NationStates Jolt Archive

It's happening. Here are some excerpts from todays news.

Stocks at Cushing, the delivery point for Nymex crude contracts, fell to 21.2 million barrels last week from 22.6 million during the week ended July 13, according to the Energy Department.
Overall, "demand continues to outpace supply," said John Person, president of NationalFutures.com. "This has been the trend this year and will continue to remain being the primary reason why prices will remain high throughout 2007."
Person said $80 to $82.50 is the "next resistance level based on technical and fundamental supply and demand trends.
"We might hit this level by late August -- and that is without any major weather supply disruptions such as a hurricane threat," he said.

...

Crude futures had fallen more than 3% from last Thursday through Tuesday on the perception that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will pump more oil.
Now the market is "less than impressed with their comments," Flynn said of the group.
"The market is starting to doubt OPEC's ability to increase production," he said. "That's adding to the bullish momentum right now. "

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?column=Futures+Movers

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Exxon Mobil said Thursday its quarterly income fell slightly because of lower prices for natural gas and the rising costs of doing business, causing the oil giant to miss its Wall Street profit target for the first time in more than a year.

...

It also said production levels dropped by 34,000 barrels a day to 2.67 millions, reversing its history of bringing new fields on stream as the industry-wide scramble to secure resources finally caught up with it.



Find your life boat.

oops.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/exxon-mobil-net-still-above/story.aspx?guid=%7BF4E6B26F%2D10CC%2D4C0B%2D950C%2DE4A50FFFB185%7D

second story

Find your life boat.

Thou doth protest too much, methinks.

Fortunately, I'm heavily invested in canned goods and shotguns. :)

Thou doth protest too much, methinks.

Protest? :confused:

Not about Zombies then......

Not about Zombies then......

Oh no, there will be zombies.

Fortunately, I'm heavily invested in canned goods and shotguns. :)

I bought the cream pies. That's why you couldn't find any. I'll make a trade if you have any canned beans.

I bought the cream pies. That's why you couldn't find any. I'll make a trade if you have any canned beans.

I think we can come to an understanding. :)

Fortunately, I'm heavily invested in canned goods and shotguns. :)

Gremlins 2. :)

Protest? :confused:

"Proclaim" if you will...it's in the context of the reference. ;)

Fortunately, I'm heavily invested in canned goods and shotguns. :)

Good strategy for the very short term, at least. We're gonna have to reorganize our lives in ways we can't imagine right now, though, and that will require a whole community strategy in order to be successful.

There was a time not so long ago when famine was an expected, if not accepted, part of life. Until the 19th century — whether in China, France, India or Britain — food came almost entirelyfrom local sources and harvests were variable. In good years, there was plenty—enough for seasonal feasts and for storage in anticipation of winter and hard times to come; in bad years, starvation cut down the poorest and the weakest—the very young, the old, and the sickly. Sometimes bad years followed one upon another, reducing the size of the population by several percent. This was the normal condition of life in pre-industrial societies, and it persisted for thousands of years.

Today, in America, such a state of affairs is hard to imagine. Food is so cheap and plentiful that obesity is a far more widespread concern than hunger. The average mega-supermarket stocks an impressive array of exotic foods from across the globe, and even staples are typically trucked from hundreds of miles away. Many people in America did go hungry during the Great Depression, but those were times that only the elderly can recall. In the current regime, the desperately poor may experience chronic malnutrition and may miss meals, but for most the dilemma is finding time in the day’s hectic schedule to go to the grocery store or to cook. As a result, fast-food restaurants proliferate: the fare may not be particularly nutritious, but even an hour’s earnings at minimum wage will buy a meal or two. The average American family spent 20 percent of its income on food in 1950; today the figure is 10 percent.



This is an extraordinary situation; but because it is the only one that most Americans alive today have ever experienced, we tend to assume that it will continue indefinitely. However there are reasons to think that our current anomalous abundance of inexpensive food may be only temporary; if so, present and future generations may become acquainted with that old, formerly familiar but unwelcome houseguest—famine.

...


Modern industrial agriculture has been described as a method of using soil to turn petroleum and gas into food. We use natural gas to make fertilizer, and oil to fuel farm machinery and power irrigation pumps, as a feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, in the maintenance of animal operations, in crop storage and drying, and for transportation of farm inputs and outputs. Agriculture accounts for about 17 percent of the U.S. annual energy budget; this makes it the single largest consumer of petroleum products as compared to other industries. By comparison, the U.S. military, in all of its operations, uses only about half that amount. About 350 gallons (1,500 liters) of oil equivalents are required to feed each American each year, and every calorie of food produced requires, on average, ten calories of fossil-fuel inputs. This is a food system profoundly vulnerable, at every level, to fuel shortages and skyrocketing prices. And both are inevitable.



An attempt to make up for fuel shortfalls by producing more biofuels—ethanol, butanol, and biodiesel—will put even more pressure on the food system, and will likely result in a competition between food and fuel uses of land and other resources needed for agricultural production. Already 14 percent of the U.S. corn crop is devoted to making ethanol, and that proportion is expected to rise to one quarter, based solely on existing projects-in-development and government mandates.

Gremlins 2. :)



"Proclaim" if you will...it's in the context of the reference. ;)

Still not sure what you mean... :confused:

Still not sure what you mean... :confused:

Shutup and get inside the shelter!

Gremlins 2. :)

http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/489111/2/istockphoto_489111_you_win_vector_illustration.jpg

World oil production has been flat for 30 months...

http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/chartimages/a/a1oilprod.gif
What happens next?

http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/encircling%201.gif

Still not sure what you mean... :confused:

I think the phrase "find your lifeboat" exaggerates the situation.

Things are sliding, sure, but it's not like I have to go to the hardware store this minute and stock up on supplies.

http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/489111/2/istockphoto_489111_you_win_vector_illustration.jpg

Yay!

*does victory dance* (http://thefulcrum.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/calvin-n-hobbes-733953.gif)

Whoa whoa WHOA WHOA WHOA.







Are telling us the amount of oil is limited?





Shit.

I think the phrase "find your lifeboat" exaggerates the situation.

Things are sliding, sure, but it's not like I have to go to the hardware store this minute and stock up on supplies.



Yay!

*does victory dance* (http://thefulcrum.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/calvin-n-hobbes-733953.gif)

I think your going tio find that it will feel like an ambush if you don't at least mentally prepare for a real problem.

Whoa whoa WHOA WHOA WHOA.







Are telling us the amount of oil is limited?





Shit.No. Of course not. Everyone knows that petroleum is non-renewable resource. What I am telling you is that we may have reached the limits of our ability to secure ever increasing rates of production and that world oil production may be about to go into permanent decline. The economic consequences of a permanent decline in world oil production wil probably be cataclysmic - effecting everything from your ability to drive to teh production and delivery of durable goods and, probably most importantly, food.

My what an interesting time to be alive!

:(

Interesting....

{img}insert pic of your choice supervillan{/img}

Putin for me....I can see it now...a horde...(do hordes fly?)....of dirigibles..!

Interesting....

{img}insert pic of your choice supervillan{/img}

Putin for me....I can see it now...a horde...(do hordes fly?)....of dirigibles..!

You jest, but raise an important point. The final wars for resources have begun in Iraq. Anybody want to tell China, Russia and India that they don't get to industrialize?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is making an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic - so he can tap its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth.


His scientists claim an underwater ridge near the North Pole is really part of Russia's continental shelf.

One newspaper printed a map of the "new addition", a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=464921&in_page_id=1811

How do you think the US, Canada and Norway will react to this?

It is indubitably true that industrialised agriculture is ludicrously inefficient, using many times the energy value of the food it produces. I would doubt that it is really ten times as much, although it could be if you're taking an average of both grain and meat production. Grain can potentially produce more energy than it consumes to grow (although with increased mechanisation, it generally doesn't) but meat can easily take at least 10 times as much - it takes about 10 kilos of grain or similar quality cattle feed to produce 1 kilo of meat.

But this situation doesn't have to continue, and isn't impossible to reverse.

1. Fertilisers: Yes, we currently produce most ammonia or nitrate-based fertilisers from the Haber process (which every high school student learns about in chemistry lessons) which is very energy intensive, requiring vast amounts of hydrogen (produced either by electrolysis or by steam reforming of natural gas), plus more energy to generate the high temperatures and pressures required to make the reaction work.

But there are alternatives. Natural fertiliser in the form of animal dung or treated sewage sludge is often just as effective - the nitrogen is released a lot slower, but because it isn't washed away by the rain so easily, you don't need to apply it so often. Also, excess nitrates washed into watercourses from application of chemical fertilisers cause eutrophication, which effectively wipes out aquatic ecosystems.
You can also operate a system of crop rotation - growing a leguminous plant for one in every three years (this can be any sort of peas or beans). Legumes contain nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots, and will return far more nitrogen to the soil than they use.

2. Harvesting and labour: It isn't necessary to use quite so much mechanisation as we do - and when fuel prices rise sufficiently, we won't any more, because it may eventually turn out to be cheaper to employ animals to pull the plow again, and people to harvest crops. There is no shortage of unemployed labour in the US today - labour that we might need again sooner than you think.

3. Transportation: This one baffles me a bit in the first place - much food transport is not really necessary. For example, centralised warehouses supplying supermarket chains take in goods from many farms and suppliers all over the country, and then ship them back out to the stores. In many cases, the goods end up in a store just down the road from the farm they were grown at - having travelled hundreds of miles to a warehouse and back.
The French have got this issue nailed completely - it is the law in France that any retailer must buy goods from the closest possible source, reducing transportation of goods to a minimum. Hence you can still see farmers taking their own produce to local markets, and the local supermarket chains buy directly from farms right nextdoor to them.
The downside of such a system is that it requires massive subsidies to make it remotely viable - over 50% of the European Common Agricultural Policy funds goes to French farmers. But it does mean that they use only a tiny fraction of the amount of transportation fuel.

It's easy to believe that our current inefficiencies are here to stay and that we will all die a lingering death of starvation when the oil runs out, but it's not necessarily true.

Not to be off-topic, but I don't think I have ever even heard of the Haber Process and I actually took all the Chemistry classes my high school offered, including Dual Enrollment.

You jest, but raise an important point. The final wars for resources have begun in Iraq. Anybody want to tell China, Russia and India that they don't get to industrialize?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=464921&in_page_id=1811

How do you think the US, Canada and Norway will react to this?

Yeah...its going to get vicious.

Here we go...*groam*

- Israel and water.

Thats the mid east done.

- Africa and Aids

This is going to influence the future. Aids is fucking rampant in Africa.

- Europe and climate change

Power. Electricity. Gas. We go nuclear...or we buy Russian...

Thats three....pretty poor ones I admit....but off the top of my head as it were.

These are all situations that are real and will impact in the near near future.

______

The Arctic....well...all that ice won't be there in 20 years time the way things are going....

It is indubitably true that industrialised agriculture is ludicrously inefficient, using many times the energy value of the food it produces. I would doubt that it is really ten times as much, although it could be if you're taking an average of both grain and meat production. Grain can potentially produce more energy than it consumes to grow (although with increased mechanisation, it generally doesn't) but meat can easily take at least 10 times as much - it takes about 10 kilos of grain or similar quality cattle feed to produce 1 kilo of meat.

But this situation doesn't have to continue, and isn't impossible to reverse.

1. Fertilisers: Yes, we currently produce most ammonia or nitrate-based fertilisers from the Haber process (which every high school student learns about in chemistry lessons) which is very energy intensive, requiring vast amounts of hydrogen (produced either by electrolysis or by steam reforming of natural gas), plus more energy to generate the high temperatures and pressures required to make the reaction work.

But there are alternatives. Natural fertiliser in the form of animal dung or treated sewage sludge is often just as effective - the nitrogen is released a lot slower, but because it isn't washed away by the rain so easily, you don't need to apply it so often. Also, excess nitrates washed into watercourses from application of chemical fertilisers cause eutrophication, which effectively wipes out aquatic ecosystems.
You can also operate a system of crop rotation - growing a leguminous plant for one in every three years (this can be any sort of peas or beans). Legumes contain nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots, and will return far more nitrogen to the soil than they use.

2. Harvesting and labour: It isn't necessary to use quite so much mechanisation as we do - and when fuel prices rise sufficiently, we won't any more, because it may eventually turn out to be cheaper to employ animals to pull the plow again, and people to harvest crops. There is no shortage of unemployed labour in the US today - labour that we might need again sooner than you think.

3. Transportation: This one baffles me a bit in the first place - much food transport is not really necessary. For example, centralised warehouses supplying supermarket chains take in goods from many farms and suppliers all over the country, and then ship them back out to the stores. In many cases, the goods end up in a store just down the road from the farm they were grown at - having travelled hundreds of miles to a warehouse and back.
The French have got this issue nailed completely - it is the law in France that any retailer must buy goods from the closest possible source, reducing transportation of goods to a minimum. Hence you can still see farmers taking their own produce to local markets, and the local supermarket chains buy directly from farms right nextdoor to them.
The downside of such a system is that it requires massive subsidies to make it remotely viable - over 50% of the European Common Agricultural Policy funds goes to French farmers. But it does mean that they use only a tiny fraction of the amount of transportation fuel.

It's easy to believe that our current inefficiencies are here to stay and that we will all die a lingering death of starvation when the oil runs out, but it's not necessarily true.

There are answers to all of our delimnas, but they require us to make massive adjustments in our expectations for material wealth and just basically the kind of lives we expect to live. Will we all accept and cooperate in a massive downsizing of the American Way Of Life, something our veep has referred to in the past as "non-negotiable?" Will the rest of the world be willing to cooperate with us as we collectively adjust our expectations? China just got cars, are the ready to give them up so soon?

Unfortunately, history and circumstance suggest that we will instead fight over the table scraps of the 20th century.

Great. I figured I'd have time to go through my non-producing career (music education) and retire and/or die before my career would have been shown to be, without a doubt, useless once the emergency came.

One more thing to be depressed about. *sigh* :(

I was going to say that its not only the American way of life but that would be wrong...

The American vision of a car for every home (+1 for the wife...another for the son...) has moved beyond America's borders and is now a de facto standard for 'quality of life'.

We Europeans must understand this. It not a cultural thing but rather a naturally human thing. Greed is too strong for some and hence never really reaches the surface of enough people to understand that we will be facing some very hard decisions soon.

Hell...not only us Europeans....the entire fucking planet.

I was going to say that its not only the American way of life but that would be wrong...

The American vision of a car for every home (+1 for the wife...another for the son...) has moved beyond America's borders and is now a de facto standard for 'quality of life'.

We Europeans must understand this. It not a cultural thing but rather a naturally human thing. Greed is too strong for some and hence never really reaches the surface of enough people to understand that we will be facing some very hard decisions soon.

Hell...not only us Europeans....the entire fucking planet.

And the tension keeps mounting. many third world nations have given up buying oil as the price skyrockets. This is the reason we've been able to keep inventories high as long as we have in Europe and the US - we can afford it. This is a losing proposition, though. As you can see from the Mobil story posted in the OP it eventually catches up to you.

Now, how does that tension effect the political situation in the third world? China is increasingly willing to do what the US and Europe have done in the past to secure resources - support brutal regimes in Africa and elsewhere.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE – The Chinese economic juggernaut and its thirst for minerals and markets has increasingly brought it to Africa, including here to Zimbabwe. The fertile hills of this Southern African nation are rich with gold and the world's second-largest platinum reserves. In Sudan, Angola, and along the Gulf of Guinea, the Asian giant is guzzling the continent's vast oil supply.
But lately the Chinese are digging on a different front, one that could complicate the Bush administration's efforts to promote democracy here: African politics.

Last year, China stymied US efforts to levy sanctions on Sudan, which supplies nearly 5 percent of China's oil and where the US says genocide has occurred in its Darfur region. And as Zimbabwe becomes more isolated from the West, China has sent crates of T-shirts for ruling-party supporters who will vote in Thursday's parliamentary elections.

more...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0330/p01s01-woaf.html

Find your life boat.

And you all think I'm paranoid and stupid for accumulating an arsenal of weaponry, stockpiles of food, and having built a concrete bunker as part of my house...

And you all think I'm paranoid and stupid for accumulating an arsenal of weaponry, stockpiles of food, and having built a concrete bunker as part of my house...

No, for answering your door with a gun in your hand.

The tendency to be isolationist will not serve you here. Real solutions will require us to find community based answers to our energy problems. We'll need to get to know our neighbors again and work together to build a society worth living in - it's the only way the we will survive.

And you all think I'm paranoid and stupid for accumulating an arsenal of weaponry, stockpiles of food, and having built a concrete bunker as part of my house...

Good for you! If your neighbors are just as prepared as you are, then you will definitely have an even better chance than the rest of us of surviving this transition period.

Good for you! If your neighbors are just as prepared as you are, then you will definitely have an even better chance than the rest of us of surviving this transition period.

The transition period into a zombie apocalypse game...

Good for you! If your neighbors are just as prepared as you are, then you will definitely have an even better chance than the rest of us of surviving this transition period.

No...

They just start shooting eachother when food starts getting scarce. ;)

Most of my neighbors are of the same preparedness.

Go look for food somewhere else - we already have a plan.

I have so many jokes I can't decide which to use here.

You jest, but raise an important point. The final wars for resources have begun in Iraq. Anybody want to tell China, Russia and India that they don't get to industrialize?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=464921&in_page_id=1811

How do you think the US, Canada and Norway will react to this?

Obviously the US will invade Russia, drag Canada along with it, and when everything else is rubble, Norway can pick up the pieces.

No, for answering your door with a gun in your hand.

The tendency to be isolationist will not serve you here. Real solutions will require us to find community based answers to our energy problems. We'll need to get to know our neighbors again and work together to build a society worth living in - it's the only way the we will survive.

Most of my neighbors are of the same preparedness.

Go look for food somewhere else - we already have a plan.

Most of my neighbors are of the same preparedness.

Go look for food somewhere else - we already have a plan.

If it involves agriculture then you'll find the isolationist tendency will disrupt it. If it doesn't involve agriculture it won't work.

And you all think I'm paranoid and stupid for accumulating an arsenal of weaponry, stockpiles of food, and having built a concrete bunker as part of my house...

How's that gonna help when you run out of food? And bunkers without electricity can get a bit stuffy.

Most of my neighbors are of the same preparedness.

Go look for food somewhere else - we already have a plan.

My plan is bigger than your plan...hand over the taco's cheers ;)

If it involves agriculture then you'll find the isolationist tendency will disrupt it. If it doesn't involve agriculture it won't work.

Why not? People survived without agriculture for the majority of the human race's time on earth. Why can't we survive without again after this next collapse?

How's that gonna help when you run out of food? And bunkers without electricity can get a bit stuffy.

Unlike people like you, we have weapons. Whatever you have, we can easily take.

We also have land. And solar power. And wells.

I could go on.

Find your life boat.
Just make sure your life boat doesn't need fuel but has a nice pair of paddles...

Unlike people like you, we have weapons. Whatever you have, we can easily take.

We also have land. And solar power. And wells.

I could go on.

What makes you think you are the only one with weapons?

And land and wells are not enough. Do you have seeds? Livestock? Do you know how to prepare the soil? When to seed? When to sow? What to grow? How to keep it from spoiling? What will you do when your solar panels fail? etc etc. Plus, it's not just a matter of not dying, but prospering as a culture and society.

If you don't know these things, no matter how many weapons you have, knowledge is gonna be damn hard to take, and your guns are going to run out of ammo.

Why not? People survived without agriculture for the majority of the human race's time on earth. Why can't we survive without again after this next collapse?

Because there are more people in the San Fernando Valley right now than there were on the planet before agriculture. You don't think you're going to be a hunter/gatherer, do you? I'm talking about you in 10 years, not humans in two centuries.

The transition period into a zombie apocalypse game...
I doubt we'd reach an outbreak of apocalyptic levels. Many people are well prepared for a zombie epidemic, thanks to Mr. Brooks survival guide. ;)
No...

They just start shooting eachother when food starts getting scarce. ;)
Well, that's always a possibility if they don't get along and if raiders or military forces have not spoiled their little safe haven already. :D

What makes you think you are the only one with weapons?

And land and wells are not enough. Do you have seeds? Livestock? Do you know how to prepare the soil? When to seed? When to sow? What to grow? How to keep it from spoiling? What will you do when your solar panels fail? etc etc. Plus, it's not just a matter of not dying, but prospering as a culture and society.

If you don't know these things, no matter how many weapons you have, knowledge is gonna be damn hard to take, and your guns are going to run out of ammo.

Not to mention trade, retail...

The best possible solution doesn't involve becoming tribal, it involves people making and selling trade goods on a local level, learning to do retail on a much smaller scale that doesn't involve 12,000 mile trade routes. It means building walkable communities with local agriculture, manufacturing and recreation. This is a tremendous project - but one we are capable of. It doesn't involve hiding in an underground bunker hugging your gun.

It is a pity we will not, like most great undertakings which would result in improved livelihood, do such a project on a large scale until we are compelled by necessity.

Not to mention trade, retail...

The best possible solution doesn't involve becoming tribal, it involves people making and selling trade goods on a local level, learning to do retail on a much smaller scale that doesn't involve 12,000 mile trade routes. It means building walkable communities with local agriculture, manufacturing and recreation. This is a tremendous project - but one we are capable of. It doesn't involve hiding in an underground bunker hugging your gun.

Of course, but some people think that since the first concern is food that should be the only concern, and that the way to get food should be hoarding a lot of it and then taking the rest from everybody else. Or growing it yourself.

But when you start thinking about it who has the knowledge to grow the variety of food that's necessary to sustain us. And then you start thinking about other stuff: clothes, shoes, parts for your rifle, ammo and powder, tools, tools and material to repair the tools, etc. etc. Even an Iron Age society needed a wide network of specialists to function properly. And, of course, the point is not to go back and live in an Iron Age community, but to build something better.

Isolationism quickly goes out of the window.

My money is on archologies.

Hearing news like this, if true, totally vindicates my pissing away my early twenties.

http://members.cox.net/pilot44/images/DJ.hugging.gun.jpg

"You'll save me won't you? Yes you will. Yes you will."


awwwwwwwwwww

No, for answering your door with a gun in your hand.


I'm not sure it was a gun. However....

Is this like the survivalist thing I used read bits about in Guns n Ammo, when but a lad in the 80's?

I'm not sure it was a gun. However....

Is this like the survivalist thing I used read bits about in Guns n Ammo, when but a lad in the 80's?

I believe RO has that bent, yes.

I believe RO has that bent, yes.


Yeah, he has a few.

But I meant is "the long Emergency" the whole 'end of society' thing where you should have gold and silver for trade as currency will be gone in "The Aftermath"....?

But I meant is "the long Emergency" the whole 'end of society' thing where you should have gold and silver for trade as currency will be gone in "The Aftermath"....?

Yeah, that's what it is supposed to be. What people forget, of course, is that if resources get that scarce the government will probably contrive to liquidate about 2/3rds of us.

Why can't we survive without again after this next collapse?

Six billion of us?

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

zomfg ur rite!111oneoneeleven
this must be it
the end of the world
its all over now
nothing left to do except
RETURN TO THE TREES MY BROTHERS! Where we can live in peace and harmony with mother earth and she'll bake us cookies every day and we'll fling shit at each other and this is fairly long unborken sentence utilizing poor grammer.

I'm still stunned by the fact that 72% of oil is wasted on transportation, of which nearly 85% is in light vehicles that are not used in industry or construction.

Solve the car, and you really do solve the problem. The rest is peanuts compared to the personal automobile and will be easily to address once this barrier is out of the way. Even planes pale in comparison to the fuel guzzled by cars, which we are dependent on for virtually everything we need or want in our lives. Frankly, getting rid of dependence on the automobile will do more to stimulate our economy, technological innovation, and social cohesion than anything else in recent history.

I'm still stunned by the fact that 72% of oil is wasted on transportation, of which nearly 85% is in light vehicles that are not used in industry or construction.

Solve the car, and you really do solve the problem. The rest is peanuts compared to the personal automobile and will be easily to address once this barrier is out of the way. Even planes pale in comparison to the fuel guzzled by cars, which we are dependent on for virtually everything we need or want in our lives. Frankly, getting rid of dependence on the automobile will do more to stimulate our economy, technological innovation, and social cohesion than anything else in recent history.


Sure, but "solve the car" is a tremendous project. Probably bigger than nay project in history by scale.

Why not? People survived without agriculture for the majority of the human race's time on earth. Why can't we survive without again after this next collapse?

Most estimates place the beginning of agriculture at somewhere between 7000 and 9000 years ago. Humanity as a current species has been around for about 11,000 years. So you're wrong. Also, living before agriculture was subsitence as hunter-gatherers. That's surviving, not living.

Most estimates place the beginning of agriculture at somewhere between 7000 and 9000 years ago. Humanity as a current species has been around for about 11,000 years. So you're wrong. Also, living before agriculture was subsitence as hunter-gatherers. That's surviving, not living.

Actually, homo sapien sapien has been around for between 70,000 and 100,000 years. The poster is right. But, of course, agriculture becaome necessary because it was the only way to support growing populations and, as someone pointed out, there are now 6 billion of us.

Also, hunter gatherers have among the highest standards of living in the world by some measures. The bushmen of the Kalihari, for example, support a diet of 114 staple foods on less than 10 hours of work a week. It's pretty much all leisure time. We support a diet of 6 staple foods on 40 hours a week. It's pretty much all work.

I'm more optimistic about the situation in the UK than I was: we've finally got a parliamentary group working on Peak Oil (yes, it should have been done years ago, but better late than never), Brown has made repeated references to the need to adapt to a post-oil economy (something which I never heard Blair do), and we're likely to be building a new generation of nuclear power stations. We're still screwed, but we're less screwed than we might have been.

Sure, but "solve the car" is a tremendous project. Probably bigger than nay project in history by scale.

Oh, of course. It's the biggest social shift since the automobile itself first came around, maybe bigger.

Nearly 2 billion people will need to transition from a wholly automobile-dependent life to one where the vehicle exists solely for leisure or luxury, if at all. People will need to downsize their cars, move closer to where they work, buy more goods locally and rely on the internet and telecommunications to fill the gaps left by the decline of car and plane transportation.

Also, hunter gatherers have among the highest standards of living in the world by some measures. The bushmen of the Kalihari, for example, support a diet of 114 staple foods on less than 10 hours of work a week. It's pretty much all leisure time. We support a diet of 6 staple foods on 40 hours a week. It's pretty much all work.

But they also don't have many of the things we want and enjoy. It's a trade-off; personally, I greatly enjoy what agricultural civilization offers, and I would do anything to preserve it and allow it to continue to thrive.

But they also don't have many of the things we want and enjoy. It's a trade-off; personally, I greatly enjoy what agricultural civilization offers, and I would do anything to preserve it and allow it to continue to thrive.

As do I, obviously. I mean, I love riding my Harley when I'm drunk. My post was more to point out that it's relative. Humans were happy long before cars, sewing machines, surfboards and plasma TVs. Humans tend to be happy as long as there's stability, whether it be modern economic stability or the stability of knowing where the tree that grows those red fruits are and always being to get one and once a week being able to bag a big water buffalo.

As do I, obviously. I mean, I love riding my Harley when I'm drunk. My post was more to point out that it's relative. Humans were happy long before cars, sewing machines, surfboards and plasma TVs. Humans tend to be happy as long as there's stability, whether it be modern economic stability or the stability of knowing where the tree that grows those red fruits are and always being to get one and once a week being able to bag a big water buffalo.

True. And nothing makes them appreciate it more and work harder to preserve it than a period of want.

No. Of course not. Everyone knows that petroleum is non-renewable resource.

We-eeell, it is technically renewable, we just don't have five or ten million years to wait...

Yay for semantics!

We-eeell, it is technically renewable, we just don't have five or ten million years to wait...

Yay for semantics!

hey.

signatures are limited to eight lines.

hey.

signatures are limited to eight lines.

I like that look. It give me character :p .

Now to read the rest of the posts...

I'm gonna laugh at all the chumps who have licenses and bought cars and are all cool about it and then they can't afford it while I happily ride the train or bus wherever I need to go. :)

I'm gonna laugh at all the chumps who have licenses and bought cars and are all cool about it and then they can't afford it while I happily ride the train or bus wherever I need to go. :)

Same here. The schadenfreude I feel whenever I see someone filling up their gigantic SUV at $100/tank makes the occasional inconvenience of riding the bus worthwhile. Although I'm also waiting for the next-gen Prius, which might have a fuel economy rating of 100MPG/gallon. Nothing better than going for a couple weeks or more between tanks.

Why can't we survive without again after this next collapse?

define "we"

I'm gonna laugh at all the chumps who have licenses and bought cars and are all cool about it and then they can't afford it while I happily ride the train or bus wherever I need to go. :)

As an city dweller, what you save on your bus (which will get more expensive), will be lost in the increased cost of food.

As an city dweller, what you save on your bus (which will get more expensive), will be lost in the increased cost of food.

I don't know, I could probably afford to lose a few pounds...