<HOT Hot hot The Oil Drum DrumBeat: February 14, 2007>

84 comments on Water and Oil - another trip to Aramco's plumbing

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dmathew1 on February 14, 2007 - 1:02am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Hello Heading Out,

I enjoyed this post. Well-written and ominous.

Hmm! Maybe the next book review I’ll do will be “The Boy’s King Arthur.” Well actually, given the controversy about him (he was a Celt and they ultimately lost – after he died - so he has been relegated to mythical status. The winners write the history books), perhaps that might not be such a good idea.

The winners write the histories, but what happens when there are no longer any winners?

When the books on Homo sapiens are closed and history has come to its final end and all that humankind has ever accomplished is forgotten forever ... what then?

When Homo sapiens are extinct and there are only fossils and a thin layer of pollution left in the fossil record to testify of our existence, what would a future species of intelligent life say about the primate species that appeared for such a brief moment and departed so swiftly?

All of these things which seem so real are coming to an end. Humans -- Americans in particular, but all humans -- are living in an invisible ocean of delusions and grandiose lies. It is a tragedy of the highest order, a tragedy which only a Divine mind can really comprehend and appreciate. I wonder what God is thinking? When God looks down upon heaven and observes the Earth with its 6.5 billion humans I imagine that He cries.

Here today, gone tomorrow. Such is the fate of all species. Such is the fate of the Homo sapiens.

But the sun will rise again tomorrow. That much is guaranteed. Thank God for the sun.

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1

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karlof1 on February 14, 2007 - 2:07am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Olympian Gods didn't cry; rather, they laughed, slapped their bellies and ridiculed the folly of Man. Perhaps that's why the idea of Isis/Gaia had/is so appealing. The Warring Father Gods overturned in favor of Nurturing Mother Goddesses.

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Dragonfly41 on February 14, 2007 - 7:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"Nurturing Mother Goddess" ...don't let Mom image fool you. She can also beat the living crap out of you if you misbehave.

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Rudolph Diesel on February 14, 2007 - 1:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It is highly unlikely that Homo Sapiens will go extinct from the collapse of this
failed experiment we call civilization. Civilization will go extinct, of course,
and the vast majority of the enormous population will disappear with it, but
it is almost certain that humans themselves will survive, and probably curse
their ancestors who put them through such a miserable thing as the slow, violent, brutal, painful decline of civilization and left a poisoned world as their final
legacy. But humanity will survive. Homo is only a couple million years old, and Homo Sapiens is only a couple hundred thousand years old. We already figured out how to
live on this earth just fine, and right up until some thousands of years ago (in some places more, in some places less) we lived a very good, very sustainable, very healthy life.

It is a common misconception of the civilized world to think that civilization IS humanity and vice-versa, that there is no other alternative. Those 'primitive savages', though, could have taught us a lot that we will have to learn again for
ourselves, as many of us as survive the next couple decades.

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Darwinian on February 14, 2007 - 4:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

High gang, I have been, and will continue to be out of pocket for several days. Taking a vacation and only every few days check the Oil Drum on a borrowed computer. But I must agree with Rudolph and all the others who say that it is highly unlikely that Homo sapiens will go extinct in the next few thousand years.

Think about it, we occupy every habital liveable place on earth. Even a catastrophe that wiped 999,999 out of every one million people on earth would still leave 6,500 people on earth.

Extinction happens when there are not enough breeding pairs of a species left to reproduce. No matter how bad the consequences of peak oil, or even the total end of fossil fuels will likely cause that to happen.

But if anyone truly believes that human extinction is indeed about to happen then it would behoove them to explain the exact mechanism of this catastrophe. After all, there are people living in the Amazon jungle as well as in New Guenie that are surviving quite well completely isolated from the rest of civilization.

But they should do this on the open thread, not on a thread that is dedicated to another subject like Saudi Arabia.

Ron Patterson

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pickyreader on February 14, 2007 - 4:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Ron, If such an event were to occur, don't you think that it would leave the 6500 people rather scattered around the earth? Is it not only helpful to have breeding pairs if they are physically together?

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xuewen on February 14, 2007 - 6:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Aboriginal people in Australia are our nation's past... I can't help thinking that they'll be our future as well, and will have the last laugh.

There are probably enough of them still retaining some of the traditional culture and skills to be able to flower again.

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84 comments on Water and Oil - another trip to Aramco's plumbing

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