[Pops]

I said way back that my reason for coming here was to talk about what I'm doing and listen to what others are doing to prepare for peak. 10 years ago I thought peak would be about now and we'd see a plateau for some years hence with rising prices that would beat us up economically, limiting our ability to prepare, until eventually the plateau would tilt downward and preparation would turn to desperation.

Needless to say I was wrong, 10 years ago was the beginning of the plateau, at least if you are talking about what then was called "oil" as opposed to "liquids". Indications are the plateau tilts downward not in "some years" by relatively soon, even the EIA says LTO peaks in a couple of years, and LTO is the only thing increasing.

We've already experienced lots of the trauma that I thought would accompany the onset of the peak or the "undulating plateau" - which is merely the peak up close. Credit and real estate were the first things I thought would pop and then inflation of commodities and the necessities like food along with the disinflation of assets as the economy slowed. We've had all that and only are seeing some signs of economic life after injections of trillions of dollars of liquidity by central banks around the world have offset the great weight of asset decline. The good news shouted from every blog is a leveraged stock market bubble even larger than '07 -in fact the largest ever, means the good times are here again.


My solution to the problems I saw 10 years ago was to get out from under the mortgage, get out of debt and get as small and out of the mainstream economy as was possible for me and my skill set. I did all that, and several others here did the same. It worked fine, I would surely have gone tits-up and lost what I had if I'd not cashed out. That's what I talked about here for many years. For a long time that part of PO.com - the Planning for the Future forum, was really the most active part of the site.

But no more. Aside from a few persistent individuals who post their made/bought/learned-s, its all crickets. Looking around, there isn't really much I can say goes on here that adds to the discussion and nothing at all that inspires action. It's Global Warming "uh-uh is not!" and "uh-huh is too!", and peeing through the fog of bullshit thrown up by [whatever nickname the troll of the week is using] and of course the ever present political disinformation recycling. By far the biggest "solutions" put forth are in the Energy Technology Forum where the Green Unicorns frolic - crickets again in the Conservation and Efficiency forum.

I'm not pointing fingers, I'm as guilty as everyone else. But I look at Resilience.org and at least they have an angle; degrowth, sharing, steady state, localization. We on the other hand just keep up the jousting with whatever troll/shill happens by and sets out to disagree with every premise made and every concern voiced and we dutifully repeat the same old slogans.

Now, lest you think I'm getting ready to throw up my hands and throw in the towel - no such luck! I want to hear what PO.com should be doing besides sitting here in mom's basement tapping out manifestos and rehashing the old arguments. What great, world changing idea should we pursue? To what purpose should we put our Google rank?

We are number 2 for "peak oil" on whatever search engine you try, right after Wiki, that is a pretty valuable position to have, what should we do with it?

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[Newfie]

But no more. Aside from a few persistent individuals who post their made/bought/learned-s, its all crickets. Looking around, there isn't really much I can say goes on here that adds to the discussion and nothing at all that inspires action

I think that's about right. I've kinda been beating a similar drum, using different words maybe, for a few weeks if not longer.

I keep asking "What is the actionable information? What are you going to do different?"

Some, it seems, understand the question but don't have a real good answer (neither do I.)

Some, however seem to be quite content with just clucking their tongues and demonizing TPTB, whoever they are.

I dunno Pops, sometimes I think we are where we are because there ARE NO ANSWERS. There is precious little we can do to save our sorry buts.

I have this argument with the Wife all the time.

She says: "Turn out the lights, get geothermal, insulate the walls, install solar." (BTW, we live in a 1887 brick center city row house. How the hell we install geothermal or solar is beyond me or insulate the walls is beyond me. And we've already switched to LED's.)

He says: "Screw that, heat costs too much, and we swelter without AC. Lets get on the boat and head South, Belize. Cool breezes. Only way to use less FF."

But of course, even if we do that what do we do with the house? Sell it? The energy bill will only go up. Rent it? OK, but again no change to energy bill. Burn it down? Well that will let carbon escape to the air and burn up FF's in rebuilding. So what do we do with our existing housing stock, which sucks from a energy point of view.

So we end up in a zero sum gain. It's damn hard to figure out exactly what to do.

We've got the bug out boat thing going. But that's a get outta town solution, not any kind of solution to the mess we are in. I've quit posting about it cause no one seems very interested in the project. Too foreign for them I suppose.

I'd love to hear some practical ideas. Not complaining, commenting.

[Ibon]

I am somewhat divided as to our purpose. If our purpose is to educate and convince and convert the public to peak oil awareness than I think we shouldn't change much. Resilience.org, the previous Oildrum, the Archdruidreport for example are all sites where the already converted go for deeper material whether it is energy or culture related. We are less purposeful and the feel of the site is that it has less of an agenda and more accessible to the common Joe or Jane wanting to know more about peakoil. In that sense we appeal more to the public not yet educated and converted. And that may well be our niche. And is valuable in that sense. It would be nice to hear anectodal comments from posters here confirming this as their experience. This site was by far the most accessible on the topic way back in 2005 when I started coming here. And it hasn't really changed that much.

On the other hand I am one of the first who have stated that words words words in this digital stream is getting tiring and seems to be getting redudant as we rehash the same themes. But this is also because the plateau is long and what else is there to do while waiting for game changing consequences?

I would add that we could be asking What Purpose Can We Have Once Consequences Start Exponentially Breaking Through Denial.

I sure hope this website is around when we see evidence of a cultural shift away from denial and more toward acceptance and solutions once consequences start to work their magic . That is when we perhaps will have more of a purpose as in the meantime we keep the dialogue open and running.

[Quinny]

I think the point is to get out of debt that is secured on anything you need.

[AndyA]

I haven't even seen the 'planning for the future' thread yet. I'll have a browse.
The trouble with peak oil is that it is like watching paint dry. Same with planning for the future, it's not like you can make a new change everyday, or even every week. Things take time. Even planning for the future is hard, when an accurate picture of the future remains elusive, and especially a timeline. So it's no surprise there are crickets.

I come to PO.com for a daily dose of doom and gloom, since TOD closed down and a few other sites went into low gear. PO.com purpose is to reinforce that PO is real, coming, and provide evidence of it. Or more generally that the stupidity, and short sightedness of society is taking us over a cliff on many fronts.

I don't mean doomer talk that is as much wishful thinking as the worst cornucopian claiming peak oil was in 2006 and we are on the downslope etc. I think it could be a bit more objective and rational then that.

To a large extent that's what PO.com does IMO.

[dinopello]

What good does debt-free do. So you don't "owe" money? Big deal. At this point it makes sense to buy stuff on credit, go broke and head for bankruptcy. The hard decision is the credit-run; do you buy bugout stuff, last-hurrah fun stuff, or liquor, which combines the best of of both worlds.

Glad to see the contrary view on credit. I don't have the guts to do it, but it may be a good play. Especially if there is a lot of inflation. I actually have more cash than I know what to do with so the question of what to do with it is germain to me.

As far as this site - most everyone including me focus on individual preps and actions. That stuff is relatively a piece of cake and instantaneous compared to building consensus and improving the resilience of your community. There is lots to talk about there, but mostly with your neighbors. More to the point - it is where the action is taken rather than just words, words words. But words are needed to arrive at agreement with your neighbors. Its hard, frustrating, slow and you never get your way. But anyway, there is I think room for more of that here - including local political strategies, examples of what real, practical places are doing etc. Its just that the topics and results are local, little, tiny femto-baby steps when talking about consensus building and its more fun to talk about how screwed everyone is going to be.

We spent years here in my town debating, studying what the standard lane width should be on our streets and how big and how many parking spots should be required. And, that is just to put the principles down in a document. Only now are we getting around to implementing policy These things have a profound impact on our energy useage because it affects peoples choices of transport mode, and the cost of building walkable places etc. But only over a number of decades time scale. Not too exciting.

[Graeme]

Of course PO should have a purpose. We're still on the peak and we haven't come off it yet. That is expected next decade so the planning forum is still very important. Updates on timing and decline rate will serve to educate. The other major allied impact we are facing is global warming so we will have to prepare for that too. Discussion on developments will again educate and allow all to prepare. I've tried lobbying politicians; they won't listen so I am reluctant to try again. No harm in them looking at this site though. There are a myriad of other allied social and economic issues that affect all of us so they can be discussed in the appropriate forums. I know Pops doesn't have much faith in renewables but I think they will have a major impact in displacing ff during the next decade.

[ROCKMAN]

Pops : "10 years ago I thought peak would be about now and we'd see a plateau for some years hence with rising prices that would beat us up economically, limiting our ability to prepare, until eventually the plateau would tilt downward and preparation would turn to desperation."

I wouldn't necessarily say you were wrong. The US consumer is paying 3X as much for oil today and even though we are importing fewer bbls than 10 years we are sending more of our currency to foreign countries for our oil imports then we were then. Granted it wasn't the sole causes of the recent great recession but it's difficult to not give some credit to oil prices. I think a lot of folks are feeling rather best up economically. And not just in the PIIGS...still more than a few folks in the US don't feel "recovered". "...limiting our ability to prepare": Americans are spending $1 BILLION PER DAY more for oil then we would be paying if we still had those prices of ten years ago. How much insulation could we afford for ONE THIRD OF A $TRILLION PER YEAR? How many old mpg vehicles could be replaced with some of that money? How many homes could be converted from fuel oil heating to NG with some of that money? How many utilities could upgrade the GHG sequestering capabilities with the monies they could save by paying $30/bbl? And along those same lines how much less would Americans be paying for NG if it were competing with much cheaper oil? And then add to that the $TRILLIONS we've added to our national debt by our oil-driven efforts in the Middle East. And how do we monetize the tens of thousands of lives lost in those efforts?

No...we are not living in Mad Max world. But I doubt that's what you were predicting 10 years ago. No...the production plateau is alive and well with no sign of an imminent cliff. And all thanks to the global oil consumers transferring almost $2 TRILLION PER YEAR MORE than they would if we still had $30/bbl oil. Put another way: if oil prices hadn't boomed and we saw global production decline but the world would be paying just 1/3 of the current price for it's oil how bad would life really be bad today? Especially compared to the world before us now? I would offer with that increase in cost the world isn't in a very good position to afford even desperate preparation. We're more like a deer frozen in the headlights unable to escape the coming calamity.

If that was your vision 10 years ago I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit for understanding the situation. No...global oil production hasn't hit it's numerical peak yet. So life is good? Well, yeah, for the Rockman and the rest of the oil patch. How's life treating the rest of y'all in this pre-PO world? Probably not walking around with big smiles on your face like some goofy petroleum geologist's. LOL.

[americandream]

PO.com is a portal to the world. Alternative media for want of a better description. Ideally it should serve to inform on options. The problem however is that one mans options is another mans problems. So how we formulate a common stance is beyond me.

If however, the site was dedicated to one world view imposed on it by a board or owner, that would be a different matter. As things stand, the best we can do I suspect is cobble along and hope that the the jumbled flow of information can be penetrated enough for the real remedy to shine through. But then again, that assumes that our readers come in one size which they don't.

Hard one frankly and probably in the too hard basket I would suggest. The one common theme bar the trollish arguments is that we cannot go on as we are and banging that home in our own various ways is probably the best we can do.

[suzette williams]

I came to this site after TOD closed down because i thought it had the most informative/interesting articles and was the easiest to navigate. I read almost everything but rarely post and i enjoy the comments as much as the posts, sometimes i just skip right to the comments if the article is about something I'm already aware of. Also i would like to get the biggest picture possible so I'd like to see the broadest range of topics covered, even philosophical discussions are welcomed. Anyway i don't watch tv news but get all my information online at the library, so the blogs i follow are really a lifeline to keep up with current events. It takes a while to attract a large following so please don't get discouraged and keep up the good work, it's very appreciated!

[SeaGypsy]

What happens here is pretty organic, natural rather than contrived. Just as things got much busier and more intense here in '08-'09- they will again WHEN TSHTF- not if, but when. Patience Grasshopper, Patience...

[Loki]

For a long time that part of PO.com - the Planning for the Future forum, was really the most active part of the site.

But no more. Aside from a few persistent individuals who post their made/bought/learned-s, its all crickets.

That's been the biggest change in the site, for the worse I'd say, but it is what it is. Much of the activity in the Planning forum was driven by folks who thought the crash would be fast and hard. It hasn't turned out that way. It's a long, slow slog down. Took a lot of the steam out of the Planning forum (that and the behind the scenes drama). The proliferation of dedicated prepper and DIY sites has also probably siphoned away interest.

Trying to give PO.com a “purpose” would be like herding cats. We can't even agree on what the definition of peak oil is. We are “exploring hydrocarbon depletion” in our own special mosh pit kind of way. I believe Aaron called it “full contact internet.”

It's a unique place, nowhere else can I find the kind of information about energy and economics that I get here. I'd be happy just to see more posters and fewer lurkers. I also wonder where folks spend most of their time on this site. There's a front page that I usually forget exists, on the rare occasion I look at it there's info and posters there that aren't reflected in the forum. A bit of bifurcation?

[sparky]

.
PeakOil.com prime function is to inform and debate the future of crude oil supply and demand
by extension , our modern world energy requirements
by derivation , the consequences of past choices
and pretty much anything else too

Pops , I don't know about a plateau , I always though there would be a plateau but now i'm having some doubts
depletion is raging , the new provinces are either in troubled places or hard to scale up
Kashagan , a huge field in Kazakstan is having very serious technical problem
Canada tar sands is not going to increase production to 10 millions a day
same for tight oil ,Arctic development is going nowhere outside technical studies

if one take money as an energy return ( my EROEI ) or bang for the buck
it take more and more money to get the same amount or less
The public always assume the techs nerds will solve everything ,
maybe, yes , they do work miracles , but at a cost .... time , money and production
however the laws of physics are god-like , not to be trifled with
and we are running out of miracles

[ralfy]

Most human beings have actually been living in dire conditions for decades. Around 60 pct earn only around 2 to 3 dollars daily. In which case, the effects of peak oil have been taking place for some time.

The problem is that the global middle class is growing, and it is estimated that it will reach almost half of the world's population in a few years. That will mean significant demand not just for oil but for all sorts of resources, from sea food to fresh water.

At the same time, too much credit has been created by the financial elite, with the middle class playing with the crumbs, such that all of that credit (for unregulated derivatives, a notional value of at least a quadrillion dollars) has to be backed by increasing production and consumption of goods (demand guaranteed in any event by a growing global middle class), in turn requiring meeting increasing demand equivalent to one Saudi Arabia every seven years.

[Plantagenet]

What happens here is pretty organic, natural rather than contrived. Just as things got much busier and more intense here in '08-'09- they will again WHEN TSHTF- not if, but when. Patience Grasshopper, Patience...

SeaGypsy is exactly right. The open unstructured nature of the discussions that go on here is the site's greatest strength.

We don't know what the future will bring us. We don't know exactly how PO will play out Trying to channel conversations here into a narrow pre-set range of topics risks missing important developments that we can't foresee now

[Beery1]

Surely the goal was, is and should be education. I came here however many years ago to find out more about peak oil, and that's what I'm still doing. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's nothing wrong with debating the issue - debate is healthy.

The problem with getting away from education and debate, and focusing on something else is that if we do that, we have to choose what it is, and it's by no means clear what will work as a solution to the problem.

[Tanada]

I think Peak Oil dot com is serving its purpose admirably well, presenting the wisdom of crowds to the world via the internet. In this place there are a great many different opinions, each with their own piece of "the truth" and as all those pieces it shuffled around and debated some items reach a kind of consensus. The vast majority end up agreeing on certain things, for example Peak Oil is a geological certainty because the planet has finite resources. Pollution is bad. Economics can be confusing but certain strong currents emerge, for example spending money you don't have is probably not the best strategy for a long term future, and business as usual has to change.

On other topics like Nuclear power you have the polar opposites being represented, some believe it is a great option, others tremble at the word radiation no matter what the context of the discussion is. Same thing with Climate Change, some or convinced it is all natural variation and others believe it is mostly human/pollution induced. A few even still insist the climate hasn't changed much if at all.

The worse the world oil situation becomes the more traffic this site receives and the more solid the accumulated wisdom of the crowd becomes. In our early days a large number of the participants were not even sure Peak Oil was a real possibility in their lifetimes. Some were convinced that The Government would find The Solution and even when we hit peak it would be a non event problem just like Y2K. The crowd can be swayed by current events or political opinion, but in general they come around to opinions based on facts if you can separate the propaganda from the discussions.

I think we are doing just fine and fulfilling our purpose, or I wouldn't be here.

[Simon_R]

Paradoxically I only ever look at pages on the front page (I surf lunchtime for about 2 minutes)

I firmly believe that our economic situation is tied to Peak Oil, so I try to use the information here to predict the next slide down the peak oil slope (who is for 2016-2018)

I think that credit is a tool, and if used correctly can aid, eg. We are planning to get a loan to cover a Solar off grid installation in the next couple of years, the interest will equal our payments. We understand this is a temporary exposure.

The diversity of the site, is in my opinion its strength