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Guest Post: Nate Hagens: We're Not Facing A Shortage Of Energy, But A Longage Of Expectations
Submitted by Chris Martenson
Nate Hagens: We're Not Facing A Shortage Of Energy, But A Longage Of Expectations
This week's interview is one of the most important discussions we've had to-date on energy, its supply/demand dynamics, and the tremendous impact it has on our economic and social identity. It is clear now that we are staring at a future of declining output at a time the world is demanding an ever-increasing amount.
Nate Hagens, former editor of the respected energy blog, The Oil Drum, gives a fact-packed update on where we are on the peak oil timeline. But interestingly, he explains how he sees the core issue as less about the actual amount of energy available to the world, and more about our assumptions about how much we really need:
"We’re not really facing a shortage of energy, we’re facing a longage of expectations. And the sooner that we as individuals or a nation recognize that the future is going to see much lower consumption than today and prepare for that, psychological resilience is going to be really important; because if no one is psychologically prepared, people are going to freak out when some of these freedoms start to go away.
Look, the average American consumes around 230,000 kilocalories a day of energy. The body itself consumes about 2,500 to 3,000 of those, endosmotically, within the body. So exosmotically outside of the body, we consume 99% of our energy footprint. So if peak oil is upon us, or any issue with coal or natural gas, or the main fossil pixie dust that has subsidized our lifestyle for the last century, if that stuff declines twenty or thirty or even forty percent, it’s not like we’re literally out of calorie availability. It’s just that our system is built on all this decadence and industry and trade and cross border transfers; it has all been built on a model that can’t continue. What’s going to break first is people’s expectations of what they own, the digits in the bank and all of the financial claims. But those are just digits, they’re abstract digits. The day that a financial system would be disrupted, nothing happens physically.
So I think if we drop our energy consumption quite a bit, nothing has to change other than our supply chains and the way that goods and medicine and water and sanitation and all that gets to the cities and towns and states. That has to be deeply thought about on a national level. But I’m optimistic - if we were sitting here and the average American used 10,000 calories a day of total energy, and we needed 3,000 for our bodily functions to continue, that would be a real problem because there wasn’t much extra. But we have a huge amount of energy relative to what we need.
So I think there are two main things that need to happen - and of course, individuals can play a role in this - but one is we need to design some sort of future system that is an accurate barometer of what we really have on our natural capital balance sheets, relative to what we really need on our human behavior balance sheets. People are working on both sides of that.
Number two is we need some sort of bridge, some sort of mitigation towards a financial currency trade disruption, which very few people are working on. The fact that a large percentage of our economic output globally is traded: if there’s some problem with the Euro or the Yen or the Pound or the dollar, how does that stuff continue to get shipped every day, along with all the components and everything else that we need? In my discussions, very few people are looking at that. And so on a macro level, people need to start focusing on how supply chains look and what are ways around our current system so that we can guarantee at least basic necessity-type things to continue to reach our shores and be processed, etc."
In Hagen's opinion, successfully entering a post peak oil future necessitates a fundamental change in our social values:
"What are we driving for? What is the goal of a society and a goal of a culture? And it has been, for quite a while, profit that is supposed to trickle down. Once the assumption of growth goes away, then you have to start looking at different objectives and that’s the gorilla in the room that people are afraid to voice. And I think if they understood the energy-economic link better, they might start to come to that conclusion."
Also in this interview:
- Why we've now reached the "biophysical gauntlet" where higher energy costs are handicapping future economic growth
- The subtle yet critical relationship between debt and energy. And why our ignorance of it is worsening our collective situation.
- The most probable implications of peak oil for the financial markets and asset valuations
- What individuals (and society) should do to position for a future of lower available energy
- Why 'self worth' is the new 'net worth'
Click here to listen to Chris' interview with Nate Hagens (runtime 48m:56s):
Report a Problem Playing the Podcast
Or start reading the transcript below:
Chris Martenson: You know, I want to start with a little bit about peak oil, the idea that someday there’s going to be incrementally less oil flowing from the ground to use as we wish. In your estimation and experience, where are we in the peak oil story?
Nate Hagens: Well, there are a lot of details that people will argue about. The bottom line is that we’ve reached a level where supply cannot continue to keep up with demand increase. We’ve been on a plateau for five or six years now, where oil supply has become inelastic: more demand, higher prices will not bring out more supply. And there are interesting sub-stories to that. For example, the EIA and the IEA, the data that they report show that we just recently hit an all-time high in oil production. If you include tar sand, biofuels, natural gas, plant liquids, etc., we’re around 88 million barrels a day. But if you look at some other data sources, like the JODI, the Joint Oil Database Initiative, that is a compilation of national governments reporting their own oil production, there’s about a three to four million dollar difference in total production. So we don’t really know the source of EIA and IEA. We assume it’s IHS CERA data, but there’s a big gap there. And if you look at the JODI data, we’ve still peaked in 2006 and have not regained that peak. Now if you’re just talking oil, both data sources agree that 2006 is still the peak of global oil production.
Chris Martenson: Is that where you are? So in your estimation, conventional oil has peaked? I think that’s in the rearview mirror, but you’re now going out and saying all liquids that we would call oil; forget about the funny stuff out there, the ethanol and whatnot, but in terms of stuff that comes out of the ground we would call oil, we’ve peaked?
Nate Hagens: Well, I’ve stopped paying attention to that, Chris, because I don’t think it really matters. I think peak oil is a constraint going forward, but it’s not the real driver on the energy side. It’s that our marginal cost keeps going up for liquid fuels, which are basically the hemoglobin of global trade and global commerce, so that’s relevant. But whether we have another million, or two million, or two million less isn’t the real story. We’re not going to be able to meaningfully grow something that the entire world depends on, and so I think all this bickering about which month or which year is the highest is missing the point. And then I’m sure, we’ll probably touch on it later, the greater threat right now is not peak oil, but peak debt or peak credit, and that’s the much more clear and present danger. But you mentioned ethanol, and there was a stat that came up today, I just wanted to point it out. As of now, corn for food is the number two use of corn in this country. We now use more corn to create ethanol than we do for food. And we produce about a million barrels of ethanol a year. Each of those barrels, of course, has, because of the BTU content, a lot less energy than a barrel of oil, around 70%. So we’re using half of our corn supply to produce one million barrels of ethanol, when we use nineteen million barrels a day of oil. So it’s kind of a conversion of corn, water, soil, natural gas and coal into liquid fuels in order to become less dependent. But it’s only a drop in the bucket relative to our total consumption.
Chris Martenson: Right. So here we have this magic substance, it’s the hemoglobin of global trade, as you said, meaning it’s the carrier that’s providing the oxygen, as it were, to have the global economy function. We will get to that peak debt connection in just a second. But this is a really important point to me, the idea that what we need is we need more oil or liquid fuels if we want to broaden it on a daily, yearly, monthly, whatever basis we want, than we did last year, day, month or whatever, because we want our economy to keep growing and that’s what we understand and know and love. In your estimation, though, we are now facing physical constraints that are going to prevent us from growing the supply of oil at the higher level, and on a more granular level, you used marginal cost of production, but that itself might be a proxy for increasing energy costs to go out and get energy; however we look at it, money being a great proxy for energy. So let’s use that. Energy’s going to become more expensive going forward and there’s going to be slightly less of it. Those are two pieces of the story, in your mind, from now stretching into the future.
Nate Hagens: Yeah, that’s right. And, you know, the main reason that’s a problem is because our entire system is based on the incorrect assumption that energy, which underpins every single physical service transaction we have in this economy, is substitutable. You can substitute capital or labor for it. And in reality, that’s not true. If you don’t have energy, you don’t have an economic transaction.
So if it becomes either more expensive or unavailable, both of those have deleterious impacts to economic growth. And we’re kind of in, what I call the “biophysical gauntlet” right now, which is that oil, we’ve found all the Beverly Hillbilly Oil 60 to 70 years ago that was bubbling right under the surface, and now we have to drill deeper, drill further offshore; create things that aren’t really oil and process them into oil, like tar sands and oil shale. And all these things cost a lot more for the energy companies to produce. And society is reaching the point of being insolvent because of our claims and liabilities. And eventually we get to a point where the oil companies need higher and higher oil price in order to make a profit, but society can afford less and less. And at some point those two prices of oil cross and we have a real problem. You know, right now, the marginal barrel of oil costs between $70 and $90, so there’s a little bit of a cushion in there now. But a lot of people say above a hundred dollar oil, it has significant economic headwinds. So at some point there, dollars don’t become an accurate measure of our real natural resource balance sheet.
And as you know, part of the tenets of biophysical economics are measuring our natural resource endowments in natural resource terms, themselves. For example, Energy Return On Investment (EROI) is how much energy it takes to get one unit of energy in our society. And 70, 80 years ago, we would invest one barrel of energy to get out a hundred barrels of oil and that 100:1 ratio declined to 30:1 in the 1970’s and it was around 10:1 in the year 2000, and the EIA stopped producing data on how much energy it takes to get energy. So we can kind of interpolate it now, but it’s clearly under ten in single digits.
And you eventually get to a point, even if oil is $100,000 dollars a barrel, or $1 million dollars a barrel, if it takes one barrel of oil to get out barrel of oil, you’re kind of out of gas at that point.
Chris Martenson: So the energy return on energy invested, or EROI, has been declining steadily. I want to just back up for a second. So here we are, if we scan the papers this morning, you know, we’ve got a debt ceiling sort of mini-drama going on in D.C.. We’ve got Italy’s bond spreads blowing out. Greece is clearly in trouble. Everybody’s familiar with the whole Portugal/Ireland story. Japan is in a pickle. China looks like it’s getting there. And as we scan across the landscape, we can’t really find any corner of the globe at this point, at least in all the advanced economies, where things look like they’re working as they used to. So if we just have our economic hats on, I believe this is a very, very confusing period of time. I know our economic high priests and priestesses are waiving their magic money wands wondering, I bet, why isn’t this working? You know, where is unemployment? Why is it stuck there? Whereas, if we step over here into the energy world and put our EROI hats on and we say look, this is perfectly predictable, I think. When you have less available net energy, these are the sorts of problems you might experience and expect. Does that make sense to you, or is that even remotely how you see it?
Nate Hagens: It makes absolute sense. We need energy to create our physical realities and create our economic growth and trade for transport, everything. If the energy sector requires a greater and greater chunk of that energy, we have less available for the rest of discretionary society. And once that constraint exists and even accelerates, you need to respond to that. And the way we responded to that was increasing our debt which, of course, as you know, is pretty much created by a pen stroke. So that can temporarily offset energy shortages at a cost of a steeper decline, because debt actually functions as a spacial and temporal reallocater of resources, away from the periphery towards the center and away from the future towards the present. So there’s a very subtle but important relationship between debt and energy. And the problem is, is that most of, as you term, economic priests and priestesses, don’t have training in the biophysical economic world, and they treat everything in monetary terms. And we just throw more money at the problem, and it’ll go away. Well, our energy and especially our net energy story is getting worse. So we’re increasing our money supply while our energy supply is declining and, yeah, that’s not a good situation.
Click here to read the rest of the transcript.
Note: Listeners interested in the conclusions expressed within this interview will also want to read Chris' recent report on Past Peak Oil - Why Time is Now Short, which takes a deep dive into the data behind the supply and demand imbalances in the global market for oil.
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Dr. Hagens is spot on. If you're not a regular reader already, you need to be: www.theoildrum.com Nate and Gail are worth your time over there.
The folks there understand. The comment threads usually have quality stuff in them, if you filter out all the agendas (global warming and LED lightbulbs).
Perhaps the most impressive commenter is a guy named Darwinian, who is a 70+ yr old retiree who has made his post retirement focus the careful tracking of individual country production numbers in a manner that starts from skepticism about all government claims. He focuses on other sources for confirmation of such and when they don't confirm, he gets loud. (They often don't confirm)
thx ill look him up
BTW THREE CHEERS FOR TYLER GETTING THIS EXCELLENT INTERVIEW POSTED.
I think Tyler, from a finance background, is a bit of a Peak Oil skeptic and thinks money can solve supply problems, but he serves his customers and ZH appreciates this sort of effort by him.
Yep. Hagens is one of the best. He has a rare deep understanding of energy, economics, and human behavior.
Good luck selling this to Americans, most of whom believe it's their God given right to consume as much energy as they please. I remember how much heat Obama took for saying that everyone can't drive SUVs and keep their AC on 72 degrees. Ask your friends and neighbors how much they spend on fuel. Most will complain, but few will actually downsize to a fuel efficient vehicle.
Consuming vast quantaties of energy is a responsibility. Same with credit. Same thing, really.
like egos, bigger is better
At the end of the day, we all seem to be gorillas trying to demonstrate who has the largest penis. That we do this by playing with matches on top of a gasoline dump is probably not the best course of action.
You call it consuming. I call it normal business activity.
You go ahead is keep feeling great by driving whatever makes you feel good and turn off your air conditioner for all I care, I will keep on driving whatever the heck I want, and will keep the air on full blast. It is called a free market system for a reason, you know...
you mean driving whatever the heck you can
Big difference between want and can
normal businesses plan ahead, develop intelligent strategies, use resources efficiently
See below where I lay out the different flavors of folks who understand Peak Oil.
Not all talk in terms of enforced consumption reduction.
A small subset believe the US should consume all it can, to deny that oil to economic competitors.
Then there is the military perspective. The US with oil and others without oil . . . the US never loses a battle.
Do not believe all Peak Oil people want lower US consumption. It's not so. They believe (probably rightly) that every barrel the US does not consume will be burned by China.
This. Any this would also, at least partially, explain why those who are playing hungry hippo for dollars/resources are presently so tenacious and brazen. If the energy constraints are real and present a ceiling to global growth, then this may very well be the last robbery... there may not be a viable or practical mechanism in which to dethrone the victors for a very long time... all things equal.
Ladies and gentlemen, Exhibit A in proof of the Tragedy of the Commons.
Hmm. . . I would call it "Rape of the Commons," Tgatliff, but knock yourself out. Your sense of entitlement won't save you from the hell that's coming.
Maybe we should consider local production of items instead of shipping things halfway around the world.
agreed...i've had conversations with people about a supply chain contraction and greater local production/consumption...i use farmers markets as an example etc. and they look at me like i'm crazy...well, maybe i am...
We will stop using oil (the main driver of the world economy) with plenty left in the ground. The cost (in currency and resources) to recover the oil is skyrocketing. Oil is essentially priced in gold already and gold will become the de facto currency by which all others are priced, period.
Matt Simmons often compared the price of a cup of gasoline to a cup of coffee. Nobody would think about pouring out a cup of Starbucks after having paid $2 for it, but a cup of gasoline worth 30 cents? What won't change is the presence of oil in our societies and economies; oil will be around for several more centuries. What will change is how it's used and that will be the effect of the skyrocketing price
americans won't need to be convinced...they will have no choice
Nothing like waiting for a little dose of "reality" to bitch-slap you awake before taking any steps - of course then it will be too late to do much about it.
Mr. Ant, meet Mr. Grasshopper. . .
Crude Oil and Liquid Fuels Overview. EIA projects that total world oil consumption will grow by 1.4 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2011 and 1.6 million bbl/d in 2012. EIA still expects that the market will rely on both a drawdown of inventories and production increases in both non-OPEC and OPEC countries to meet projected demand growth. Projected supply from non-OPEC countries increases by an average of about 0.6 million bbl/d annually in 2011 and 2012. OPEC production, including both crude and non-crude liquids, increases by 0.3 and 0.9 million bbl/d in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
EIA expects the release of strategic reserves pursuant to the IEA's June 23 announcement to reduce the expected draw on commercial stocks during the rest of 2011. In last month's Outlook, commercial stocks held in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, which fell by about 7 million barrels over the first 6 months of 2011, were forecast to fall by 127 million barrels over the last 6 months of this year because of the projected second-half increase in world consumption. In this Outlook, the second-half OECD commercial stock draw has been lowered to 71 million barrels.
The crude oil price outlook remains uncertain. Among the major uncertainties that could push oil prices above or below our current forecast are: risk of additional supply disruptions in producing regions, such as possible unrest in Sudan; the willingness and ability of key OPEC-member countries to increase and sustain higher production in response to the global increase in oil demand; the rate of global economic growth; and fiscal issues facing national and sub-national governments.
Global Crude Oil and Liquid Fuels Consumption. World crude oil and liquid fuels consumption grew to a record high 86.7 million bbl/d in 2010. EIA expects that world consumption will continue to grow by 1.4 million bbl/d in 2011 and by 1.6 million bbl/d in 2012, resulting in total world consumption of 89.7 million bbl/d in 2012 (World Liquid Fuels Consumption Chart). Countries outside the OECD will make up almost all of the growth in consumption over the next two years, with the largest increases coming from China, Brazil, and the Middle East. Among OECD countries, EIA expects that consumption will increase in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea over the next two years, offsetting declines in OECD Europe. Consumption in Japan is forecast to increase slightly in 2011 but then fall in 2012 as power plants recover from the impacts of the earthquake and tsunami.
Non-OPEC Supply. EIA projects that non-OPEC crude oil and liquid fuels production will increase by 540 thousand bbl/d in 2011 and by 740 thousand bbl/d in 2012 (Non-OPEC Crude Oil and Liquid Fuels Production Growth Chart). The greatest increases in non-OPEC oil production during 2011 occur in Canada (170 thousand bbl/d), China (140 thousand bbl/d), the United States (140 thousand bbl/d), Brazil (120 thousand bbl/d), and Colombia (120 thousand bbl/d). EIA has lowered the rate of production declines in the North Sea and Europe compared to the last Outlook. Increased taxes on production, particularly in the United Kingdom, are now expected to have less of an effect on total production. At the same time, EIA now expects that Azerbaijan's production will be lower compared to the previous Outlook, as continued problems with the production in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field last longer than initially anticipated. In Russia, lack of reform of the tax regime likely will dampen any increase in oil production.
OPEC Supply. Forecast OPEC crude oil production declines by about 300 thousand bbl/d in 2011, but increases by 560 thousand bbl/d in 2012. EIA assumes that about one-half of Libya's pre-disruption production will resume by the end of 2012. The 12 members of OPEC produced an estimated 29.2 million bbl/d of crude oil in the second quarter of 2011 and EIA expects that their production will increase to an average 29.6 million bbl/d in the third quarter. EIA projects that OPEC surplus capacity will fall from 4.0 million bbl/d at the end of 2010 to 3.5 million bbl/d at the end of 2011, followed by a further decline to 3.1 million bbl/d by the end of 2012 (OPEC Surplus Crude Oil Production Capacity Chart). Forecast OPEC non-crude liquids production, which is not subject to production targets, increases by 0.6 million bbl/d in 2011 and by 0.4 million bbl/d in 2012.
OECD Petroleum Inventories. EIA expects that OECD commercial inventories will decline in both 2011 and 2012. Because of the IEA release of emergency stocks, the projected commercial stock declines are not as large as those in last month's Outlook. Projected onshore OECD stocks fall by about 78 million barrels in 2011, compared to 118 million barrels in last month's Outlook. Days of supply (total inventories divided by average daily consumption) drop from a relatively high 58.1 days during the fourth quarter of 2010 to 55.7 days in 2011 and 54.6 days of supply in 2012 (Days of Supply of OECD Commercial Stocks Chart).
[SUSRIS - ITEM OF INTEREST]
July 30, 2011
Saudi Arabia's coming oil and fiscal challenge Editor's Note:The Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment firm has produced an extremely valuable special report, “Saudi Arabia’s coming oil and fiscal challenge,” that addresses a series of key questions about trends in Saudi Arabia’s energy sector and economy. Jadwa Chief Economist Brad Bourland and Head of Research Paul Gamble, authors of the report, noted that Saudi Arabia’s government spending and domestic consumption of oil are growing while the Kingdom’s overall oil production growth is flat. In examining this worrisome trend they sought to address several key questions:
Today we provide the special report for your consideration and thank its authors for sharing their perspectives and insights with you.
[Complete report with charts, graphs and tables at this link.]
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Yeah... it is becuase people want more oil than there is.. and going forward it will be far more constraints on the supply side.
Long winded fucking idiots talking out of their asses should shut the fuck up.
Your post is too long and no one read it. Including me.
well.. I know you are but what am I?
whatever you say bounces of me and sticks to you..because I am rubber and you are a big pile of shit.
You offer 1 sentence of nothing but drivel? You and the others, there are so many others like you.. that have Nothing! To offer the World but feel the need to try to inject yourself into grown up conversations any way. Why cant you just sit at the kiddie table and not be seen and heard until such a day comes that you would offer some information.
Here.. you don’t strike me as the reading type.. try a video. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
Listen to Uncle Jeffery explain why Your World is going to get a whole lot smaller.. which will match up with the majority of the populaces comprehension capabilities.
Dood, you're the one that advised long winded people to do things, at the end of your longest, least-read post in the thread.
How is this my fault?
That vid is good stuff. Very clean presentation. Thanks for posting!
Yep, they always talk about how demand will increase but never seem to make the connection between supply and demand, namely that you can demand whatever you want but that doesn't mean shit if supply can't keep up.
Yes. This is the horror scenario of all cornucopians.
Consumption is not synonomous with demand. The day that happens is the day war planning starts.
US strategic planning has included oil contingencies since before WWII (Note Japan's attack on the US was largely a result of the US's purposeful containment of Japan's access to regional oil reserves).
Why do you think we've got troops and bases on both sides of Iran and carrier groups in the Persion Gulf?
PS Check out Michael Klare's "Resource Wars" for succinct summary of how global confict will likely play out.
And eventually we get to a point where the oil companies need higher and higher oil price in order to make a profit, but society can afford less and less. And at some point those two prices of oil cross and we have a real problem.
It is at this point where the free market will take over and alternative energy will become more attractive. I'm not saying that I disagree with alternative energy, but society as a whole will not embrace it until they can't afford to keep doing what they are doing.
And this alternative energy (whatever it is) will enable even bigger and more powerful cars and trucks! 2,000 horsepower, here we come! The Invisible Hand Saves! Hallelujah!
Did the Invisible Hand just grope me?
The answer to that question is for smarter people than me.
Technocopians worship at the altar of miracles and often do so as atheists.
It's a bit weird.
Supposedly objective social and economic models and systems frequently serve as secular stand-ins for religion. I'm not dismissing faith, but we should call it what it is. We should also pay close attention to the priests and prophets and understand how they benefit from the faithful.
It's my right as an American to a Jetson's/Star Trek future, dammit!
/sarc-off. . .
As oil becomes more expensive, there will be an equilibrium between oil and alternative energy but that equilibrium will come at a lower total energy (in terms of Btu's) usage and higher cost. That (in my opinion) is the key point that is lost on many. Alternative energy can only replace part of our current oil usage and will do so at a higher economic cost than we currently enjoy. More expensive energy = lower economic activity level.
EROEI Bitchez.
Well, I am one of those capitalist Americans whoe believe it is my God given right to consume as much energy as I want, and can afford. I am also one of those people who believes that most of the conservation ideas presented are akin to socialism/defeatism as nation. We do not need people to consume less. We need to develop the next energy source that will propel us into the next century. Shortages and rising prices ultimately breed new technology solutions. Meaning, a Mad Max world will not exist as oil declines. What it will do is open up new possabilities for the innovation of newer technologies that ultimately will replace oil one day
In short... The world does not need to come together on anything. What they need to do is to let things continue as they are so that the "true" free market capitalist system (not the free money for all bankers system) can have time to work. One can get energy from a range of sources. The shorter the supply of Oil, the higher the price and the more capitalist opportunities it will provide.
In the parlance of Peak Oil, you are a technocopian.
This is a play on cornucopian, the category that thinks oil is forever.
Technocopians, in contrast, understand oil is not forever, but they believe technology is all powerful and will solve all problems before anyone dies.
i think it's also important to view oil and other fossil fuels in the proper historical perspective...Dr. Hubbert explained quite intelligently that in the context of human history (not just the past 100 or 200 yrs but the past 5000) oil and fossil fuels occupy a very brief period of time...here he is explaining this in 1976...
1976 Hubbert Peak Oil
I <3 Jeff Rubin!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
I believe that there has been a reservation for technocopians set aside in Fukushima, Japan. The idea is to put our best minds on these problems and so eventually they will just figure out the solutions.
Last I checked all of those 9,000+ really smart folks at Los Alamos still drive vehicles fueled by internal combustion engines, but there is still plenty of time to come up with a solution AND get a smooth transition. Right?
Tgatliff needs to get aquainted with Dr. Hirsch and his report.
"Limits to Growth" might be another illuminating read.
All you folks who bet your, your family's, and the world's future on the future develpments BY SCIENTISTS should do yourslelf and get aquainted with some.
All the actual PhD level scientists I know (quite a few, btw) are worried. In my experience, it's only the arm-chair variety that seem to blythly think our future is actually bright.
second that vote on The Limits to Growth. great piece. WHen it came out, quite a few folks tried to debunk it. Well reality is doing the debunking now.
In the parlance of a parent, he is a 3-year old. Go on and pitch a fit over your "god-given" rights. The Mother in this case, is a stern bitch. You will certainly not get your cookie. You will likely get spanked with extreme prejudice.
Peak metaphor.
Unfortunately, there is nothing in the pipeline or even within 30 years of coming to market that comes even close to filling the energy and commodity chemical void left by oil. I agree that there will be opportunities, but as oil and all other available technologies rapidly become tied to gold by default, please explain how the masses (who hold nothing but paper and are paid in paper) will afford to pay for energy at all?
Your hopium is great, but you need to do your homework on the real energy demand of 7+ billion people and you need to look at credible sources from MIT and Cal tech. Developing and implementing technology is not cheap, and with the government cutting funding to do the high risk research that companies will not do, but that is required, who is funding this innovation? I have been in energy and Agricultural technology for 20+ years. The BRICs have the capital and they will not invest in American companies or employees if they think they can do it themselves (which they do). I see companies regressing to very old technology, such as the ABE process used during the last two world wars. At the end of the day your scheme only works after massive human deflation, hedge accordingly.
The Invisible Hand Saves!
Faith, Brothers and Sisters, is a beautiful thing!
Consume and be BORN AGAIN!
I am also a capitalist. And a conservative and hold to most libertarian ideas..at least until it becomes apparent where the theory ends and it becomes a religion. You sir, fall into that category. To wit....
"Well, I am one of those capitalist Americans who believe it is my God given right to consume as much energy as I want, and can afford."
You can believe anything you want. But you cannot prove that it is a God given right. First of all, prove that it is a right by Constitutional means and then prove that there is a God. You can't on both sides. Which proves that you are a liar and a hypocrite. By the way I believe in God...but I'm also honest enough to admit I cannot prove it. I have also reread the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation and just for shits and giggles the Magna Carta and no where did I find a divine right to consume as much energy as possible.
"I am also one of those people who believes that most of the conservation ideas presented are akin to socialism/defeatism as nation."
You idiot. Almost every nation state/empire in history including Soviet Russia either in part or for the most part saw their decline and collapse due to over-reach from lack of supply of energy sources. Sometimes this came about not directly but because it took too much energy than their own indigenous economies could allow to keep up the military and commodity supply lines to import things that that nation state did not have naturally but could acquire from conquest. But sometimes, it did come about from simply the rape of their own land.
And by the way....just because that fucktard liberal Jimmy Carter really put a face on the whole energy conservation idea when we in the US was experiencing first hand our own domestic peak oil calamity doesn't mean he was not correct in his outlook and solutions. A broken clock is right twice a day.
"We do not need people to consume less."
Moron. What the people need does not matter in the least. What they will have to do is what matters. And what really matters is that they listen to morons like you who believe in magic not reason. And that magical thinking is the eternal cornicopian belief that mankind will forever grow, prosper and evolve if just left to his own devices. Even if left to his own devices in as much freedom as possible all this magical shit we have at our disposal came about from abundant cheap energy. If you have read any of the statements from the CEO's of Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell, which obviously you don't because you are too busy believing in the cornicopian bullshit of Rush Limbaugh and Neil Boortz, you will have read statements from all of them that cheap energy sources are running out.
Google is your friend. Sitting on your ass stewing in your own delusion is not.
"Shortages and rising prices ultimately breed new technology solutions. Meaning, a Mad Max world will not exist as oil declines. What it will do is open up new possabilities for the innovation of newer technologies that ultimately will replace oil one day."
What else needs to be said to prove your magical thinking. Where the hell do you think all of this wonderful new technology comes from? How is it bred? Nurtured? It comes from cheap energy sources such as fossil fuel. Where did the techno-paradise that we live in come from in the first place? Where was it 1000 years ago? 500 year ago? 100 years ago? Most of what we call today's modern and technological society only came about after the discovery of oil. Even when coal was cheap and plentiful, the growth of major cities and regions were stymied because of the effect of the pollution that came from coal. Just read the history of England and particularly London or Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas in Pennsylvania, where scores of people died simply from the combined fumes of coal fired plants.
"Shortages and rising prices ultimately breed new technology solutions"
In certain fields, yes. But even there the returns diminish when in a consumer society there is no more room for debt that fuels the ability to absorb rising prices...the most important of which is the input cost of a diminishing supply of cheap fuel.
Once again you ignorance is bountiful and in clear site. This is what you desire. But it is not the truth. You free market cultists were the ones who off-shored our jobs to the world to help us (at least in theory) maintain our wonderfully lush lifestyles as compared to the rest of the world and to do the one thing any corporation is bound by charter to do....namely make a profit for itself and its shareholders. Nothing wrong with that. But you made it so that the world has to come together at our behest to continue for Americans to delude themselves that this "lifestyle" can continue in perpetuity. Fuck you very much.
"What they need to do is to let things continue as they are so that the "true" free market capitalist system (not the free money for all bankers system) can have time to work. One can get energy from a range of sources. The shorter the supply of Oil, the higher the price and the more capitalist opportunities it will provide."
The only thing in this last statement of magical thinking that is true is that one can get energy from a range of sources. True. Can these range of energy sources supply us in America much less the world, with enough cheap, 24/7 energy needed to just maintain our lifestyles today much less drive us to new heights of magical lifestylishness? Nope. Not even close. Even the most green-headed eco-socialist will tell you that....if he is honest.
Lastly this gem of a statement...."The shorter the supply of Oil, the higher the price and the more capitalist opportunities it will provide."........is correct on paper. But like most cultic beliefs, falls apart upon srutiny. If there was an undeveloped energy source that could be extracted with little input costs from the prevailing energy source that it would be replacing at the needed quantities to replace the original source plus an excess to demand to keep it cheap then this is a true statement. It happened when we transitioned from coal to oil. Today this is demonstrably false....even the CEO's of all the leading oil companies will and have told us this.
The end of cheap energy and calls for conservation are not attacks on free market capitalism. Capitalism was born and flourished when the prevailing energy source was wood. What you are afraid of is your comfortable, magical life, in which you are not required to think past the words of the high priests of the radio, going down the drain. That perhaps you have been lied to and you have believed in a lie most of your life.
Don't worry my friend....I believed that lie too. I just had the good sense to stop believing the lie and prepare first my mind and now my life for the inevitability of what is coming. You on the other hand are truly a liar and self deluded. The facts are out there but you chose to cling to a secular, political religion called ideology in spite of the facts. You call yourself a conservative, but believe that in spite of the facts, it is your God-given right to be liberal when it suits your delusion. You rail against liberals because they act upon "feelings" and not facts and reason, yet when confronted with facts and the reasons behind those facts, you forget your reason and resort to feelings. You forget that the root word of conservative is "conserve".
I have called bullshit for decades against the magical delusions of liberals. I will not turn a blind eye against the magical delusions of conservative/libertarians as well. Because of such delusions, we have in this decade alone elected two of the worst leaders this country has ever seen from both sides of the ideological fence. And if magical thinking continues concerning cheap energy, we will descend into a Mad Max world. As conservatives it is our right to use facts and reason to prepare, no matter what confronts us for it is chaos that kills freedom. Freedom does not rely on cheap energy. Only a magical delusion of lifestyle and the market system that was built upon cheap energy.
Hey, c'mon! Ease up on the dude, he works for Chevy ...
You know, Government Motors ...
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
One-tentacled golf clap:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/02_27.html
Govt to conduct comprehensive radiation monitoring
Japan's government has decided to start comprehensive radiation monitoring this year by coordinating organizations that have been checking radiation levels since the Fukushima nuclear accident in March.
The government decided on the plan on Tuesday in response to criticism about difficulty in referring to results of such checks by various ministries, agencies, prefectural governments and utilities.
The plan divides monitoring activities into 6 fields including air, water, farm soil and grass, and food.
Organizations are to be in charge of monitoring and analyzing results in each field and proposing concrete measures.
The government is to set up about 250 monitoring points across the country and draw up maps showing radiation levels at children's facilities, such as schools and public libraries.
The science ministry is expected to set up a website to provide such data by mid-August.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011 19:33 +0900 (JST)
This is an oil production thread. Irrelevant post.
Why don't you pimp your silver blog, like most such posts do.
Jim's been posting on zerohedge probably since the original TD was running it on blogspot. He's always a great source of information and like several other longtime commenters more valuable than the PMs we pimp.
Hmmm, maybe PROFIT is not the most important ethos for human culture. What an astonishing concept. Good writing. Good ideas. Glad to see them out and about.
This is a quality interview with a guy who understands.
It's probably important for ZH folks to understand that the Peak Oil people are not monolithic. They do not all see the same future. In fact, there are huge differences in predictions.
The Doomers or Doomsters themselves come in different flavors -- of degree. Some arm themselves. Some buy farms. Some do neither and are just sure they will die, and defend that choice via "realism". They may be right.
The "Renewables Will Save Us" crowd see BAU (business as usual) as far as the eye can see. It's amusing that CERA, the group that sees infininte oil production forever (uber cornucopians), has managed to become an official oil production numbers source for the EIA. (it's an organization that has Daniel Yurgen as its money driver, he wrote a non fiction Pulitzer prize winner about the history (not the future) of oil. He's a writer. No geology/engineering/physics technical degree at all. MIT degree in international economics or something. CERA uses him like a star athelete celebrity to persuade oil companies to give them consultant contracts).
The "Railroads Substitute" crowd are sure a left wing political future will outlaw private car ownership and there will be no die off.
The Technocopians (play on cornucopia ) understand oil is not forever, but they believe technology is all powerful and will solve all problems before anyone dies. These folks usually talk about LED lights and heat pumps and solar powered cars/planes. There are, ominously, not many physicists or geologists among them.
There are a few other schools of thought, but you get the non monolithic picture. All of them do understand the math of oil production insufficiency, however.
The budget forecast states that us GDP will be approximately 23 trillion by 2021. Many other governments are forecasting similar growth rates. The question becomes where will the energy required to power this growth come from? The reality is that it won't come from anywhere and it will turn our current monetary system upside-down. One hope is virtual GDP as more commerce becomes cyber commerce but the bottom line is that exponential growth will hit the limits of a finite world.
The energy required to power this growth, will come from the printing press.
GDP is a near-worthless gauge of economic activity. We could hit 23 trillion next year by simply printing money/deficit spending.
Three observations:
It is common, especially when one gets into the research minutae of any phenomena, to become predominantly concerned with the short run. Perhaps part of the psychology of this trend is that our training and education leaves us uncomfortable with any large, complex situtation that is unplanned. And in the short run, there may indeed be issues.
But producers have responded to market demand for centuries. I do not see why energy is any different unless western government legislate our own self-implosion. For let us make no mistake; deconstructing current energy production in favor of green energy would send us back to Medieval levels of existence.
You understand, but you are searching for a category to fall in. Some comments:
1. Despotic and green politics, not supply, remains the principal constraint on oil and coal production. There is plenty of oil at $100 / barrel.
No environmental organizational constrains offshore Brazil, but they are still drilling down 25000 feet instead of 5000 feet. Why? Because that's where the oil is, and it doesn't matter how much there is. It will only come out so fast when you face 25,000 feet of pressure that will blow the rig up unless flow is tightly constrained.
Russia drills 6000 wells Per YEAR just to keep their production up. Those cost money and that money is becoming less interested in drilling when each well dries up before there is enough profit . . . at $100/barrel. Oil has to go much higher or Russia is going to shut down -- and be very aware Every Single Minute that Russia, not Saudi Arabia, is the world's largest oil producer.
2. Since 4/5 of the cost of nuclear represents safety requirements, their is little reason new technology will not drive that cost down significantly in the near future if energy is in much demand. And to temper the latest news, remember that Japan built those failed reactors on a well known fault line that pretty dependably produces 20+ foot tsunamis in 50-100 year patterns.
Nuclear doesn't push airplanes around the sky or grocery laden trucks to the Walmart shelves. And it never will. It's not important.
3. Natural gas remains primarily an untapped source of energy supply.
One barrel of volume (42 gallons) of 1 atmosphere pressure natural gas contains 1/1000th the energy density of a barrel of crude. (5.6 X 10^6 BTUs vs 5.6 X 10^3 BTUs) Freezing it or pressurizing it (1000 times? That's a bomb in your trunk) requires energy. Natural gas production / consumption curves are DESTROYED by any physics-accurate attempt to believe that the car total on the roads transition to natgas. The 1000X energy density thing destroys them. It doesn't work.
Thanks for providing facts for this troll. Just to add a bit more information, in addition to the pressure problem with deep wells they have been pumping seawater into almost all other oilfields for 30+ years. Organisms that have been asleep for millions of years see all that sulfate (seawater has a lot of sulfate) and wake up because they now have something to dump electrons to. Basically you and I oxidize sugar to CO2 and reduce oxygen to water. These organisms oxidize fats (oil) to CO2 but reduce Sulfate to hydrogen sulfide (extremely corrosive) and hydrogen gas (extremely explosive). These oil fields are massive and so are the hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen pressures that are being generated. Makes the oil being recovered shit as well. Oil will be dumped long before we run out. All oil companies are heavily investing in numerous "green" technology, they are very scared for their bottom line.
We will stop using oil with plenty in the ground. I am working with one oil company now trying to solve major problems associated mainly with the cost of recovering oil from large underground fields that they have been pumping seawater into for 30+ years. Oil and all resources are rapidly being price in gold. The masses can not afford $100 oil as their paper burns and hence we are going back to medival times regardless, unless there is massive human deflation ASAP.
Hedge accordingly.
Thanks Law and Crash for your input. Keeps me from having to reply. One thing I would like to add is that the complexity we enjoy in our society is a direct product of cheap oil. That complexity is still fairly cheap (though getting more expensive) because oil is still fairly cheap. As oil gets more expensive and harder to find the complexity of our society will come crumbling down. This is mainly due to diminished returns. I also theorize that this is another reason that technical jobs are going overseas. These are among the highest paying jobs in the US and is one way for companies to offset other costs that are not flexible. We will continue to shed high paying jobs as a way to offset other rising expenses. I'm sorry to say that this will continue until the wage level here is more in parity with countries that currently use much less energy.
Transportation costs are all important in a global economy. You are making the case for labor costs being definitive, but I would mildly disagree and point at transport.
That cheap labor that builds stuff gets snuffed out if the stuff can't ship.
No question you have a point in that stuff can't be built to be shipped without that slave labor, but once you postulate slavery, you still have to ship the output of that slavery. If you can't profitably ship it, earnings per share crater.
This is what happened in Q1 when $135 Brent destroyed shipping costs and generated 0.4% GDP. The dirty reality is Brent is still north of 110. Society can't function with oil this expensive, and that reality rides shotgun on your other accuracy, oil is cheap. It will get worse.
Peak EVERYTHING bitchez!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fw1RMKWypo
Evelyn De Rothschild Warning Masses - Too Late (Holding Bonds, Oil, Gold)
Sold out of Banking in 2006.. this report is from 3 years ago.
Nate is Great....... gives a different perspective on the issue. Whenever I want to rouse curiosity in friends about Peak Oil, I ask them to go and look for "steep discount rates" on the web.... poor souls think its will give a deal for iPad
the US public doesn't want to look at it straight in the face : peak debt, peak consumption, peak oil, peak food, peak population, peak pollution, peak man made climate influence.
paradigm change of magnitude 9 whether we like it or not. Those who act first and intelligently will reap what they sow.
I'll bet its those countries with limited home resources who act first. That's nature law of sloth (entropy).
I've not seen something this good from Nate for a few years.
Right back at fundamentals, Nate! And we both know where this goes.
Peak oil is absurd for dozens of reasons, but one will suffice.
Veggie oil can easily be substituted for diesel. The only issue is price.
Peak oil is no more or less sensible than peak watermelons.
Shit is good for growing corn, not for a substitute for brains. Pull some out of your ears and grow some corn with it and free your mind as well.
Of course it's easy to replace veggie oil for diesel. On a technical level and on a limited basis. But did you not notice what has been happening lately when more land that was once growing food stocks was being used to grow corn, swtichgrass and other biomass fuel sources? The price of those commodities shot up. Veggie oil refineries shot up as well when the price for their refined product allowed them to operated at a profit. But now those same refineries are shuttered or operating as half level, particualarly the independent ones.
If you divert land used to raise food and then use it to raise fuel, you will increase the price of both. Even with all of the advances of agri-science, you cannot increase the amount of food stocks out of half the amount of land to compensate for the amount of those same food stocks which are now diverted for fuel. If this had been tried 30 years ago, before Peak Debt, then perhaps over time, with the agri-science revolution and and proper limited time subsidies we might by now have a good portion of our fuel needs supplied by veggie fuel. But even this would only work if there were no more mouths to feed in the world or in America over that same period in time.
You cannot escape Peak Debt and energy invested on energy returned. Corn with its many input costs to get that energy returned is not suitable for widespread replacement of fossil fuels.
You are grossly misinformed on what is and is not feasible.
A good place to start for facts is David Fridley's The Myths of Biofuels.
http://old.globalpublicmedia.com/the_reality_report_the_myths_of_biofuels
Might as well face it. 9 out of 10 academics agree: we're running out of fermented dinosaur excrement.
/sarc
Might as well face it. 9 out of 10 academics agree: we're running out of fermented dinosaur excrement.
/sarc
I have followed the peak oil story for almost a decade now. I have even interviewed Dr. Hirsch. I am glad to see the Peak oil theorists finally throwing in the towel on the "we are all headed to the dark ages after 1999" (then 2005, then 2008, then 2010, now it won't really happen but there will be trouble). Finally an understanding (on both sides) that the oil-economy thingy is dynamic. Use too much increasingly expensive oil and the economy retracts. People conserve and use less oil. The decline in easy-to-recover-oil has been slow enough and will continue to be slow enough (in my opinion, based on admittedly inherently flawed inductive reasoning based on the last few years) that we will be able to adjust accordingly. Rough patches, yes. Complete energy crash, no. We will probably feel more negative effects from the collapse of the ponzi keynesian economy than from declining oil. Just last week REN21 reported that 20% of our energy now comes from alternative sources. We are well on our way to buffering the negative effects from the high price and declining amount of oil.
Where in God's name do you think the money came from to support that 20% alternative fuel figure (if that figure is true....I'm not quite so sure)?
It came mostly from the Ponzo Scheme that is collapsing all around us. It takes a hell of a lot of fiat currency and stolen tax fiat currency (ie subsidies) to keep the alternative fuel biz afloat.
Take away the Ponzi (or more likely it blows up on its own) and that figure of 20% (once again if true) shrinks to single digits.
Like the sun setting and the wind dying down.
"use too much increasingly expensive oil and the economy retracts. People conserve and use less oil"...and the economy retracts. There fixed it. "20% of our energy [that] now comes from alternative sources" is nothing like our current "energy" and was financed mostly by money and water we can't afford to waste. Lastly the "collapase of the ponzi keynesian economy" and peak oil are intimately related
Great article. I will check out their web sites.
Thanks for the sane comments above Jumbo, Crash, Laws.
As one who has been aware of this stuff for 40 years, I have to say I think they are way too optimistic. At this point I think we have passed so many tipping points that it's all over. I was looking at 95%+ die-off, and a return to hunter-gatherer, when I read this article http://www.stevenerikson.com/index.php/commentary-endgame-vol-1-and-2-by... by anthropologist and SF author Steven Erikson. Depressed the hell out of me for a couple of days.
My belief is that only genuine spiritual transformation would help humanity; highly unlikely to happen soon enough to enough people. However it's also the only preparation for whole-earth catastrophe, so that's where I put my energies.
Thanks for the kind comment. I absolutely agree with your statement about spiritual transformation. I also agree that it will come too late. As a Christian I believe that spirtual transformation comes through faith in Christ. As your handle above suggests, you probably have a more "earthy" perspective. That's cool. We still are on the same page about the true problem with mankind. It's not about capitalism or communism. It's not about right or left, it's about right and wrong. And no system of utopian thought, ( and make no mistake about it, America and capitalism are just examples in a long line of utopoian thought) can withstand for very long the mystery of human corruption or as the Bible calls it , sin.
It is my opinion that the whole of the human story can be summerized as mankind's quest to forget and reverse the curse as illustrated in the story of the Garden of Eden. Whether you believe it or not does not matter. We operate as if it is true , even if on a subconcious basis. It all comes back to the promise made by the serpent that you can be like God if you partake of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I don't think like some of my atheist and pagan friends that God was evil for putting that tree there as a temptation he knew we would fall for. Rather I think it was there for its eventual use. But we were not ready for it at that time of our spiritual and mental evolution.
But we did. And ever since mankind has invented scheme after scheme to not only lessen the effects of the curse but to obtain the promise that could never be fulfilled...namely our apotheosis...our obtaining godhood. Now, though because of cheap energy, the last 100 years and in particular, the last 60 years has brought us much closer than ever before to erasing the curse and obtaining godhood. We have created stars (we call them nuclear explosions) we are on the cusp of breaking the 120 year life span barrier. Our very planet is networked by various land lines, wireless, and satellite communications to such powerful computers that we and the planet have achieved a kind of omnipotence and omnipresense. All the while not realising that we built this illusion on magic....namely oil. In fact, we built this illusion on death as well, as all fossil fuels are derived from dead plant and animal life.
It is the third law of Arthur C. Clarke that states "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." When in our human existance have we ever been more magical....more god-like than today. And soon, accoding to Ray Kurzweil we will obtain "singularity" where machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence and indeed will augment human intelligence on a biological level thus allowing us to leap forward in evolution. All this is nice, but begs the question.....what has happened in the past when men thought they had achieved apotheosis. It was usually a king or pharoah or satrap. It never ended well. Also, it amuses me that many of these scientists and futurists look down on people of faith like me, when it takes as much faith in debunking a God you cannot prove does not exist by scientific means and faith in the magic they weave through technology.
As a matter of fact, it amuses me more to think that after 10,000 years we are not that far removed from our Neolithic ancestors who sat around the campfires as their shamans weaved tales of magic and made potions to heal or destroy. In fact the Greek word used to descibed the sorcerors so hated by God is pharmakeia which we derive the word pharmacy or a drug despencery. When in human history have we've been more under the spell of sorcery than today, between big pharma, the illicit drug trade and our techno-mages (to use a term from Babylon 5). All of which strive to do two things, make us believe we are not under the curse and that soon we will be like the gods.
Until the magic runs out, in terms of cheap energy. And when we all face, globally, that we cannot achieve god-hood, that our lot in life is truly, "Life's a bitch and then you die", that we have been led down the primrose path of a fake prosperity that was leading us away from the curse to our own apotheosis as collective Dorothies down the yellow brick road to Oz.....well....the collective shit will hit the fan.
And as always the strong-man with the solution.....perhaps the final solution will arrive. You may have a name for him. As a Christian, I too have a name for him.
Hey Jumbo,
Don't know if you'll get this reply, but anyway...
Thanks in turn or your reply, it's good to have a sane dialog on this crazy (but interesting!) website!
As you surmise, I'm not Christian, but spirituality (whatever one means by that!) is central to my existence (all existence).
I buy your description of the striving for godhood through technology--it's the Tower of Babel, isn't it?
I would describe the whole human dilemma differently, but it sounds like at core our attitudes might not be so different. The reason I think that is partly because of your acceptance of my differing sipiritual views--sounds like you do not require me to adopt your beliefs in order to be OK!
I think a genuine grap of the nature of spirituality is very difficult. What is really meant by "God", and what is the true relation between God and man?
I think humans have forgotten who they really are, and have adopted a severely delusional view of the universe. And I would include most conventional religious views in that, as well as the materialistic view. Coming to recognize our true nature is the spiritual realization i am talking about; and although I would not normally use this language, I could call it oneness with, or non-separateness from, God (very different from the separate human being believing he or she can become or be God).
My main work at this time is, first, helping others towards this realization; second, deepening my own realization; third, getting myself, family and neighbors prepared to weather the crisis as well as possible (with few illusions about ultimate survival).
All best wishes to you.
It is likewise refreshing to have this conversation with you. And you are indeed correct. The God I serve did not force this faith upon me so why should I turn around and force it upon you. Which is why I have such a digust with most fundlementalist Muslims. If Allah was indeed so great, why would he need you to strap on a bomb vest? He's a big boy, right? He can take care of himself. Obviously, history is replete with examples of the holy wars Christians took upon the Muslim and the Jew and even each other. However, we have had our reformation. It's bloody past time for the Muslims to have theirs.
Besides, the Bible teaches me that as we have a common father in God, and a kinsman (brother) redeemer in the form of Christ, you are indeed my brother even if we do not share immediate DNA material. As a matter of fact, you are, even as a stranger, as much brother to me as my own sister, as both my sister and I are adopted from different biological parents seperated by 2 years. As in that great scene in Tombstone when Wyatt Earp barges in to the jailhouse to find that Virgil and Morgan have accepted being deputies because they are digusted with the lawlessness in town even after they had agreed not to get involved, Morgan turns to Wyatt and shows him his badge and says to Wyatt...."It's like you said Wyatt...you've got to back your brother's play." Your play may be different from mine, but I'll back you none the less. Your heart is open, your a seeker like me and you did not judge me as well. Gotta back your play, brother.
Besides, I don't see one passage in the Bible where Jesus thumped a Torah, screamed bloody murder about hellfire and damnation except against his own corrupt priests, or waged holy war. He has convinced billions of people over 2000 years, the vast majority of which have never seen him, that he was truly the Son of God, simply from the way he lived his life. His example was all that was needed. Who the hell am I to try any different? It's a difficult task enough to do. I fail every day. I do not have the time or energy to beat you over the head with a Bible that I am too busy reading to see how I failed today in living by Christ's example. I much rather have a drink with you, discuss heady topics such as these in love and rationality and laugh at the absurbtity of life.
Don't know where you're from PPagan, but I promise you this. Somewhere in Florida tonight at dinner time, I shall raise a glass of Chinese Merlot given to me by the Chinese wife of a Viet Nam vet, say a prayer of thanks, and drink to your health. For I rejoice in having found a brother.
Salud, my friend. May God (or whatever) protect and keep us in this coming hour of testing.
Well this feels really good to me brother. I will likewise hoist a glass to you up here in Vermont.
May all beings awaken to the miracle of life all around us.
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