[K-Dog]

Those EVs must have put quite a dent in demand for peak oil half decade ago not to have elicited higher prices.

I don't think it's so much EVs as demand that never returned after the Covid Collapse in 2020.  That squashed a lot of the Chinese demand for oil for factories and construction.

RE

Emissions of CO2 have never been higher.  Reality is in the numbers.  Covid was a bump on the road to ruin.

CO₂ mesured in the atmosphere lags the actual emissions by a few years because it takes a while for it to distribute out.  Plus Oil isn't the only contributor to this number, coal and NG contribute significant amounts for electricity generation.

All the production graph says is that Peak Oil PRODUCTION came in 2018, not how much carbon was burned from all sources and contributed to the current measurement.  Considering that global population has increased at the same time, that tells us per capita consumption of oil must have decreased as well, except for the amount in storage which is not that huge.

At least in the FSoA, this hasn't affected the price of gas at the pump that much, likely because total global demand is down and happy motorists here are driving fewer miles.  Unless there is some kind of economic miracle, demand will continue to drop.  It's called Demand Destruction, and I've written about it many times in the debates between Inflationists and Deflationists.

RE

Currently CO2 Emissions per Capita are 4.76 tons per person worldwide.  There has NOT been a decrease in per capita consumption.

It is an often repeated claim that it takes a few years for the effects of CO2 to manifest.  I take that often repeated claim as proof that humans are not actually a sentient species.

THERE IS NO SCIENCE BEHIND THAT CLAIM WHATEVER!

If it were a few years we could not see a seasonal variation which I account for by always comparing months a year apart.  If it were a few years we would never see the squiggles.  We do.



Mixing CO2 in the atmosphere only takes a few weeks, and emissions start out effectively being mixed already since there are millions of widely distributed sources.  The big adjustment is the northern hemisphere emits more CO2 and that excess has to be mixed in through the equator to reach the southern hemisphere.

The average doomer buys into the 'it will be worse later' bull because a doomer wants to say it is going to get worse.  The average denier also buys into the same bullshit because worse later feels better right now, and people become pacified sheep at the news.  Everybody likes to pontificate that it gets worse with time for their own reasons.  It is all emotion without any science.

It will get worse with time, but not because of the CO2 that is already there.  It will be from the new CO2 that we add.

Most people don't 'do science'.  If I sound like a pompous ass for saying that, I don't give a fuck.  It is true.

Existing CO2 molecules start gobbling up infrared radiation as soon as daylight breaks.

Per capita consumption increases not decreases.  Developing countries and JEVON'S PARADOX ensure that any reduction of carbon footprint by the average upper 10% (Americans and others) is offset by new consumers making per capita consumption go up.

Note:  Here is where the Doomstead has value.  Average perception of the resource/climate situation by the general public remains at a cave man level.  The Doomstead is a resource to show that incremental change to the status-quo will not manage collapse.  We are here to show that fundamental change in the structure of current social arrangements has to happen to manage collapse.  Only then will we save as many as we can, and can all dogs eat.

*******

When you see charts like this one below remember the bottom is like an iceberg hidden below the waves.  The bottom  of this graph is down by your feet so all we are seeing is small variation that looks big on the top.



Covid was a blip on the conservation radar.  But we have now passed 2016 consumption levels and are on the way up AS FAST AS EVER!  Consuming ourselves to death.

Peak oil was a more useful concept twenty years ago than it is now.  With tight oil coming along the concept of a single peak became antiquated.  The actual peak is bumpy with a blunderbuss of complex technologies, sources, and political arrangements making it so.

* We also made the mistake of thinking that a bell curve shaped curve is so simple an average person can understand it.  In that we are wrong.  Very wrong.

Conventional oil peaked but with so many kinds of oil the conventional peak is not as significant as we thought it would be.  We expected a sudden crisp change in economic conditions, but the momentum of new technologies and human interactions does not make for a distinct peak, and a sudden change.

[RE]

Currently CO2 Emissions per Capita are 4.76 tons per person worldwide.  There has NOT been a decrease in per capita consumption.

Not per capita energy consumption, that is up.  It's the per capita oil consumption that's down.  Oil isn't the only fossil fuel getting burned for energy.

Since less oil was pumped up, less oil was burned.  You can't burn what you didn't extract.  That is CFS.

RE

[TDoS]

But gas prices matter and once they did not.  I can remember gas so cheap a minimum wage worker could keep the tank full.  I never concerned myself with how much it cost to drive from A to B in the same city.  Now I think about it all the time.  Where I live I have to drive at least five miles to get to anyplace I want to get to.  That is an exaggeration, but I am in the middle of a 'bedroom' community.  Stores are at least five miles away with the exception of one strip mall that has groceries and a drug store.
So, it is a five dollar bill to get anywhere and back.  At my retail job that is 15 minutes of servitude.

In the early 70's when gas prices quadrupled I'll bet they mattered. When the rationing was taking place in some US states in the late 1970's, boy then it wasn't even about prices but just could you get the stuff.


Okay, 5 miles to get anywhere you want to. Call it 10 for fun. One way. 20 miles total. An EV gets about 4 miles per kwh, 5 kwh to get anywhere you like, call it $0.12/kwh locally....$0.12 X 6kwh (for less than 100% charging efficiency) = $0.72.

When it comes to fuel costs anyway, could a micro-economic effect this simple have an outsized macro-econmic oil produced effect? Certainly something is happening whereby an event predicted to crush the modern world within months has gone unnoticed for half a decade. The more suffering amongst the fossil fuelers just increases the momentum to the EVers?

[RE]

One thing to consider is the demographic change and Boomer retirement.  Retirees drive less than working people, and childless people less than ones with kids.  So FSoA Total Miles driven has been dropping.



As long as there is less driving, it keeps the price of gas from going up.

RE

[TDoS]

Peak oil was a more useful concept twenty years ago than it is now.

It also had folks with scientific chops involved, and back then Hubbert's overall idea still had the US on his side. Few knew it was just going to be a head fake on the way to the US becoming the world's largest producer of oil. And natural gas. And largest exporter of LNG. And a net energy exporter, which at the end of the day was just killer to internet "experts".

With tight oil coming along the concept of a single peak became antiquated.

Turns out, tight oil was with us all along. But finding it in the history of literature wasn't what the internet wanted to push the idea, and as we all know, it can't be real if it isn't on the internet.

* We also made the mistake of thinking that a bell curve shaped curve is so simple an average person can understand it.  In that we are wrong.  Very wrong.

Matthew, 7:7
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:"

The perils of the internet echo chamber, when everyone around you is nodding and snapping up whatever is put in front of them....no one ever stops to make the most basic counter-interrogatory. "Prove it."

[RE]

The main error with the focus on "Peak Oil" is that Oil isn't the only source of energy to run industrial civilization, and there is a decent amount of flexibility in where and how you get the energy and then apply it.  Second error is it doesn't account for the population size and distribution of the energy.  I was never in the game because of a focus on oil or on CO₂ emissions and climate.  For me, collapse has always been about the economics, so once I made the connection between energy and money (my 4 part masterpiece that got attention from a couple of economists at the World Bank), it became a waiting game for when we turned the corner on PER CAPITA ENERGY CONSUMPTION.  This point has at last been reached, and it comes out as a fairly straightforward Bell Curve.



As you can see, we hit the top of that mountain in 2018, and now are skiing downhill on total energy consumption.  What will be interesting to see now is how the slope on this graph changes.  The second derivative, for you folks familiar with calculus.  Unless I miss my guess, this is where the effects on money supply will become more pronounced and less amenable to manipulation, and the slope should take a marked negative increase over the next 5 years.  It's running positive 2019-20, but probably not for long.  This graph doesn't show past 2020, so gotta wait for an update.

So mark 2018 on your calendar as the Year the Universe Changed.  Notably, this predates Covid.  Ihat should make your conspiracy radar blink.

RE

[RE]

Since we all live in the FSoA/GWN, our per capita energy consumption hit peak in the 70's, and it's been eroding ever since, from all sources.  This in large part is due to immigration and population expansion here.  Thus the stagnation in wages and standard of living.

Here's the story in a nutshell



https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/10/176801719/two-centuries-of-energy-in-america-in-four-graphs

Reason we have so many people wanting to immigrate is things are worse everywhere else, and now that the total global consumption is going down, it's going from bad to worse.  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

RE

[TDoS]

For me, collapse has always been about the economics, so once I made the connection between energy and money (my 4 part masterpiece that got attention from a couple of economists at the World Bank), it became a waiting game for when we turned the corner on PER CAPITA ENERGY CONSUMPTION.

RE

So...it ISN'T about the oil.....

Duncan's claim of per capita energy production being the trigger for collapse was back in 2008, around the time the internet peak oil claimants were getting into full swing. He wasn't right either though. I've got no objection to collapse involving economics because...it always has? I just don't like the social sciences pretending they are the physical or natural sciences, and in particular this one where "rational actors" (whatever the hell they are) being required to make anyone's ideas work. No one has ever called geology or engineering "voodoo geology" or "voodoo engineering" but voodoo economics makes perfect sense and probably always will.

[K-Dog]

So...it ISN'T about the oil.....

I just don't like the social sciences pretending they are the physical or natural sciences, and in particular this one where "rational actors" (whatever the hell they are) being required to make anyone's ideas work. No one has ever called geology or engineering "voodoo geology" or "voodoo engineering" but voodoo economics makes perfect sense and probably always will.

People do have a calculator of sorts inside of them that triggers them to action.  It is anything but rational.

[K-Dog]

The German Economy.

Collapse it seems, waits around the corner.

[RE]

Collapse it seems, waits around the corner.

2024 looks like a Collapsalooza waiting to happen.

RE

[TDoS]

Collapse it seems, waits around the corner.

2024 looks like a Collapsalooza waiting to happen.

RE

Dec 31, 1999 was better. Waiting around to see what would shut down at midnight, planes falling out of the sky, all the electronnics going haywire in nuke power plants and electrical generation facilities, civilization literally just coming apart around us.

Everything since then has been shoulda woulda coulda collapse. ther than 2008 it has been difficult to get a decent recession going in the US, let alone a collapse. Even the recent lousy inflation burst hasn't managed to get an official "recession" going, heck we aren't even as bad as the late 70's and early 80's stagflation, we've been living past the global peak oil for 5 years now, unemployment is low and inflation has diminished purchasing power just like the economy needs to devalue our national debt and keep the markets afloat.

The most interesting visible collapse consequences that I've noticed is the growing homeless issues, be they growing run of the mill homelessness or the new mobile homeless with RVs that look like rolling death traps (local Walmart starts filling up right after closing time). Weird other things, like new car prices being amazingly high (who the hell can afford $75k cars and trucks?), persistently high lodging costs for hotels that don't appear to be associated with traffic (few cars in the lot early the next morning) or hotels in nowheresville that are running high quality hotel prices. Plenty of weird stuff, after effects of all the government spending flowing through the system, and companies making sure profits remain high even with lesser sales volume?

But unless the wars and geopolitics get out of control, it just looks like the usual slow grind.

 

[RE]

But unless the wars and geopolitics get out of control, it just looks like the usual slow grind.

You have developed a bad case of normalcy bias.  300,000  refugees/month hitting the border isn't enough for you?  That's like Xerxes Persians hitting the 300 Spartans at Thermopilae with a new army every month.  The Houthis are still sinking Maersk freighters in the Sea of Aiden and the FSoA just sank 3 Houthi torpedo boats to retaliate.  Trumpovetsky still might get himself reelected.

That which cannot continue indefinitely won't.  Maybe 2024 won't see a catastrophic cascade failure and we'll have to twiddle our thumbs awhile longer, but we're getting closer all the time.

RE

[TDoS]

But unless the wars and geopolitics get out of control, it just looks like the usual slow grind.

You have developed a bad case of normalcy bias. 

How many decades of non collapse, while collapses are being claimed, are required to make normalcy bias a-okay?

I thought you were a ROE participant from way back? That would put your buy in back what, a quarter century? Isn't a bit of normalcy bias creeping in perfectly natural? You bought like RVs and bug out vans years and years ago....how many bug outs because of collapse did you endure in them, waiting for the world to come back to its senses before the cities became safe again? Had fuel, working ATMs, grocery stores open, etc etc.

Considering the age of folks here, normalcy bias might be perfectly safe because it ain't collapse that's gonna get us. More like not waking up one morning in our comfy beds, falling and breaking a hip, never having never missed a meal or become one for the ravaging hordes of starving suburbanites fleeing the cities.

300,000  refugees/month hitting the border isn't enough for you?  That's like Xerxes Persians hitting the 300 Spartans at Thermopilae with a new army every month.  The Houthis are still sinking Maersk freighters in the Sea of Aiden and the FSoA just sank 3 Houthi torpedo boats to retaliate.  Trumpovetsky still might get himself reelected.

Are you worried about immigrants making it to the Great White North? The US didn't collapse when millions of Germans were flooding the US in the 1880's. How about the Irish in the 1850's? Grandpap came into the US during the Eastern European immigration wave, sometime early 20th century. Does history interpret them as the cause of the Great Depression?

I'm thinking immigrants are immigrants and while I'm no more happy with it than anyone else, it isn't as though this is the first time, and they certainly aren't the collapse we've all been waiting for. When does Yellowstone go BOOM! Magnetic poles shift? Sure the Mayan Calendar gig was good for awhile, but by the time it came and went we didn't even have peak oil anymore, or the BOE event, the AOC still hasn't shut down. Those last two have some hope though, but only for it happening, not for it causing collapse.

Trump getting reelected though could be terribly entertaining, disruptive, and possibly collapsy in weird ways.

And the US has been blowing up pirates and vagrants they don't like since the Marines were bashing the pirates of the Barbary Coast or the Shores of Tripoli. As non-collapse as current events can be, until the Russians start nuking US aircraft carriers or something and then the Big Show could be collapse worthy.

That which cannot continue indefinitely won't.  Maybe 2024 won't see a catastrophic cascade failure and we'll have to twiddle our thumbs awhile longer, but we're getting closer all the time.
RE

We've been getting closer since the day any of us was born. And "continuing indefinitely" is the same as "it won't require infinite time" and that sure doesn't mean it will be 2024 and doesn't preclude "anytime after we all die of natural causes anyway".

How about some optimism? Not normalcy bias, but optimism, so we can enjoy the time we've got left, and then we;ll croak before being eaten by zombies or whatever, and here is how we do it. Each and every one of us survived the claimed Great Dieoff called for the end of the 1980's. All of us. We zipped right through that one like it wasn't even there because...well...it wasn't. So we can be thriled with having gotten an extra 33 years becoming 34 years this evening, and kick back and enjoy the couple we have left before the ticker stops ticking, or that brain aneurysm turns out the lights, or that drunk driver makes a grill ornament of us.When you only got a little time left, make the most of it!

Happy New Year everyone, and enjoy and be happy that you escaped The Great Dieoff of the late 1980's that was so earth shattering that normalcy bias got us through it without a scratch, and handed us another 34 years to boot! Fingers crossed for 35 years next year for everyone here!

[RE]

I thought you were a ROE participant from way back?

No, I didn't write arguments based on ROE.

That would put your buy in back what, a quarter century? Isn't a bit of normalcy bias creeping in perfectly natural? You bought like RVs and bug out vans years and years ago....how many bug outs because of collapse did you endure in them, waiting for the world to come back to its senses before the cities became safe again? Had fuel, working ATMs, grocery stores open, etc etc.

Owning an RV was a precaution against ending up homeless, as well as a way to live cheap once I retired.

Are you worried about immigrants making it to the Great White North? The US didn't collapse when millions of Germans were flooding the US in the 1880's. How about the Irish in the 1850's? Grandpap came into the US during the Eastern European immigration wave, sometime early 20th century. Does history interpret them as the cause of the Great Depression?

Not worried about immigrants to Alaska.  Most people won't come here for the same old reason:  Too cold.

German and Irish immigrants never flowed in here at the rate of 300K/month.  It took decades for those waves of immigration to play out.  There was time for them to be absorbed into the economy, which at the time was growing.
 

How about some optimism?

I don't see any good reason for optimism.  The economy is a mess, the world is swimming in irredeemable debt and while 2024 may not be "the big one", I find no reason to think things will get any better over the year.

RE