The Oil Drum | Book Review: Peak Oil Prep

144 comments on Book Review: Peak Oil Prep

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Leanan on December 27, 2006 - 12:11pm

I think "Get more sleep" is relevant. One, if you're asleep, the lights, TV, computer, etc., are presumably off or at least in sleep mode. The thermostat may even be lower. So you're conserving energy. Two, there's some fascinating new research that links lack of enough sleep to health problems like obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Something to keep in mind, if we're heading to a future where healthcare will be unavailable, or at least way more expensive.

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kjmclark on December 27, 2006 - 12:31pm

I think "Get more sleep" is relevant.

Agreed. Another reason we all could use more sleep is clear-headedness. I've recommended to a number of people who are freaked upon first finding out about oil peaking that they get more sleep, go for a walk, and get more exercise. I think all three of those are basic human needs that many people undervalue. I haven't found anything better than a good walk for dealing with anxiety.

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doug fir on December 27, 2006 - 12:41pm

Perhaps this is not relevant, but I've long been intrigued by our family's sleep paterns in response to seasonal changes. Decreasing daylength and the long nites of winter always get longer sleep times, whereas the reverse holds true for the short nights of summer. Is it boredom, less work, or just a natural response? It must help to lower winter energy consumption, though that is not a deliberate response.

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Don Sailorman on December 27, 2006 - 12:41pm

The evidence points to "natural response" as the reason why we northerners sleep more in winter and less in summer. People who live within the tropics do not display different sleep amounts at different times of year because day length varies so little in the tropics.

My body wants to hibernate during Minnesota winters, while during the summer I have manic energy and can get by on four or five hours of sleep.

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Cornucopia on December 28, 2006 - 2:29am

Minnesota winters? Perhaps you have a scandinavian heritage? Back here in south Sweden, dawn is at around 0800-0900, and dusk at 1500-1600. I go to work in pitch black, sit indoors, get back home in total darkness. Literaly put on my peak oil hat, go feed the sheep in total darkness, bring in a days worth of firewood, clean away the droves of rodents left by the cats on the front porch, do some logging, go inside play with the children, make dinner, make love to my beautiful wife, do some logging, go to sleep. Thank god for my portable rechargeable LED lights, and without the physical activity I would be in hibernation 15 hours every day. And it's even worse further up north, but at least they have some snow to light up their existence. Global warming has killed the snow, so here comes winter and pitch black depressions.

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ET on December 28, 2006 - 2:03pm

Used to be in Vermont and other New England states the suicide rate went up during the winter. Then the snowmobile was invented. Now the death rate from snowmobile accidents is replacing the suicide rate :-}

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hummingbird on December 29, 2006 - 7:21am

Must be great in the summer though.:)

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neuroil on December 27, 2006 - 12:59pm

I was in the state of commenting on this, and as often, you already replied fast with a documented reponse.

Sleep is one of my favorite subjects when I try to help my patients. Sleep is primordial for your attentionnal system. If you want to remain creative and take appropriate steps in preparing for PO, you should definitely take enough sleep.

We all know what sleep deprivation can cause : attention disorder (very well documented by research done on drivers), headache, nervousness, disruption of the need-satisfaction cycle because of hypothalamic induced perturbations hence the risk of obesity and diabetes, anxiety, depression or aggressivity, tremor, imprecision of motricity, increased muscular tone ...

All of these consequences will increase energy consumption : food, medication, TV, inappropriate driving and so on.

The first thing we will need to learn when dealing with decreasing energy resources is that everything in life goes in cycles. We need to recognise them (our brains are framed for that) and to live with them, not against them. The wake-sleep cycle is one of them and I would indeed suggest that it is one of the first we need to learn to know.

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veganmaster on December 27, 2006 - 4:21pm

Lack of sleep may be associated with those diseases, but the cause is already quite clear for anyone willing to weight the thousands of scientific studies in an objective manner. A crappy diet of meat, dairy, and junk food causes a pandora's box of chronic diseases. The cure is obvious too: whole plant foods. The mountain of studies show this, and I guarantee that when peak oil forces industrialized folks to eat healthier (less environmentally disastrous and inefficient meat/dairy, more whole plants) - the result will be a rapid reversal of the diseases you mention above. In fact, in addition to science, history provides examples like WWII - the rates of chronic, lifestyle diseases went down when europeans were forced to eat lower on the food chain. This is the ultimate irony: that peak everything will actually improve the physical health of the richest 20% of human beings on the planet. Check out Dean Ornish, who first proved that heart disease is totally reversible via a basically vegan diet. Then just last year I think it was, his newer study showed that a vegan diet reverses prostate cancer (those on the vegan diet got better and none of them got full blown cancer). So in a way it's kind of absurd that energy descent will improve the health of the already-richest segment of the human population! :)

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Leanan on December 27, 2006 - 5:35pm

I wouldn't be surprised. Have you seen the research about calorie restriction and longevity? Critters from rotifers to rats live 30%-100% longer if kept on a low-calorie diet. For obvious reasons, most research has been done on animals, but many scientists suspect it holds for humans, as well. Preliminary studies have been promising, and there are a lot of people actually practicing it already.

Why would this be? One theory is that our cells have to "choose" between reproduction and cell repair. Sex is metabolically expensive, and if we use some of our historically limited energy toward it, something else has to go - cellular maintenance. If you're eating well, the body thinks, "Hey, time to reproduce - might never be a better chance." Energy goes into the hormones, etc., that make sex and reproduction possible.

But if times are bad - you aren't eating well - it's a better strategy to wait until times are better in order to reproduce. Energy goes into cellular repair instead.

Of course, nature never foresaw our current situation, where there's plenty of food for both reproduction and cell repair, and where long periods of revved-up sex hormones can actually be bad for you.

A data point that may support this theory: it's long been noted that people who have a lot of kids have shorter lifespans.

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InfinitePossibilities on December 27, 2006 - 5:56pm

What do you get when you starve a monkey?

A monkey that is 30% longer hungry!

"There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong."

H._L._Mencken

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Kevembuangga on December 28, 2006 - 12:12pm

One can always recognize a pornucopian by his habit of "improving" the texts he quotes :

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken

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InfinitePossibilities on December 28, 2006 - 3:57pm

Actually... I was quoting what many people believe to be the original by H.L. Mencken and you are quoting the popular version. I can't say I am the authority on this, but at least I tried to find the original quote with a citation:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken

He might have said the same thing twice using different language...

Anyway... you are totally wrong about me being a cornucopian. IMHO the peak occurred, for all practical puproses, in 2006, or, if it didn't, will occur well before 2010. I constantly suggest a $1/gallon gas tax in the US with an automatic 10% annual increase until at least 50% of the retail price of gas is tax, an allocation of those funds for a fleet of high efficiency cars, a luxury tax on SUVs and increasing government investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar. I think all forms of energy should cost twice as much as they do right now and there should be a global tax on carbon.

Hardly cornucopian standpoints... wouldn't you agree?

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tstreet on December 27, 2006 - 7:25pm

Also, I believe, the health of the Cubans improved when they were forced to live lower on the food chain as a result of their oil being cut off with the collapse of the soviet union. Although I am vegan and believe that this approach could help solve many of our problems, including global warming, I fear that our human population would just expand to take up the land freed up thereby.

My guess also, however, is that lack of energy will cause millions of people to starve who are already on the edge as it is. The so called green revolution has been primarily successful because of petroleum inputs; millions will not be able to adjust in time as the Cubans did. Also, Cuba's climate and high level of education probably also contributed to their ability to transition to a largely organic system with very small inputs of petroleum energy.

Another issue is the contention that organic agriculture would make it necessary to expand the amount of land devoted to agricuture, thus further impinging on areas like the rain forest. Of course, if we experience a significant decrease in the amount of petroleum available, the millions who might did from that would potentially free up a countervailing amount of land.

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InfinitePossibilities on December 27, 2006 - 7:32pm

The people who are starving today have not had any upside from the green revolution. They can not afford to buy GM seeds from Monsanto, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and the usual tech toys of the northern hemisphere farmer.

On the other hand, the people who have been given these riches will make a simple decision: to take the bus OR to see their kids starve while they fill'er up for a few hundred a week. In my books that is a really simple decision to make... and something tells me it will be just as easy for everyone else.

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Kevembuangga on December 28, 2006 - 12:53pm

The people who are starving today have not had any upside from the green revolution.

Yes, the "green revolution" was kinda upside-down :
For most of them, hybrid rice was more difficult to cultivate and "inferior in terms of grain price, profitability, consumer demand, and head rice recovery."

They can not afford to buy GM seeds from Monsanto, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and the usual tech toys of the northern hemisphere farmer.

Of course they "cannot afford" that, this is probably why Monsanto used to give hybrid seeds for free :

Often, it is the government which buys from Monsanto or its distributors the Bt corn seeds, which are then given for free or at subsidized prices to unsuspecting farmers.

Now that the free ride has vanished they cannot cope, how silly!
Yet they found a smart solution, suicide!
I must emphasize that this is also a neat solution to the overpopulation problem, Heil Monsanto!

Disclaimer: I am not a leftist and I don't like the so-called "democracy" but to quote Mencken (not much of a leftist either) again :
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
H. L. Mencken

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InfinitePossibilities on December 28, 2006 - 4:06pm

I think we totally agree with every sane person that Monsanto's strategies in developing countries are criminal. The company should be prosecuted for a lot of what it did in the past and is doing right now.

The point I was trying to make is that the green revolution has not had as benign an effect on much of the world as it had on the developed countries. Indeed... without the green revolution much of the world would be starving to death, but even with it there is hunger. Part of the problem is technical (not all parts of the world are equally productive eco-systems for agriculture), part is economic and part is political.

Unlike you I will always agree that part of me, like of every honest man, is a leftist. The other part of me is conservative... conservative as in "conservation of (natural) resources and human life and values", not as in neo-conservative fascist.

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DelusionaL on December 27, 2006 - 4:30pm

"I think "Get more sleep" is relevant."

More sleep, in a cold house, with the lights off....hmmm..."lack of enough sleep to health problems like obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes." (Sounds an awful alot like exercize to me, but hey what do I know)... :-?

...more sleep...sounds...er...great to me!

;-)

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DelusionaL on December 27, 2006 - 9:50pm

More sleep, in a cold house, with the lights off....hmmm

Also a very good reason for a vasectomy

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Sandor on December 27, 2006 - 5:51pm

I spent nearly 20 years in the IT world. The "falling asleep" ritual took at least 30 minutes every evening. The mornings were a challenge, and I usually slept 6.5-7 hours.

I retired almost 5 years ago and became a builder. Trust me, 10 hours a day with a tool belt on, getting enough sleep is the last of your worries. The "falling asleep" ritual is now measured in seconds. I would say I fall asleep in less than 2-3 minutes. I don't use an alarm clock, and my body dictates how long I sleep, usally 7.5-8.5 hours.

If people are going to physically work for a living, getting enough sleep will not be a problem. It will be a requirement to survive.

I am now 42, and do not miss the white shirt, tie, coat and slacks.

I spring out of bed in the morning! I love the physical work!

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oilmanbob on December 27, 2006 - 7:12pm

So the moral is take more naps, and that turkey sandwitch may fuel a bout of lewd behaviour. Starving oneself may not make you live forever, but its sure going to seem like it!

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BrianT on December 28, 2006 - 9:51am

The cultural obsession with longevity is amusing,considering the extremely poor quality of life of almost anyone over the age of 90.

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Leanan on December 28, 2006 - 12:09pm

Obviously, what people want is to be healthy into old age.

That appears to be genetic, though. If you do everything right - exercise, eat a vegetarian diet, don't smoke, etc. - the average person will live to be about 86. The people who live to be over 100 tend to be quite healthy and happy for most of that time. If you have cancer or a heart attack at 56, you probably won't live to be 100.

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Magnus Redin on December 28, 2006 - 12:12pm

Its not that bad since the number of good years have increased a lot.

One complex economical and moral problem is that we now have very manny medical treatments to get some more months or better quality of life for a short while when we are near the end of our lives. This is a good problem since we did not have these options before but using all of them for everybody cost a lot and will probably cost more then can be afforded.

This prompts the need for some kind of moral/cultural development to ratio these medical treatments in a way that gives a nice society to live in with good quality of life for most people.

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Don Sailorman on December 28, 2006 - 12:45pm

I have a living will in the hands of each of my children, my doctor and my lawyer. The gist of it is that before age seventy it is all right to spend a lot of money to keep me going, between seventy and eighty I want to rule out very elaborate procedures, and after age eighty all I want in the way of additional medical care is antibiotics and painkillers. With the help of my lawyer I put in strong wording to the effect that I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of pain or of being kept alive on a ventilator near the end of my life. At all ages I have specified "DNR" "Do Not Resuscitate" because dying once is enough for me;-)

My body is going to go to the U. of Minnesota medical school to provide an educational corpse for future doctors. Why waste a perfectly good body by burying or burning it?

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