I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 9:33 pm Post subject: I have been lurking here but this is my first post & opi
I have been following pretty much everything here for about 6 months now. I usually go to Matt Savinars site. www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
Up until about recently, I was pretty scared about the end of the world, but then i stopped letting myself be a drone to other peoples beliefes and really thought about the issue. What I have discovered is that neither side is telling the whole truth.
One side believes there is no problem, which there is, and the other side is whacked out on this die off theory and the end of modern civilization.
I think we all can accept that peak oil is a problem and will create big problems, so we can check off the people that think this is false because they ARE wrong. But the side that we are all on, and we agree there is a problem, are also wrong. People like Matt S. dont seem to want to accept that alternatives really are alternatives. WHAT REALLY GETS ME is that they LIE about the usefullness of alternative energy sources.
Example one. Matt says that solar is not a true alternative because the amount of energy it creates is equall to the amount of oil it takes to make the panel. THIS IS NOT TRUE. simple as that. Solar panels can operate for well over 20 years. And for people like me who live in san diego where the sun is always shinning, the new panels could make at least 3 to 4 times, maybe more, the amount of energy that went into them. If these panels were MASSED produced, we could make the cost of them even less.
BUT WAIT... how are we going to make enough panels for everyone???
Lets see.... how many cars a year can tokyo, detroit, alabama and germany make. A LOT. And they have no indentive to make cars other then for money. When life and EVEN MORE money are at steak, imagine how many panels we could make.
BUT WAIT AGAIN. Once peak oil hits, we wont have any time at all to make these panels.
We will have many years with gas at 7 dollars a gallon range, before its at the 20 dollar range. PLus the number of electric hybrid vehicles being put on the road is increasing at an exponential rate. In 5 years hybrids WILL make up a large percentage of vehicles on the road. The difference between a 15 MPG suv and 50 MPG car owner is huge.
think about this, IT IS cheaper to run an 04 toyota pruis, (which is a very nice car with lots of power) on 6 dollar a gallon gas, then it is to run a suburban on 2 dollar gas. Gas hasnt cost 2 dollars here in california in a loong time. Also, the average new car sold in the states cost something like 24,000 dollars. The prius only costs 20,000 dollars. Plus you get 2000 back from the government. With the one year wait to get a prius, toyota has decided to make more for next year and will continue to increase production to meet demand. And all the other auto companies are jumping on board to.
So back to what i was saying, if gas prices triple, the market can adjust. People(niehboors) can carpool to work, moms can go to the store together in the same car. Kids can walk to school instead of there mom driving them. GASP you could take the trolly or tain. Hell, whatever happened to bikes, i see those people on the road all the time getting there workout.
If you are really poor and need transportation, for 2000 bucks you can buy kawasaki 250. those little motorcycles can go over 100 miles per hour and get 70 miles to the gallon.
doing stuff like this will give us time to make those panels and re-structure the energy system.
As for food, what about human power...
example: Its called the gift of mexicans. God always provides us white folk with people willing to do hard work for us. I live in san Diego, well carlsbad to be exact. Next to my house is a large strawberry patch. The mexicans live in the canyon next to the patch, so no need for oil to transort them. They hand pick and plant the strawberries. Then they put up a little shack next to the patch and sell them right there. My 58 year old mom walks over there and picks them up and walks them home. Almost no oil used in this proccess, and there the best berries you've ever had.
As for nuclear power, if we truly used it to its potential, we could have more electricity then we ever wanted. And that electricity could make hydrogen to power machines to make the next nuke plant. And it could power industry.
What people like matt do is say, HEY hydrogen is for fools. In order to make hydrogen you need guess what??? fossil fuels. We have all been sold a lie, because the hydrogen gas produced has less energy then the gasoline we used to make it!!! WE ARE WASTING energy, by making hrdrogen. therefore, its not a solutiuon!
This is absolutly true, but its not the whole truth. You can use electricity to. And electricity comes from the SUN, and its comes from the WIND, and it comes from the seperation of the atom. Last time I checked we had 66.022 x 10 to the 23rd power times 100trillion atoms to seperate. And as far as I know the wind cant stop blowing. And as we get more efficient at collecting the sun, even more power is available.
No this isnt as easy as oil, not its not as cheap. Its not even as efficient. Its not better then oil in any way, but it works. Thats all it has to do.
We will have a large ressesion, and people in 3rd world counties will starve, but they are starving right now as I type. 30,000 children starve to death everyday! I dont care now, you dont care now, i dont see why we would care if that number was 100,000 children per day. Whats the difference???
People in first world countires might lose a standard of living, but we will still live, and we will recover. The middle class will survive.
One more thing. I know i am right about the prices of gas gradually going up. There is a limit to how much gas can cost.
If gas were to go up to 20 dollars a gallon today, nobody could afford to buy it. Once the gas in our cars ran out, we would call our bosses and say sorry I am taking the day off, it costs more to drive to work then I make at work.
Well everyone else will do the same thing at th same time! So nobody buys gas that day. The next day the oil tankers come to deliver there 20 dollar a gallon gas to the gas stations and they cant, cause the stations our full of gas! Now they have to much gas. DISCOUNT TIME, this gas has gotta go! now that gas is 7 dollars a gallon again, the kawasaki 250's and toyota pruises roll out and fill up and everyone goes to work the next day. As the week goes on the stations are almost empty selling there 7 dollar gas. They raise the price to 20 again.
And then it becomes a habbit. The weekend is now 3 days long not two. And on the weekend nobody buys gas or drives on the weekend. We all sit at home and spend time with out families!! gasp... and watch even more TV then we did before, this time its nuclear power TV though so that makes it even better.
When mom needs groceries, dad picks them up on the way home from work, that way you dont waste making a special trip.
Taking the day off is the exact same thing as conserving. Gas prices cant jump from 20 to 7 to 20 again in real life. The prices will balance themselvs out and people will do what they have to, to survive. Gas will still be affordable 20 years from now, even if peak is only 2 years away.
Pops, THAT is a fact. No one knows the facts. We are all just a bunch of amateur futurists making uneducated guesses.
All we can post is our opinions about what logically makes sense in our minds.
Some of us don't see any problems.
Some of us see a rough road ahead, but long term solutions.
Some of us only see candles and horses.
And there is really no way possible to know who is right until it happens.
I really don't know how to respond to this, but from an economics perspective I can explain it this way.
All of our luxuries and conveniences to this day are due to productivity growth. In an economic growth model, you have capital, labor, and the productivity factor. Now, productivity improvements are literally due to increases in productivity ie you can produce more with a given amount of labor and capital. Technology accounts for all of this productivity growth. For instance, back in the day, agriculture accounted for over 50% of our labor force, but now due to increases in technology, our productivity increased immensely. And yes, cheap oil was part of this technology improvement, but so was mechanized farm equipment etc...
With peak oil, all of a sudden productivity decreases. Why? Oil is more expensive and as a result everything else is relatively more expensive. You can produce less with a given amount of oil. If a good becomes more expensive, in this case oil, then the markets should move to find a substitute. However, in oil's case right now I don’t think the price is high enough for the market to make this massive shift. A shift to an alternative source of energy could literally take decades.
If people really knew how much oil was left in the world, the market would respond and price it accordingly in order to make this shift to alternative sources of energy. But the markets are instead relying on USGS figures which seem to be unreliable and accordingly the markets have imperfect information. When the markets have imperfect information then the value of the good is not priced right. In this case, it is all on Saudi Arabia’s shoulders to produce how much they really have left as they are the largest reserves in the world. That is the bottom line.
In any case, if the geologists are right, and we do find Saudi’s actual reserves to be lower than they stated, the market will find the right price which will be extremely high, thus causing a massive oil shock. Oil shocks are not a good thing as they cause a market’s worst nightmare: stagflation – high inflation combined with low growth.
Having said all of this, I am positive that the CIA must know how much Saudi has left and Saudi Arabia itself should know how much they have left, given the importance of actual reserve figures to both countries. Definitely, one of the motives of the US in going to Iraq was to make sure that they had control over the most valuable resource in the world. That much is obvious as all nations act in order to ensure it’s own survival.
If peak does happen, it will get messy. Actually it already is. It is going to cause more havoc to the markets. However, I am not so sure that the US will suffer as much as some think. It will be the poorer countries of the world that do, unfortunately. America is a democracy but if the population has to choose between economic and social ruin, and war, I think it will take advantage of its superpower status and choose war. When times are good, people extend out their hand, but when times are bad, they take care of themselves first. Human nature.
Anyways, the Cold War and the period immediately thereafter was actually one of the most stable periods in history. The upcoming resource war will be just returning back to the norm. However unfortunate our current situation is, I think it is great that people are beginning to sense that something strange is unfolding. Maybe humankind can somehow pull out of this one with some sensibility as we all know nuclear weapons are proliferating and I don’t want to see what an angry starving nuclear state will inflict on the world when times are tight.
You know... after reading my own post... I realised what the critical issue is here. Its all about how fast the gas goes up in price. If it only doubles or triples, we will be able to adapt. If it goes up by a factor of 10, then we are screwed and will go back to the stone ages.
Matt S. ASS-U-ME S that gas prices will go up so fast that the market wont have time to correct itself and we wont have the time to make alternative energy sources before the downfall of our society.
THAT is a HUGE assumption. That event HAS to happen in order for everything else to come true. He provides proof and evidence for everything that he tells us EXCEPT that. AND that is the most important part. It makes simple sense that gas will go up and up, maybe at an exponential rate. But this die off and downfall of society would require gas to absolutly sky rocket to at least 8 TIMES the current level and then to hold that price and continue to go up from there.
THERE is no evidence anywhere that this is even possible. The whole piece of crap is based on this one idea that is almost sure to be BS.
If you look up you can read why gas prices cant just go up that much.
If there is a 10% increase in demand, and 10% shortage in supply, we need to conserve 20%. 20% is nothing when you think about it. Back in the 70's when there were shortages, people did not have the ability to conserve like they do today. And if you REMEMBER, people did conserve a lot. All the cars were smaller and had less power. The GEO METRO type cars were born. Imagine a geo metro hybrid. The current economy cars are almost sporty. toyota corrollas and what not making way over 100HP... WTF, thats not an economy car, is it? The world wont function if even the cheapest most economical cars dont have at least 100HP????
The oil market is A LOT more elastic then this guy would have us believe. And the whole thing about gas being to expensive to buy just doesnt make sense at all.
I want a response MATT on how you can tell us all this stuff is going to happen when you have no resonable evidence that a shortage of gas would make the cost go up to the levels you are proposing that would end civilization.
I am made at you for making me believe all the BS. I am mad that you got me worried about my life being in danger when the only thing happening is a reccession. Having a really bad economy and not having food are two tottaly different things.
Leave it to goddamn lawers to make the most convincing arguments that suckers like me will believe. OJ simpsons lawer was so good at his work he was able to do the same thing to a jury. THEN you make a damn book! you could have just posted the book for download on your site, but no... damn lawers gotta make there money doing what they are good at, arguing a point well enough that no matter what it is we all nood and saw yes.
I have an idea, GO GET A REAL JOB, go defend some poor lady that was hurt by some punks. Put some Westerfields and OJs behind bars. Just dont make stupid BS cause you can.
I am fighting mad... GEEZ I AM ANGERY. ALL THIS crap BASED OFF ONE STUPID ASSUMPTION! GO TO HELL!
your lucky that editted out all my "BAD" phrases and words... I am just so angery right now. how could you go to all that work and do all that stuff and predict all of whats going to happen when its all based on a lie. The lie that gas prices will sky rocket to the point of being unaffordable when we start to get shortages. How could be have no gas if we are still pumping it and it is unaffordable.... where is it going? IT JUST MAKES NO SENSE!
To say that when shortages hit the end of the world is here is SOO FREAKIN STUPID. European nations are already getting very close to the point where oil is no longer life and death. And as long as we still have some oil, we will have that time to transition. And oil will slowly decline for decades and decades. PLENTY OF TIME!
hey.. are there any Omish people on here? DO THEY USE OIL AT ALL???? they have a very high standard of living, they certainly eat all thay want.
YOU ARE SO MANIPULATIVE... sorry for all this but i need to vent. I think i am almost though it... this rants is calming me down. Once again. Stop selling your book, if you really cared about the cause and really believed in mass die offs you would post it on your site in good concious.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 1195 Location: Zoorope
Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2004 2:52 am Post subject:
Yamaha,
go read everything you find about the 2001 Argentina recession. It was just a recession, through very hard, and guess what?
People starved.
After they lost their jobs, after the banks stopped to give them back their savings, after they stole everything from supermarkets, after they fled from their houses because they couldn't afford anymore their loans, after they tried to barter on the road all their properties, they began to starve.
The factories closed, the offices closed, no more work, no more money, no more trucks to deliver food, nothing.
It was "just a recession", plenty of oil... and they starved.
To sum up: I don't eat oil, so I'm afraid I'll starve exactly because our system can't afford a recession like that. _________________ **no english mothertongue**
--------
Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.
Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2004 4:55 am Post subject: Somewhere in between
The truth (as always) is somewhere between the perpetual growth, limitless energy believing economist and the doom merchants like Matt. The impression I get from reading a lot of the contributors is that they can't wait for resource wars, economic collapse, the draft etc. Then they can say - look I told you so. I was extremely alarmed when I first read about peak oil - in fact I sold the families second car and bought a bike so I could commute to work. (This was a good idea in any case as I was becoming a fat bast..d). I believe there are huge opportunites in coming decades as society moves to a more community based sustainable style of living. Our real standard of living should actually improve.
This is all dependand on the warlords which now seem to be running the US being voted out in the election in Novemeber (which looks like being cancelled).
Anyway, I'm Irish - all I need is some alcohol to ride this all out. This can be made from potatoes, sugar some yeast and wood for boiling.
Life after the oil crash was the first peak oil site I found.
I was immediately suspicious of the concept because
1. It's on the Internet.
2. Matt is selling a book.
I think we can all relate to that.
So I did what I always do... I goggled it.
This thread seems to put a lot of the burden on Matt's shoulders. And although Matt writes well, and makes some interesting analogies and useful metaphors, I don't know him or his qualifications.
Not being an energy or geology expert myself, I wanted the opinions of the experts, so to speak. And I'll hazard a guess that this is exactly what Matt has done as well.
So how much weight go I give Matt's arguments? Without some indication of specific expertise, I can't just accept his ideas, I must have corroboration. Now Matt may not be a geologist, or physicist, but some others are...
I may take it with a grain of salt when Matt makes a claim, but when I hear similar predictions from respected scientists & researchers from the energy field... I pay attention.
Matt may be selling a book, and you have a point that he is motivated to sell it. But that does not mean it's wrong.
So you may brush past some of Matt's arguments, but I wouldn't be so quick to throw out the "baby with the bathwater".
While I agree that the proof is in the pudding, and as Jay points out peak is only visible in retrospect, & I might dismiss this whole argument were Matt the only advocate. But when respected professionals from multiple fields echo some of these arguments, people with everything to lose by being wrong, I pay attention.
When a 35 year Oil & Gas industry heavyweight says we should worry... I listen. When professors from Princeton get nervous... I get nervous. When multiple geologists with lengthy careers in traditional fields are concerned... so am I. If you have won the Nobel prize in chemistry... you have my complete attention.
So do I buy Matt's worst case predictions... not all of them. But do I think that means a "soft landing"? Not really...
One thing to consider is that to the extent you think Matt is overstating the problem to sell books, more conservative authors may tend to understate the problem.
Dr. Smalley demonstrated as much when I asked him what he thought the consequences for failing to meet our future energy needs in any significant degree would be. He replied that it would be "a challenging few decades". I then asked if that was his "politically correct" way of referring to starvation, economic collapse in many places, epidemic disease patterns, regional conflict, and even a nuclear exchange? His reply was, "
Yes... all of those".
Now you may doubt Matt's conclusions, and question his qualifications to make such judgments. And I suspect Matt would encourage your doubt and urge you to do the research yourself. But when a respected director for a leading carbon nanotechnology lab, winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry, and the pioneer of nano-physics and discoverer of Bucky Balls, agrees with multiple geologists and energy industry experts that declining oil & gas may devastate world economies in the near future... you get the idea.
We tend to think in terms defined in context with our personal lives. So when we consider energy use, we think of our own intersection with it. How we each use this energy. We can drive more efficient, bio-algae cars and use solar panels all we like, but the underpinnings of our modern global economy rests firmly on the shoulders of oil & gas energy and manufacturing technologies. Our prosperity today is based on our major industries and cheap power to feed it.
So while we may be using "armchair" diagnostics to make uneducated guesses in here... I don't think that's how Simmons or Smalley or Deffreys, or Campbell et al do it.
Our current world culture employs a cheap terawatt energy solution. This has fueled the rocket-ride of prosperity we have enjoyed this century... Being forced to replace this cheap solution with an expensive one is the "cliff" they speak of...
Return to the stone age? Probably not...
Economic collapse, starvation, regional resource wars... I hope not...
Runaway inflation, global recession, political and social instability... a certainty if our energy budget is seriously compromised.
I find I agree with Smalley... we are looking at a challenging few decades. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Welcome to the discussion Yamaha. I appreciate any opinion and I hope some of the criticism here doesn’t stop you from posting. I do have some questions about the ease with which you introduce alternative energy.
Quote:
The oil market is A LOT more elastic then this guy would have us believe. And the whole thing about gas being to expensive to buy just doesn’t make sense at all.
The oil and gas prices have more than doubled in the past 4 years. Yet this has not resulted in a drop of demand. Instead demand grew. Do you know other commodities, which can double in price without causing drop in demand? I can only conclude that oil is very inelastic. I don’t believe that oil will become ‘unaffordable’ anytime soon, but we will see a strong rise in prices.
The problem is then, that so many things are connected to the oil price. Just plot the US trade deficit against the oil price. You’ll see the connection. Then plot the US-dollar and treasury yield against the trade deficit. The correlation is obvious.
The financial systems are very vulnerable at this moment due to the tremendous amount of speculative money involved. This vulnerability was well demonstrated at 9/11. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that strong price rice in oil will trigger a worldwide recession, or worse a depression.
Then there is the old mantra of the economists that a high price will automatically result in alternative supply. This does not always work. I will use food as an analogy for oil since it is very price inelastic as well.
In countries like Ethiopia food is expensive. It has been so for the past decennia. According to the economic theories this should result in alternative food supply. For instance, since the price of food is high certain irrigation processes become feasible, which should result in higher crop yields.
I realize this is an extreme case, but the fundamental problem is, that the country does not have the financial reserves to make the initial investment in alternative food generation. Now imagine the level of investments that are required to go to solar wind and other forms of energy at a rate of 2% of our energy needs per annum. Add to that the increasing costs to keep our oil production from falling more steeply.
So if we combine these two we get a frightening mix. We soon need to make very large investments in energy, but at the same time we know that the economy and thus our ability to invest is going to take a severe blow.
If these two start interacting we could be see an avalange of problems heading our way. Rising energy prices will weigh down on our economy and prevent us from tackling the energy problem. This will cause more price rises. It’s a viscous circle.
The only way to prevent this from happening is to start making these investments now, before we enter that circle. We should have done that in the 70’s when we realized the danger of our oil dependence but I’m afraid that we’ll just wait until it’s to late.
I don’t believe the result will be the sudden end of the world, but a monster depression is in my opinion a likely outcome.
Previous depressions have always been confined to certain regions. Although the recession in Argentina was bad, but they still could rely on help from the IMF and other countries. The same with the Asia crisis.
I wonder and fear what will happen if the whole world will simultaneously enter a severe and enduring depression. This would be an unique first and there is now way of telling what will happen or how bad it is going to be.
I am starting to tire of people pontificating about peak oil and how it's not as much of a problem as we think it is when they haven't spent the MONTHS doing reasearch that most of us have.
for instance....
Quote:
We will have a large ressesion, and people in 3rd world counties will starve, but they are starving right now as I type. 30,000 children starve to death everyday! I dont care now, you dont care now, i dont see why we would care if that number was 100,000 children per day. Whats the difference???
This is laughable.
While many are indeed starving, most of the people in "third world countries" are not "starving", but living in small farming communities without power except that of oxen and mules. Their "standard of living" and "life expectancy" are not what we're used to, but they are living a life just as valid and full as ours.
How are they going to be adversely affected by oil and energy shortages? You really think that they will be affected more than we will? Why?
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