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msongs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:15 AM
Original message
coming soon - collapse of civilization when oil runs out ->
EVERY aspect of modern civilization is dependent on OIL or products made from OIL. As the oil runs out, civilization will
decline and/or crash unless your "civilization" is hunting/gathering in the woods or jungle. Interesting take on all that here:

(HINT: - the price of gas is the LEAST important problem)


http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm
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lectrobyte Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:22 AM
Response to Original message
1. Your subject line is a bit over the top, but I'm convinced that this
(peak oil) will be the challenge of the 21st century. The reason I say your subject line is over the top is that we had civilization way before we had oil, and I think civilization, in some sense, will survive.
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acmejack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:46 AM
Response to Reply #1
7. I suspect you shall see so rather unsettled times in the interim.
Wait until people start going hungry. That will be when things get interesting! It isn't the price of fuel, it is the petroleum based fertilizer sustained agriculture. When that production declines dramatically, as it inevitably must, civil disorder is sure to follow. Given the proliferation of weaponry in this Country, I anticipate veritable warfare.

Have you looked at some of the magazines out there? I was waiting for my cab at the grocery Thursday and there were wanna be SwAT team instruction magazines! This one was devoted to Entry Team composition and tactics, it was professionally put together and illustrated using big city police teams.

Advertisers were all the major manufacturers of such gear ("tactical appliances").
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Donnachaidh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:24 AM
Response to Original message
2. hey -- you have an awful lot of BOOKS FOR SALE on your site
and I am sick of fearmongering on BOTH sides.:eyes:
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snappyturtle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 12:09 PM
Response to Reply #2
12. I don't intend to be rude here so I'll just
say, oil, no matter if there is a little or a lot it's either going to become VERY expensive or scarce. It's really worth a look. Our lives will change.
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snappyturtle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:26 AM
Response to Original message
3. Plastic,plastic,plastic.......
polymers in EVERYTHING......look around you right now! It's there.

My husband and I are having a huge fight (well, disagreement) to the point though I won't anymore talk to him about it. He says there's tons of oil: re:report of Shell last week of "find" (shale) in sw CO and the four corners area, the best I can remember.Then there was the report of more oil in the Gulf.....now that they can go after it. Shell's spokesman also said they can extract it at a profit! I bet they can.

I think from what I've read we're (world) consuming more daily and we're to or about to peak.

I don't know what to believe.
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lectrobyte Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:37 AM
Response to Reply #3
5. As the price goes up, then supplies that were once considered
non-recoverable become economically feasible. So your husband does have a point. But... There's still the huge question of the economic impact of the increasing prices, though, and at some point we will be far enough down the supply curve that it may be too late to have enough of an economic base to develop alternatives. If we had just a bit of foresight, I believe this country would look more like Europe, i.e., have more mass transit, energy efficiency etc.
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snappyturtle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:59 AM
Response to Reply #5
10. THANKS--you jogged my "memory" of the marital debate!
Interesting isn't it that when the price of oil on the world market was cheap the oil companies couldn't spend the money to extract, that's after the repuke administrations gave them the Federal land the oil is in AND that our neighbor Canada went ahead and extracted theirs and are our larger supplier. I think it's a bit of a game of who has the "biggest toys" in or at the end of ample supply....and we want it ALL...wherever it is.
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acmejack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:55 AM
Response to Reply #3
9. I always believed it was too precious to burn!
It is still irreplaceable. We think nothing of depleting a resource that may be of some use to our offspring. We care nothing for the wellbeing of our great great grandchildren do we?! We certainly are thoughtless about them, our greed and arrogance is overpowering!

It is said Spain was heavily forested until the harvested the timber to build the Armada. The same is said to be true of Italy prior to Rome. Think of those arid plains, great forested sweeps instead...
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snappyturtle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 12:05 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. Yes, if nothing else where is conservation...I haven't heard
much of anything on that. I live sixty miles from a big town. I am amazed at the people here who frequently drive that distance to get cheaper food at CUB or Wal-Mart rather than buy here in town. We only have one grocery store but.... This isn't to say we're angels: My husband and I go every four to six weeks and really stock up but not twice a week....or more!
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Viva_La_Revolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 12:24 PM
Response to Reply #3
15. show this to your hubby...
from the link...

"What About that Giant Oil Find in the Gulf of Mexico?"

Chevron's recent find in the Gulf of Mexico is estimated to hold between 3 billiion and 15 billion barrels of oil. Let's assume, for the sake of illustration, Chevron's most optimistic estimate of 15 billion barrels is accurate. How much time would this buy us before we hit the peak, which coincides with the point at which world oil reserves are 50% depleted? A thirty billion barrel field puts the global peak off by 7.5 billion barrels. This is less than a four month supply at current rates of consumption.

This does not even account for the fact this "huge find" is almost 6 miles below the ocean and thus much more expensive to develop than traditional oil fields where the oil has typically bubbles up to ground level when first discovered. The fact that Big Oil has to look in such remote and expensive to explore locations for significant oil finds should tell you something: there is virtually nowhere else to go to find the stuff.

Chevron's find is being depicted by the mainstream media as some type of huge victory in the battle for energy independence. Given the mainstream media's dependence on advertising revenue from the automotive and petrochemical industries, this should come as little surprise. If they don't "keep up appearances" by hyping such modest finds like this for all they're worth, people might start to believe websites such as the one you're reading right now. That could lead to people leaving/pulling their money out of the market the way multi-billionaire investor (and friend of George W. Bush) Richard Rainwater is keeping $500 million in cash out of the market in anticipation of this crisis.

The truth is Chevron's find is really a sign of how desperate Big Oil companies are getting when it come to replacing their rapidly dwindling reserve base. There is no reason to look for oil 270 miles off the coast and 6 miles below the ocean surface unless cheaper and easier to extract sources have been exhausted.
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snappyturtle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 12:34 PM
Response to Reply #15
16. Thanks Viva_La_Revolution!
I'll keep up the "fight"! I have read scenarios of what could, will happen when oil supplies dwindle and they're not pretty. I think most people don't realize that oil is used for so much other than just as fuel. Will print out this article and leave it somewhere my hubby can "discover" it!
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Maat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:36 AM
Response to Original message
4. Fascinating site, Msongs!
My spouse was in the oil industry for over 20 years, and is a chemical and materials engineer. I'm sending the link to him; I'm sure he'll agree.
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elocs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:46 AM
Response to Original message
6. Oil probably has peaked, but I don't think it is TEOTWAWKI.
Things will change and get more expensive, particularly food. It may precipitate a recession, but it is a certainty that things cannot go on as they have. As many tout ethanol or hydrogen or other things as the solution you have to look at the energy returned on energy invested (EIOEI). There is no simple solution and as long as oil is much cheaper than the alternatives then people will be like water and follow the path of least (and cheapest) resistance.
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msongs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 11:47 AM
Response to Original message
8. posted FYI. collapse of civilization is the gist of the referred to site
pssst, most components of electricity based technology are made from petroleum, or made using petroleum.

can you see the oil oozing from your monitor :-)

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm
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elocs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 12:19 PM
Response to Original message
13. Just as nobody expect the Spanish Inquisition,
nobody expects "the hydroxyl apocalypse: http://www.exitmundi.nl/hydroxyl.htm

"What you're witnessing is a phenomenon known among scientists as the ‘hydroxyl collapse’, or, more technically, the breakdown of the 'oxidizing capacity' of the atmosphere. Don’t worry if that doesn’t ring a bell -- it’s a rather obscure thing. Scientists worry about the ozone layer, greenhouse gases and stuff like CFCs and CFKs -- not hydroxyl.

That’s partly because hydroxyl is a benign little substance. You could call it the detergent of the atmosphere. The stuff (formula: OH-) attacks smoke from our factories, cars and chimneys, and makes it soluble in water. After hydroxyl’s touch, pollution can rain down and vanish in the soil, or dissolve in the ocean.

But no hydroxyl, and we’re in trouble. Evil noxious gases like sulphuric and nitrogen oxides would pile up. No hydroxyl, and smoke and soot would accumulate in the atmosphere.

And ‘no hydroxyl’ could be where we’re heading. In the 1980s, NASA scientists came up with figures that suggested the amount of hydroxyl in the air has dropped by 25 percent since 1950. And in 2001, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a 20 percent drop of hydroxyl activity in the century to come.


Then, in 1993, Sasha Madronich, a researcher working for the US government, made a frightening discovery. At some point, Madronich calculated, pollution will overwhelm the hydroxyl chemistry. There will be so much filth around, the detergent will simply give up -- and quit. In fact, over some polluted areas, the hydroxyl shutdown is happening already, Madronich points out."

So it just goes to show, it's always something.

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Viva_La_Revolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 12:20 PM
Response to Original message
14. Bookmarked
Thanks, I think. :scared:
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snappyturtle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 12:41 PM
Response to Reply #14
17. Did you read the ads at the bottom of this page? nt
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Viva_La_Revolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 01:54 PM
Response to Reply #17
19. they change every time I access the page
was there an interesting one?
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snappyturtle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 02:08 PM
Response to Reply #19
20. You're right--it's gone. It was about
the "big find"!
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Viva_La_Revolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Sep-10-06 01:53 PM
Response to Original message
18. How to survive when the oil runs out
Edited on Sun Sep-10-06 01:54 PM by Viva_La_Revolution
Living without oil, if we don't start to prepare for it, will not be like returning to the late 1700s, because we have now lost the infrastructure that made 18th-century life possible. We have also lost our basic survival skills. Dr Richard Duncan, of the Institute on Energy and Man, believes that we will return to living in essentially Stone Age conditions. Here is a taste of how to deal with the essentials.

Water: Animal trails lead to water. Watch the direction in which bees fly. Make containers from animal bladders and gourds.

Food: To remove the bitterness from acorns, soak them in a running stream for a few days. The common dandelion is a versatile and delicious plant. Open pine cones in the heat of a fire to release the nuts inside.

Luxuries: Make soap using lye (from hardwood ash) and animal fat. For candles, sheep fat is best, followed by beef. (Pork fat is very smelly and burns with thick smoke.)

Medicine: Use hypnosis for pain control. Frame suggestions positively. Use the present tense. Be specific and use repetition. Keep it simple.

Develop a survivor personality: Survivors spend almost no time getting upset. They have a good sense of humour and laugh at mistakes.

From: When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance and Planetary Survival, by Matthew Stein

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1813695_2,00.html
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