biodiversity loss, climate change and peak oil -related threats

[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.