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PEAK OIL


Guest im not witty

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Guest im not witty

ive been reading about "peak oil" alot lately and its really fucking scary. theres so much to consider and about 99% of it is bad news. the most positive thing i can think to say is dont have kids if you havent already. because a)increasing population/ increasing demand is a large part of the problem, and b) bringing children into the most optimistic of these scenarios makes partial birth abortion seem like a deep tissue massage complete with handjob

 

LIFE AFTER THE OIL CRASH

 

THE LONG EMERGENCY

 

THE END OF SUBURBIA

 

Even Vice is getting in on this shit.

 

"Remember at the beginning of Mad Max where the narrator talks about “The day the black stuff ran out.� It was a crazy nutty fantasy movie about there being no more oil. Of course, that day will never come. You know why? Because we are going to vandalize SUVs, eat more tofu, use one plastic bag instead of two, and ride a bike with a sticker that says “No Blood for Oil.� Just kidding! That will only give us about 48 more minutes of oil. What we really have to do is go through the Middle East starting wars with everyone so we can take over their land and inevitably, control their oil. Just kidding! That will only buy us another week or so. Whether you’re a college kid with a Mohawk or the most gullible president in history you can’t avoid the inevitable truth that we’re out and Mad Max is just around the corner. We warned you about this two years ago but here’s James Howard Kunstler saying the same thing only way more sciencey (and with a totally contrived happy ending). Who knew Bush and crusty punks had so much in common?"

 

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v10n9/htdocs/eat.php

 

 

lets discuss people. while the power still works.

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Well 12ozers should be concerned about life in this new era for sure. With the mass of people unable to afford personal transportation the trains, muni, and subways surely will increase meaning more paint will be required to keep up meaning gas money will become the other half of paint money...

 

wait what?

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Guest im not witty

the price at the pumps is a small part of why this is such a big deal. everything from clothing to medicine to national defense to the food you eat is built on a base structure of infinite oil, which is a fantasy. even alternative energy sources rely on oil. it takes oil to develop and run the machinery that builds fuel cells for instance. at this rate, there will come a day when the US returns to small centralized farming communities to survive, that is if we arent all killed in resource wars before we get there.

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Gee whiz, you guys are beginning to sound like the survivalist-militia wackos I knew about twenty years ago. Oh, but wait, they're all backwards and ignorant, it couldn't possibly be that they were already on the tip BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN BORN. Unbelieveable.

 

There should be some rule that if somebody decide to be a tree-huggin' liberal that they are forbidden to wake up and smell the coffee, so they will be forced to reap the consequences of what they sow.

 

Small, "sustainable" farming communities. Gee, what does that sound like? Mayberry RFD, 1964.

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The solution is obvious. Stop using so much energy. We will, whether we want to do so or not, so we might as well choose some way to do it that is more comfortable than having the pump go dry.

 

a.) Ride a bicycle. Fuck cars.

 

b.) Build houses that are extremely well insulated, earth-sheltered if possible, that have "green" roofs with grass and bushes planted on them.

 

c.) Live very close to where you work.

 

d.) Install showers and locker rooms at every business, or at least somewhere close by. For instance, regional light rail stations should have a big locker room, showers, a bicycle lock-up as well as a parking lot for cars.

 

e.) Increase the numbers of buses, and decrease their size, so that a jitney bus comes by every bus stop in town every fifteen minutes to carry you to light rail stations and main bus lines. The main transportation routes should be constantly fed and bled by feeder jitneys, like tributaries feeding a stream which feeds a river.

 

f.) Stop paving roads. We do not need any more paved roads. People move to the boondocks to GET AWAY from paved roads, county power utilities, citry water and all the rest of "civilization."

 

g.) Stop building suburban neighborhoods on farmland close to cities. How in the hell are we supposed to supply foodstuffs to cities economically if the farms are all 250 miles away from the customers? Idiocy. We need protected watersheds close to cities, as well as protected agricultural areas.

 

h.) What causes rampant suburbanization is White Flight and racial animosity. Suburbia will continue to grow unabated forever unless we figure out some way to deal with these problems. Crime, antisocial behavior and a feeling of uncertainty and being threatened all the time is what drives White Flight. Since it is extremely difficult to alter people's behavior, the only other solution I can see is expotentially greater security measures to reduce people's fears of crime. During the recent past, when segregation and bare-knuckle racism was rampant, minority people were afraid to venture into White neighborhoods for fear of violence. Once this problem was addressed, and segregation in housing, employment, etc. was outlawed, White Flight began, and has never stopped. The result of this social phenomenon is voracious suburbanization, long commutes, multi-car owning families and consumption of prodigious amounts of fuel. It's all well and good to say "Well, they just shouldn't feel that way. They should be happy in a multi-cultural, multi-racial society." The problem is, they aren't. Everybody pays lip service to multi-culturalism, Martin Luther King, Jr., blah blah blah, but they STILL buy houses farther and farther and farther from the "minority" urban centers, and they STILL burn up thousands of gallons of gasoline a year commuting to and from work. Until we address these issues as a nation, we are going to remain addicted to oil.

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"h.) What causes rampant suburbanization is White Flight and racial animosity. Suburbia will continue to grow unabated forever unless we figure out some way to deal with these problems. Crime, antisocial behavior and a feeling of uncertainty and being threatened all the time is what drives White Flight. Since it is extremely difficult to alter people's behavior, the only other solution I can see is expotentially greater security measures to reduce people's fears of crime. During the recent past, when segregation and bare-knuckle racism was rampant, minority people were afraid to venture into White neighborhoods for fear of violence. Once this problem was addressed, and segregation in housing, employment, etc. was outlawed, White Flight began, and has never stopped. The result of this social phenomenon is voracious suburbanization, long commutes, multi-car owning families and consumption of prodigious amounts of fuel. It's all well and good to say "Well, they just shouldn't feel that way. They should be happy in a multi-cultural, multi-racial society." The problem is, they aren't. Everybody pays lip service to multi-culturalism, Martin Luther King, Jr., blah blah blah, but they STILL buy houses farther and farther and farther from the "minority" urban centers, and they STILL burn up thousands of gallons of gasoline a year commuting to and from work. Until we address these issues as a nation, we are going to remain addicted to oil."

 

wow, i never thought of that. good point.

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I know kabar and i don't always see eye to eye but those all sound like solid suggestions to me. now we just need to get a radically green friendly administration in and we could see alot of positive, long range goals implemented. i wonder how many chapters have a viable plan for that? and what is the way for it to defeat the two headed party system that can lie, cheat, steal and kill it's way into power "legally"?

How about economic trend slavery? Shouldn't there be more shock absorbers for these types of changes in the economy that displace millions of workers? Maybe retraining programs, something....

Oh wait, this is about peak oil. alot of problems are interrelated. anyhow...

dieoff.org is a good site.

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Kabar, what is this white flight crap you're talking about? The suburbs aren't all white people running away from minorities in the city. There's tons of of people from different countries that come to live in the suburbs. What about the whole pride in ownership of land as the reason behind what fuels suburbanism?

 

Where are you that they're developing needed farmland for homes? California may not be able to afford so many people moving here, but as far as agraculture, we're very self sufficient.

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Originally posted by angelofdeath@Mar 19 2006, 09:00 PM

"h.) What causes rampant suburbanization is White Flight and racial animosity. Suburbia will continue to grow unabated forever unless we figure out some way to deal with these problems. Crime, antisocial behavior and a feeling of uncertainty and being threatened all the time is what drives White Flight. Since it is extremely difficult to alter people's behavior, the only other solution I can see is expotentially greater security measures to reduce people's fears of crime. During the recent past, when segregation and bare-knuckle racism was rampant, minority people were afraid to venture into White neighborhoods for fear of violence. Once this problem was addressed, and segregation in housing, employment, etc. was outlawed, White Flight began, and has never stopped. The result of this social phenomenon is voracious suburbanization, long commutes, multi-car owning families and consumption of prodigious amounts of fuel. It's all well and good to say "Well, they just shouldn't feel that way. They should be happy in a multi-cultural, multi-racial society." The problem is, they aren't. Everybody pays lip service to multi-culturalism, Martin Luther King, Jr., blah blah blah, but they STILL buy houses farther and farther and farther from the "minority" urban centers, and they STILL burn up thousands of gallons of gasoline a year commuting to and from work. Until we address these issues as a nation, we are going to remain addicted to oil."

 

wow, i never thought of that. good point.

 

ummm..guys..yeah, they're taking care of this problem..its caleld gentrification, kick all the poor blacks and mexicans out..buy up the land really cheap. Then set up yuppie lofts, etc. White people are coming back to the city, just on their terms. IE: no coloreds allowed.

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The people trhat are moving into these Disneyfied "urban" neighborhoods are generally very liberal. They would be more than happy to live in "multi-cultural" neighborhoods, but what they imagine is college-educated, latte-drinking, Starbuck-chillin', bookstore habitues like themselves who just happen to have an African-American complexion. They are imagining the sort of Black people who would send their children to a Montessori School and buy the Sunday New York Times for the book reviews, even though they live in Cleveland.

 

These "urbanites" move into run-down commercial buildings so they can have an inexpensive loft, then immediately the rents on apartments triple all around their block. They are big green supporters of the environment, and speak contemptuously of SUV owners, but drive a Porsche or a Mercedes sport coupe. They would definately be outraged if some kid stole the Blaupunkt out of their yuppie ride.

 

They are super liberals, but secretly believe that they are just more than a little bit better, more intelligent, better educated, than the "common people." They think that "the most intelligent people should run society." (This means THEM, of course.)

 

They have absolutely no respect for the decisions of the people that have abandoned the urban centers in droves. They believe that the suburbs are full of morons, and that only the people who live in trendy uptown neighborhoods like their own have opinions worth genuine consideration. They are outraged that their candidates do not win. It's just "not fair" and is "proof that the political system is corrupt." They do not believe that suburbia-dwellers should be able to control their own schools. If they could, they would demand that the suburbanites only preach "politically correct" sermons in their churches. "Freedom of speech" means the right to broadcast pornography and filth on TV, but not to publicize ideas with which the urbanites disagree. They think European style restraints on speech are "reasonable," like outlawing the wearing of the swastika, or jailing people for denying the Holocaust. The term "holocaust denier" seems like a perfectly acceptable way to describe anyone who promotes the idea that the victors wrote the history of WWII.

 

The idea that the local people who live in a neighborhood should have control over it is just absolute heresy, because they might choose limitations that are not politically correct.

 

The urbanites do not believe that rapists and child molestors should be forced to place a sign stating "WARNING: A Sex Offender Lives Here" on their front lawns. They do not think that restrictive probation rules that control an offender after he leaves prison are "fair". In fact, they are pretty sympathetic towards felons in general (until they are victimized by one, of course. Then they become Conservatives.)

 

This is why millions of Americans have "voted with their feet." And unless these people's concerns and complaints are addressed, they will CONTINUE to vote with their feet, as soon as the neighborhood starts "going black" or "going Mexican" they sell, and move farther out "away from the City and all it's problems" (i.e. "away from minorities.")

 

When I moved into the neighborhood where I live now, in 1989, it was about 85 or 90% white. Today, it is maybe 30% white. Nobody made a big deal about it, no protests, no furious letters to the Editor, none of that. They just left. And moved farther out.

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Arent there threads on here already to address gentrification/race issues?

This is getting off the topic of "peak oil".

 

Since I read about this shit, I've been extremely disturbed by it.

Is the only feasible way out to build many, many nuclear power plants.... as one of those articles suggests?

 

It seems that all the other "alternative energy" ideas are sub-standard to produce the amount of energy we'd need just to keep the lights on and some amount of industrial production going. Never mind automobiles. I can do without a car just fine. I'm more concerned with the notion of going back to pre-industrial revolution style America....

 

 

Is the only way to try to save some of our society in a way comparable to how it exists now too build more light rail/train lines and nuclear power plants?

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nuclear power is a very real option

 

putting huge government subsidies behind corporations willing to go green will also help, since a lot of these problems were sort of created by companies and industrialization, and could be solved that way also

 

hydropower, wind power and solar power are very much neglected by the establishment because there is no reason for a switch ..saving the planet doesn't mean shit when it's all about the bottom line.

 

our government needs to spend more time penalizing the violators of environmental policy before citizens' personal actions will make much of a difference, imo

 

think of this: Exxon has not paid out a single fucking dime to victims of it's Valdez oil spill. they have tied the whole judgement up in endless appeals..it is estimated that exxon has profited over three TRILLION dollars simply by not paying the judgement, and investing the money instead.

 

this same corporation funds junk science that 'disproves' global warming.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2.../ma_286_01.html

 

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...ike_it_hot.html

 

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archiv...sj_on_exxo.html

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The articles intially posted in this thread, as well as other available literature on the subject, all basically state that the problem is much more immediate than alot of people would like to believe.

 

My understanding from reading the stuff is that by 2012, we'll be in some "serious shit", and by 2030 we're going to all be farming and living minus electricity, heat, etc, etc, etc....

 

The common theme seems to be that the reason most "alternative energy" options are insufficient is that they require petroleum in some way (ie: burning oil to produce the energy to refill electric fuel cells and the amount of petroleum needed to produce the multitude of other things, such as everything made of plastic....).

 

I may be wrong, but isnt wind power "expensive" in some way, based on the cost of building enough of the structures to power a large city, maitenence, etc? My understanding of this is that going nuclear is the only really feasible option.... and there seems to be alot of doubt cast on that as one of the articles points out that building the neccesary amount of plants, and getting the uranium to power them within the next 6-10 years would be a very hard goal to realize, especially with all the stigmas and negative history attached to nuclear plants.... but if we dont have any other options..............

 

 

 

 

You would think that if this shit is as well proven as it seems to be, and that its an inevitiability within that within the next 20 years we WILL run out of oil, wouldnt the government cut the shit and actually do something for a change? Granted, I have little/no faith in our elected officials.... but cmon, this is is something that even the stupidest people alive should be able to wrap their heads around. If there was ever something that you'd think would unite people somehow to work towards a common goal, it might be the idea of having to spend the rest of their lives farming for sustinence as opposed to watching "Lost".

 

 

 

 

Then again, maybe with all of the money that the wealthy have, a huge castle with all of us tending the fields as serfs might not seem like such a bad idea.

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it's expensive because consumerism is not DEMANDING it

if tomorrow, everyone stopped driving and started riding bikes, and stopped buying stuff from campanies that use factories that pollute, all of a sudden wind power becomes a hell of a lot cheaper.

 

that's what i'm saying. there is no financial incentive to do anything about this now.

exxon is more interested in selling oil to power wind turbines than in building turbines that power themselves..because it's all about their bottom line

 

the day polluting starts to cost serious money in the way of fines and regulatory problems, corporations will be interested in the environment

 

our elected officials own stock in oil..their friends are running the companies..we are in a fucking WAR over oil for shits sakes. our government is not interested in getting us to quit the habit

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geothermal is cheap and limitless...small investment, low maintainence...also LOW profit...and we need to develop better batteries and engines that can run on some type of electric motor...esp for flying planes and moving container ships, which use the most energy (carbon based that is)

 

 

 

but geothermal will be best to power cities, since basically the heat of the earth wil be used to boil water to turn the turbines...

 

 

nuclear will never really work, too much radiation...as physicists discover more and more sub atomic particles, they relize more what a nuclear explosion gives off...

 

 

waterpower is good, but dams ruin rivers which kill ecosystems, so scrap those

 

 

solar is good for local heat sources, such as homes etc, but not for large scale energy production, same with wind...

 

 

alternative fuels are a no-no beacuse they're still basically a carbon-based energy source, which is NOT what we really need to produce...

 

 

 

seriously, look at geothermal.. do the research...its the best and cheapest and easiest alternative...as I said though, there is really no profit though after infrastructure investment...so no one wants to invest in something that has a 000.1% rate of return vs. 200%

 

 

get it? geothermal...

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Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools

The Mission Was Indeed Accomplished

 

Greg Palast / London Guardian | March 22 2006

 

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

 

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

 

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

 

"Operation

Iraqi

Liberation."

 

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

 

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

 

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

 

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

 

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

 

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get MORE of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

 

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.

 

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

 

No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

 

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

 

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was a Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

 

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20030324-4.html

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Originally posted by Lonesome Cowboy Bill@Mar 23 2006, 03:51 AM

nuclear will never really work, too much radiation...as physicists discover more and more sub atomic particles, they relize more what a nuclear explosion gives off...

 

seriously, look at geothermal.. do the research...its the best and cheapest and easiest alternative...as I said though, there is really no profit though after infrastructure investment...so no one wants to invest in something that has a 000.1% rate of return vs. 200%

 

 

get it? geothermal...

 

I don't think any of this is true. From what I understand nuclear is a pretty good (and safe) option. There's just a huge stigma about it. And I don't think geothermal energy could really power the world for a long period of time. Basically I think we need to be smart about our shit and divide energy sources up effectively. Like solar cells on the roof of every house and wherever practical, nuclear power plants for larger power production, existing hydroelectric and expanded wind farms for other shit...and of course there's the hydrogen question. I've read conflicting assessments of hydrogen's potential; some scientists think it can solve all our energy problems, others think it's too expensive...in any case, like you said, no major change will occur until the supply actually becomes a problem, simply because of a lack of infrastructure...but I think by the time fossil fuels really start to run low we will have the technology and the seeds of infrastructure to begin using new energy sources...It'll be a transition, and it could be a little rocky, but I don't really believe it's going to be a huge catastrophe for us.

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Guest im not witty

theres a link in the babble, for colors magazine issue about energy. theres some good stuff in there. plus the layout is dope.

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Guest im not witty

oh and for the person who said this wouldnt be a big issue. it is concievable that we can handle it. but the problem is for a problem that looms so large we arent starting on it NOW>

 

the famous example from ishmael is falling in a plane that doesnt fly. as youre falling you call your flight a success because hey, we havent hit the ground yet, so far so good. our entire civilization in America is built on oil. once the shit hits the fan, its way too late to try and switch our infastructure to alternatives. we will already be pulverized into the ground. we need to open our parachutes right fucking now before its too late.

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