biodiversity loss, climate change and peak oil -related threats

[bigpaul]

(4 May 2013, 20:37)I-K-E Wrote: definitely don't want what we have now I personally would want a simple back to basic type living

i prefer a "back to the land" type existence, fairly basic/rustic existence, wife was brought up in a country cottage without any mains-- electric, water or sewers!

[RoadWarrior]

PEAK OIL is NOW....ive said this before, the yank gov knows/knew this decade/s ago.....gotta get the oil...WAR/CORRUPTION/FALSE FLAG TERRORISM/WAR etc....so on ....Peak Oil is a very interesting subject...deffo a reason to prep IMO ! its as much a reason as the pending "dollor crash" THEY are lining up! regardless of the new oilfields found....they need the stuff from the middle east BADLY ....without it the U.S. war(money) machine will halt... its all about OIL...OIL and more OIL....I bet even the Saudis are lying about their oil reserves too ...just like the U.S. gov...a huge bluff .."oh well we only have 3 zillion barrels in our reserve (at a hidden gov location)....I will say again PEAK OIL IS HERE AND NOW people !

[Tarrel]

(5 May 2013, 17:20)Jonas Wrote:

(4 May 2013, 19:52)StriveForPeacePrepForWar Wrote: 1. UNFOLDING REALITIES (I ESTIMATE AT 90% LIKELY)

a) Continued general warming of the planet's surface, resulting in increasing unpredictability of weather events, including increasing unpredictability of rainfall patterns. Also, increasing temperatures around the equator.

This has been largely debunked for 2 reasons:
1. Our temperature data only goes back 200 years or so, which is a hiccup in time overall.
2. There has been NO global warming in the last 11 years. Average temperatures have actually gotten cooler.

Quote:b) Increasing scarcity of oil and thus more and more prohibitively high price of oil / petrol / all oil and petrol derivatives including petrochemicals and all plastics ~(which includes anything that is made out of plastic!)

You haven't been watching the news. There has been a new oilfield discovered in North Dakota that is estimated to be larger than all the current mid-east countries' oil reserves combined. There is also ANWAR.

Quote:There is considerably more gas and coal left than there is oil, but these do not relate to the extensive infrastructures of oil, and secondly will not be adopted globally due to climate change restrictions.

Huh? Natural gas burns cleaner than oil and is safer than nuclear. Many of our coal-fired power plants have either been converted to or are being converted to natural gas as I type.

Quote:A related trend is that we will see nuclear power adopted more and more, although it is not much safer than it ever was and the specialist technology, as far as I understand it, cannot be replicated globally 'in time' to deal with the extent of coming oil scarcity,

Personally, I think nuclear power died the minute the tsunami hit Fukashima.

Quote:(not that we would want it to, would we?)

Speak for yourself, my friend. I have an "all-electric" home and I'm not interested at all in returning to the 19th century.

Quote:Most so-called renewable energies still require oil in their production and transportation.

Yes, true.

Quote:[As for Alaskan tar sands, they are literally scraping the barrel, and expend more energy to extract the oil than is gained from burning the oil, believe it or not]

And this I do not believe. Companies cannot and do not survive by producing a product that they must sell at a loss. "Lose money on every sale but make it up in the volume" has long been disproved as a viable business plan.

Quote:c) Continued biodiversity loss i.e. species extinction.

Uh huh! Like the "snail darter" perhaps? There's a good reason why the dodo bird went extinct. It wasn't capable of continuing as a species.

Quote:d) Continued wish by people the world over to have more and more, especially those in developing countries to want to live like those in 'developed' countries.

They're tired of living in the 19th, or even the 17th century too...

Quote:2. UNFOLDING THREATS (WHO KNOWS HOW LIKELY, BUT IT IS 99% LIKELY TO ME THAT SOME OF THESE THREATS AT LEAST WILL UNFOLD)

a) Migration of peoples away from the heating equator north and south, especially north to better standards of living, so for instance from S America to America and from Africa to Europe. Immigrant clashes with local populations, competition for jobs and resources, rise of far right governments and groups in the north, and further, civil war, in reaction, and in further reaction to the far right.

It seems to me that a country has a right to control its own borders and immigration policy. By "far-right governments and groups" do you mean those who believe in adherence to the law? I took an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States". Not the president, not the government, not the Democrat or Republican parties, not the United Nations, but the Constitution. Period. And that I WILL DO!

Quote:b) Potential extinction of bees and other insects needed for pollination of much of the world's food supply, potential for extinction of more and more fish varieties, endangering the global fishing industry, and due also to unpredictable rainfall patterns, more crop failure in general, more jobless, more hungry, more starving, more rioting, and potential huge migrations of people where crops fail...leading to similar tensions as described in a) above.

The die-off of the honeybee is a problem, and if it continues will have the capacity to cause serious problems in those crops which require mechanical pollination (but all crops do not require this - corn being one example). The global fishing industry seems to be doing ok, especially here in Texas, where catfish are grown in farms. Rainfall (and all other weather patterns) have always been unpredictable and will probably continue to be so. Joblessness, starving and rioting are geo-political problems, hardly cause by oil. These problems have been documented as existing before oil was even discovered.

Quote:c) A generally warmer wetter global climate (wetter seems to be consensus, but not sure about that) coupled with population growth could mean increasing likelihood of incubation and transmission of all diseases including deadly ones, on epidemic scale, as well as migration of bugs and pests, damaging to crops and humans, in unpredictable ways. (It is a FACT that in the last few years the malaria-carrying variety of mosquito has been found as far north as Spain for the first time).

Warmer and wetter climate? That hasn't been proven as of yet. Incubation and transmission of diseases? Many communicable diseases have been wiped out by modern medicine, including but not limited to: typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria, small pox, polio, and measles to name but a few. The premise in the original post seems to be valid only if all research on disease prevention stops immediately and never restarts.

Quote:d) Increasing serious psychotic episodes in individuals who are not told the truth by their governments and who will have to live under increasing pressure from all threats. Increasingly desperate behaviour exhibited by an increasing number of people.

Governments have been lying to citizens for years. Citizens (at least those with IQs over room temperature) have known it for years. Now all of a sudden we're supposed to become psychotic over the behavior of politicians? No thanks.

Quote:e) Increasing likelihood of appropriation of nuclear material by terrorist groups and rogue governments, as transportation and generation of nuclear material increases to try to make up for shortfall made by peak oil and post peak oil event. I would even lay a bet that transportation and generation of nuclear material will INCREASE, not decrease, in explosive risk (regardless of terrorists) as officials desperately try to cut corners to meet energy quotas. Happy days!

Yes, the terrorists will always try to terrorize, peak oil or no peak oil. It's a religious(?) thing. Fortunately, the terrorists aren't bullet-proof (just ask the eldest of the "Boston Bombers").

Quote:f) Ultimate and final collapse of all global stock markets, as the markets themselves and the commodities within them rely on oil.

There will be a global stock market and economic collapse. In fact, I'm surprised that it hasn't happened yet. However, IMHO, it will be due to fiat currencies backed by nothing but hot air, and the greed of politicians and "banksters". Oil has nothing to do with it.

Quote:g) Energy, food and water wars between nations and within nations, as unpredictable rainfall patterns, scarcity of oil, increasing crop failure due to climate change and pests, and increasing populations, combine to put pressure on everyone, everywhere. (See Gwynne Dyer's book, mentioned above). A potential WWIII for resources on an unprecedented scale (Aren't all wars for resources, ultimately?)

The Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Ontario, and Erie) hold 25% or so of the world's fresh water supply. We're not worried here. Climate change has certainly not been proven scientifically, mainly due to lack of data, and populations in Canada and the US, the last time I looked, were falling. And no, all wars are NOT ultimately for resources. If this were true, Viet Nam, Korea, and The Falklands would never have happened

Quote:My advice?

1) Be as aware as you can
2) Know how to forage and hunt
3) Be prepared to be mobile
4) Base yourself in the country, not the city.
5) Make yourself a valuable commodity in a number of ways, so that you are more useful to people alive than dead.
6) Make as many connections with as many differently skilled people as possible.
Lucky 7) Get lucky!

Good advice! The right conclusions were reached, albeit possibly via the wrong reasons.

Quote:The Falklands would never have happened

ROFLMFAO!. What on earth do you think it was about, if not oil?!

---

Hey Strive, welcome to reality! You know that scene in The Matrix when the lead character realises that everything he has taken for granted is all an illusion? You've just reached that moment.

I became "peak oil aware" two or three years ago, and the world hasn't really looked the same to me since. So much so that I picked up my family and my life and de-camped from the crowded South East to Northern Scotland.

It's almost certainly peak oil that is behind our current economic problems. The experts are scratching their heads trying to figure out why economic growth won't return. There's talk of "double-dip recessions", "triple-dip recessions". What's next; "quadruple-dip recession"?, "quintuple-dip recession"? The problem is most economic models don't factor in the importance of energy, and just assume it will always be there in infinite quantities. This is because most modern economics was developed during the age of abundant fossil fuels.

Now we have reached peak-oil, the whole supply/demand picture for energy looks different. As demand goes up, OPEC can't just turn up production as they've always done, in order to stabilise the price, so the price remains stubbornly high. Add in, as you say, the rising demand from Asia and you have a recipe for climbing prices. This obviously affects every aspect of the economy, from personal expenditure to transportation of goods to corporate overheads. No wonder we don't have growth.

The new fuel extraction technologies, such as fracking, for all their promises, are only viable when the price remains high. Many of the players in the US fracking industry are moving out now that the natural gas price has dropped. The whole issue with oil (and gas and coal) has never been 'are we running out of it?', but "can we continue to afford to extract what's left?'. The answer to this is "probably", but at huge cost in terms of standard of living, environment, etc.

My personal response has been to change lifestyle, and start getting used now to what is likely to become the new normal. Several hours of every week are now spent collecting and processing firewood for our wood-burning heating and cooking system, not because I have to, but because I choose to. Then, when I HAVE to, it will be easier to adjust. Changing where we live means I have slashed my annual driven mileage by more than half, meaning we are less at risk from fuel price spikes. Moving to a smaller house has reduced our energy bills and freed up capital for investment in renewable off-grid energy, making us less dependent on the grid supply, and the wildly rising prices thereof. We're starting to grow our own food, although we're just on the starting blocks with this and having to learn a lot.

Psychologically, I've found that, once you realise we're not going to continue as we are for very long, you start to focus on what the essentials are, and realise that achieving these comfortably, without getting too "hair-shirted" about it, is not hugely difficult.

I guess it's a compromise between, on the one hand, insisting that life must go on as it is now, and that no aspect on one's current lifestyle is up for negotiation and, on the other hand, throwing one's hands in the air, giving up and going back to some sort of medieval life.

[bigpaul]

i couldnt agree more, Peak Oil probably happened as far back as 2005, at least by 2008, lets face it, TPTB arent going to jump up and say"yohoo were running out of oil people" are they?? we need to prepare for a world without oil NOW not in X number of years, and its not just oil, lots of stuff is made from oil like plastics and pharmacuticals, there are hundreds of things we WONT be able to produce without oil, we have to get back to a more low key more agricultural type lifestyle, the "oil age" wont last long, it will be a blip in history.

[Jonas]

[quote='Tarrel' pid='55884' dateline='1367845635']
[quote]The Falklands would never have happened[/quote]

[quote]ROFLMFAO!. What on earth do you think it was about, if not oil?!

---

[/quote]

Great theory, but then The Falkland War was in 1982. The possibility of offshore oil deposits there wasn't even known until 2003 or so. The Falkland War was triggered by an invasion ordered by the Argentine government, a group of generals who had mounted a coup, then collapsed the economy (though the Argentine economy wouldn't finally go "tango-uniform" until 2001). The ruling military junta decided to take the peoples' minds off the governmental shortcomings by retaking the disputed Falkland Islands. I was still in the service at the time and read the intel briefs.

[quote]It's almost certainly peak oil that is behind our current economic problems. The experts are scratching their heads trying to figure out why economic growth won't return. There's talk of "double-dip recessions", "triple-dip recessions". What's next; "quadruple-dip recession"?, "quintuple-dip recession"? The problem is most economic models don't factor in the importance of energy, and just assume it will always be there in infinite quantities. This is because most modern economics was developed during the age of abundant fossil fuels.[/quote]

Actually the responsibility for the world's current economic problems has little or nothing to do with so-called "peak oil". Rather, the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the central bankers, technocrats, and politicians who have allowed the printing of massive amounts of paper fiat currency backed by nothing more than vast quantities of paper and ink. Without going into a discussion of leveraged banking and the existence of over one quadrillion dollars in "financial derivatives", ($1,000,000,000,000,000.00 for those who want to see it visually), I highly recommend regular reading of the website Zero Hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com) for professional information on the state of world economies and markets, and Adam Fergusson's book "When Money Dies", an extremely in-depth look at the collapse of the Weimar Republic after WWI.

History does repeat itself, and correct information is definitely our friend. Conversely, ignorance is definitely NOT bliss, and can be extremely harmful to your economic health.

[Tarrel]

(6 May 2013, 16:50)Jonas Wrote: [quote='Tarrel' pid='55884' dateline='1367845635']

Quote:The Falklands would never have happened

Quote:ROFLMFAO!. What on earth do you think it was about, if not oil?!

---

Great theory, but then The Falkland War was in 1982. The possibility of offshore oil deposits there wasn't even known until 2003 or so. The Falkland War was triggered by an invasion ordered by the Argentine government, a group of generals who had mounted a coup, then collapsed the economy (though the Argentine economy wouldn't finally go "tango-uniform" until 2001). The ruling military junta decided to take the peoples' minds off the governmental shortcomings by retaking the disputed Falkland Islands. I was still in the service at the time and read the intel briefs.

Quote:It's almost certainly peak oil that is behind our current economic problems. The experts are scratching their heads trying to figure out why economic growth won't return. There's talk of "double-dip recessions", "triple-dip recessions". What's next; "quadruple-dip recession"?, "quintuple-dip recession"? The problem is most economic models don't factor in the importance of energy, and just assume it will always be there in infinite quantities. This is because most modern economics was developed during the age of abundant fossil fuels.

Actually the responsibility for the world's current economic problems has little or nothing to do with so-called "peak oil". Rather, the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the central bankers, technocrats, and politicians who have allowed the printing of massive amounts of paper fiat currency backed by nothing more than vast quantities of paper and ink. Without going into a discussion of leveraged banking and the existence of over one quadrillion dollars in "financial derivatives", ($1,000,000,000,000,000.00 for those who want to see it visually), I highly recommend regular reading of the website Zero Hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com) for professional information on the state of world economies and markets, and Adam Fergusson's book "When Money Dies", an extremely in-depth look at the collapse of the Weimar Republic after WWI.

History does repeat itself, and correct information is definitely our friend. Conversely, ignorance is definitely NOT bliss, and can be extremely harmful to your economic health.

I bow to your insider knowledge, but I'm not sure I agree that oil wasn't at least partly a factor. There were political considerations this end as well; we've just been going over this ground quite a bit in the UK with the departure of Baroness Thatcher. I don't think there's much doubt that she used the Falklands situation to her advantage politically. However, the conflict came at the end of several decades of British Empire retrenchment, in which many overseas interests and colonies were "let go". Why should the Falklands be any different unless there was an ulterior motive? And there have been mutterings about oil under the South Atlantic for many years.

With regard to finance, yes I agree that debt and financial speculation are both critical reasons why the current set-up cannot continue. However I believe peak oil has brought the situation much more sharply into focus, and brought forward any potential day of reckoning. Without peak oil it may have been possible to maintain growth for a few more years and "kick the can down the road" until the debt burden overtook even the most productive economies.

The more precarious the economic situation becomes, the easier it is for a small energy price or supply shock to destabilise it. look at 2008; rising petroleum and food prices were just enough to push millions of already stretched mortgage-holders into default, with the domino-effect that followed. The latest edition of the KunstlerCast has an interview with Steve Ludlum of the Economic Undertow. He points to a historical trend over the past few decades, in which the size of energy price-spike needed to cause economic chaos seems to be coming down over time.

Yes, I read ZeroHedge. Also Chris Martenson, Nicole Foss and FinancialSense.com. All useful reading.

[Jonas]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...inion_main

And from the Wall Street Journal:

May 5, 2013, 6:51 p.m. ET

A Tale of Two Oil States
While the shale boom lifts Texas, California sits on vast resources.

Texas and California have been competing for years as U.S. growth models, and one of the less discussed comparisons is on energy. The Golden State has long been one of America's big three oil producing states, along with Texas and Alaska, but last year North Dakota surpassed it. This isn't a matter of geological luck but of good and bad policy choices.

Barely unnoticed outside energy circles, Texas has doubled its oil output since 2005. Even with the surge in output in North Dakota's Bakken region, Texas produces as much oil as the four next largest producing states combined. The Lone Star State now pumps nearly two million barrels a day, and Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman (who is also oil commissioner) says "total production could double by 2016 and triple by the early 2020s." The entire U.S. now produces about seven million barrels a day.

The two richest fields are the Eagle Ford shale formation in South Texas, where production is up 50% in the last year alone, and the 250-square mile Permian Basin. Midland-Odessa in the Permian is one of America's fastest-growing metro areas.

More than 400,000 Texans are employed by the oil and gas industry (almost 10 times more than in California) and Mr. Smitherman says the average salary is $100,000 a year. The industry generates about $80 billion a year in economic activity, which exceeds the annual output of all goods and services in 13 individual states.

Now look to California, where oil output is down 21% since 2001, according to Energy Department data, even as the price of oil has soared and now trades in the neighborhood of $95 a barrel. (See the nearby chart.)

This is not because California is running out of oil. To the contrary, California has huge reservoirs offshore and even more in the Monterey shale, which stretches 200 miles south and southeast from San Francisco. The Department of Energy estimates that the Monterey shale contains about 15 billion barrels of oil, which is about double the estimated supply in the Bakken.

Occidental Petroleum, OXY -0.42% the big oil player in California, has recently purchased leases from the Interior Department to drill in the Monterey shale, but in April a federal judge blocked the breakthrough drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in the state. The judge ordered an environmental review of the drilling process that Texas, North Dakota and other states have safely regulated for years.

A large part of the explanation for the Texas boom and the California bust is the political culture. Despite their cars, California voters have elected politicians who consider fossil fuels to be "dirty energy."

The plaintiffs in the Monterey shale lawsuit were the local chapters of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity. Rita Dalessio, chairwoman of the Ventana chapter of the Sierra Club, said, "We're very excited. We're thrilled" by the judge's ban, adding that "I'm sure the champagne is flowing in San Francisco." This attitude is prevalent among California's elite and wealthy.

California has also passed cap-and-trade legislation that adds substantially to the costs of conventional energy production and refining. The politicians in Sacramento and their Silicon Valley financiers have made multibillion-dollar and mostly wrong bets on biofuels and other green energy. Texas has invested heavily in wind power but not at the expense of oil production.

Another contrast is that most Texas oil is on private lands, which owners are willing to lease at a price. In California much of the oil-rich areas are state or federally owned, and leasing doesn't happen because of political constraints. In California it can take weeks or even months to get approval for an oil rig. The average in Texas? Four days.

In short, Texas loves being an oil-producing state while California is embarrassed by it. And it's no accident that Texas has been leading the nation in job creation since the recession ended. The energy boom is creating thousands of jobs related to drilling but also in downstream industries such as transportation, high-technology, construction and manufacturing. The Texas jobless rate is 6.4% while California's is still the third highest at 9.4%.

Texans are realizing another benefit from oil production: money to fund government services. According to energy analyst Kathleen Hartnett White of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, "oil and gas production generated $12 billion in state taxes in 2012." This helps Texas avoid a state income tax. California's top marginal income-tax and capital-gains tax rate is 13.3%.

California has the natural resources and technical expertise to be the next Texas if it wants to be. What it needs is the political will. California Governor Jerry Brown at least says he wants to drill, but his dominant Democratic Party is so beholden to the already-rich greens that the state is paralyzed.

So the oil remains locked in the ground, as one million Californians look for work, as its schools and roads deteriorate, and as it keeps raising taxes to balance the budget. What a tragedy. Imagine how fast the U.S. economy would grow if California were more like Texas.

A version of this article appeared May 6, 2013, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Tale of Two Oil States.

[Steve]

I have some ideas on peak oil, just theory, nobody outside the elite knows the truth.

There is no oil shortage, there are billions of barrels in proven reserves, the problem is that all the easy oil has been used and the remaining oil is expensive to extract. As new techniques are developed to reach ever more remote oil, the proven reserves figures will continue to rise, it is in the oil companies interest to keep these figures high to encourage investors and keep their share prices high.

If the global economy is driven into a major crash by rising oil prices demand will be destroyed, prices will fall below the level required to extract the difficult oil and the oil companies, and governments, will be left sitting on huge reserves they can't afford to extract. I'm not sure of the implications of this, I'm not an economist, but it seems likely to me that they will keep pumping as much as possible, even at low profit margins, for as long as they possibly can - to extract the maximum amount of money before the big crash. This makes a sharp downturn in production more likely than a gentle tailing off.

[bigpaul]

as far back as June 2008 "experts" were predicting there was only 10-15 years supply of oil left. in august 2008 Chatham House a "think tank" said a supply crunch would affect the world market in 5-10 years. in 2009 a report said China's demand for oil had gone up by 50%, India's was up by one third.

[Skean Dhude]

Guys, I'm closing thise because we are a prepping site not a politicial or religious one.

SD