Since y'all are poker players who can do maths

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See - FULL LECTURE HD - YouTube!

edit: warning, the vid is long and you'll want to set aside a bit of time to watch it.

Sorry to bring doom and gloom to the commune. Maybe I've been watching/reading too much armageddon-is-imminent-and-we're-fucked-and-everything-is-shit-type things lately, but when I talk to basically anybody (95%?) about peak oil/energy crisis/overpopulation/financial crash/collapse-of-society-as-we-know-it is met with a deafening lack of resonance, due to ignorance or indifference.

My present feeling is that if (when) the shit should really hit the fan, we're gonna be so underprepared for it it's going to be an unfathomably ugly world to live in.

inb4 wuf says he posted this like a million years ago in the uhfishul glowbull wormeen thred

In seriousness, this is like my most favoritest topic ever. To nutshell it, peak oil is not about total oil, but rate of production. It is currently, and will be moreso later felt in increasing prices, decreasing demand (due to high prices), and a worsening economy. The idea of total collapse, however, is false simply due to supply and demand and price changes all through the course.

As a side point, global warming is a much, much bigger issue

As another side point, the story of the economy is the story of the price of energy. We are currently at one of the pivotal stages demonstrated in the video where the results will be found in an economy that is impossible to improve without dramatic changes in energy costs and conservation

so glad ill be dead and will have no offspring to suffer in the doom world to come

And a slightly broader look at things:
The Crash Course - Chris Martenson - chapters, Crash Course, Economy, Energy, environment, Peak Oil, videos, what should I do

Takes a good 3-4 hours to watch the whole series. He devotes a chapter to the exponential function, where he quotes the video from OP. His point boils down to this: our population grows exponentially, our energy needs grow exponentially, and we rely on a financial system that REQUIRES exponential growth of money supply and credit to prevent its utter collapse. The way I understand it, the current trillions of US debt and endless money printing is not a coincidence - it's an inevitability of its system design. Realizing that evidence points to our being past the peak on the peak energy bell curve, and monetary policy which demands endless growth = far from putting on the brakes, we're putting the pedal to the metal as we drive towards a cliff...

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Originally Posted by bikes

so glad ill be dead and will have no offspring to suffer in the doom world to come

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Unless you're planning on dying in the next 20 years, you might be in for an awful surprise.

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Originally Posted by eugmac

Unless you're planning on dying in the next 20 years, you might be in for an awful surprise.

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You mighta seen me in the streets, but nigga you don't know me.

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Originally Posted by bikes

so glad ill be dead and will have no offspring to suffer in the doom world to come

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the world def needs more bikeses

I'll try to make some specific points and keep it short

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Originally Posted by eugmac

His point boils down to this: our population grows exponentially, our energy needs grow exponentially,

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The exponential function is only one small part of the story, and it breaks down in many areas of social and economic dynamics. I really don't know how to explain, so I won't really try. But I'll just say that the point demonstrates why treating the finite like it's infinite is false, and that the exponential function is somewhat symptomatic, not causal, to a lot of social problems

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and we rely on a financial system that REQUIRES exponential growth of money supply and credit to prevent its utter collapse.

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Maybe somewhat. It's more along the lines that this paradigm requires certain growth factors in order for this paradigm to work. Changing this wouldn't mean collapse. If it did, Japan would have already collapsed. In fact, we all would have

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The way I understand it, the current trillions of US debt and endless money printing is not a coincidence - it's an inevitability of its system design.

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True, but I also think the reasons are probably different. The debt is more about the extraction of wealth from the US economy and sending it overseas and into rich peoples' coffers. The debt is really the story of pillaging the US by Walmart and Goldman Sachs and Koch Industries, and how this depresses wages, which raises the need for consumer credit and government subsidies. The corporatocracy is really just welfare for the executives on the backs of the laborers.

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Realizing that evidence points to our being past the peak on the peak energy bell curve,

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Yes, this is pretty bad. We are now, and will be for most of the rest of our lives, stuck in an energy plateau cycle where the economy improves, then energy costs go up, then the economy worsens, then energy costs drop again, reapply until conservation and different sources of energy drop enough that growth is not energy intensive enough to cost more as demand goes up. This will not change for a very, very long time. It's possible we will experience some years, maybe a decade of anemic to decent growth, but it will still be nothing to shake a stick at

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and monetary policy which demands endless growth = far from putting on the brakes, we're putting the pedal to the metal as we drive towards a cliff...

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Monetary policy is not the problem, it's mainly just symptomatic. We can grow the money supply as much as we want without obstructing purchasing power as long as it's not too rapid and distributed correctly. Even in our current paradigm of slowly stealing from the poor and middle with monetary policy, it's a small part of the story, and cannot induce things like hyperinflation or monetary collapse

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Originally Posted by eugmac

Unless you're planning on dying in the next 20 years, you might be in for an awful surprise.

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Here's how I think it goes down

Stagnation, first and foremost. Collapse isn't really part of this equation. There's a ton of fossil, and it's gonna be pumped lots and lots our entire lives. The real problem is that supply can't increase much from here on out, while demand is pushing the edges and will be for all our lives

The rich will be mostly isolated from this, as they always are. And that's why nothing changes. It's specifically bad in that one of the primary sources of the super rich is keeping energy prices as high as possible without killing demand too much or making alternative energy sources economically attractive.

Peak oil is more like plateau oil. This is a bitch, and it's gonna keep being a bitch. But the real big fucking problems are borne of global warming. Even in the toddler stages of global climate shifts will see drastic increases in things like the price of food. It will get so bad that modern middle classes will start losing weight due to purchasing less food. This is when the only people not really affected are the rich or people living in well conserving areas.

We are very likely to see some slight beginnings of this during this decade, but it will take several decades for it to fully bloom. Beyond that, we get into utter disaster territory where even the rich cannot escape ecological collapses, and the final hope is some currently unknown geo-engineering solutions in order to save modern civilization

I predict that within the next 300 years, the only crops and seafood will all be artificially contained in hydroponics and shit. There's not really any way around that when the globe's only potential farmland loses its necessary soil and climate, while the oceans become too chemically altered to support much life

So why do you believe that the middle/lower class won't get fed up with this and revolt against 'the man?' Thus resulting in a collapse like eug is discussing?

I think it would be a pretty small chance for someone(s) somewhere(s) to not stand up and be like 'yo wtf' and sparking off some shit.

Ohwait.

Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for World Revolution

Inb4 doom.

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Originally Posted by Roid_Rage

So why do you believe that the middle/lower class won't get fed up with this and revolt against 'the man?' Thus resulting in a collapse like eug is discussing?

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Well, I think that the proposed idea of collapse is not true. I used to believe it, and it is the first (and second) place somebody digging into energy/peak oil issues goes. But the reality really is that we have enough energy in the ground, and are at a technologically advanced enough stage, to never collapse due to lack of energy. The peak oil problem is not one of reserves, but of rate of production. And the rate of production is engaged with the economics of supply and demand.

We have already been experiencing this for several years. A fixed supply makes a bumpy ride when demand increases. It's not a collapse, it's a bumpy ride where prices go up then down then up then down then up then down and on and on

There's lots of oil left, way more coal left, tons of natural gas, and when push comes to shove (or more like when liver punch turns into headbutt), renewables like solar and biofuels will work.


As far as a revolt goes, a lot will happen. But overall, revolters just get marginalized. I guess the real economic collapse (more like restructuring) happens when so many people have been swept under the rug that there's no longer a mildly healthy consumer class that can keep the game running for the executive class, then the value held by the handful of "owners" of everything plummets

Also to note, the US has been sucking for quite some time. The American Dream was exported to several other countries a long time ago, but Americans still don't realize this. We still think Norway is similar to Stalin, despite the fact that Norway is so well run that they don't even have poor people. Propaganda machines are so amazingly powerful today that they convince you that when you get punched in the face you're not actually being punched in the face. I mean, just look at the red states. They're poorer than blue states, as well as being financially subsidized by blue states. Yet half the country still believes the brainwashing garbage pushed by the red state overlords, about how they're really the areas of self-sufficiency and rewarded-for-their-efforts. It's not a coincidence that the lowest taxed people believe they're taxed too much. It's the nature of powerful propaganda

So I don't have much faith in chimps with longer brain gestation (also known as humans) revolting for a better tomorrow when it comes to such ingrained and important issues as energy and ecology

"Zero population growth is going to happen"

Pretty surprising that a mathematician would make a statement this flawed. The only thing we can say is something like: "It appears that current growth rates are unsustainable."

Another thing that should be perfectly obvious is that our planet will never run out of oil.

The key point of peak oil is not that we will all the sudden have no oil/coal/etc to fuel our needs, but that once we're past the peak it takes more energy in proportion to the amount created. Net energy = energy out / energy in. Also called energy returned on energy invested (EROEI or ERoEI).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...sted_-_USA.svg

"Lots of coal and oil left" seems a careless thing to say when all the good coal and oil (high net energy yield) are vanishing (highest yield coal for example, is all gone afaik) leaving us considering low net energy yield options like tar sands or biofuels. See how the graph above compares the net energy of oil imports in 1990 to 2007.

I'd like to see some information on the energy in/energy out thing. It's definitely a limiting factor if we were to hit it, but of all the analysis on peak oil I've seen, it's never about that. It's always about it just being more and more expensive to extract remaining reserves. What I'm mainly referring to is how this dynamic plays in economics as a fluctuating plateau for a long time. If oil hits a certain cost level (currently that level is around 100$ a barrel), it is predicted to create a recession, as that always has in the past. Then the recession makes oil cheaper due to drop in demand, then demand rises, then oil price rises, rinse repeat. Alternative sources are either going to have to get pretty cheap and defeat those looking to destroy them, or oil is gonna have to get expensive enough that there's no choice but to engage in alternative fuels. We're technologically not too far off on alternatives either, but the biggest hurdle is to stop letting oil billionaires and shareholders soak us for all we're worth

I'm pretty sure that when scientists and the like discuss peak oil, they're referring to the oil they already deem as extractable with a net energy gain. We do know there's a crapload of oil in the ground that can never be touched. In fact, I think that even the easiest to evacuate fields are still left with about 1/3rd left just because it can't be extracted with a net energy gain. I'm not positive on that though

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We do know there's a crapload of oil in the ground that can never be touched. In fact, I think that even the easiest to evacuate fields are still left with about 1/3rd left just because it can't be extracted with a net energy gain. I'm not positive on that though

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Yeah that's how I understand it as well.

Quoting the Crash Course I mentioned above:

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But something interesting happens at the halfway mark. Where oil gushed out under pressure at first, the back half usually has to get laboriously pumped out of the ground at higher cost, obviously. Where every barrel of oil was cheaper to extract on the way up, the reverse is true on the way down. Each barrel becomes more costly in terms of time, money, and energy to extract. Eventually, it costs more to extract a barrel of oil than it is worth, and that’s when an oil field is abandoned.
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Here’s an interesting aside. Suppose we wanted to become “independent from imported oil” and decided to replace those 10 million imported barrels with some other form of energy. Those 10 million barrels represent the same power equivalent as 750 nuclear power plants. Considering the issues we have with the 104 we have operating right now, I think it’s safe to say nuclear power is not a realistic candidate for reducing oil imports. Well then, how much would we have to increase our solar wind and biomass energy production? There, we’d have to increase our currently installed base by a factor of 2,000. Not 2000%. Two-thousand times as much.

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Originally Posted by bikes

You mighta seen me in the streets, but nigga you don't know me.

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5 stars

just buy an index fund and quit lettin all the market volatility freak ya out

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Originally Posted by drmcboy

5 stars

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ya, I did a mental slow clap when I read this.

Good article and comments discussion about current and near future status

The Oil Drum | OPEC says, "Don't Count on Us" for More Supply

It's truly disgusting how much capacity for economic health we have, yet how we're really just being strapped across a barrel for the profits of the fossil fuel owners. I mean if all we did was tax the hoarded trillions of dollars stolen from the economy and used that to fund alternatives, we could get solar and biofuels down to very low cost levels, then job and wage growth would skyrocket.

The primary reason for everybody's economic problems is the price of energy being too high and supply being too low. Spend like 500B$ over ten years developing alternatives, and we'd find everybody has a ton of cheap energy and we'd have a boom that makes that rivals the industrial revolution

Gail Tverberg : 65 year debt bubble : Keiser Report - YouTube

The United States’ 65-Year Debt Bubble | Our Finite World

This article and commentary are fantastic. And scary. Making a case for the end of growth as an economic system

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Originally Posted by boost

ya, I did a mental slow clap when I read this.

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BUMP GOAT POST

I have a rule that I don't watch videos that are labelled "must watch" "best ever" and/or whose titles are typed in more than 51% caps unless they are being presented by large breasted underaged girls with clinically low self esteem. This one violates two of my rules, and doesn't seem to comply with the exceptions.

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Originally Posted by oskar

I have a rule that I don't watch videos that are labelled "must watch" "best ever" and/or whose titles are typed in more than 51% caps unless they are being presented by large breasted underaged girls with clinically low self esteem. This one violates two of my rules, and doesn't seem to comply with the exceptions.

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when ya holla when ya speak, remember you don't know me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aqKA_2UUy4

my feelings re: thread bump