Peak Oil

[ed_from]

I thought we were running out of affordable fossil fuels and bad stuff was supposed to happen. Are we there yet?

[K-Dog]

I thought we were running out of affordable fossil fuels and bad stuff was supposed to happen. Are we there yet?

Considering that I once bought gas for 17 cents a gallon in a gas war and getting to and from work now sucks up about an hour of the work shift, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Youth has nothing to compare the present to.  The frog not noticing they are being boiled to death is an accurate portrayal of society.  Scenic vistas once destroyed are forgotten.

Old farts sayin -- Son I remember when.....

Don't get remembered.

The better question is how long ago did the bad stuff start?

[RE]

The better question is how long ago did the bad stuff start?

It was well underway by the time they paved paradise to put up a parking lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2595abcvh2M

RE

[RE]

You could trace it back a little further though.  Breathing in Victorian era London was pretty unpleasant.





RE

[K-Dog]

If we try and go back too far we defeat our purpose.

Doom is a fact of life.  No matter how far back we go we find doom.  So why have the Doomstead if doom is just a fact of life!?

Because the kind of doom we concern ourselves with here has human roots.  Climate change, resource depletion. These are problems that humans caused themselves.  Doom as the result of human action or INACTION is our primary concern, though decent material concerning doom in general is welcome.

Breathing in Victorian era London was pretty unpleasant. certainly qualifies as human caused.

As soon as I escaped from the oppressive atmosphere of the city, and from that awful odour of reeking kitchens which, when in use, pour forth a ruinous mess of steam and soot, I perceived at once that my health was mending... So I am my old self again, feeling now no wavering languor in my system, and no sluggishness in my brain.

Seneca AD 64-65

The point being to save as many as you can.

[Tonyprep]

Doom is a human construct. All species degrade the environment but, due to our use of tools and, eventually, our use of ancient sunlight, humans have managed to bypass, for the moment, all ecosystem controls which usually keep species in check. The consequences are plain but, eventually, nature and physics will reimpose controls.

[RE]

All species degrade the environment

That is a very specious argument.  All living things use energy to grow and they create waste in the process, but the waste product of one life form provides the energy and or building blocks for another.  Worms digest human waste, worm shit feeds plants, the waste product of photosynthesis is free oxygen which serves as the electron reciver for the krebs cycle which produces ATP which provides chemical energy for animals...round and round she goes.  It's a constant dissipative cycle that runs as long as the sun keeps providing the right amount of energy for the system to run, not too much or too little.

Homo Sap fit right in to this whole system quite well until we learned to control fire and began consuming copious amounts of energy faster than the sun regenerated it.  First we burned whole forests, then we moved on to the fossil fuels.  That was when the degradation began.

RE

[K-Dog]

All species degrade the environment

I don't mean to pick on you Tony P.  But I have to say that I learned that is not true last week.  I have been into You-Tubes about the ancient past. 

I learned some things about insect evolution.

Before insects decay could not keep up with plant growth, and the world swung between snowball earths when ice miles thick covered all land and when land was all backing desert.  No decay meant CO2 was depleted and global temperature went below freezing.  New volcanic activity then would bring new CO2,and the earth became baking desert until plants cooled things down to make a brief paradise.  But the plants could not decay. The cycle repeated.  This happened several times.

Insects burrow into plants transferring fungus and bacteria to internal plant parts by their action, greatly increasing decay.  Fungi evolved to digest lignin and insects distribute the fungi.  Enough so that the planetary system is stabilized.

Specific lineages within the basidiomycete fungi, white rot species, have evolved the ability to break up a major structural component of woody plants, lignin.

Keeping the correct amount of CO2 in the air turns out to be a big deal.

Who coulda knowd?

[John of Wallan]

Peak oil not talked about right now because everyone is distracted with other issues.

Fracking, deep water drilling and bio-fuels all are reactions to peak oil... Easy stuff is gone. No more spindle top gushers...
Now where is that cartoon I posted 3 forums and about 10 years ago?

Here it is. My favourite peak oil video still on youtube!

Fuel here is hovering around $2.10 a litre. When I started drivig it was $0.20 a litre. 10 fold in 35 years.

Peak oil is adding to inflation, and all we know how to do is print more money, adding to inflation.
The correct response is use less... But... No government will ever get elected telling people your chldren will have a lower standard of living than you, hence the cycle goes on until we fall off a clif, One of many, we are rushing towards:

Ecconomic collapse
Food shortage
Environmental collapse
Social collapse
Wars
Population collapse
IQ collapse?...


Hmm, seeing all of these right now already. Maybe we are already in free fall?

Western ecconomic society needs to grow to survive. its basd on increasing money supply. It needs cheap energy to do this. We have run out of chep energy. De-growth is the only path forward. Some call this collapse. Most think we can avoid it. We can only delay.


JOW