[DesuMaiden]

Collapse by Michael Ruppert?

My opinion is that the movie is informative yet very flawed at the same time.

The central and main theme of the movie is that we live on a finite planet of finite resources, so that infinite growth in economy, population and etc is not possible. That is correct.

But the film makes overgeneralized and numerous false statements. Here's a list of such statements:

Statement 1: All modern agriculture is entirely dependent on fossil fuels.

Rebuttal: Only the agriculture of certain industrial nations (like Canada and USA) are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Even then, much of those nations' food is grown without much fossil fuel input.

Outside of a few industrial nations, most of the world's food production relies little on fossil fuels. For example, subsistence farmers in Africa, Asia and much of Latin America don't use oil-powered machinery to produce food.

However, Mike is right about one thing: our food system is heavily globalized. We transport and trade food from across the world. For example, people in Canada often eat food grown and produced in China, which is half-way across the world.

Statement 2: Global human population started to rapidly grow in the past two centuries (especially since 1900 AD) primarily due to fossil fuel usage.

Rebuttal: Correlation doesn't equal causation. While fossil fuel usage has greatly increased during the past two centuries, it did not cause the great growth in population around the world of humans. This phenomenon was caused largely due to improvements in health care that reduced infant mortality.

By reducing infant mortality and keeping birth rates high, you result in rapid population growth because now there was way more people being born than people dying.

Also, improved agriculture was only partially due to fossil fuels. The Green Revolution allowed for rapid population growth, but it was not primarily due to fossil fuels, contrary to what many doomers want you to believe.

I do believe is very likely for peak oil and resource depletion to cause industrial civilization to decline over the remaining decades of the 21st century (like the film suggests), but I doubt industrial civilization will suddenly collapse due to oil/fossil fuel/resource shortages.

Most likely, what will happen is globalization aka global/international trade will gradually decline over the next couple of decades, until you see very few, if any, products from far-away countries in stores across the world. Let's say you live in Canada. Then in the next couple of decades, expect fewer and fewer products from China and other far-away countries in stores. That's because when oil becomes more expensive and scarcer, it becomes more difficult to transport products across the world.

Overall, Collapse was an interesting film, but it has some serious factual errors. It has a correct premise (that being that peak oil and depletion of other resources will likely lead to the decline of industrial civilization), but it grossly exaggerates the outcome of what might happen in the future.

The film suggests that peak oil can be mitigated in a productive manner i.e. how Cuba managed to feed its population after having its supply of petroleum cut off from the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Also, the film correctly suggests that we live in an infinite growth paradigm where the economy and population must constantly grow and consume ever-more resources and energy. That, of course, being unsustainable, and akin to a pyramid scheme.

But the factual errors in the film need to be addressed because the film takes an overly one-sided perspective (then again, the entire film is coming from only the perspective of one person, that is Michael Ruppert).

Despite the film's flaws, I think it was overall a good film because it enlightened me to the fact that industrial civilization may one day end. The film made me realize the fact that we live under the religion of progress. Virtually everyone in society thinks that technological progress aka "progress" will solve all of our problems, and eventually we will use technology to transcend our mortal origins to become gods.

Most people think we will eventually end up living like people in Star Wars with intergalatical, space-travel and other amazing sci-fi technology like we see in many futuristic, scientific fiction movies and books. But that might not be the case. What might happen, according to this film, is that due to the depletion and exhaustion of certain resources, human society might up simplifying and becoming more primitive in the future.

People in the future might end up living more like people did during the Middle Ages or Roman Empire's time without modern technology. While this is difficult for most people to contemplate, let alone accept, this is a likely possibility. We will likely have to return to a mostly local food production and production of other products in the future due to the lack of energy to transport products from around the world.

The future might end up more like the past. That's Collapse is suggesting as a likely probability. That's all I have to say. Have a good day.

[onlooker]

Yes I watched Collapse and am familiar with Mike. Good critique Desu. I do though have one qualm with your assessment. That is that fossil fuels are not instrumental or key to this humongous population we now have. While I agree that medical care improvements were also crucial, one cannot discount the role of fossil fuels and the Haber-Baush nitrogen fixing process that allowed vast new stores of nitrogen to be released that fueled plant growth in the form of synthetic fertilizers. As for the ability of peak oil to lay low civilization that cannot be discounted because of the importance of Fossil fuel derived liquid fuel to run most forms of transportation. Transport of food and other necessities like medicines is a key component to allowing our massive population numbers to persist. Also, all heavy machinery utilizes fossil fueled derived fuel. We all know the importance of heavy machinery to mining, drilling and extracting. So overall a good film but mostly for beginners to get their feet wet, the better apprised people would be bored by it I presume.

[KaiserJeep]

Desu,

You are out of date on one thing. Subsistence farming produces an insignificant portion of food on Africa, Asia, Indonesia, etc. The new population surge in those countries which started in the second half of the 20th century was all enabled by petroleum fuelled mechanized agriculture.

The movie star N!xau, a San (bushman) from the Kalahari desert (starred in the five "The Gods Must Be Crazy" films) used his earnings to buy a plantation and a tractor and grew food, which made him wealthy in his country Namibia. Tractor cultivation and electric powered water pumps replaced rice paddies in China. Indonesia burned jungle and replaced it with industrialized, large scale farms.

This newly multiplied food supply plus medical technology from the first world moved virtually every third world country into the 20th century. So on and so on, and then there were 7+ billion humans.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there simply is no way that we can feed half the present population - not even a quarter - without cheap fuels like gasoline, diesel, and liquified petroleum gas. Not to mention that fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides are virtually all petrochemicals.

Nor should you become overly invested in Doom. Michael Ruppert repeatedly and confidently predicted collapse, and it never happened. He was a true believer who ended up being marginalized every much as those late night preachers you see on cable, confidently predicting the second coming, the arrival of aliens on a comet, and similar things. Then when Doom never arrived, he took his own life.

In actual fact, we are in the midst of collapse already, it began in the late 1960s. It will continue for another century or so. There never will be a time when you have to fight off hordes of cannibal zombies on the way to the supermarket. Life will slowly get tougher and less affordable - until if you can afford to live in a discarded cargo container and have enough food to keep you healthy, you will be a success.

Don't expect drama, only the slow rachetting up of quiet desperation. The wholesale deaths of those who cannot or will not work, oldsters who are not surrounded by loving descendants, and an increasingly obvious realization that the elite class controls the government that is taking from us all and returning too few services.

Complete your education by reading Kunstler's work:
https://ecoartscotland.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/kunstler-the_long_emergency1.pdf

[americandream]

The guy had passion and a strong belief in his understanding of the issues. It is a great shame he passed as he did and never took that knowledge to its proper resolution. With his energy he would have been a very powerful force for change. I was quite sad at his passing.

[SeaGypsy]

Kunstler- correct, Ruppert- sad lunatic, Desu- raving L plate doomer.

Aside from what Onlooker said, there is no shortage of NG- the most important FF for modern agriculture, it will be around at least 100+ years. Shipping is by far the cheapest form of transport. Massive modern agriculture is move threatened by climate instability than anything else. Shipping is not threatened at all for the next 100 years. What is threatened most is the overall requirement for economic growth.

[ennui2]

Mike just passed along information that he learned from more authoritative sources. In that way it's not unlike a typical rant that you read on peakoil.com. As such, you're getting the information one step removed and without being held up to rebuttal.

I know Roger Ebert liked the film, but Roger wasn't as informed about doom the way a typical doomer is. To someone like me, hearing Mike run through the usual doomer bullet-points doesn't really do anything for me. It then becomes more of a human interest story, the story about Mike the doomer and what it means to be a doomer, which ultimately led to him swirling down the drain of depression and suicide a few years later.

[ralfy]

One can probably look at world population

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

in light of the Green Revolution

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

as well as increased globalization after WW2, which may have included mechanized agriculture, manufacturing, technologies and improvements in health (vitamins, vaccines, sanitation infrastructure), etc.

[onlooker]

Yes but Natural Gas cannot be translated at least not easily to land vehicles as fuel including heavy machinery like tractors and such. Also, the mining for Nat. Gas requires Oil. So while peak oil can be somewhat managed to forestall a total collapse it will as Sea alluded to stop economic growth in its tracks as even now it is beginning to have pernicious consequences.

[KaiserJeep]

Yes but Natural Gas cannot be translated at least not easily to land vehicles as fuel including heavy machinery like tractors and such. Also, the mining for Nat. Gas requires Oil. So while peak oil can be somewhat managed to forestall a total collapse it will as Sea alluded to stop economic growth in its tracks as even now it is beginning to have pernicious consequences.

Wherever did you get those ideas? LPG-powered tractors have been popular in the USA since WW2, and that fuel is an option on most domestic tractors, combines, etc.


Natural gas is also burned in very large diesel engines in land-based power plants and large ocean-going ships. Not to mention most large cities have fleets of LPG buses, as do large fleets of trucks and buses used by private businesses. (As a vehicle fuel, LPG is about 40% cheaper because it has no excise taxes, cap & trade taxes, etc.)


Next time you are on the highway, notice how many tractor-trailer rigs have the silver stainless steel LPG tanks:


This is the ford lineup, but you can also buy from GM and Chrysler:

[onlooker]

Okay thanks for that informative correction to my assertion. However, considering how private automobiles are constructed we would have to retrofit almost our entire private automobile fleet to be able to use Nat. Gas as a transport fuel. Also, from the link I will post below are these drawbacks among others
-Concentrated sources require long distance transmission and transportation
-Energy penalties at every stage of production and distribution
-Requires extensive pipelines to transport over land
Wonder if anyone can answer the question of whether Nat. Gas can be used to power the hardcore drilling that is now going on for deep reserves as well as ocean deposits?

[SeaGypsy]

KJ is being disingenuous. LPG is not NG, having very different compression dynamics & safety issues. We have been around this before & he seems to have forgotten. LPG is common in transport & is made in conjunction with crude oil extraction, not NG.

[onlooker]

Haha, I think we all are pretty smart guys but we are bound to get some facts wrong or distorted especially considering that not all information on the Net is reliable. Thanks Sea for that correction of a correction. I have no problem admitting I am wrong either. Besides the only one I think is a bonafide genius on this site is our esteemed moderator Tanada. I would never ever dispute facts with him. In fact I have reconsidered my opinions on nuclear precisely because Tanada points out that nuclear is not as bad as some would have us believe. It is just that it is quite expensive. Anyway, carry on. here is link: http://www.triplepundit.com/special/ene ... pros-cons/

[SeaGypsy]

Even Tanada gets corrected once in a blue moon. What makes you think T is a he BTW?

[onlooker]

Oh are you saying T is a she? Oh my apologies to T, if she happens to peruse this thread.

[DesuMaiden]

Desu,

You are out of date on one thing. Subsistence farming produces an insignificant portion of food on Africa, Asia, Indonesia, etc. The new population surge in those countries which started in the second half of the 20th century was all enabled by petroleum fuelled mechanized agriculture.

The movie star N!xau, a San (bushman) from the Kalahari desert (starred in the five "The Gods Must Be Crazy" films) used his earnings to buy a plantation and a tractor and grew food, which made him wealthy in his country Namibia. Tractor cultivation and electric powered water pumps replaced rice paddies in China. Indonesia burned jungle and replaced it with industrialized, large scale farms.

This newly multiplied food supply plus medical technology from the first world moved virtually every third world country into the 20th century. So on and so on, and then there were 7+ billion humans.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there simply is no way that we can feed half the present population - not even a quarter - without cheap fuels like gasoline, diesel, and liquified petroleum gas. Not to mention that fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides are virtually all petrochemicals.

Nor should you become overly invested in Doom. Michael Ruppert repeatedly and confidently predicted collapse, and it never happened. He was a true believer who ended up being marginalized every much as those late night preachers you see on cable, confidently predicting the second coming, the arrival of aliens on a comet, and similar things. Then when Doom never arrived, he took his own life.

In actual fact, we are in the midst of collapse already, it began in the late 1960s. It will continue for another century or so. There never will be a time when you have to fight off hordes of cannibal zombies on the way to the supermarket. Life will slowly get tougher and less affordable - until if you can afford to live in a discarded cargo container and have enough food to keep you healthy, you will be a success.

Don't expect drama, only the slow rachetting up of quiet desperation. The wholesale deaths of those who cannot or will not work, oldsters who are not surrounded by loving descendants, and an increasingly obvious realization that the elite class controls the government that is taking from us all and returning too few services.

Complete your education by reading Kunstler's work:
https://ecoartscotland.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/kunstler-the_long_emergency1.pdf

This is a good Youtube video on how our slow descent will be like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WG0CBGWhSc

Like you mentioned, it is highly unlikely industrial civilization will quickly collapse. More likely, industrial civilization will slowly decline until we end up becoming an agrarian civilization again.

[KaiserJeep]

Everybody, I do understand the differences between LPG and CNG. The extra embodied energy is to force the phase change from gas to liquid. The LPG is kept in liquid form by moderate pressure, and is fairly safe. CNG does not have the embodied phase change energy, but uses higher pressures.

SG, I also remember the discussion of methane, butane, etc. But we started with "natural gas" and the LPG/CNG distinctions are unnecessary at this level of discussion - and Ford offers both fuel options anyway.

[Subjectivist]

KJ is being disingenuous. LPG is not NG, having very different compression dynamics & safety issues. We have been around this before & he seems to have forgotten. LPG is common in transport & is made in conjunction with crude oil extraction, not NG.

While it is true KJ used references to LPG aka Propane there are also a number of farmers who do use CNG aka compressed Natural Gas.

http://www.farmshow.com/view_articles.php?a_id=1399

“We have natural gas fumigation systems on a pickup and on our Deere 2-WD and 4-WD diesel tractors, and they work great,” says Warsaw, Ohio, farmer Ed Jones. “Burning natural gas with diesel boosts horsepower by about 30 percent, helps the engines run cleaner and saves us money on fuel.” They have natural gas wells on their farm so the product is readily available. They capture gas from the line with a compressor that fills tanks on the equipment.

Jones says his 4-WD tractor has two storage tanks that are equivalent to about 25 gal. of diesel fuel. The 2-WD tractor has four tanks mounted on the front of the tractor frame. His truck uses a CNG tank that he hauls in the box. In the fall, he uses that same system on his Deere 7720 Combine.

All of his systems feed natural gas from the canisters through a valve and regulator into the air intake between the air cleaner and the turbocharger. The tractors and truck start on diesel fuel and switch to CNG after the engine warms up to about 140 degrees. Vacuum created in the air pipe as the engine load increases pulls in the CNG. Jones says it’s an economical and trouble-free system.

“In the tractors we usually can run a full day on one fill, depending on the work we’re doing. I can really notice the difference in power output on the 4-WD and in the combine when we’re using CNG,” Jones says.
He’s also saving fuel with a CNG system on a 4640. “When that tractor runs at wide open throttle it uses a lot of fuel,” Jones says, “even though it’s not pulling a full load. We switch it over to CNG for baling and spraying and save a lot on fuel costs.”

Jones figures his cost for CNG is only about 50 to 60 cents a gallon because they’re compressing gas from their own wells. If we had to buy it from a station it would be considerably more, but still economical,” Jones says.

His 2005 Dodge pickup with a Cummins diesel engine also runs on CNG and Jones is pleased with the results. “I took it on a road trip to Indianapolis and got 54 miles per gallon. I think it’s safe to say we’re doubling our fuel economy and getting 30 percent more horsepower,” Jones says.

A neighbor who hauls grain and lime for Jones is using a CNG system on his diesel semi-tractor and getting 10 to 14 mpg compared to 6.5 to 7 mpg with straight diesel. “We were concerned about engine heat when we first installed these systems,” Jones said, “so we put exhaust temperature gauges on to make sure everything was okay. We compared the temperature with plain diesel and with CNG pulling the same implement. The engine temperature was actually cooler running on CNG.”

Jones cautions anyone running a CNG system not to overload the engine. “With the extra power it puts out it might be possible to overload the cooling system, so a person shouldn’t get greedy with that power,” he says.

[SeaGypsy]

Oh are you saying T is a she? Oh my apologies to T, if she happens to peruse this thread.

No, I'm suggesting the presumption may be incorrect & a male default is an out of date one.

[ralfy]

In light of collapse, one might also consider limits to growth:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... g-collapse

and complexity:

http://fleeingvesuvius.org/2011/10/08/o ... d-economy/

[AdamB]

Collapse by Michael Ruppert?

My opinion is that the movie is informative yet very flawed at the same time.

Much like the man it would seem.