Obviously, the problem is that history has already selected for the actual death controls to be most successfully done through the maximum possible deceits, within which context we had the treachery of spies, etc., being very significant, as the most important soldiers, in the overall context of warfare. Moreover, those actual death controls, based on the maximum possible deceits, were then the cultural context in which all controlled opposition groups, such as the significant religions and ideologies operated, i.e., within the basic deliberate ignorance due to the triumphs the real death controls being done through the maximum deceits.
Better death controls would require a more scientific society, that surmounted, at least somewhat more, the dilemmas and paradoxes of the actually established death controls, and related cultural concepts, have been selected to develop artificial selection systems that operated through the maximum deceits about themselves, engendering the maximum deliberate ignorance towards those.
Better death controls are better energy systems, which have a better understanding of the how energy is conserved, due to a better understanding of the concept of entropy, all of which require correcting the degree to which the biggest bullies' bullshit world view has dominated the currently established artificial selection systems, to create the kind of Bizarro Mirror World we are living in now. It is prime paradox to recognized the degree to which the only genuinely better resolutions to our real problems require better death controls.
That is particularly so because the debt controls are backed by the death controls, because money is measurement backed by murder. Guys like Chris Martenson, who is typical of many, many others, proposes relatively silly "solutions" because nowhere does he systematically present what the real death controls already are, much less what better death controls there could be. Due to the degree that the biggest bullies dominated civilization, their bullshit social stories dominated everything that our culture does, including its death controls, and therefore, our economic systems operate as enforced frauds, which get away with deliberately denying and ignoring that most important and central social fact.
Better death controls are better militarism, as an improved social science and social engineering, which is able to move through enough of a series of paradigm shifts to stop being as trapped as it is now by the language of dualities, or false fundamental dichotomies and related impossible ideals. The "Matrix of Lies" that we live within is much more pervasive and profound that almost anyone is even dimly aware of, due to the degree to which the biggest bullies' bullshit totally dominates our culture. But nevertheless, better death controls, based on upon better understanding of general energy systems, which could enable better systems of artificial selection, should still be our realistic goals for the future.
going through the links now. will reply asap. BTW I did finally watch that vid you linked weeks ago where they were suggesting that we should stop thinking or talking or something and I agree with you, it just didn't ring true. Thanks for this reply/more homework !
quick follow up, the Meadows/Smithsonian presentation, while I can h/t the guy for showing up, was painful. All 3 speakers were lame as shit and couldn't stop talking about the funding. Sheesh! Meadows is way behind on his message, I doubt he'd ever heard of a Canfield Ocean or Paris when he arrived there in (?)2012. I heard about Paris at 30 months out...
http://northcyprusfreepress.com/news-review/pressure-groups/avaaz/avaaz-...
and like Meadows the title of his article, "save the world" is hyperbole but...
The arm-crossing exercise was fun and while he was right about #2, it being cumbersome to figure out how to cross your arms the other way, he failed to point out that "there was a third possibity..." in that that the exercise highlights the artificial, for we naturally cross our arms so that both hands are in our armpits...
I'm part way through the much meatier 'Means' link now...
I can feel the danger I see you talk about RM, because I talk about the danger that IS Paris. Genuine progress on the SNAFU in Paris will, I think, invariably bring out progress on the central issue of death controls. My guess is that that words will be hard to come by in December 2015 but that we will start to hear them in Peru from places like Ecuador. The breaking point IS coming because while progress may be "dangerous" as you say, "we are now at the point" (as Jarraud says LOL) where it is clear that NOT talking about real reality (as James Burke said) is far more dangerous, to put it mildly!
I agree that "The actual future shall continue to be primarily the result of the series of psychotic breakdowns through insane murder systems" and in that sense I totally agree with the point Meadows was trying to make (apologies for the rant late last night, I'm MAD Bros! a lot these days "LULZ") but I admire his contribution and did note that his first observation in the arm-crossing exercise was that it is possible to fold them "the" other way. Failure in Paris the way Copenhagen failed in my mind virtually guarantees it for reasons I've outlined vis-a-vis AR6.
As for economists, I thought Peter Joseph nailed it. Why am I not surprised that my Ex the lawyer did her undergrad in Economics? Not that I was looking at her degree at the time... OUCH!
Better information is what is being presented in Paris. I don't hear Jarraud saying it is all the information but it's the best we have at the moment and at the end of the day we will make decisions based on what we have, even if we decide to not make a choice. Jarraud did say that this is (perhaps?) THE most studied science EVER. In that I hear a call to have the political science catch up!
I think we will finally hear, in Paris, that of all the dreaded WMDs that humans have created, none even begin to compare with the destructive power of climate change resulting from global warming caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels at the rate we have done so. AGW is the mother of all WMDs...
YES, better death controls.
Radical Marijuana you have done a fine job here at Zero Hedge and I thank you. I don't know how you do it but keep it up!
Let me ask, if the funds showed up out of the blue tomorrow, would you go to Paris?
Me? back to unitary mechanisms : )
p.s. "A MEANS OF CONTROL" was pretty intense and I feel you do a better job of articulating those themes.
How to Keep Communism or Totalitarianism at bay in Collapsing Scenario?
How do we Fight Communists like Russia & China in view of Augustine's Law and the loss of productivity, wealthy generation, resources, and Energy???
Thomas Malthus lived in 1798 or something.
He didn't conceive of what we do today, but we have compelling Economic problems, treat food as a commodity, allow hording of capital, Banker Class to create their own money & wealth, and gamble with Federal Pork Barrel give a-ways and Corporate Subsidies to the Richest Executives in the World... while have no will for sweeping reforms.
If I was a conservative banker I would try to argue that you are overlooking money velocity, Real US Growth, Components of Government GDP figures, Real US Labor Participation Rate, and decline of AVG US Wages....
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MZM
Looks like 1981 was the Money Velocity high, note manufacturing plunged 1979.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1V (Top was 2007 Q4 at 10.7, now down to 6.3)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V (Top was 1997 Q3 at 2.2, now down to 1.5)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MZMV (Top was 1981 Q1 at 3.5, now down to 1.4)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/Mult (Top was January 1987 at 3.1, now down to .7)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MANEMP (Employees: Manufacturing 12.1 M Persons)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART 62% labor participation supposedly down from 67%
Yawn
I have a bridge to sell you. It's right over there, under the rainbow, with unicorns flying above it.
It's called rate of production. There will always be oil, just not enough for ALL of us!
"It's called rate of production."
Correct!
Further, economies of scale in reverse is going to kill production, resulting in margins collapsing.
If we just stay the course, and keep "financial services" growing at a healthy clip, we can buy all the food and energy we need.
Margins are already collapsing!
The middle class has no margin left and is reducd to a part time workforce that can't pay for its healthcare.
Millenials don't have any margin left and are heading for mom's basement.
But Obummer and his masters have plenty of margin, vacations on Martha's Vineyard and 4 rounds of golf per week is what I call plenty of margin.
My margin has now become someone elses!
DaddyO
"Abiotic oil is generated deep within the Earth at all times, there will be no energy shortage."
Yes, and also:
The check is in the mail, government is here to help, and I'll only put the head in.
I suspect Abiotic oil actually *is* generated deep within the Earth at all times, given the methane lakes on Io, etc.
The problem is that it probably doesn't happen fast enough to help. Perhaps in a couple of hundred years the oil will be replenished and muscle cars will again be fashionable... the question is will there be any humans around to drive them.
Abiotic money is created deep within the crotches of the Eccles building. Asshole.
Reducing complexity means collapse, there is now way to travel back in time.
It will have to get far more complex than the current state before it can get less complex. Grandma's gotta be NIRPd, people gotta be forced to the streets cuz they still make 50K while the rents have become $4K/mo, even in the shittiest places. The 'collapse' is not in any hurry, as we've seen over the last few years.
You must have read the same article that I did, about the guy in Greece who was a computer programmer. He didn't step back a notch when he lost his job. Or two. Or even three. He's back home with grandma, tending the garden they planted in the front yard so they can eat. He's been out of work for months. I'd call that collapse, wouldn't you?
No. That is altered priorities.
Collapse would be when he, his family, and grandma are wandering the streets with nowhere to go and no way to feed themselves.
I've gone through what you described. It's actually good, though it sucks while you're going through it. Situations like the Greek fellow help you prioritize better. When I finally did find work again (at 1/2 my prior salary), I wound up being in a much better situation over time. Here's how I look at it. Over the last 18 years, I've spent 2 full years out of work, and 8 of the years I worked were at a salary 1/2 of what I made in my best year. Of the remaining 7 years, my income was about where it is now - not the highest it's been, but not the lowest either.
Yet I'm wealthier now than I've ever been. How is that possible?
Well there are some things to consider. First, being unemployed is a great learning tool. You prioritize better. You cut costs to the bare minimum. What do you need and what do you want? Wants are put aside.
Once you've prioritized, and you focus on the needs, you lose the complexity. You learn to adapt. You improve. So when you DO find work, you're in better shape than you were before!
Unless you're a complete foul up and keep spending money you don't have. See, that's why I hate and despise politicians. When I was unemployed at one point, it was as the economy was crashing. I had no prospects and was out of work for 9 months WITHOUT severance and limited unemployment. Did I go out and get a home equity loan to tide me over? NO.
But that is the political solution - when you're broke, borrow MORE! Because when things turn around, you can pay off that loan. Except they don't. They borrow even more when things are going well, and they have to tax us more to pay for their profligacy. Which is why we have severe boom/bust cycles.
Anyway, that's a side note. My point is that no, that's not collapse. That's a good learning experience, for the well-adjusted.
As someone who can relate to your story I can only up-arrow.
Regarding "collapse," I think that it ought only be applied in the context of civilizations and societies: these can collapse and people can still survive, whereas when individuals collapse they usually are dead/dying.
But that isn't what the Greeks are doing and why you don't see open revolution and even more radicalized behavior in Greece despite unemployment rates among the youth that in some places is at or above 50%.
1. Greek youth who are motivated, capable, and talented have left the country in droves for other places especially Germany and Australia and to a lesser degree several other places including US, UK, and Canada. Greeks aren't quite like the Irish but they share a lot of similiarities including a large global dispora community.
2. Talk to a good friend in Athens and he said in a lot of parts of Greece that the black market activity is equalling if not surpassing official GDP activity. In the tourist areas and in Athens, the black market is still notably lower but in wide areas of the country outside of those the black market is the way people are getting things done and living. Not new for the Greeks and it is easy to get things in and out of the country past the feedle efforts by the gov't to stop it.
3. Greeks have a long history including relatively recently up through the 70s of disobeying and giving a $hit about the national gov't and even regional governments priorities. Widespread examples of Greeks displaying civil disobedience making the electricity/heat stays on during last winter who those who couldn't and while the Greek gov't and companies have attempted efforts it is largely an effort doomed to fail. If the Greek gov't in Athens ever tried to really press this issue especially in the winter, there would be violent flash points and real chance of much more.
4. Greeks are used to living in a multi-generational home and it isn't for aging parents to live with their children and for adult children to live with their parents. Pensions have been hit hard and gov't-workers pay reduced/sporadic/etc but many examples of at least 1 individual in the household still receiving an income.
Personally if I lived in Greece and I was a bit younger (37) I would either forment and organize for active revolution or leave.
Partial collapse is what I'd call it. We still have a looooooooooooong way to fall. That computer programmer will be ahead of the curve if he can survive a temporary period where people are reduced to zombies who are wondering if they can get a meal in the next few days. The problem with all of the complexity that we have built up is that people do not know how to survive without it. There are a lot of dumbfucks here who think that a steak comes from a steak tree in the back of the store. You know, the kinds of trees that grow steaks with Styrofoam packaging already around them? Yeah, that's what makes the idea of a collapse so scary. People who will have no clue how to make sure that their basic needs such as food, water and clothing are met will be fucked if we have a sudden decrease in the complexity of our food supply system. If you have your needs covered, they'll think that they're entitled to your shit. Or they won't give a fuck if they're entitled to it, they'll just be thinking about staying alive.
The greedy fucks on the top may or may not realize the gravity of the situation, but they're only making it worse. Keeping the status quo going is the absolute wrong thing to do, but they're hell bent on keeping it going - for them. Globalized production of everything, including food and clothing, that they have control over is unsustainable. At some point, they won't be able to maintain that control and there is no alternate system in place. They'd better hope that there are out of the reach of torches, pitchforks and guillotines when that happens. And no matter what, expect the government to do the opposite of what is best, because it will be trying to sustain an unsustainable status quo.
My bet is that if we make it through to where it is a straight up economic collapse, the sign to look for is the weak hands in the fracking industry getting shaken out and it coming to light that they're using Enron style accounting. Of course, that doesn't take into account something else that's bad happening first, e.g. WWIII, pandemic, asteroid, Yellen nudes surfacing on the internet, etc...
Sooner or later we have to abandon this socio-economic model. Now the question is: Will we be forced or will we choose it?
Well the answer is clear if we look the "government" policies.
Although if it happens later, in 200 years or so, it will not be my, my children's or my grandchildren's problem. Timing is everything.
oil is abiotic - google Joe Vials Abiotic Oil. Russia has taken total advantage of this driling 300 superdeep abiotic wells.. If you notice western governments completely ignore or censor non-opec producing states (such as Russia)
Secondly a thorium reactor the size of a truck will generate 20 MW. Are we building them here - no! But China is going to build them, and whoever does will rule the planet. No spent uranium fuel rod BS.
And China plans to have one built by 2020.
The days of energy monopoly are totally numbered. The elite's empires will eventually collapse and from it a society will hopefully arise to explore the stars.
Knowing the fkheads that control oil they will launch a nuclear exchange than give up their control.
Well the peakoilers downvoting you.
BTW the abiotic theory has more sense then the classical theory.
Another question: What will happen when we pumping faster then the reactions can replenish the reserves?
Still troubles ahead.
Abiotic, no. The Russians are looking for old meteor strikes. Carbon rich comets smacked the earth and the pressure and heat formed the long chain hydrocarbons in the absence of Oxygen. While dead dinosaurs might have made a little oil, most of it came from comets and that's where the Russians are looking.
Coal mines are full of fossils of plants from the Carboniferous period, but where are the dinosaur fossils, and how did they get 2 miles below the ocean floor? Yea, yea, tectonic movement.
Whoever said dinosaurs made the oil? Last I saw on the theory on indicates that algae created the oil beds, not dinosaurs.
The second law of thermodynamics contradicts you
How so? Explain it.
Here's where science thinks it comes from. Yeah, they know about thermodynamics too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum
You know, we keep reading all these claims that crude oil is abiotic. Let's assume it is.
Why do we never see any discussion of how FAST abiotic oil is produced. And if all oil is abiotic then why is oil getting ever more difficult and expensive to extract from the earth's surface?
These posters who tout abiotic oil assume that it is a new and untapped source hiding somewhere, cheap to extract, waiting to be found.
Even if all crude oil is abiotic, we are still stuck with peak cheap oil until the abiotic true believers find a way to speed up its creation and push it to the surface for us.
That's easy, we just have to capture excess CO2 in the air, combine it with hydrogen into methane, then inject it several miles into the earth, and have a nearby exit hole for the new oil to come gushing out.
Even if it works, I bet it will take more energy than it produces, but at least we somehow won't run out of oil.
You assume crude oil is the only hydrocarbon.
Why is it getting harder to extract hydrocarbons? Because the easy deposits have been pumped already. We've picked the lower hanging fruits. That doesn't mean there are no fruits higher up in the tree.
A few decades ago, the technology didn't exist for deep sea or horizontal drilling. It was predicted that there was 20 years of crude oil left. That was in the 1920's.
For all we know there could be 500 years worth of crude oil beneath the surface. The only question would be the technology and cost to pump it. I figure there will be some scientific advancements by then.
Why worry about something you have no control over when the real threat is from the the bankster government?
cnmcdee:
The physical technologies are relatively secondary, because none of them can actually operate outside of the political situation. Even IF some oil was abiotic, most of it was not ... I tend to believe there are an abundance of creative alternative technologies, HOWEVER, none of them could actually work within alternative politics, which means, at its heart, there would have to be alternative death controls to back up alternative debt controls.
It is impossible to separate alternative technologies from the alternative life styles which would be necessary, especially since the best developments of the alternatives requires those to be assembled into overall systems: Alternative Energies & Society Adapted to Them?
As Martenson states, some alternatives could provide a higher quality of life, despite consuming less material, if that was done well enough. Indeed, for most people, most of the time, greater use of information, enabling higher consciousness, would provide superior solutions to their problems. However, that is extremely difficult inside of social pyramid systems where there was a perpetual war against the consciousness of the people being ruled over by those who ruled them.
As I have similarly commented regarding every new episode of the Crash Course, it continues to be grossly optimistic, and makes excessive use of Hanlon's Razor, because Chris Martenson, et alia, tend to deliberately refuse to think more about the crucial issues of the death controls, that backed up the debt controls, that now operate through our combined murder/money systems, through which any possible physical resource or technology is controlled by the surrounding political situations.
Within the established MAD Money As Debt system, nothing could be financed without making more "money" out of nothing as debts in order to "pay" for that, while we are already drowning in that MAD debt slavery system having generated numbers which became debt insanities. Therefore, it gets harder and harder to imagine how that system can finance any integrated systems of alternatives, after that system has already been over-saturated with debt insanity numbers, which have no mathematically possible ways to ever be repaid within that system, where the only "money" IS debt.
Generally speaking, money is measurement backed by murder. That is the core of the problems that the established systems were due to the triumphs of organized crime, growing at an exponential rate throughout the history of Neolithic Civilizations, which were social slavery systems, based on backing up lies with violence, that were able to rape and plunder a fresh planet through developing the political means to be able to do that, which were amplified to more astronomical sizes by advances in science and technology.
THERE IS NO WAY TO RESOLVE THE REAL PROBLEMS WITHOUT SOME ALTERNATIVE HUMAN MURDER SYSTEMS BEING THE KEYSTONE TO ANY SYSTEM OF ALTERNATIVES, OR THE LYNCH PIN THAT HOLDS THOSE TOGETHER.
Of course, that is WHY resolving any of our problems in any better ways appears practically impossible, while the path of runaway debt insanities provoking death insanities appears way more probable. Although I believe there are an abundance of possible technologies, and that some technological miracles could eventually be proven possible, NONE of that can work without the political miracles of human beings developing overall better death control systems.
Those political miracles are far more improbable than the technological miracles. However, without those political miracles, then any technological miracles will only make the established social pyramids grow to become even more criminally insane.
For me, the great irony of the presentations made in Martenson's Crash Course is that those do NOT become radical enough in assessing how human systems operate as general energy systems. The primary reasons for that appear to be the almost universal errors in the philosophy of science, which reversed the meaning of entropy, by inserting an arbirtary minus sign into the entropy equations, as well as the far reaching consequences of deliberately ignoring the ways that real politics actually operates according to the principles and methods of organized crime.
The core to real politics has been the death controls. There is no way to avoid that. Anyone who proposes we adapt to the kinds of problems correctly identified in the Crash Course without discussing the death control systems is deliberately ignoring the most important features at the heart of everything else. Our entire political economy was based on ENFORCED FRAUDS that controlled how the industrial revolutions actually manifested.
The problems we are facing are due to the ways that our civilization is based on systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which the vast majority of people have been conditioned to not want to understand, despite those problems becoming magnified many orders of magnitude by progress in science and technology, all still taking place within the politics of social pyramid systems, which are were always controlled by backing up lies with violence.
Genuinely better resolutions of our problems could only be done through real, radical, revolutions, that must change the ways that the murder systems back up the money systems, in order to be able to pay for developing any other possible sets of technologies, which become more imperative as the old-fashioned systems are reaching their limits. The collapse into crazy chaos of the established systems of globalized monkey money, backed by apes with atomic bombs, has nothing in human history to compare it to! Indeed, the main reasons why that has not collapsed already is that nobody can come up with any better realistic solutions. The established systems are runaway criminal insanities, against which no saner people can stand.
Economics is a subset of militarism. The connection between economics and energy are through the ways that general energy systems work. However, when one applies the basic concepts of general energy systems to human civilizations, one understand how and why human systems are organized lies operating robberies, whereby the society is controlled by the methods of organized crime, and thus, develop along the paths of the minimum morality.
Martenson correctly presents the basic problems, but seems to me to deliberately ignore the ways that the death controls developed, and therefore, how BIG a series of political miracles would be necessary to develop better systems of death controls. Meanwhile, the rulings classes ARE preparing to apply their kinds of "solutions" within their social pyramid systems, which are more genocidal wars, along with democidal martial law.
The ONLY genuine alternatives MUST be alternative death controls, which should be seen as continuing development of evolutionary ecologies, through which artificial selection systems are driven by natural selection systems. Of course, since the currently established Neolithic Civilization systems are based on backing up lies with violence, engendering evil deliberate ignorance, that makes exponential growth followed by catastrophic collapse the most likely future: Overshoot in a nutshell!
To continue on the path we are on now merely takes bigger lies, backed by more violence, maintaining attitudes of more evil deliberate ignorance. Any alternative which is better requires a series of technological miracles, which could not be successfully implemented and integrated without a series of political miracles.
Is there a short and clear description of the current HMS, and maybe some examples of AHMS for contrast.
You know there is no such thing as Thorium fission? The Thorium 232 absorbs a neutron and becomes Uranium 233, which then undergoes fission, just like Uransium 235, with maybe slightly different by-products.
I assume you are talking about molten salt reactors. Every molten salt reactor that has been used to commercially produce power has eventually had a problem, because sodium or flouride do not work well with water or oil, and eventually, either the coolant gets into the lubricant or vice versa.
If you're talking about laser-Thorium fission, I'm not sure if that actually exists or is just a pipedream. Either way, claims of no risk and no waste seem pretty utopian.
It's all a big house of cards.
There won't be an orderly change, and a whole lot of people will die.
We're talking Billions of people dying, because our current systems are unsustainable.
Petri dishes of bacteria do it, and so do humans. "Monkey want banana", same as it ever was.
I'm taking a tip from Mr. Wu and converting all those dead humans into delectable Char Sui, pork dumplings and bacon.
Organic and environmentally friendly protein conversion.
"Remember how Aunt Mabel used to make those delicious pulled pork sandwiches?
She still does, bless her soul."
This may be correct and incorrect. Read Joseph Tainter's take on this, with his book "The Collapse of Complex Societies". The correct part is we need to become less complex. But I'll side with Tainter when it comes to how that happens. It's not easy to back up a few steps. The entire system has to collapse completely and start again. This is what history shows us, and so far it's been the best and most correct teacher.
+1000!! Tainter is right. The extreme measures now being taken to prevent collapse guarantee total collapse.
Yes on the Tainter, but in one of his talks, he was asked if there is an example of a society that had made the decision to reduce its complexity in order to survive. I forgot which society he mentioned, but he did give an example. He said that they had to do things like get rid of their large standing professional army and go to a more militia type form of defense. He also said that they only did it because their backs were up against the wall. Well, our backs are up against the wall here, and our government is not even acknowledging it, so in that respect, I do agree that we are headed towards a complete collapse.
Cuba
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygujCeaSzog
They've already been through it.
Eeeehhh... all it takes is 1 breakthrough as it relates to energy and the entire peak oilers argument falls to bits.
SilverIsMoney:
While some technological miracles which provide a new energy source are possible, that would still do nothing about the deeper problems, which would require a bigger series of political miracles to resolve. Any technological miracles that provided a new energy source would still create the basic problem of waste heat. Ultimately, there are NO ways to avoid the basic issues of evolutionary ecologies. However, dealing with that would require enough recognition of how and why our actual human ecology developed its death controls to operate through the maximum possible deceits, in order to back up debt controls based on the maximum possible frauds.
While the "peak oil" problem might be resolved by some technological miracles, that would still leave the BIGGER PROBLEM that human society is controlled by lies backed by violence, which would only get WORSE, if there was more progress in physical sciences, that continued to occur WITHOUT any progress in politics. The deeper levels of the "peak oil" issue of diminishing returns applies to every other natural resource which was being high-graded to hell, as those were strip-mined, while that was being "paid" for with "money" made out of nothing as debts. Those who think that "peak oil" problems are due to misrepresentations may be somewhat right. However, they are NOT right that such misrepresentation could be corrected, while everything else is governed by even worse misrepresentations.
The real economy operates on the bases of enforced frauds, which make developing any better industrial ecologies practically impossible. However, there could be NO longer term solutions which did not maximize the recycling of materials, which is economically impossible within any system in which "money" is made out of nothing, and can disappear back to nothing, because such a fundamentally fraudulent accounting system deliberately ignores the basic laws of nature, since that kind of bookkeeping is an enforced fraud!
I repeat what I think is one of the most important quotes to reconsider, in light of the gestalt of these issues of the intersections between energy, environment and economy:
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/silent_weapons_quiet_wars.htm
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
"Energy is recognized as the key to all activity on earth. Natural science is the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and control of social energy. Both are bookkeeping systems: mathematics. Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science. And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping. ... In this structure, credit, presented as a pure element called "currency," has the appearance of capital, but is in effect negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is in fact, indebtedness or debt. ... if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide)... They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act of destroying the creditor ... War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public ...) the economy has been transformed into a guided missile on target."
Our economy is controlled by bookkeepers who have become the Fraud Kings, the biggest gangsters, the banksters, who have captured control over governments, by capturing control over the public "money" systems. Understanding that deeper problem demonstrates that NO technological miracles which developed new energy sources are genuine solutions to the deeper problems, that our society is controlled by lies backed by violence. Instead, any possible technological miracles only makes the political problems become BIGGER & WORSE!
The debt controls depend upon the death controls, within combined money/murder systems, and nothing outside of that can provide genuinely better resolutions to our real problems. The current path we are on is for the ruling classes to set up conditions to mass murder the majority of the human population, due to the runaway debt insanities being resolved by provoking death insanities. However, the ONLY realistic alternatives would require better death controls, because endless exponential growth is absolutely impossible.
Some evolutionary ecologies must and will develop. However, at the present time there is practically nothing that human beings can do to prevent that developing through episodes of death insanities, due to the deep degree to which the established systems were built on the ability to back up lies with violence, to a degree that is almost impossible to exaggerate, since that goes right down to the basic errors people presume to be correct in the philosophy of science, that they take for granted.
While the problem of "peak oil" may well have been somewhat misrepresented, and while there may emerge technological miracles to overcome the problems caused by "peak oil," that the struggle to control oil resources manifested one war after another, and continues to do so today, was the more important issue behind the development of any natural resources whatsoever, through social systems of lies backed by violence, being amplified to astronomical SIZES by progress in science and technology, NOT yet happening in political sciences.
Any better resolutions of the profound problems emerging from the interaction of energy, environment and economy require a series of intellectual scientific revolutions, from the philosophy of science, through to political science. While theoretically possible, everyone who has a vested interest in the status quo the established systems based on enforcing frauds does NOT want that to happen!
Therefore, as Martenson correctly concluded in the video above, although grossly understated, the problems we face have NO merely technological fixes which could be sufficient ... One way or another, sooner or later, the basic death control systems will change. Tragically, it does not appear likely that can occur through greater use of information, enabling higher consciousness, instead of economic collapse into chaos, provoking death insanities, because there is nothing within the established debt slavery systems generating numbers which have become debt insanities that can be fixed within that system itself!
The status quo is committed to backing up bigger lies with more violence, because those were the basic realities upon which that status quo was originally made and maintained. Fossil fuel resources enabled the social pyramid systems to continue to grow exponentially. It was not an accident that an animate graph of the development of oil would match that of the distribution of wealth through the social pyramid systems.
The distribution of wealth in the world today looks like a cartoon that matches the metaphor of an oil well gusher. There has been a globalized system which repeated what the Spindletop oil well was like in Texas, during the history of the development of the petroleum industry. Wealth was pumped up through the social pyramid systems, to become like a oil well geyser.
The globalized social pyramid systems, pumped up by oil, made those pyramids get bigger and steeper, than ever before in human history. There is now such extreme inequality, built on the foundation of enforced frauds, that it is impossible to graphically represent the degree of that inequality, without it looking like an absurdly impossible cartoon.
Ideally, we should perceive the social pyramids as actually being toroidal vortices, so that we could better connect the bottom and the top of those social pyramids. However, that could not be done without going through the heart of the problem, which is that the death controls backed up the debt controls. The deeper issues are that all human realities are necessarily always organized lies operating robberies, while those who were the best at doing that were also the best at lying about it.
More radical truths should go through at least 2 levels of analysis. The first is to understand that the status quo was based on enforced frauds, and the second is to understand how and why that happened. After that, a third level is possible, whereby one does creative synthesis of solutions based upon different death controls, arising out of thinking in different ways about those issues.
However, doing anything like that appears politically impossible, due to the degree that the vast majority of people have been brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit, and therefore, feel like they want to continue to believe in that bullshit. For instance, originally, the American money was supposed to be backed by gold and silver, while the word dollar meant an exact amount of sliver. Therefore, INDEED, SilverIsMoney! However, gradually the word "money" was reversed to mean the opposite of what it originally meant, while the American Dollar had an increasingly ridiculous relationship to an amount of silver, since the American Dollar became based on runaway enforced frauds, ultimately backed up by the American Military, operating death controls based on the maximum possible deceits, in ways which drove the State Religion of National Security to become psychotic.
The actual relationships of human beings to natural resources are extremely tangled up in the history of warfare, whose successes were based on backing up deceits with destruction, in which context treacherous spies were the most important soldiers. That was the foundation for an economic system based on enforced frauds, in which context one can NOT trust the statistics regarding petroleum resources, but rather, one can expect that the problem of "peak oil" HAS been misrepresented. However, such misrepresentations do NOT resolve the deeper problems, the same as any technological miracles that provided new energy sources would NOT resolve the deeper problems, since those deeper problems are how to operate better death controls, when the history of successful death controls was based on the maximum possible deceits, in which context all the controlled opposition groups also operated within that deceitful frame of reference!
P.S.
See also my reply below, SilverIsMoney, which further explains that money is measurement backed by murder, in which context silver as money would become the measurement of silver backed by murder.
I don't disagree with what you're saying here but my point is really quite simple...
A new energy source = a continuation of this system
Obviously this system continuing is a death sentance in itself but that doesn't change my basic premise. A new energy source that replaces oil basically makes all of these arguments about peak cheap energy moot. People have been talking about this stuff for decades and yet here we are... still producing all the energy we need and oil is under $80 a barrel.
I'm not saying it's a good thing i'm just pointing out a very simple point - all throughout history there have been people screaming the sky is falling the sky is falling and yet almost none of the fears about peak energy are realized because technology finds a way to fix the issue. Am I saying that's going to happen again? No. My entire point is that it has over and over and we've been fine.
It's funny how ZHs love to point to history until it doesn't fit their narrative. This time may not be different and we may end up fine that's all i'm trying to say here.
I agree that the technological miracles of some new energy source, which could be scaled up, would provide considerable time to the established systems, to maybe adapt better, especially if that was able to sustain the complexity of a globalized electronic communication system.
One of the sources of information which speculates about that produced this well-made, entertaining video overview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEV5AFFcZ-s
Thrive
http://thrivemovement.com/
Great presentation. Stop fucking M'Fers. I've lived long enough to wonder where the hell all these people that are around me are coming from. They weren't here when I started out.I don't like them getting in my way.
Well I'm pretty sure the banksters have prepared to rid the world of a huge portion of these pesky fuckers and me with them. I tried to convince people around me to stop fucking when I was 15. I was drunk. They didn't listen. It was as if I were speaking some other languageI that I still seem to speak to this day.Nobody listenes to Q99X2 although the Chinese finally caught on. If you want to have huge populations you have to move to an open source based democratic system of governance. There is not enough left for wealthy people to steal in the world the way it is. There are no wealthy people on Q99X2.
Let's see. None of the "knowns" listed above are, truly, known at all. I've studied this at length and while it's possible that we MAY run out of something like oil, it's not necessarily a fact. Abiotic oil is a real thing, the question is whether it is created as fast as we take it.
However, even if it's not real, there is the economic question of energy on the margins. "Cheap" energy is only "cheap" in a very relative sense. The relative value of solar electric in 1979 was 3 times higher versus oil than it is today, and the cost is falling. At some point, these lines cross and the value of solar increases dramatically as a source. Innovation and growth of that market will drive down costs and drive up value.
The same will be true of other things like wind, geothermal (which is already a tremendous value if put into new homes), and a host of other options (I am getting a Stirling engine which is driven by natural gas for emergency purposes, but it can generate electricity at roughly the same rate as I'm paying the utility. As Stirling engine technology improves, this cost will also fall as they become more efficient).
So I don't really buy into this nonsense. Becoming "less complex" is a thing which "society" can't do. But each individual CAN take steps to simplify their own lives, and in this society will improve dramatically.
Complexity, as a useful outcome, is a construct which is derived from simplicity at an individual level anyway. Anyone familiar with "Boids" would understand that.
Your Stirling won't become more efficient, not appreciably anyway. It's limited by the Carnot cycle and the difference between the combustion temperature and the exhaust gases. Having said that. Your overall system efficiency with the Stirling will be high 90% range. Assuming you use the exhaust for heating.
The problem with alternatives to oil is the energy return isn't anything like oil. Solar, wind are intermittent and solar is poor in winter. Sure I can charge up my Twizy with it, but only drive to work every other day.
The technology of the Stirling itself - yes, you're correct. As for the generation, that has improved dramatically in recent times, and I expect it to continue to improve.
I agree with the problems with alternatives (some of them, like the 2 you mentioned), but you forget that you can also store electrical energy (which was quite cost effective until the recent dip in fossil fuels). You can also use alternatives to create other energy forms (hydrogen, for example) which can be used elsewhere. Someone else mentioned the thorium generators (which a friend of mine worked on over in Iraq and said it was remarkably effective). Point is, you addressed a side point and not the main point - as the relative cost of fossils rise, alternatives become cheaper on the margin, as that happens and more interest in them occurs, they become cheaper and more efficient still.
I don't buy into the 'peak oil' doom and gloom. It's Malthus all over again. Julian Simon has yet to be wrong - so I'll stick with the concepts that have proven themselves out over time.
Its when complexity becomes simple that you have a problem...not with simplicity itself per se (although certainly the Welsh water wheel is the most significant pieces of technology ever invented.)
The internal combustion engine is the most wondrously impossible to problem mankind has ever created (next to the Space Shuttle perhaps.). The fact of the matter is that the entire automobile let alone all the other moving parts that go along with it are now a commodity.
That does make that ounce of gold worth a lot more of course. But the amount of dollars created when then impossible is made for pennies on the dollar and lasts forever will result in a drop in consumption for the mere fuel for the device.
Who even needs to drive anymore?
In ways like these?
http://newworldorderg20.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/driverless-cars-automobiles-for-elites-only-everything-else-for-slaves/
http://newworldorderg20.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/electric-bikes-catch-on-in-europe-and-u-s-because-slaves-cant-afford-cars-anymore/
http://newworldorderg20.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/los-angeles-signs-medical-tourism-deal-with-south-china/
Has everyone lost thier head!
How many Fn barrels per day of abiotic oil do you think will naturaly be produced?
The world consumes approx 83 M/b/d. So by this kind of thinking there will be plenty for all the E/M's to increase their oil consumptiom forever and for population to have infinate growth.
Not only is the planet Flat but it is growing by a million sq miles /day!
That will even icrease the abiotic oil growth. oil forever. Yaaa
Sometimes I wonder though whether complexity is simply the result of successive producer/service providers trying to wiggle their way into the market. Differentiation could well lead to complexity without any real improvement in the product/service offered.
Sure, that would be part of it, but you have to consider whether or not they would be able to produce what they produce or provide the services that they would provide without crude and its derivatives.
dup
Bring it on. The 1% turn the 99% to go mad-max.
Society is too used to their toys though. They'll jump out of buildings if they don't have them.
The wrong people jumping out of the windows. But jump they must....
The numbers must be less or we need to get off this rock.
Entropy, bitchez............
Entropy understood BACKWARDS by the overwhelming vast majority of people, bitchez!
The Entropy Law and the Economic Process.
The only real change you will see when oil gets more expensive will be the end of the McMansions way out in the burbs. A few people will switch to more efficient cars but the trend will be to try to drive less and have smaller houses to heat or cool.
we humans are a funny lot. we are cursed with a mind that is able to transcend the automaton fate of the rest of the animal kingdom. humans just don't live and die spending all the live time seeking food and running from predators. the herd thrives on the ability to feed itself and dies when it can't feed itself, avery simple structure. humans decided the system could be rationally(brain devised) changed for the benefit of all humans instead of leaving well enough alone so the industrial revolution was inspired to save humans from the drudgery of providing food by growing and hunting it to the idyllic promise of factory work affording humans the luxury of "buying" food with their factory labor for a medium of exchange. the farms themselves have become factories.
the flawed assumptiom in the model was/is the denial of, therefore the exclusion of, the natural, environmental, animal kingdom variable. the energy problem will be solved by a natural reduction of human population. the catalyst is simply the overcapacity of useful humans. there are simply too many humans than are needed to feed the population so the populations with too many unneccessary humans naturally reduce the population. japan is a great example. in fifty years there will be about 90 people in japan, a 30% reduction from today. given the volume of energy used per person will be greatly reduced by then, japan's diminished need for energy will offset places with greater demand/person. in the end the population of humans will cull itself naturally with help from catastrophic environmental events like weather and disease.
in the end humans are just animals with a brain that is able to convince the deluded we are not.
Except we fuck like animals,consequences be damned. Japan will turn itself around if left alone. Some sumo sumbitch will impregnate all the womens and they'll be back where they were. Solution will be local sources, conservation and less use of energy. Major world war driven by our greed may kill us all but, if not, will not change theo overall trajectory--people living like they did 100 years ago, small houses, more direct involvement in their food production, know their community and still have ipads
OT, I received my renewal notice from my 'competitive' electricity supplier in a 'deregulated market' and contrary to all the news about energy prices dropping dramatically, my supplier informs me that my electricity rates will be going UP by 35% from next month! Anybody experiencing similar rate increases?
Yup, 30% rate increase in elec here too.
Guess the CEO had a bad day at the track.
besnook, human beings are the paradoxical animals which internalized natural selection to become intelligence, which then was applied to their primary problem, which was other human beings, and so, ended up with artificial selection systems based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds.
Due to that, rational public debates are NOT possible, as actually demonstrated in a backhanded way by the silly superficiality of the video above from Chris Martenson!
The end of complex society through forced simplicity due to peak oil, resulting resource wars and internal national wars to control starving populations is eminent.
Perpetual mass consumption is a failed concept. When I was a younger person I considered the result of the entire world living as Americans through growing ravenous consumption and I thought that this would be an impossibility the earth could not sustain it.
Now many years later the reality is upon us.
I believe that we will very soon see a total economic collapse with global ramifications that will result in an en masse die off of the weakest and least capable first the infirm, chronically ill, the very old and the very young. (20-40% of total world population). Followed by those unwilling to endure suffering and the shiftless dependents of the state.
The ensuing chaos and economic destruction will initially favor TPTB then sweep them away once the FSA has died off.
Starving desperate people that have to do hard work to scratch out a subsistence don't have tolerance for the demands of an out of control government or their thousands of feudal lords and petty dictators.
There is essentially an infinite amount of energy available to us. However, power is maintained by creating and controlling a false scarcity.
Successful alternative energy scientists, geneticists and astronomers tend to have a higher than normal mortality rate.
Forget oil, 'peak oil', fracking oil, we are going to switch to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles faster than anyone realizes. Yes, they aren't perfect, but what is? They run clean, fill up in 3 min and are being improved by the day. Even 18-wheelers are being tested. "But, but, what if the fuel tank blows up if the car is hit by a locomotive or the tank is ruptured by an armor-piercing incendiary round?" Got me there. Nearly every major car manufacturer will have them out in 2015, and not just prototypes. Costs will come down. Why buy an all-electric Tesla or Leaf, when this is the best of both worlds? Government subsidies are available for adding filling sites to existing gas stations across the U.S. over the next few years. Not all that expensive. Its time has come. Oil to $55/bbl.
And where is all the energy going to come from to produce this hydrogen? The stuff isn't just floating around freely by itself on Earth. Most of the readily available hydrogen that we can easily get to is bound to oxygen, and it takes energy to separate it from that oxygen. We don't have the electrical capacity in place to just up and replace oil with hydrogen.
Doesn't food (when you drive thru) come from the window?? I mean, the window at Burger King or McDonalds, or.....wait a minute...maybe Carl's Jr.? I don't know what you guys' problem is. Just go get your food from the window.