[Ludi]

I seriously doubt a rapid die-off of billions of people as the decline starts to happen.

With 1 billion people already chronically hungry in these times of plenty of cheap oil, how will the 7 billion be maintained on declining oil?

Maybe I'm not sure what you mean by "rapid."

[Lore]

The boom/bust cycle in commodities can only go on for just so long. When it becomes apparent that there are real fundamental constraints to supply many countries will exacerbate the situation by hording reserves. We're seeing some of that right now in the base metals. This will be the cause for panic at which point the poorest of countries and their millions will be left with two rocks to rub together.

It's impossible to adjust to nothing and history is a poor indicator of the future when new factors are added to the equation.

[vision-master]

So why don't you go f#ck yourself, kid?

Peak oil gets a bad enough rap as it is from the serious folks, once they can point to peakers suggesting that the transportation and distribution of illegal drugs across state lines is a-okay, it will only get worse. Grow up dumbass.

Say what? ru on drugs...

[Xenophobe]

It's impossible to adjust to nothing and history is a poor indicator of the future when new factors are added to the equation.

Depends on the details. Prior to mankind inventing a game changing technology, and testing it in 1945 near Alamagordo, NM, the sun rose in the east. After the testing, use, and conversion to civilian uses, the sun still rose in the east.

There must be an interrelationship of some sort for your assumption to apply. Boom/Bust in commodities may not be tied to oils price as tightly as some might like. When it comes to the housing bust and the desire of some to blame it on peak oil, no relationship has been established yet. Those who desire to find this relationship tend to be those who have been most disappointed by the mundane consequences of peak oil, now 6 years in the past.

[Plantagenet]

When it comes to the housing bust and the desire of some to blame it on peak oil, no relationship has been established yet. Those who desire to find this relationship tend to be those who have been most disappointed by the mundane consequences of peak oil, now 6 years in the past.

I don't consider the ongoing global recession to be "mundane"....I think its remarkable because it has involved simultaneous collapse in housing markets, credit markets, banks, manufacturing, employment and job creation in countries around the globe, and even a few countries themselves have essentially defaulted. And, in spite of the slow global economy, oil is right back at triple digit levels.

This is exactly what I expected.

[Xenophobe]

When it comes to the housing bust and the desire of some to blame it on peak oil, no relationship has been established yet. Those who desire to find this relationship tend to be those who have been most disappointed by the mundane consequences of peak oil, now 6 years in the past.

I don't consider the ongoing global recession to be "mundane"....I think its remarkable because....

yes...it was dierce..it was rough...we may have years more of working off the excess....and guess what? It's been a part of the business cycle since BEFORE oil was discovered.

I don't consider this one any more special than the others, so sure, mundane it is.

Also, it isn't usually called "collapse" when I can borrow money to buy a house, (more house than I could a few years ago actually), still have a job along with 90%+ of those who weren't involved in some aspect of the bubble economy, and countries have defaulted before and didn't require a peak oil justification then either.

Like I said, all theses hopes and dreams and relationships all came up AFTER it became obvious that peak oil had happened, and didn't cause the end of the world.

This is exactly what I expected.

Could be. But unless you are one of the Peak Prophets who spent their time spreading the cooler dieoff scenarios, you are just one more poster on a web forum who maybe, in some version of peak light, got it right. You, me, we don't matter, unless you've been selling your versions publicly since before 2005 in a major way?

[sparky]

This is certainly getting worst already

The boom/bust cycle in commodities can only go on for just so long. When it becomes apparent that there are real fundamental constraints to supply many countries will exacerbate the situation by hording reserves. We're seeing some of that right now in the base metals. This will be the cause for panic at which point the poorest of countries and their millions will be left with two rocks to rub together.

It's impossible to adjust to nothing and history is a poor indicator of the future when new factors are added to the equation.

there already is above normal purchase of food , China is set to buy 9m Tonnes of corn
the market will set new records , there will be more riots

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60af28b6-2f00 ... z1D7FaKsnO

[thuja]

I seriously doubt a rapid die-off of billions of people as the decline starts to happen.

With 1 billion people already chronically hungry in these times of plenty of cheap oil, how will the 7 billion be maintained on declining oil?

Maybe I'm not sure what you mean by "rapid."

By rapid I mean within a short space of years- perhaps 10. This is what many people mean when they say "die-off". And I call BS on it.

I think it will take many generations, perhaps as much as 100 years, for the planet to pare down to 2-3 billion people. That in my mind is extremely rapid.

But how that happens is quite complex and I would never subscribe to a universal maxim that 6 out of 7 people you know will be dead within a decade.

In general I think poorer countries will get the brunt of the suffering, as they already have. Africa, large parts of India and China, the poorer countries in Latin America...all are likely to experience severe problems due to not being able to outbid the richer nations for food and energy resources. This will lead to famine, social unrest, revolutions, wars and yes...the likelihood of die-off at some point.

The Western INdustrialized world and Japan will not be immune from severe problems but I don't think "die-off" is in the cards. Birth rates are already incredibly low and if you extrapolate these rates out 100 years, you would see a natural deep contraction in population. Of course this varies from country to country.

So in any event- die-off is a pretty loaded word that I have come to hate here on these forums. People use it as a catch-all universal term. That leads to lots of talk of zombies, bug-out doomsteads and semi-religious talk of an apocalyptic year zero in the near future. Bah...

So rapid die-off? No. Severe contraction in population over a multi-generational period, affecting some countries more harshly than others? Sure.

[Lore]

It seems you have constructed a myth that spares you and other wealthy 1st worlders. You kind of have it backwards. The Western Industrialized world and Japan depend on the 3rd world countries for minerals and many agricultural commodities. When those countries fall into chaos, then ours will not be far behind.

Just what are you trying to tell me? No more blueberries at the local grocery store from Argentina during the winter!

I say stock up now on cheap lithium from Bolivia, avoid the rush!

[jupiters_release]

We all know the banking system's always been corrupt at its core for centuries, but the level of ponzi fraud the central banks allowed in finance and housing over the past decade was unprecedented. Is it coincidence the banks would time 'the big grab' with peak oil? I couldn't get through watching the latest Zeitgeist, but one quote was succinct "This Shit's Gotta Go".

Assuming the internet doesn't get killed here (LOL) we too can facebook the revolution for democracy! (YAY!)

[dissident]

As we tumble down the post-peak plateau (this year? next?, five years?) we will lose 10 million barrels/year production.

Indeed, the ride down will be much faster than the ramp up. All the Gaussian fits to world production are misleading even if they already highlight a problem. As we progress in time the average age of producing fields of significance is increasing. This reflects the lack of sufficient discovery to replace major developed fields. Old fields decline fast especially in geology such as that of Saudi Arabia. The discovery of small fields here and there will not be sufficient to making the peak oil curve symmetric since they do not last long and do not offset the change in the average age of the bulk of oil production. This also applies to the seabed oil development, the average life is short even for major areas such as the North Sea.

The ramp up stage of the global oil production curve was shaped by the growth of demand through development under conditions of unlimited supply. After peak it will be shaped by attempts to fill insatiable demand (driven by population growth and development) under conditions of diminishing supply. There is simply no reason why the before and after peak curve shapes should be the same. The decline stage also has the characteristic of attempts to extract maximal amounts of oil from fields faster (horizontal branched wells, etc.) that will increase production from existing fields in the short run but decrease the final recoverable figure by some fraction. So the long term decline rate will keep on increasing and not just due increasing average age.

The above is nothing new and has been beaten to death at The Oil Drum and here. With the current discovery rate (1 barrel found per 6 burned when averaged over the last 10 years) the decline will be steep. The current undulating plateau is the quiet before the storm.

[Xenophobe]

As we tumble down the post-peak plateau (this year? next?, five years?) we will lose 10 million barrels/year production.

Indeed, the ride down will be much faster than the ramp up. All the Gaussian fits to world production are misleading even if they already highlight a problem.

The Gaussian fits all self destructed the instant the world decided to plateau for awhile rather than decline. It was always suspicious trying to incorporate the 1979 peak within them, they really can't withstand a plateau, nor another upcoming peak.

http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/12/p ... crude.html

The above is nothing new and has been beaten to death at The Oil Drum and here. With the current discovery rate (1 barrel found per 6 burned when averaged over the last 10 years) the decline will be steep. The current undulating plateau is the quiet before the storm.

We have discovered more than we've consumed for a few years now, as demonstrated by our very own Oily. Do try and keep up with the modern developments. And your 1 in 6 over the past few years is bogus as well. Between 2002 and 2008 we added up some 300 billion alone, enough for 10 years of consumption, let alone just the 6. I haven't scraped up the newest EIA information but I hardly need to when the world is churning out those kinds of volumes over a chunk of the time period you just mentioned.

[Xenophobe]

you know you are talking gibberish?

It only looks that way to stoned people.

Those 300 billion represent a political redefinition of old extra heavy, oil shale, and bitumen known for years...

It ain't political when people, like you, put it, like you, in their SUVs.

[Jenab]

It sounds like there is a major pooh-pooh effort going on. The basic ideas of peak oil are

1. that there always was a finite supply of oil and natural gas on Earth, and that we've reached or passed the midpoint.

2. that demand continues to rise while supplies do not, resulting in bidding up the price of oil until many persons must do without and until many businesses fail, both of which damage the economy to the point of general economic collapse.

3. that the last half of the oil extracted from a field is the dirty half and that as the field continues to be depleted the costs, whether measured in money or in energy, of extraction rise until further attempts at extraction serve no useful purpose.

The most significant extrapolation from the above ideas is that people are going to suffer, and many may die when food and essential services can no longer reach them. However, as will usually happen when people prophesy a coming disaster, they repeatedly predict the dates on their projected timeline too early, and that makes it easy for mocking propagandists to say "See there! It didn't happen when you said it would! So your whole basic idea is wrong, and we may safely conclude that we are not in any danger and never were." And when the disaster eventually does happen, a lot of people, who were once prepared and who might have remained so, aren't prepared any more.

What has happened is that the people in government and in the oil industry wish to continue business as usual, making their OWN preparations for the coming bad times without any interference by an alarmed public. So we begin to see threads with titles like this one has, where the minions of disinformation sew their pacific propagandas.

There's a difference between a cult and a group that keeps anxiously jumping the gun about timetables. The difference is in the quality of their basic premises, and those of Peak Oil are very good basic premises.