the fallacy of Peak Oil totally undoing our ability to move goods around

[KakistocracyHater]

America. Long before the combustion engine there were great civilizations that shipped foodstuffs, fabric, medicines, books, furniture, etc. all thruout their territory. Sumeria, Rome, Egypt, the Phoenicians-all used water routes/barges to ship goods all over their respective nations. The 19th Century had paddle-boats & then steam boats & trains. Take a look at Ancient Rome & look at their recipe books, they also shipped papyrus all over their territory.

I dislike the tactic of fear used to blind people to genuine alternatives, & that's a keystone of the Right & the "other Right"/DLC. Roman glass found in England-without using oil.

Past as preview-we do not need to feel panic or horror, as these feelings make it difficult to keep a clear mind. THEY did magnificent things WITHOUT OIL & WE CAN EQUAL THEM IN THIS. It takes unswervable determination & a dispassionate mind to hold fast & not let fear-mongering change our minds.

It may strike some here as too simple, but we have only to look at the aquaducts of the Romans, their roads & maps, looking into these very old civilizations gives us options the oil barons & banksters are hellbent to prevent on being used as workable blueprints, because it will wipe out their deathgrip on us, it will make THEM obsolete. The site jesusneverexisted.com has ALOT of Roman examples of a higher quality of life before Christianty took over & spread like cancer. It also has examples of Arabian science being far superior before the crusaders attacked them, distilleries, soap-making recipes, astronomical knowledge, plumbing-after the Christians attacked Muslim fundamentalism took over & lessened their quality of life. "Old Testament Christians" are now attempting to repeat this self-destructive pattern, their "war on culture" is just another way of saying war on civilization itself; "Red Letter Christians" this is not aimed at you, I'm talking about fundies here.

Everyone will try to say you can't have nearly the same quality of life without oil-bullshit. They're the horse & buggie crowd who claimed cars were a temporary fad, that radio wouldn't last, that traveling to the moon was impossible & against "God".

18th Century water fountains: before electricity. Aquaducts & cysterns-before oil generators & electricity. We don't need oil to make our roads, Roman concrete is superior & even sets & cures underwater.

We can avoid horrendous human misery & suffering by forcing a changeover now. If only we could corral "Liberal" millionaires to put their money where their mouth is, working in tandem with archaeologists & scientists who have studied these areas. The biggest impact of Peak Oil may be plant fertilizers & the tremedous yields these oil-based plant foods have yielded.

But it would take overriding the status quo crowd, who've proven they don't know shit except how to strike fear in people & sread confusion & doubt.

[Demeter]

1. All That Is True

with two caveats:

1) there were a lot fewer people.

2) the Roman world was powered by slavery.

This world of ours is powered by the "slavery" of technology, with hundreds of mechanical servitors per person in the developed world. Now most of those can be operated by alternative energy PROVIDED a concerted effort is made to convert our electrical supply system over to renewable energy.

Then the remaining fossil fuel use--transportation--can be handled by a combination of the biodiesel process and the alternatives to which you allude.

The world will slow down noticeably. And the parasites (finance, marketing, other non-productive careers) will have a lot less opportunity to suck off the much smaller profits. But we could all survive and thrive in a post-oil world,

IF WE WANTED TO!

Without slavery, or mass genocide. Unfortunately, I see lots of effort into both slavery and genocide, not so much into renewables, even here.

[yella_dawg]

14. Some years ago.

Some ten years ago or so, I read an estimate that the average American benefits from the energy equivalent of nineteen slaves. You imply that this has increased dramatically. Do you recall any hard-number estimates of this analogy??

[Javaman]

17. yes and no...

"Then the remaining fossil fuel use--transportation--can be handled by a combination of the biodiesel process and the alternatives to which you allude."

bio-diesel is an agriculture solution, which requires, land, water and energy to farm. Until a closed loop is established, fossil fuels will be required to power the harvesters.

A closed loop is planting feed crop that will in turn be turned into biodiesal which will run the harvesters.

Then you run into mono-cropping issues, water issues, erosion issues, weather issues, drought issues, etc.

The fluctuation of price on bio-fuels, from year to year, could be enormous.

"The world will slow down noticeably. And the parasites (finance, marketing, other non-productive careers) will have a lot less opportunity to suck off the much smaller profits."

Sadly, the world won't slow down until it has to. That's human nature. What can be done right off the bat would be conservation, but conservation won't happen unto itself unless there are real laws passed and real enforcement to make sure people comply.

With a real conservation policy, it's been noted, the U.S. could cut it's fossil fuel consumption by up to 1/3 of our current needs with virtually no ill effect.

"But we could all survive and thrive in a post-oil world,IF WE WANTED TO!"

you answered your own question, "if we wanted to". right now, there is virtually no incentive to "want to".

Most of this nation bitches and complains about the price of gas at the pump, but how many of them drive less, drive slower or talk alternative means?

Many people want to, but a very small amount of people do it.

"Without slavery, or mass genocide. Unfortunately, I see lots of effort into both slavery and genocide, not so much into renewables, even here."

On the money. Over population is what got us here. The solution? Anyones guess.

We are all slaves of a fashion to one thing or another, but the concept of Slavery in it's traditional American sense, won't return, however, I do see us already experiencing a certain measure of how slavery was practiced in ancient Rome and Greece. Non-citizens preforming all the menial tasks or tasks by which the rich couldn't be bothered to do. Yet, these same slaves had a measure of respect and even a form of "camaraderie" with their owners. It was only in various social status situations were the apparent division of classes became necessary to maintain by the rich and influential.

[zazen]

2. I think you mean fallacy of oil-dependency, not that peak oil theory is fallacy

right? Peak oil theory is just about a how energy returned from energy investment follows a curve, and how we're near the top of that in terms of the easier to extract oil. How people will (and are able to) respond to that is a subject of debate.

Re earlier technologies, I agree with you--they are impressively complex and run counter to stereotypes many learned growing up.

However, the big difference is the amount of low or unpaid labor they required. Rome's engineering products were entirely dependent on a huge, expendable slave class. The energy of oil has enabled us the luxury of comparative equality. We'll see how long that lasts if we can't generate equivalent horsepower without oil.

[JNelson6563]

3. A thought provoking post.

:toast:

You make some valid points worth considering. Sadly I don't think the oil baron death grip will be broken till the oil's gone.

Julie

[DCBob]

4. Without oil we would be stuck in the dark ages..

Oil touches everything we do. Oil has made modern society possible. You cant turn the clock back even if you wanted to... the genie is out of the bottle. We are totally dependent on oil.. at least until we can find an exceptable affordable practical alternative. Dont get me wrong, I wish/pray we can find alternatives because "Peak Oil" is going to get us eventually if we dont.

[ixion]

5. No. Religion and Monarchies are responsible for the Dark Ages

All we're talking about is a fuel source. It doesn't have to be oil exclusively.

[DCBob]

6. "Dark Ages" was meant as kind of a metaphor..

Oil is the "cheapest", most energy dense, most available and easily transportable fuel we have. That why it has become the dominant fuel all across this planet.

[ixion]

7. It is also finite, and quite toxic

making it a poor choice on which to build a global "civilization."

We need to move away from the concept of internal combustion as our primary power source. There are other fuel sources and technologies available.

We will use up all the oil. It is a finite resource. It's long past time to move on.

[depakid]

10. +1

On the business of dark ages, you might find this last bit by the eminent Jane Jacobs interesting to consider:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Age_Ahead

[Javaman]

12. Fuel source has nothing to do with it. When you understand the term "energy carrying capacity",..

they you will understand that there is nothing like oil or anything currently out there that will replace it.

It's concentrated energy. it produces more by volume than it's original content.

A single barrel of oil contains 42 gallons. roughly, 19 of which is gasoline, the remaining amount is refined into just about everything else in our society in order for it to run.

If you can name me a single closed loop modern technology that doesn't use oil in some way, shape or form, I would really love to hear it.

From the water we drink, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the solar panels we want, the turbines for windmills, etc, they all use oil.

To replace oil, instead of using a single resource, will will have to rely on many many other commodities to fill the gap.

All of which require, some element of water and land. Oil, is in the ground; it takes no water to remove it (that is when it is first pumped, but takes water to displace any remaining oil in old wells which are no longer under enough pressure), and it requires little to no land to remove it.

Hemp, corn, potato and milk, which all can be synthesized into plastic, all require huge amounts of materials to produce. While all of those are "green" sources, they are also subject to weather conditions, erosion and natural disasters that would limit their production. Also, if they are grown as a mono crop, they will destroy the soil value. Also, before any of these crops are planted in any meaningful way, we will need feed crops to provide the bio fuel in order to farm these same "energy" crops. In essence: crops to grow crops.

While, I wish we could eliminate oil and coal from our society as a means of energy, the reality is: they will be used to the bitter end.

The concept of "phasing out" the use or need of fossil fuels is nice, but it won't happen until there are real laws with teeth passed that make that transition a reality.

Like most things humans do, we will wait till the last possible minute to fix anything. And we will fix it in a panic rather than using long term planning.

[RC]

8. Oil is much, much more than energy.

Plastics - our world would be much different without oil from plastic. It is everywhere. We wear it in our clothes even. And then there is fertilizer. No way could we feed the masses of people we do without oil for fertilizer.

Oil is not the problem, it is but a another symptom. The real problem is too many people for this planet to support. Only because of oil can we support as many people as we do. We are already starting to get a bit desperate for this oil, as it is getting harder and harder to get.

[Merchant Marine]

9. Sails just aren't all that great for moving cargo

Sure, you can build a sailing vessel that will move a few thousand tons of cargo, but real merchant vessels move tens and hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo. Ships that burn tons of fuel per day but still manage to be more efficient than trucks thanks to economy of scale.

Biodiesel would probably be a workable solution, but most marine diesel engines are very finicky with that they'll drink. There have been some serious mechanical problems on ships just from switching from normal marine diesel to the low sulfur stuff. And these are diesels that can run wild and explode. The Deepwater Horizon didn't go up because the well blew out, it caught fire because the diesels sucked methane and ran wild till they blew.

I have heard of some European ship owners testing large-scale hydrogen fuel cells on their small coastal vessels. Electrical propulsion is definitely workable through azipods and z-drives, but having a reliable enough source without burning fuel will be a tricky bit of engineering. Hydrogen obviously presents a greater hazard risk than diesel, and would probably have to be carried as chilled liquid in special pressure vessels rather than simple fuel tanks. So it has potential for new builds, but would be very impractical for retrofitting.

Powering ships with "renewables" is too unreliable. Solar is only useful for some small amount of auxiliary power, and that doesn't even help because you can't really control the output of ship service generators anyway. They're designed to run at one rpm for thousands of hours and deliver rock-steady output that whole time. The solar output would just be slapped on top of the output from an already sufficiently rated generator. I don't even know how wind would work. Powering a ship with an intermittent source is a bad idea anyway. Lose power, drift into shoals, bad day.

[Locrian]

11. interesting post

The problem is you cannot get to A from B overnight. The inertia of our culture and what we depend on will prevent us from acting before its too late. Call it the inertia of stupidity or whatever... but its real.

[bigmonkey]

13. Emergence through emergency.

Bucky Fuller's principle. You have an alternative all worked up, demonstrated to work, but no-one will adopt it until the crisis hits. If it's available as an alternative a that time, then the culture will adopt it if it's an improvement. Otherwise, inertia wins out.

[Javaman]

16. I prefer the "typical human responce"...

don't fix it until after it's broken, even though you know it's worn out and in desperate need of replacement or repair.
;)

[Javaman]

15. I don't think you know what the concept of "peak oil" means.

It's about not meeting demand. NOT running out.

In the ages you talk about the population of the earth and the level of industry didn't require anywhere near the amount of energy we require today.

Simple rule of thumb. 1 gallon of gasoline contains the same amount of energy as 30 hours of human labor.

Now, look around you.

Virtually everything today is done by industry. Something as basic as digging a ditch is done by fossil fueled vehicles.

Suppose it takes 8 hours of work for a trencher to dig a phone line trench. Suppose that trencher uses 3 gallons of diesel to dig that trench. That is the equivalent of 90 hours of man power to do it.

So either you have the trench completed in 8 hours via machines or you have humans dig it by hand for 11.25 8 hour days.

I can go on and on.

Our demand has roughly leveled off due to the recession depression but China whose economy is still growing at roughly 8-9% a year; their oil demand is growing 5% year on year.

Not taking into account India or the many many 3rd world nations who, as little as 25 years ago, didn't use oil at all but now have a growing need, you will then begin to understand the scope and what the concept of "peak oil" entails and means.

The bottom line to everything is: population. Either we limit it or it will be our undoing, but the messy problem of coming up with a workable solution to our ever expanding population, has yet to happen.

More than likely, with in the next century, the population question will solve itself. As populations of cities grow ever larger so does the ease by which disease can spread.