[Plantagenet]

Oh it is already happening I have heard first hand accounts from both Latin America and the Philippines of such rolling blackouts and limited rationed power. So I assume the same for other poor regions like Africa, Middle East and even some Eastern bloc countries.

Yup. Same thing in India. And when the power goes out that means the ceiling fans stop moving....and that means you get to experience the full impact of 108° F with 99° humidity for an hour or two until the electricity comes back on......and then you get a couple of hours of power and then it goes off again. And so on and on.

It can be utterly hellish.

Its really no surprise that people in these poor countries desperately want the same creature comforts we enjoy in the US and EU. I had expected it to be extremely hot in India when I went there in late August and early September, but one of the things that surprised me most about India is that you can never escape the heat. When you go to mid-range hotels, restaurants, museums, train stations, trains, airports, bus stations---- nowhere has air conditioning.......the only way to cool off is to find a fan and stand next to it or open the window on a train.


On the bright side-- you don't need a fan to stay cool when you take the train

[ennui2]

haha, good reply Ralfy. Ennui seems to be under the assumption that all that "funny" money is real. Better acquaint him to the wise saying from the Indians:
“When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.”

Nobody has to remind me of the imaginary nature of BAU, but when I buy something with money right now, it's converted into something tangible. Doomers spend too much time envisioning days of reckoning and not facing the reality of life in the present.

[ralfy]

haha, good reply Ralfy. Ennui seems to be under the assumption that all that "funny" money is real. Better acquaint him to the wise saying from the Indians:
“When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.”

Nobody has to remind me of the imaginary nature of BAU, but when I buy something with money right now, it's converted into something tangible. Doomers spend too much time envisioning days of reckoning and not facing the reality of life in the present.

Living in the present is a default view and requires very little effort. Questioning the point that that present will go on indefinitely requires, among other things, discussions. That's the purpose of this forum.

In which case, why are you still participating in this forum?

[GoghGoner]

No such thing as the default view. There are many different personality types and most of our types on this forum are within a small percentage of that population. Basically, we are wired to think about these things where other types have more pragmatic thinking; how do I fit in with this group of humans, what to eat today, etc... You can easily imagine why it an advantage for a group to have different types, if everybody in the group was a maverick or a leader, nothing would get done and they would die off. We think we are sliced bread but we are just who we are and they are who they are, all pieces that fit together to further survival.

[ennui2]

In which case, why are you still participating in this forum?

Excellent point. That's an existential question that the vast majority of the posters here made years ago which led them to leave. In other words, the issues presented here didn't seem so acute to justify day-to-day hand-wringing. I have to agree with that sentiment.

[Revi]

We may be seeing all the things we thought would happen about 10 years ago happening now. Check it out. The price of oil went up $2 yesterday. Russia, China and the US are all mucking about in the middle east. The fracking boom has ended and there is nothing behind it to take up the slack. Sure, right now there is a little "glut" in oil, but the change is coming now. Let's see where we are at next year around this time.

[ralfy]

Excellent point. That's an existential question that the vast majority of the posters here made years ago which led them to leave. In other words, the issues presented here didn't seem so acute to justify day-to-day hand-wringing. I have to agree with that sentiment.

Only if this "existentialist question" was answered, but it wasn't. The replies that we make to your posts prove that.

In short, the use of unconventional production proves peak oil. The same goes for the 2005 rise in prices, the 2008 economic crash, the weak economy throughout, another oil price crash, and now warnings of another financial crisis:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... s-IMF.html

And these are being issued by conservative organizations in mainstream media.

[ROCKMAN]

ralfy - "In short, the use of unconventional production proves peak oil. The same goes for the 2005 rise in prices, the 2008 economic crash, the weak economy throughout, another oil price crash, and now warnings of another financial crisis". It's too bad you don't have some cute 3 letter acronym to use instead of all those words. Just ACS...A Crying Shame. LOL.

[ralfy]

ralfy - "In short, the use of unconventional production proves peak oil. The same goes for the 2005 rise in prices, the 2008 economic crash, the weak economy throughout, another oil price crash, and now warnings of another financial crisis". It's too bad you don't have some cute 3 letter acronym to use instead of all those words. Just ACS...A Crying Shame. LOL.

I always see these problems in terms of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

[ROCKMAN]

Ralfy the Red??? Or is that Ralfy the Democrat??? LOL

[davep]

ralfy - "In short, the use of unconventional production proves peak oil. The same goes for the 2005 rise in prices, the 2008 economic crash, the weak economy throughout, another oil price crash, and now warnings of another financial crisis". It's too bad you don't have some cute 3 letter acronym to use instead of all those words. Just ACS...A Crying Shame. LOL.

I always see these problems in terms of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

Same here. But it's allied with a debt-based economic system that requires growth in order to stand still. Fixing the latter could potentially help mitigate the former if it's not already too late in the day.

[ROCKMAN]

Dave - Unfortunately I'm pretty sure it was too late even 20 or 30 years ago.

[Revi]

It's too late now. I wonder if the powers that be knew about this 20 years ago and failed to act on it? Probably.

[roccman]

It's too late now. I wonder if the powers that be knew about this 20 years ago and failed to act on it? Probably.

depends on perspective

if the goal were to enslave the world and saw the earth as a throw-away - then there was no reason to do anything different.

advancement of rational supporting this notion is likely to throw this into tin (and I think lots of tin is not tin).

so suffice to say - it's a matter of perspective

[onlooker]

Only if this "existentialist question" was answered, but it wasn't. The replies that we make to your posts prove that.

Exactly, even has some prefer to live in the present without a care in the world, other like us here wish to anticipate and predict the future. Cause you know the future has a funny way of becoming the present ya know.

[davep]

Talk of it being "too late" raises the question "who is it too late for?".

We will not disappear as a species and there are ways of mitigating the shock of population growth and dependency on fossil fuels. But these are and will be local solutions rather than top-down diktats. So, plant some edible perennials that are suitable for your area, start building up your own heirloom seedbank and don't be living in big cities. At least in the country, as things wind down, you may be poor but you will have the means of sustenance at your fingertips.

[dolanbaker]

I don't think that we'll ever be too late as such, simply because few of us want to voluntarily downsize before we actually have to, as it is quite likely that the decline in available fossil fuels will be quite shallow 2-3% per year (maybe after a once off 5% or more drop caused by the current pulling back on investing in new projects).

The decline is slow enough to adjust to a different version of BAU for a number of decades, but only if population growth is halted and future generations allow for a slow decline in the birth rate (something that the west has actually succeeded in doing, but is being cancelled out by migration).

Consumerism, in its current form will probably be one of the first things that will collapse as needs should take priority over wants, probably followed fairly rapidly by the financial services sector. Both of these flourished with the availability of cheap and abundant energy and both will decline with the lack of "surplus" energy that they require to function.

[Tanada]

People also fail to realize potatoes exporting countries will not be potato exporters when they need their own potatoes to survive.

Globalisation is an exercise in ensuring the maximum number of people starve when countries no longer have surpluses to trade.

While I find this to be a very cynical view of the motives of the Globalizers the effect is still a real possibility. If the international trade system falls apart rapidly there will be a lot of hungry people in some countries and food either rotting or being stockpiled in the exporting countries.

They are harvesting the soybeans and yellow dent corn all over my region this week, and while the soy crop did better than I feared I know for a fact that the corn yields per acre are way down. These facts don't seem to have penetrated the commodity markets yet for whatever reason, but I would not count on that being a long term situation.

[Revi]

Here's a nice view of the plateau. US production piled a nice peak on top of this, but now that has tanked, so the plateau remains. We may be off the plateau pretty soon, as the price is not allowing a lot of new production, so the relentless drop of the legacy fields will eventually drag us off the edge.

[dolanbaker]

This time we may know the answer, but we always have to consider the fact that non UK production may have been suppressed by the extra US production coming on stream and may rise a bit to compensate for dropping US supply (once the backlog has been consumed).