Short-Sightedness, Greed, and Oil...

The End of The Age of Oil

"Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know."-Marion King Hubbert

"Here in the United States we're now consuming about three gallons of petroleum per person per day. That's twenty pounds of oil per person per day. We only consume about four pounds of oxygen per person per day. We're consuming five times more oil each day, here in the United States than we are oxygen. We've become the oil tribe."-Randy Udall (Film:Sprawling from Grace: Driven to Madness)

[peak oil will bring about]"...the greatest preventable holocaust in the history of planet earth"- Mike Ruppert (investigative journalist, author of Crossing the Rubicon and Confronting Collapse)

"The species Homo Sapiens may not become extinct, but the sub-species of Petroleum Man most certainly will." -Colin Campbell (a retired petroleum geologist)

"[The report 'World Energy Outlook 2006'] reveals that the energy future we are facing today, based on projections of current trends, is dirty, insecure and expensive."-Claude Mandil, (Executive Director of the International Energy Agency)

"We've embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil."-Mike Bowlin, Chairman, ARCO

Hubbert's Peak

One of the first men to calculate peak oil and describe its ramifications to a broad audience was Marion King Hubbert. He was a geophysicist who became famous for his predictions about fossil fuels from 1949 until near the time of his death. In 1956 he predicted U.S. oil production would peak in 1970. He was very, very accurate in his prediction.






















He also predicted in 1974 that world oil production would peak around the year 1995. He was fairly close, but it actually is still at the bumpy plateau stage right now. World peak oil production peaked in the year 2005. However, energy per capita peaked in 1979! This means that the scenario we are currently in is an ever decreasing energy supply and an ever increasing population. The most basic economic law that determines the price of something is supply vs. demand. So the price of oil, while fluctuating on a week by week and even month by month basis, will inevitably go up over the next few years rather quickly.
Now, many who attempt to "debunk" peak oil will point out oil company books showing they have plenty of oil reserves and lots of new discoveries of reserves to this day. However, oil companies have an incentive to overstate their reserves because in the oil business reserves= the value of the company. Many companies overstated their reserves in the past and only began revising them after the Enron scandal (another reason I suspect they have begun drawing them back is they know they are getting close to the end and they don't want to be caught in their lie). As to the new discoveries, oil companies also have an incentive to spread out a single discovery of large reserves over many years. Why you ask? Because the tax code makes oil companies pay taxes on the discoveries they claim even before they begin making money on them. This means it is better for them to claim they find large deposits over multiple years because it a) allows them to space out payments, because they may not be able to make them in the beginning and b)could keep their stock prices up by instilling extra confidence in investors.
Accounting for this manipulation is crucial to understanding what is going on. Another factor that needs to be taken into account is that fossil fuels are used to make many things, not just burned for energy. Plastics, tires, pesticides and many other products. My intention is to go over the problem, the reasons solving this problem is so difficult, and what we need to do to prepare for it individually and collectively, NOW.
The problem is, directly, peak oil. The problems to the solutions to peak oil are short-sightedness and greed. The short-sightedness of individuals, politicians, energy companies and corporations. The greed of the politicians and corporations. The last problem is the intentional blinding of the people by those in power, and in turn our willful ignorance of looming disasters. What are the proposed solutions?
1) "Clean Alternative Energies": A popular topic on ATS (and rightly so), but none will replace all the uses of fossil fuels, and none have yet come to fruition.
2) "Lowering Consumption": Will only put off the inevitable. I think some price spikes in the past were used this way, as well as to make money in the short term. The cap and trade schemes and other "green government" type of energy taxes and regulations were going to be used in the same way, but they chose to base it on the "science" of "global warming", and it fell apart (but its coming back!).
3)"Ethanol": You put more energy in than you get out. It wouldn't be profitable if it weren't for government subsidies. This is one of the reasons peak oil hasn't hit full force yet.
We could have a chance of fixing this looming disaster if everyone was told the truth and we agreed to a cut in our living standards and worked very hard for the next 10-20 years, but we will not. It is because the average person would be angry and could possibly revolt, and because TPTB are greedy and limited by their lifetimes, they do not want to go to a lower standard of living either. They also know we would never accept lower standards of living and greater control if we saw them keeping their standard of living. Even though they already have a much greater standard of living, the transfers of wealth and power have been largely indirect and behind the scenes.
The rich and the powerful are stretching this for all it is worth, but the age of oil is starting the slide into inevitable collapse. If you think of the events of the last ten years in terms of peak oil, it all begins to make a lot more sense (consider 9/11, invasion of the middle east, the National Energy Policy Development Group headed by Cheney, the push for global energy based government, global warming being pushed, large scale U.S. military operations, recent market volatility, and so much more). (continued)


[edit on 20-5-2010 by time91]

[edit on 20-5-2010 by time91]

The Great Collapse
We are already seeing the signs of the great collapse. Indeed, this could be the greatest collapse of all time, rivaling the stories of atlantis. They were undone (according to legend) by their technology, sounding familiar?At the beginning of this thread I placed a few quotes about peak oil and the future of humanity. Population has exploded in the last few hundred years. Long term population chart:








Before the industrial revolution world population was rising and had hit roughly 1 billion people living worldwide. After the use of coal, oil and other fossil fuels became routine for nearly everyone in the developed world population assumed a near vertical growth when looked at long term. The only reason population has been able to grow this much is because of the use of fossil fuels. The end of oil will mean the end of a lot of people in the future. The reason for the inevitable loss of life is that oil(and other fossil fuels) are essential to food growth and transportation. Oil is used in both pesticides and products that enable food to be grown at about 4x the natural amount that could be grown in a given area. Second, most food we eat is transported from a different state, often a different country. So if oil goes away, we have roughly a 75% drop in amount of food and a huge drop in our ability to transport what food remains. Even if we convert to electric cars most countries still use coal for a lot of their energy. If everyone charges their cars it will put more stress on coal supplies, which are also within about 15 years of peak already. Natural gas could hold out for a while, but also will probably peak within 20 years if we begin to rely on it heavily. So, what do you think will save us, in the end? Nuclear power could help but it has its dangers as well. We would also have to convert the world to electric cars within 5 years for it to have any lasting effect. Plus, it takes over a decade to get a license and build and bring online a nuclear power plant. So at best it could put off the inevitable if we started today.
Personal Solutions
1) Start growing your own food, now! If food supply drops off it is best to grow your own food and not rely on government to save you. I think most on ATS would agree with me here.
2) Supply your own energy. If possible, have solar panels installed so you can have electricity even if the grid goes down. You can also use this energy to power a hybrid car, or a hydroponics system.
3) Be faster than the slowest camper. Do everything you can to prepare. Buy one of the machines that converts humidity into liquid water just to be safe. Protect your food and whatever you have when necessary. Innovate! Do what you need to get a leg up on your competition (in this case your competition is everyone else). You don't have to be faster than the bear, just be faster than about half of the other campers!
Collective Solutions
1) Have some powerful friends, if possible.
2) When the time comes, establish a group that can support itself and be large enough to be safe if or when someone who wasn't prepared tries to steal whatever you have.
3) Do not go bats*** insane when the SHTF. There will inevitably be large scale conflicts over resources. Keep a cool head, try not to be involved. If there are actually large scale conflicts then there will inevitably be the destruction of resources on the losing side. It will only further destabilize things and quicken the rate of death worldwide.
Please, do not rely on your governments or these mega corporations to save you. They are both amoral. As long as governments keep power and corporations keep making money they will consider it a success. I wouldn't put it past goldman sachs to take out life insurance on everyone on earth right before the SHTF. If we could collectively see past our own short-sightedness and greed we might get out of this scenario with relative ease, but it has never before happened in human history, and I doubt it will in my lifetime. The 'elite' are some of the greediest of us all, although they plan for the future more than the average person. They aren't short sightedm they just don't care. See the report on peak energy put out by the CFR in the early 00's if you don't believe me. The CIA has also been acting as if peak oil were a very real problem back in the 1970s. Cheney's energy task force was definitely acting as if it were very real. Look it up and come to your own conclusions. But don't say no one warned you.

Well there you have it, my take on peak oil and peak energy. If you have any questions feel free. Seriously, its always better to be prepared than not prepared. I'm not telling you to crap your pants and run to the hills. Just do some simple things, at least buy some organic plant seeds so you could grow food if you had to. I think in the next age a lot of city people will go back to farming...

[edit on 20-5-2010 by time91]

Dude, great post! Insanely detailed, informative, and realistic without the fear-mongering that many inject into these threads.
I would also suggest to people to be actively involved in getting the growing of hemp (DOES NOT produce enough THC to get you high, for all you anti-hippies) legalized in their states and start learning how to grow and utilize it. There are an insane amount of products we use oil to make that could easily be made with hemp instead.

reply to post by mooseinhisglory


Thanks. Industrial hemp can be a viable option for lots of products, but oil/energy companies would never allow it. That was why there was so much propaganda in the 1920s/30s about "Reefer Madness". It was actually paid for by DuPont and others. But thats for another thread...
It also won't solve our food problems...

reply to post by time91


Actually hemp seeds have been found to have quite a bit of protein, and amino acids in them. So they would be able to use those in the food production process.

reply to post by dherik


Yes but you would have to grow tons, tons, tons of hemp to feed people, and other crops do so more efficiently. Also, there is no fuel substitute like oil that would allow us to transport food even if we managed to grow enough naturally.

So we have a population that has exploded and oil is running out but if we grow weed we can save the world ?

Get real guys.

We will not run out of oil but we will run out of money-debt to pay for the oil and more of whats left of the oil will be used up in india and china.

in the longer term it will become more cost effective to go back towards farming the land using manual labour to pull the weeds than paying for oil based chemicals to do the job.

This is fantastic as all those london bankers, lawyers, accouantants will need jobs as the econmy crashed, with or without the help of oil.

Don't except the amro when it's offered and tell them they can keep the debt along with your savings, taxes and police state and unless your rich then get ready to do a bit more gardening than your doing now and yes you can grow as much skunk as you like

Originally posted by LieBuster
So we have a population that has exploded and oil is running out but if we grow weed we can save the world ?

Get real guys.

... I didn't say that.

It also won't solve our food problems...
...you would have to grow tons, tons, tons of hemp to feed people, and other crops do so more efficiently.

We will run out of oil, I don't understand how everyone thinks it is an infinite resource. We will run out of money (technically not, they can print money until we run out of paper): With our banking system it is inevitable but when faith (& value) leave paper currencies it will be bad, but losing oil would destroy industrial civilization. I agree with you on increased farming. Also about growing weed, industrial hemp is not the same as weed. Natural tobacco is stronger than the effects of hemp. We used to use it for for flags, ropes, clothes, and other things.

[edit on 23-5-2010 by time91]