all I can think about is Peak Oil and how screwed we are

[momophile]

I think it's starting to effect my sleeping. I'm more worried about my 2 year old daughter than for me. I mean, when the shit hits the fan I'll have already lead a pretty good life, but my daughter will still be young.

I know there was a post here recently about the stress of global warming and peak oil and all. Someone tell me I'm not alone, please.

[madokie]

1. you are not alone in worrying

I'm turning grey for it;-)

[fenriswolf]

2. all I can think about

is how much worse off my son is going to be then I was. not financially but his quality of life because of political reason, environmental and economical.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. Me too. My boys are 17, 18 and 21

One joined the Nat. Guard to have a chance at College.
One sees no good future, what with Global Warming and the Economy and World Politics. It's hard to keep him motivated.
The youngest is more prepared. He loves working with his hands, and the thought of finding a sustaining rural community to join turns him on as much as it does me.

With such limited resources however, I'm having to settle on stocking up on necessities and knowledge, and searching for a place that would welcome a poor but hardworking family of above average intelligence.

[ret5hd]

5. Lake Wobegon?

[kestrel91316]

24. But they'd have to like lutefisk.........that is likely a deal-killer.

[momophile]

6. I've been looking at farms lately but

I don't even know which direction to go. I guess somewhere south but not where it might flood. Warm but not arid. Another country?

I remember people talking about Oregon but it's awfully pricey.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

8. I'm in Oregon, and looking at definitely staying here in the NorthWest.

The models are predicting that we will get drier and colder, but we will have less water problems than the rest of the US. Growing up on a farm in Colorado will finally come in handy, as the weather will be closer to what I grew up with.
However, it may come to sneaking over the Canadian border, living in the woods and learning to add "ay" to my speech patterns. :scared:

[dkf]

4. Me too.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Lots of folks think we are in a bus being driven off a cliff.

I'm one of them. It doesn't look good.

[BadgerKid]

10. Not enough of them are in Washington. n/t

[TheWraith]

9. Relax, and don't worry about it too much.

The reality is never as bad as the fearmongers make it out to be. And make no mistake, the "peak oil" issue attracts as many fearmongers as anything else. Some people, for perverse reasons of their own, enjoy thinking that the end of the world is imminent.

There have been people insisting that the oil was about to run out ever since the early 1970s. It still hasn't happened, and it WON'T happen, because the reserves are considerably larger than paranoia would make them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't switch over to better energy sources, but it does mean that we shouldn't be anticipating the fall of civilization like it's going to happen next Tuesday. You might as well worry yourself sick over the gradual cooling of the Earth's mantle, or the fact that the planet is going to be incinerated when the Sun turns into a red giant in 5.5 billion years. Worrying about it rarely does anything about problems you CAN control, and absolutely nothing about ones you can't.

[IrateCitizen]

12. Misconceptions and strawmen abound your post

First things first, nobody versed in "peak oil" would ever say that reserves are about to run out. Peak oil is, quite simply, the time at which the production of oil reaches its maximum volume, then gradually (or sharply, depending upon the extraction procedures used) declines. It is a method based upon a summation of all of the fields exploited as a function of time -- the idea being that extraction over an entire region (or the earth) roughly follows a bell-shaped curve. Oil is not about to run out, nor will it ever. What IS about to run out is cheap oil.

Verified reserves have nothing to do with paranoia, as you so erroneously state, and everything to do with confirmable data. Since we can't count on ANY of the figures produced by the OPEC member nations due to a reserve accounting glitch that caused all of them to overstate their reserves in the 1980s, the best figures we have to work with show that we are hitting our global peak somewhere between 2000 and 2040. Export figures currently show a peak in global production occurring in 2005, and trailing off ever so slightly since then.

Whether this is the true peak, we simply cannot know. However, it does seem perfectly plausible to anyone who has the slightest bit of scientific and mathematical education, as well as time spent actually reading about this subject, that this very well could be the peak.

If this is the peak, then worrying about it is hardly misplaced energy. In fact, it is the first step toward the most destructive path -- and the one you seem to endorse -- which is to bury your head in the sand and pretend that all is well. Oil permeates every aspect of our modern society, from transportation to agriculture to medicine and pharmaceuticals. Adjusting to a life where access to cheap oil is nonexistent will be rocky -- especially for the US. However, if you actually begin to look at it NOW and take steps to change your life and community, you can actually make the results less difficult to deal with.

[TheWraith]

22. I don't agree.

"First things first, nobody versed in "peak oil" would ever say that reserves are about to run out."

Hence, we can deduce that all the people who insist that oil is about to run out don't know the first thing about the subject they espouse, a statement which I would agree with.

"Peak oil is, quite simply, the time at which the production of oil reaches its maximum volume, then gradually (or sharply, depending upon the extraction procedures used) declines."

Yes. And it's true that this is inevitable, oil being a limited resource. However, I don't think that cheap oil is as close to the end as you think. Most of the current price of oil has nothing to do with supply, and everything to do with market speculation. Futures traders bidding up the price per barrel. Nobody can claim with a straight face that it costs $100 a barrel to extract oil today, versus $9 a barrel eight years ago. Nobody can seriously claim that demand has increased eleven-fold since then. Hence, the only option left is that there are other factors not tangibly related to economics that are determining the price.

Verified reserves are only a fraction of the total picture with regard to oil, because new oil is constantly discovered. That's why we didn't run out in the 1980s, or 1990s, or now. When people project out from current known reserves, they don't usually consider PROJECTED reserves, which is oil that's expected to be found based on scientific analysis.

And no, there is no point in worrying oneself sick over a problem that may appear tomorrow or in 75 years. All that worrying does is ruin a person's life right now over fears that might never be realized, and cheat them of clear thinking and the ability to live their lives as best they can.

The degree to which moving away from oil will be difficult is, in my opinion, grossly overstated. There are tons of synthetic and biosynthetic compounds that will do fine for our plastics and anything else petrochemical, if oil production ever even got low enough that that would be cost-effective. Transportation is a simple, albeit slightly expensive, matter of switching over to electric vehicles for ground transport. Aircraft fuel can be refined from practically any waste oil source, similar to biodiesel. The technology is all there--there simply hasn't been any motivation to use it, because there's been no lack of dirt-cheap oil. If anything, the current highway robbery has a silver lining, since it'll help accelerate the adoption of alternatives.

[Kolesar]

28. Who is going to fly to Disneyworld if oil (or its equivalents) are $300/bbl?

Who is going to be able to farm marginal land? Who is going to be able to get products to market from remote areas?

[TheWraith]

29. Please read my post again.

All the things you outlined have simple and fairly easy solutions.

[Kolesar]

31. Fly the family to Disneyworld for $2000/ticket?

[soothsayer]

14. and who knows, maybe the abiotic theory of oil holds water, so to speak

Russia sure seems to think so, and they've gotten themselves totally out of debt and awash with cash due to their oil riches

[Speck Tater]

11. When thinking about "post industrial" economies, ...

everyone seems to think "living on a farm." But even in the pre-industrial world there was need for merchants and craftsmen (excuse me, craftspeople). Any imaginable post-industrial world will also need other skills beyond farming. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker, ...

[IrateCitizen]

13. Certainly true, but...

In a pre-industrial economy, a significantly greater proportion of the population was directly engaged in agricultural production. And of those who weren't, many had to grow a significant portion of their own food in order to survive.

Much of the "craft" skill you speak of -- artisanry -- has been largely lost due to the switch from craft to industrial production. It will take considerable time to recreate.

[Delphinus]

15. Hey, momophile,

be sure to check out the Peak Oil forum here on DU. You might find much of the information useful in how you plan your future.

[momophile]

20. thanks, Delphinus

I didn't know there was a Peak Oil forum. I can't keep up with all the new forums, so thanks for letting me know.
:hi:

[GliderGuider]

16. Been there, done that

Still there, still doing that (to a certain extent anyway). "Getting" peak oil is a life-altering experience, and it's not usually a enjoyable time. I've written about it here though since I wrote that article I've realized my feelings are more those of Deep Ecology rather than pantheism.

I've written about some of the things I've personally found hopeful here. The hopeful things I cling to are: we're not all doomed, though some of us probably are (and it was ever thus); a lot of people are realizing what we've done wrong that got us into this mess; we can make the situation a lot better by educating and empowering women and letting them run things for a change; the message of Kerala is that we don't need stuff to be happy; Terra Preta(!); and the existence of 2 million local, independent environmental, social justice and aboriginal rights groups worldwide that I call "Gaia's antibodies".

Big changes are coming. They are going to be uncomfortable for most and fatal for some, but human beings are tough little buggers and we won't be vanishing from the planet any time soon. Work for our children and the children of all the other life that shares this planet.

[kestrel91316]

25. "...the message of Kerala is that we don't need stuff to be happy...."

This is one message I am finally getting, and acting on. I moved from a 2-BR house to a 1-BR apartment recently and, yes, I have a storage unit now (family keepsakes I am obligated to hang onto) but it is the SMALLEST one Public Storage has. I had two BIG garage sales and took tons of stuff to Goodwill before I moved.

My new criteria for getting or keeping "stuff". It must be either beautiful (and I have room to display it) or useful or a family keepsake/heirloom. And preferably it is both beautiful and useful. I kept several pieces of flawed old porcelain and pottery (minimal resale value) because they were both beautiful and I had a USE for them in the apartment.

About the only stuff I can see needing in the forseeable future is a new sofa (got rid of the junky 25-yr-old one in the move), new car (probably slightly used), and a down comforter (with washable duvet). Oh, and new slacks for work and a new pair of good walking shoes. Note the absence of adult toys and electronic gizmos and trendy crap.

[The2ndWheel]

17. Just think of how screwed we are if we start using wind and solar

Humans used human energy, and we changed environments.

Humans use energy burried in the ground for millions of years, and we change environments.

If we start using, on an ever increasing scale, the energy that regulates the environment, just think of how we'll change the environment.

Hope that helps.

Every species changes the environment to a certain extent, but the environment balances out those other species, just like those other species balance out the other species and the environment. Then we come along, harness more and more energy for ourselves, and then keep doing that as a "solution" to the problems that we create by harnessing more and more energy for ourselves.

[GliderGuider]

18. In principle I agree with you

Using more energy isn't the solution to a set of problems that were created by using energy in the first place.

That said, wind and solar aren't going to ramp up fast enough to replace the energy we'll lose from oil and gas, so overall our energy use will decline with time. I look on wind and solar as "soft landing" technologies. Their value will be in easing us down out of our current high energy civilization and back into closer balance with the unimpeded energy flows of the planet. I can't imagine an industrial civilization consisting of multiple billions of people running on wind and solar, I'm afraid. I can imagine it running on coal for a while, I'm afraid. I'm very afraid of that.

The thing that really gives me cold shivers is the thought that we might develop cheap, practical nuclear fusion in the near future. That would probably spell the end of the biosphere.

[brystheguy]

19. I've been worrying too.

I've been thinking about this a lot more than I used to. It is here and it is happening. I am trying to make plans to better myself and maybe move to a smaller house with an acre or two. The real problem is that I just don't know what will happen when we REALLY get there. What affect will this have on my grandma in the nursing home? Will I be able to visit relatives out of state? Will stocks be worthless? Will we still have products in the store and at what cost? Will my suburban home be worthless. How fast will the ramp up in gas prices be? Will we be able to get to work? Will our jobs still be there? What products will start to vanish from the market? I have a 1975 Corvette - will it be worthless and should I sell it now?

Like I said, I've done a few things. I've bought several old pedal mopeds and have learned hoe to fix them. I'm reading up on simple solar solutions for heating homes. I'd like to do some canning soon just to try it. I've very handy with wood and mechanical things. Will this be enough? Who knows.

I'm with you. I worry at night a lot. I've been talking to my wife and she semi-agrees that there is going to be a problem. She asked me, "OK, so what should we do?" I didn't really know what to tell her. I said that I'd like to sell our current house and move to an acreage (1.4 acres) with a small bungalow on it. We would be debt-free if we did that. She told me to start showing that I'm serious by getting rid of stuff around the house like my car. Looks like I might have to fix those brakes after all.

What do you tell people that ask what they should do? What would be your suggestions?

[kestrel91316]

26. I'd be dumping the Corvette PDQ while there are still folks with enough

spare cash to indulge in such frippery. Let somebody else get stuck with that white elephant.

[LynzM]

21. You're not alone.

That was my thread, about how do you cope (or maybe you saw another one, many of us are stressed.)

Here's a link to the thread I started, in case you want to read the replies there, too: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=119463

It used to keep me up at night. I've learned that I shouldn't read environmental news after about 9 p.m., and I'm doing the things I can to reduce, conserve, reuse, eat locally, etc., and also to help others around me learn about why they should be doing those things. Many small things can add up to big change.

Is it still scary? Hells yeah. :hug:

[kestrel91316]

23. I worry about my niece and nephew. they are young adults and

while they are well-informed about GW and PO compared to most, I don't think they comprehend "The Cliff" that awaits civilization. I guess I'm just a doomer.......

[OKIsItJustMe]

27. There's plenty to worry about

My parents (especially my mother) have actually expressed relief that they won't live long enough to see the worst of what's coming. This from a woman who is fundamentally an optimist. (It would seem her optimistic view is, "at least I won't live to see it!")

She raised us to be SciFi readers. Some years back, she said she wasn't reading any more SciFi; since she'd already seen too much of it come true.

[losthills]

30. Oil is not essential for human survival.

We need to curtail our consumption of it anyway because of global warming.

So-called "Peak Oil" is nothing to be feared. It's a term that can't even be defined, because no one knows whether new reserves will be discovered next week or next year. Knowing that we are near the point of peak oil just gives us plenty of time to re-organize our support systems. All the tools for that are available today. If we don't do this today, then rising oil prices will cause us to do it tomorrow.

I don't see peak oil as a worry at all. It's a signal for us to move forward and cease cooking the planet with antiquated 1940s technology, and that's good.

"Don't worry-- be happy..."

[GliderGuider]

32. Nor is electricity, right?

64. Electricity is not worth a single human life.

losthills (413 posts)

We lived just fine without it for many thousands of years.

It's a convenience, not an essential.

Energy? Bah humbug, who needs it, right? We'll do just fine without oil OR electricity. All 6.6 billion of us.