Worried about peak oil & catastrophic climate change

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I've been a member of peakoil.com since its inception in 2004. I am getting very worried about the consquences of peak oil, catastophic climate change, and the end of growth. As an Aspie I tend to have a different view point than NT's on these issues.

I want to post a few links for people unfamilar with the core issues, who are interested in an Aspie only peak oil awareness discussion. (I tried this approach at peakoil.com with only one other Aspie responding- I'm hoping for better here).

The Peak oil Aspie only post I made at Peakoil.com: http://peakoil.com/forums/aspie-only-pe ... 64451.html

A discussion of the ramifications of the runaway greenhouse effect: http://cid-yama.livejournal.com/371577.html

A discussion of looming financial collapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WBiTnBwSWc

A discussion of the end of growth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... QqDS9wGsxQ

These things affect us all. Tell me how you feel after reading and watching these presentations!

Thank you,

I'm somewhat familiar with these issues. I don't think there will be a "runaway" greenhouse effect. There will be one, but it won't get so crazy that Alaska is tropical. As for financial collapse, I'm constantly on the lookout for ways of making money that don't involve SSI. I've tried several, all have failed. Money will still be around, and things like food will still be priced in it, so getting enough is a priority. Pension payments in Russia bought a single loaf of bread by the mid 90s, although they still were paid. I'm not sure if the govt will just end disability checks, or let inflation erode them. Peak oil, well more people will be farmers, that's for sure. In fact, one of my goals in making money is to be able to buy a little land so I can raise food. I live in a city now, with my parents. My dad is disabled and my mom has a devil-may-care attitude about it all. End of growth, if it's anything like Japan it will just be a gradual decline, with more and more people opting out of a dying system. Let's hope it's not Argentina, where everybody is killing everybody else over silly stuff like $20 or the "rights" to rape a certain female (it happens).

I think about this stuff a lot. Not obsessively, but definitely more than normal people. Enough to annoy my NT spouse.

I've been right about a lot of stuff. Climate change, the housing bubble, the ensuing mess.

Enough to think I'm, if not totally right, at least on the inside track with some of the stuff that's coming.

All I can say is self-reliance and isolation. Self-reliance and isolation. Preferably not total isolation, but relative isolation-- distance from population centers, which is something I no longer have-- ideally with a group of mutually supporting, like-minded people.

Preparation. I'm not talking about "Doomsday Preppers," although it's entertaining and I have learned a few things watching it.

Your most important tool is your brain, your most important preparations are knowledge and skills.

Not dangerous until Deathwing come out of earth..no seriously i think that somes overexaggerates with theses issues but on an another hand can be very serious if we don't do anything

I used to be obsessed with peak oil, and then I realized something: peak oil is a reality only if we do not adapt to the ramifications it brings along. One only needs to look at past energy crises to see what I mean. The UK in the early 1700s was near collapse when it exhausted its fuel-wood supply, which is when they learned to mine cheaper and more efficient coal. Even today, Japan is discussing replacing some of its nuclear generation capacity with geothermal energy, a resource Japan has in abundance yet has not tapped.

So I'm really not worried about peak oil. Even if oil becomes more scarce, we'll probably see more drilling in deep-sea areas and the polar regions, as well as tar sands. It will be costly, but the cost will signal our society to switch to something else. I am convince we haven't switched to something else simply because of the massive sunk costs of an oil infrastructure, but we can and will change it if it becomes costly to maintain the status quo.

And run-away greenhouse gas emissions? We'll survive. Remember, we are causing climate change, so when can stop it as well.

unfortunately the all too common reaction for those who aren't in complete denial, is to imagine they can just dig in alone with some freeze dried food & a rack of gunpower... such is the state of the american imagination in the first quarter of the 21c.

on the contrary, we are going to have to rely on each other--especially our near neighbors--more than ever before. if we really want to get through this (& not just fantasize about it).

i would think a first step might be to research what the staple food crops in your area were, before the age of agribusiness & 1000-mile-long supply routes. of course, now it's not quite the same weather, & the soil has often been depleted. where does the water come from. what do you do if this crop has a bad year.

be smaller.

what starts as a neighborhood watch today, might in a generation become a self-reliant community. but we will have to swallow our arrogance, & learn to share, even with those who believe quite different things (& how little those differences will come to matter...). skills, not belongings, are the real gold.

the art of bricolage, the practice of salvage, the idea that nothing need be wasted: these will become second nature. so will walking to get somewhere. how badly do you need it?

but what a lot of fools & shouting we will have to endure, before people get off their butts & set to work!

But what do us Aspies do? Its not like were part of 'groups' like neighborhood watch, ect.

Isolated, fragmented, disenfranchised Aspies must have a different approach than 'relying on others'.

Suggestions??

It doesn't quite work like that. If we stopped ALL emissions today (something that would actually take many many years to do) damage would still continue for decades, because it's caused by an accumulation of gases in the atmosphere, which only very slowly dissipate. By the time it gets that we're seeing real harm, it will be far too late to do anything about. Kind of like a smoker not worrying about it until he actually gets lung cancer.

Also, London adapted to the loss of wood fuel, sure, but - London in the 1800s was pretty much Hell on earth for most of the inhabitants. Air pollution was so bad, on some days large numbers of people literally suffocated to death. Poverty and disease were extreme, and raw sewage mixed with the drinking water. In fact the sewage was so bad, that they were soaking the curtains in lime in Parliament and, several times, came close to evacuating the House of Commons and the law courts because of the gasses.

These sorts of shifts, yes, the species and even the civilization can survive. But that doesn't mean people won't be dropping like flies. Just remember that the groups targetted by the Holocaust are all still around, despite millions being industrially exterminated.

consider katrina--there were those who had experience and/or skills related to emergency survival, who were looked to for leadership in a crisis. you don't have to be able to handle a town, just a lifeboat. aspies are good at thinking ahead, & can collect information (google will be all many people know, by that time) in advance. above all, know your area.

isolation is the enemy of everyone. it is in no way a solution--though some would present it as such.

as for disenfranchisement: when the franchise ends, those who didn't rely on it so much, will feel less deprived of its rewards. think of the former soviet union, because i see a gradual decline rather than a sudden sort of collapse (per the cinematic version, & we all know the movies are a lie). people who are already living in reduced circumstances will notice it less than those who are being showered with abundance--though their redoubts & enclaves will continue to exist for awhile, no doubt, the fact is, it requires a whole organized society to maintain its ruling class. rather, i expect gangs & organized crime to provide some structure, where they are common (in the otherwise abandoned city core); it might make sense (though their past enmities would keep it from seeming very obvious) to merge with the remnant of existing services... but these things cannot be calculated now, at any rate. what we can mainly do is prepare emotionally, so as not to be overwhelmed by feelings of despair & hopelessness. a lot of people will just give up on living, when they're cut off from tv & internet stimulus...

i actually think it will come as a relief in the sense that these false values, of hierarchy, glamour, celebrity, & inequality based on charisma or inherited rank, will have to yield (hopefully nonviolently) to values more centered on pragmatism & problem solving (an area where being asperger's will be a distinct survival advantage)...

when the dinosaurs died, mammals came into their own.

Question: Where's worrying gonna get ya ?


You can't do anything to change it so don't buy into the
Chicken Little's. Just take the blue pill and everything will be fine.


If you take the red pill you have to go here..............

http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/
.[i]


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The media exists to make money, its a business.
They will run stories that are sensationalized to get more ratings,
What this means is that the stories are not always 100% truth.

An old saying in broadcasting is: "If it bleeds, it leads!"
Leading stories will always be sensationalized, its just the nature of the media business.
A story about a shooting will always take the lead over a human compassion story about local volunteers helping the homeless.

Basically, don't take the news media to be 100% truth.
The same story can also sound completely different when its angled to appeal to Democrats, or angled to appeal to Republicans...this is no accident. (just using those two as an example of opposing viewpoints)

There are many opposing views, and there's a lot of actual solid evidence that shoots down these scary climate change / peak oil stories.

I was really worried and worked up about it too, until I looked at other data that is just as valid.

For fun and perspective, here's a thought:
Peak oil says that petroleum and methane/natural gas are from decaying plant and animals.
However, Titan, which is one of the moons of Saturn is covered in a vast ocean of Methane. (its in liquid form due to how cold it is on Titan)

So you have to either accept that methane comes from animals, and therefore accept that Titan must have been teaming with animal and plant life at some point...which is unlikely.
Or, you accept the idea that oil and methane are formed deep inside the earth by natural geological processes over time.

Oil companies drill something like 7 miles into the earth to get to the oil...does it make sense there would be a vast dinosaur graveyard that far down? Why would dinosaurs all die in a massive pile? How come if you bury a dead thing in your backyard and check in a few years you don't see a tiny film of oil starting to form around the bones or something?

I could go on and on, but overall just try to look at this stuff critically, and without the emotional spin the news media adds to it. They are human and sometimes stuff gets on the news that's just plain wrong, or at the very least, heavily weighted to appeal to one particular political viewpoint.

(Thread moved from Adult Issues to PPR)

The greenhouse effect as a result of peak oil is silly in my opinion. Its a non-factor.


The real issue is the collapse of the intensive agriculture infrastructure and the global and beyond-local region distribution network.

Its not that oil is going to run out... its that it will become scarce enough that the price of it will reach a point where it is not cost effective.

When that happens the use of oil in our fertilizers and pesticides..which is *the* only reason our intensive agriculture can exist at its current output (there are no replacements for it that will be as cost effective and abundant) ... will mean the collapse of the food supply.

At the same time, the distribution networks that rely on oil for lubricant and fuel (aka, any mechanical device) grind to a halt. Food cannot get distributed as far as it used to anymore.

To put it simply, the food production goes down by three fourths of its current level and transportation capacity falls below half.

Mass starvation.

In less than 5 years world population could very well drop under 2 billion. That is the estimated carrying capacity of the earth using 'local' food production and distribution. And thats IF things are organized and set up for it.

Much will depend on how the world responds to peak oil I think.

I think we will see some positive things.

Cities should begin to thrive again. Urban ghettos now should be reclaimed as working families accept that they can't commute for 2 hours one way.

I think technology will advance. It will suddenly become profitable investments for railroads to invest in electrification, it will become profitable to investment in real green technology.

The market for diseil engines will surge as they can burn waste vegetable oil and other bio-fuels.

Nessisity is the mother of all invention. I think one of the reasons green tech hasn't jumped to life is due to the lack of a true demand for it.

peak oil as a power source is one thing, climate change another, climate change is a fact, man made or not(where in reality it will be both, the ffects are proven the scales are not)

the power source can be replaced and depending on what timescale you are thinking climate change is inevitable,(that is no excuse to accelerate it and we still need clean air to breate) there will be other ice ages and hot periods.
my major concern is the frozen methane hydrates on the bottom of the sea, it is fairly thermally unstable, with a wide range of melting temperatures, methane itself is 20 times as powerfull as Co2(which to some extent has been overplayed as the black sheep of the green house gasses, there are other non regulated yet just as bad sources)

there are at least 300 known methane vents under the ocean, we know some are from metling hydrate deposits, this is completely natural, we dont know what a rise in ocean temperature will mean since it is mostly of modern interest.



[url=link to gas hydrate article]http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html[/url]

ammounts in the oceans compared to other sources

"Peak oil" doesn't say that crude oil is formed from decaying (v. simplified) zooplankton, that's what science says.

The difference between methane/ethane and the hydrocarbons found in crude oil is significant. The molecular formula for methane (made easier to read by adding hyphens)is C-H4, ethane is C2-H6. Crude oil contains compounds from C5-H12 to C16-H34, as well as alkanes as long as C35-H72. There are also cycloalkanes, branched alkanes, and unsaturated hydrocarbons containing double bonds and/or benzene rings. Put simply, methane and ethane are much more likely to form physically or chemically than complex organic molecules, which need a biological process.

Also, just because conditions exist on Titan for methane and ethane to be produced, doesn't mean that those conditions exist or have existed here.