[deMolay]

What a hoot. Actually a good article. http://www.elle.com/Beauty/Health-Fitness/Do-Worry.-Be-Happy

[AgentR]

I listened to Newt Gingrich say "peak oil" in a serious sentence in front of a serious congressional panel just today. (The were talking about alternative energy, biomass, etc)

Something's got their attention.

[mos6507]

Why did it have to be Gingrich (who is trying to block GW legislation)??

[mos6507]

What a hoot. Actually a good article. http://www.elle.com/Beauty/Health-Fitness/Do-Worry.-Be-Happy

This is exactly the kind of magazine that needs to print this material. Smack all of the soccer moms in the gut with some reality. Awesome. Stuff like this is worth 1000 articles on EnergyBulletin.

[TheDude]

The Transition movement is on some kind of press junket lately. Is Rob going to pop up on Martha Stewart soon? Or The View.

[shortonoil]

TheDude said:

The Transition movement is on some kind of press junket lately. Is Rob going to pop up on Martha Stewart soon? Or The View.

Peak Oil is likely to never go mainstream as long as someone has an agenda to refute it. There is a quantity problem. There is still 4.3 billion barrels of the stuff left in the ground. Trying to explain to your average American tweed that there is a difference between what is still in the ground, and what is usable is like trying to lift the Titanic with a pair of rubber duckys and a bungie cord.

If you try getting into usable energy and its relationship to economic activity it produces something akin to a bled out, blank faced zombie on Prozac. They become unresponsive to the point that it can become necessary to lead them to the door by hand, and hope that they don’t get run over by a passing car. An attempt to pursue such a conversation appears to almost always result in a complete cerebral, neurological disconnect!

For the above reason I would advise any speaker on the subject to keep to simple concepts, like “End of the Fossil Fuel Age”. Even though few can understand the concept, many do know what most of the words mean; which is a start. For football enthusiast J6P and honey, we’ar f****d works best. Keeping to the common vernacular has advantages.




AvailableEnergy

[Sixstrings]

Post–Hurricane Katrina, I’d lost faith that my government would protect me in the event the oil ran out, the food stopped arriving at the store, and the lights went off

Wow, that's in Elle magazine? I noticed above the article is an add for a bra that supposedly can be worn "62 different ways." The Peak Oil stuff I knew all about, but the bra was new info.. I mean, 62 ways? I can think of regular, inside-out, maybe backwards.. so that's 3.. I didn't click the link to find out the other 59 ways -- I'm not quite that interested.

But I digress. Actually, a very good article, I'd say the best I've seen in a mainstream pub. I too don't think PO will ever go mainstream until there are lines at the gas station long enough to cause riots. But if the Greens take up the PO banner with gusto, then expect about a 1000 times more awareness of these issues in the general public.

IMHO, a lot of the eco-movement is really just about being fashionable. I shopped at Whole Foods for the first time the other day.. I found the experience rather amusing. I felt like I was shopping for food at the Gap.

As I drove home, it occurred to me that it's really ironic that the only place in town where it's fashionable to be eco-conscious is too expensive to attract enough people to ever make a real difference. So it remains just that -- a fashion statement for folks wealthy enough to spend a LOT of money for their groceries.

The whole Green movement has been marketed and skewed to educated, upper income white yuppy types. Obviously, the vast masses of humanity do not fall into this category (and sorry Virginia, it's the masses who actually have the impact, any impact of the fashionable elite using organic veggie shortening is minimal).

So, I wonder how the green marketing machine will handle PO. PO isn't easily marketed -- it's all about less, not more.

[stu]

Wow, that's in Elle magazine? I noticed above the article is an add for a bra that supposedly can be worn "62 different ways." The Peak Oil stuff I knew all about, but the bra was new info.. I mean, 62 ways? I can think of regular, inside-out, maybe backwards.. so that's 3.. I didn't click the link to find out the other 59 ways -- I'm not quite that interested.

4. On your head

5. Around your waist

and so on......

[TWilliam]

I would advise any speaker on the subject to keep to simple concepts,

I find likening oil extraction to a giant SlurpeeTM to be occasionally helpful in getting the idea across. "You know how when you get a SlurpeeTM, the first half is really tasty and it's really easy to get a big ol' mouthful with almost no effort? Then when you get down to the second half, it's sorta flavorless and and you really have to work at it, maybe even tossing the cup in the trash even tho' there's still some left, because it's more work than it's worth? Peak oil is kinda like that. Yea, there's still oil in the ground. But we've used up all that tasty, easy to get stuff and all that's left is the flavorless, hard to get stuff. And eventually the only thing that'll be left is the stuff that isn't worth the effort, because it'll take more energy to get it than what comes out."

[mos6507]

I think everyone owes Rob Hopkins an apology for bashing him in the other thread. Whether you think the transition model will work or not, it is mobilizing people in a way that is getting unprecedented peak oil press coverage.

[shortonsense]

The article is based on the Transition model and references Heinberg's the End of Suburbia.

You think someone should tell Kunstler that Heinberg has now stolen authorship to his book? You kill me PStarr....maybe next you'll assign Mein Kampf to Mao Zedong with all the "expertness" annointed upon you by this website?

[deMolay]

If you drop in on the UK Doomer blogs etc. The Transition idea is making a fair bit of headway. Or seems to be from here. Maybe some of the folk of the EU could comment. I mean they are actually getting concessions from towns and local Gubmints to experiment with sustainable housing etc.

[shortonoil]

shortonsense said:

You think someone should tell Kunstler that Heinberg has now stolen authorship to his book? You kill me PStarr....maybe next you'll assign Mein Kampf to Mao Zedong with all the "expertness" annointed upon you by this website?

You are definitely short on something........ pstarr was referring the the 2004 movie “The End of Suburbia” which was produced by Gregory Greene. There is no doubt that both Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” and Heiberg’s “The Party is Over” contributed to the movies development.

If you could get a less “short” on something, you may be able to contribute something of value to this forum. In the meantime why don’t you limit your posts to quotes like “shortonsense is still here”. That way we will all continue to know how royally f****d the planet really is!



AvailableEnergy

[Aaron]

I would advise any speaker on the subject to keep to simple concepts,

I find likening oil extraction to a giant SlurpeeTM to be occasionally helpful in getting the idea across. "You know how when you get a SlurpeeTM, the first half is really tasty and it's really easy to get a big ol' mouthful with almost no effort? Then when you get down to the second half, it's sorta flavorless and and you really have to work at it, maybe even tossing the cup in the trash even tho' there's still some left, because it's more work than it's worth? Peak oil is kinda like that. Yea, there's still oil in the ground. But we've used up all that tasty, easy to get stuff and all that's left is the flavorless, hard to get stuff. And eventually the only thing that'll be left is the stuff that isn't worth the effort, because it'll take more energy to get it than what comes out."

Win

[shortonsense]

If you could get a less “short” on something, you may be able to contribute something of value to this forum. In the meantime why don’t you limit your posts to quotes like “shortonsense is still here”. That way we will all continue to know how royally f****d the planet really is!

I would think the peak oil having happened, and caused sub $2.00/gal prices in the US would by itself be quite a good indicator as to how accurate the projections of a post peak world have been to date?

[shortonoil]

shortonsense said:

I would think the peak oil having happened, and caused sub $2.00/gal prices in the US would by itself be quite a good indicator as to how accurate the projections of a post peak world have been to date?

When I get back into the mood of trying to explain differential calculus to mealy worms, and the flaws of neo-classical Keynesian economics to horse radishes, I’ll try to explain the $2.00/gal gasoline price phenomena to those who are little “short” on something.

In the meantime try a little of this Available Energy. If you can come up with one intelligent question, I may attempt to answer it.

pstarr said:

I see it hear at PO all the time. There are many mantras here, that on close inspection, are only Solutions in Isolation (Montequest favorite put down )
--Permaculture without complete nutrient cycling is just fancy gardening.
--EV's without an appropriate electric infrastructure and traffic segmentation (to separate large longhaul vehicles from HyperCars) are just dangerous short-range toys.
--Mass transportation without Eminent Domain is impossible. The Hydrogen/Solar Economy is nonsense without a single Government Mandated, Manhattan-Size effort. (The private sector just does not have power and mandate to put all the pieces in place at one time. Without a simultaneous effort the individual components can not make a profit).
--The Law Receding Horizons (declining eroei chasing cheaper petroleum) means that alternative fuels will never compete with oil
--Biofuels are impossible without another planet's worth of topsoil.

Until folks understand the big picture -- THE BURBS ARE FARKED -- and that we need to go rural to be near food production, or urban to reduce transport costs (or better yet a combination of both that only a real electric mass transport system can provide) we will be chasing a fossil fuel chimera.

To summarize, people will not understand (for lack of ability, lack of common sense or vested illusions) that we are now heading, dead on, into the end of the fossil fuel age. The notion of making the needed change to a low foot print energy world is so distasteful to them that they would rather run over a cliff with the rest of the flock, than to begin a transition to insure their own survival.

If any other species acted in such a bizarre fashion, we would definitely declare them to be insane!

[shortonsense]

When you've been here long enough to say undulating plateau with understanding and conviction then folks will listen to you.

You wouldn't happen to have a link to Hubberts paper on "Nuclear Energy and the Undulating Plateau", would you?

Or is that considered an improvement on his method by perhaps the same people who predicted global peak oil in 1990?