The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: July 17, 2006

404 comments on DrumBeat: July 17, 2006

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Show without comments | PDF version

Testudo on July 17, 2006 - 1:19pm

GW >>> PO

Peak Oil may undo a couple of hundred years of industrialization.

Global Warming threatens to undo a few million years of evolution.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

davet on July 17, 2006 - 2:19pm

Nah, just provides new and different evolutionary opportunities! (Just not for us...)

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Reed on July 17, 2006 - 2:28pm

Exactly! In a nutshell.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

fleam on July 17, 2006 - 3:11pm

Global Warming = take measures to protect the environment so your grandchildren can enjoy trees and squirrels and sunsets. Peak Oil = things are going to get rough and you may go w/o a lot of dinners!

The call to "care for the environment" has resulted in a good record of altruistic behavior in Americans, yeah say what you will, but you don't have the kind of "litterbugs" I remember as a little kid, etc there have been changes. If the propaganda is heavy enough, people will change if they figure it's "no skin off my nose, and it's a nice thing to do". And the anti-littering propaganda in the 70s was pretty pervasive as an example - it got results.

Peak Oil on the other hand is just plain fackin' scary. Scary stuff has always resulted in more selfish behavior - exactly what we don't need.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

AlanfromBigEasy on July 17, 2006 - 5:04pm

Global Warming = Being able to grow crops where we are used to growing them.

I think GW is scarier than PO, which is why I advocate only PO solutions that help both PO & GW. We would be better served with a Depression and less GW than with a recession & more GW.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Reed on July 17, 2006 - 5:31pm

Ok, Fleam, have it your way. Choose your preferred poison. In your case the article Leanan referenced on the prospective oil bonanza in Greenland must be heartwarming -- keeping the good ol' non-negotiable life style rolling. But the need for wearing "brown underwear" is explained at:

http://www.countercurrents.org/po-church170706.htm

The opening qoute has never been more applicable:

"Down one road lies disaster, down the other utter catastrophe.Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose wisely." - Woody Allen

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

alan on July 18, 2006 - 11:58am

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it"
Yogi Berra

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Don Sailorman on July 18, 2006 - 2:25pm

Orally.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Donal on July 18, 2006 - 2:41pm

Aura Lee, Aura Lee,
Maid with golden hair
Sunshine came along with thee,
And swallows in the air.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Mad Maxout on July 17, 2006 - 6:02pm

GW and PO are both potential disasters. But GW is making itself more obvious to average people due to crazier weather. Meanwhile, the only obvious symptom of PO is the price at the pump or the price of a barrel.

While we are PO-aware here, most people aren't unless one of us manages to talk one-on-one with someone. Lots of people like to scapegoat oil companies, Arabs, etc. for the ever-climbing gas prices.

But there is a critical difference between the two issues: With GW, we can choose to mitigate it and use less, but PO will force us to use less! Big difference. The gas prices (and its trickle-down effects) will force the mitigation. After all, tar sands are hard to extract. And shale is probably a done deal in terms of being too hard to extract.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

HongKong Trader on July 17, 2006 - 9:49pm

I agree, it's as if we have 2 large asteroids heading towards us. One is large and will hit in 2 years, it's called PO and one is absolutely humongous but won't hit until quite a bit later than PO. It's called GW. Because PO is about to hit us if we don't do something it is forcing us to act. So in the short term we need to take agressive and expensive action to deflect PO. Unfortunately we have watched PO approach us for 50 years and taken no action to deflect it. Afterwards (or maybe at the same time) we can work on GW. Hopefully we will learn that relatively small actions now will deflect GW enough to pass us by rather than making the same mistake we made with PO - i.e. allowing it to get close so that it becomes more difficult to deflect. Small actions count more over large distances than large actions over small distances. At the end of the day, we likely will deflect them either way - it's a matter of cost.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Don Sailorman on July 17, 2006 - 7:45pm

Amen.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Solaris on July 17, 2006 - 4:33pm

PO >>>>>>>> GW

Not even close. Does GW have the potential to cause die-back to pre-industrial revolution population levels (1.5 billion people or less)?? Peak fossil fuels is a far more serious problem for civilization in general and it's severe effects will occur much faster.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Donal on July 17, 2006 - 4:54pm

Depends on what it does to the food and water supply.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Magnus Redin on July 17, 2006 - 5:01pm

From a purely selfish national point of view I would prefer a dire PO scenario over a dire GW scenario. If you already have a good climate, ok infrastructure and plenty of natural resources it is easier to weather PO and then a climate shift forcing you to move somewhere while abandoning all fixed investments.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

AlanfromBigEasy on July 17, 2006 - 5:55pm

Wouldn't it be interesting to have crocodiles in Sweden ?

No need for summer vacations in Spain, etc.

Crocodile teeth have been found in the high Canadian Artic islands, along with warm temperate tree species.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Magnus Redin on July 17, 2006 - 6:18pm

Having a freezing winter kills a lot of potential pests wich makes it possible to farm with fairly little pesticides. We loose productive months compared with warmer climates but what is produced is often good with small inputs of nasty stuff.

Having plenty of rainfall, often fairly well distributed over the months makes it very easy to get fresh water and good crops and gives us plenty of hydro power.

I rather have rainfall and a green summer then a nice summer vacation where one can see brown vegetation. The other extreme, a new ice age, is of course even worse.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Testudo on July 17, 2006 - 5:04pm

PO is a more obvious problem for the next generation or two. GW is a more serious problem for our entire planet as an ecosystem.

GW threatens to cause the extinction of a significant portion of the species on our planet. GW means leaving our children a home that is barren in comparison to the world we inherited from out parents. What are all the implications of that? I can't begin to imagine.

Here at the leading edge we will watch coral reefs and polar bears dissapear from the planet. But that is just the beginning. I am confident that 10 generations from now our children will look back and condemn us for poisoning the abundance of life on our planet. The fact that we burned through our oil so fast will just be a side note, a cause, but not an especially relevant effect.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

davet on July 17, 2006 - 5:08pm

There's a report put out by the Pentagon which essentially foresees war. Resource depletion is a major concern, but mass migration from lands no longer able to sustain a population because of climate change and land use is expected to put severe stresses on the global society and economy. If they're right (and they're no more pessimistic than some of PO doomers here) then yes, GW may indeed lead to a major population "drawdown".

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

AlanfromBigEasy on July 17, 2006 - 5:22pm

IMHO, yes. Change the monsoons, turn the North American Great Plains into a Dust Bowl, slow or stop the Gulf Stream, etc.

GW "losers" will migrate or die-off and the disruption from that will carry over into social disruption and a decline in technological civilization (worst case).

Comments can no longer be added to this story.