Said by Anti_Elvis:
The earth produces more energy in a day from solar/tidal/wind than..all the fossil fuels that have ever existed on earth.

Perhaps 1 or 2 months of sunlight exceed the energy content of all the fossil fuels that ever existed on Earth. If fissionable and fusionable materials, such as Uranium and Deuterium, are included, I think Sun delivers about 10,000 times more energy over the next 4 billion years. Sun is definitely the primary energy source.

solar constant: 1353 W/m²
mean radius of Earth: 6.378 * 10⁶ m
World energy consumption in 2005: ~500 EJ = ~5 * 10²⁰ J
The estimates of remaining worldwide energy resources vary, with the remaining fossil fuels totaling an estimated 0.4 YJ = 4 * 10²³ J

Earth receives: 1.7291 * 10¹⁷ W

During 1 day Earth receives: 1.49 * 10 ²² J

When man IS forced to adapt or "die", he will.

First of all this is based on the false premise of what has been will always be.

Second, the history of life on this planet is replete with examples of highly adaptable organisms that actually died when the circumstances permitting their survival either changed drastically or ceased to exist altogether.

It seems you assume that the smart ass little primates that we are are exempt from the basic laws of thermodynamics. Humans seem to believe we will forever be able to outwit nature due to our technological and cultural ingenuity.

Despite that assumption, there is nothing that actually supports this.

All of the schemes for extracting and producing energy, be they fossil or alternative, don't amount to a hill of beans if you can't produce and distribute enough food to adequately feed the continuously growing population of the world. So whether you accept this fact or not, there are currently massive die offs already happening due to starvation in various parts of the world.
Those people are *NOT* adapting.

Of course if by "Adapt" you mean come up with a plan to voluntarily and drastically reduce the human population of the world I would love to hear your thoughts on how that might be achieved.

Every technological solution that allows more people to live on a planet of finite resources, will only compound and delay the problem. There is nothing that I have seen in any culture currently existing that indicates we understand the need to completely end growth now. So there is absolutely no doubt that the laws of nature will therefore limit the so called adaptability of man.

Best wishes for a sustainable human culture.

I think the problem with many people who say that "technology" will allow us to overcome Peak Oil, or that Peak Oil cannot happen because we will "adapt" is one of unsaid (or even unconscious) assumptions.

I believe the assumption of people that say Peak Oil will be overcome or even say that Peak Oil will not happen is that life will go on (but without us humans), or that people will adapt (but without many people less) or that we will find a replacement (there will be no choice since there will be no more of the stuff).

I think that when many people say that Peak Oil will be a catastrophe, they mean to say that adaptation (yes, we most probably will adapt) will be extremely painful and that many will not make it.

So, yes, if we *want* those wind turbine, we *can* get them. Now, will we want them in time to be capable of building them or are we going to wait until we need to shed half of Earth's population before we can build alternatives?

See? it's not that we "can't", it's just that many people actually want the most of us to be able to continue living and actually think that people dying *is* a catastrophe.

Anti_Elvis,

I don't think the problem is one of not being 'bathed in energy' but one of society being entirely addicted to more extreme/concentrated and easily accesible (high EROEI) forms of it. To use an analogy its a little like saying a crack cocaine user could simply start eating all the coca leaves in the forest as there are literally tonnes of them out there...

What we need is a plan to get us from 'A' to 'B' -a transition plan. Unfortunatley the main issue at the moment is not that we don't have a plan, but everyone thinks we are heading towards destination 'C'.

[Edit]In response to FMagyar I would say that I do not believe it is in the fundamental nature of any species to "end growth" be it organic (yeast) or a higher form (man) -we rush towards consuming all...

Nick.

Nope, she is a he.

Don, I can agree with you on that. Leaders are really such putzes. I think it was Bob D that said "Don't follow leaders...etc" - and anyway a small tribe with many heads is much better than some bozo with a big one. I will negate that negative you have at the moment, as while I don't particularly like the implication of what you say, it seems to be the way things go.

lead on bro, let thy hard on point the way! Save some blood for your brain though... (snicker)

And while there are certainly important things that can be done, it overlooks the most important: we MUST have a political response to the crisis.

I think it would be great to have a political response, and talking about people stepping up as leaders is just such a response, no?

P.S. Sorry about the preachy tone...I haven't quite found out how to get that out when discussing this topic. I'll keep working on it. I don't like preachiness, either.

I am aware that Andre' gave a peak oil presentation to the Board of Supervisors of Marin County where he lives. So he is politically active.

It's not an either or. Politicians will take you more seriously if they see you are personally committed to walking the talk. And if you can show that making lifestyle changes hasn't hurt you and may even be helping you and your family and your community, etc., it becomes easier for the politicians to then reallocate resources towards more of what is needed rather than more of what they think people want or expect. Actually, you may have just changed what they think people want or expect!

You are absolutely right about how pathetically inadequate the current conversations are. The other week some friends of mine and I spoke to our congressman about a steady state economy, not requiring growth, etc. He doesn't quite get it, but he does sit and listen and not tell us we are wacko, which he is prone to do if he doesn't agree with you.

I think now is the time for the "psychological and introspective" which eventually reaches critical mass and spills over into the political. Don't knock the source for not being a result. The critical point comes closer and closer. The best way to achieve things politically: coil and get ready for the best moment to strike. Political action addicts are too antsy usually lack depth.

...Strewth.

Hi, MicroHydro.

I think it's entirely possible for almost everyone to create a future worth living into. If they "give up" then trying to point this out to them becomes impossible: every point is met with "evidence" that "it's hopeless." I've had to deal with someone who was suicidal so I know exactly the vortex the mind can enter and it's sometimes very difficult to get it out. But in the case I dealt with, the person did get out of the vortex and is living a normal life now.

This is different from people who are suffering from painful wasting diseases. At some point I think it's entirely rational to simply say goodbye to friends and family. We all have to go at some point and I think it's useful to remember that we are all but a brief candle.

But these situations are rare and I would say that the possibility contained within the overwhelming number of people out there is almost unimaginable — middle-aged women included. But few people know exactly how powerful they actually are because they don't try, or they tried some time in the past, were unsuccessful and convinced themselves that it wasn't worth trying again or that they were inadequate in some way.

Reminds me of the movie 'Logan's Run'.

and 'Soylent Green'.

Funny how the late 1960s and into the mid-1070s there were several movies made that seem to address the issues...

The big hand-wringer amongst many is how to sustain Social Security and medical benefits for an expanding pool of seniors/retirees with a flat or declining base of young working people. Unfortunately, many traditionalist/conservatives point to the evolving demographics in Japan and much of Europe and clamor for government/moral/church-driven incentives to increase the birth rate in these graying industrial counties, big time, right now! They even decry the upcoming demographic shift in China due to the one-child policy....as if the answer is for Chinese women to go into baby-making overdrive! Of course we import citizens, but many conservatives decry these folks of being the wrong color and cultural background, thus the urgings from the Pat Buchanan crowd for the upstanding, pure white Judeo-Christians to multiply their numbers to maintain numerical superiority...the same is said for breeding pure stock Europeans rather than be taken over demographically by the Moslem hoards. China and Japan are much more xenophobic than even Europe and the US. However, the idea of breeding more young people to support more old people is an overshoot fools' errand.

It is glaringly obvious that most people still cannot let go of the 'growth-forever' Ponzi scheme and envision a steady-state population sustainable World. Just look at our games: Monopoly; classic computer simulations such as Sim City and Railroad Tycoon...our games teach us that the only way to 'win' is grow. At least Sim City did a descent job of showing how growth has costs that lead to diminishing returns...unfortunately, once the cheat code keys became known to receive an unlimited budget, the idea of dealing with resource constraints went away and the game became a big sand box to see who could build the biggest castles.

Our reality 'cheat code' is the idea of the Fed and other institutions in the World being able to 'print' unlimited amounts of money and the belief that technological advancement can out-run population and resource pressures and contraints.

I work for a very large firm that is still briefing its employees of the need to grow 15% year-over-year and for all projects to realize a minimum of 7-8% ROI. This performance is expected forever. Growth is often being realized by absorbing smaller companies...ultimately we are in a zero-sum game, but do not want to admit it.

As we can see from the current election spectacle, the 'grow, baby, grow' crowd becomes highly desperate when their paradigm is threatened. Everyone in that mindset from all the 'Joe the Plumber' pawns up to the Greenspans and Roves and others who like to run the game get very upset when the game changes. This leads to the destructive politics of distraction of blame and fear: Stir up the racial, social ,and nationalist prejudices...just like the 1930s and early 1940s. Socialist! Communist! Terrorist! Community Organizer! The call for Lebensraum and oil for the divine Emperor's empire...permanent bases in Iraq, anyone?

Am I being a 'Drama Queen'? You Betcha, by golly, dontcha know! Maybe we can elect a leader in 6 days who maybe can at least slow the march off the cliff.

I agree, and disagree.

I agree that suicide will likely become more acceptable, and probably should. Jared Diamond noted in Collapse that sustainable societies often used suicide, even of the young and healthy, as a method of population control. Rather than being an unforgivable sin, it was seen as heroic.

However, I don't think lack of botox will be as terrible a scourge as you think, nor will the elderly be useless. The glamorization of youth is not universal.

My parents have reached the age where they're vacationing a lot, and my mother loves going to Asia. In China, Japan, Korea, etc., she gets a lot of attention and respect. The kind of public interest she hasn't received since her youth in the US. Because the elderly are respected there. I read an article once that described how happy a Chinese woman was to reach her 40th birthday. Until then, she got zero respect, but life changed for the better once she hit 40. Suddenly she was respected. The younger women in her family were jealous, and couldn't wait to be 40 themselves.

If things get as bad as many fear, the knowledge that old people have will be even more valuable than usual. Because they'll remember how to do things we may suddenly need to learn how to do again.

I attended a meeting our county's emergency preparedness committee this past week. One of our urgent agenda items it to network with our most elderly citizens in order to start learning and dissmeniating their skills to our younger generation. We did not have electricity in this county until WWII. That means our elders know how to live without electric, save seeds, store food, care for each other in a powered-down world.

Two nights ago I had my 80+ year old neighbor over for dinner. He still gardens and has perennial food crops that he began in 1934 at age 7. He talked about how the house we live in was once lit with carbide (?) and had a carbide system (?). That system sits in a corner of our attic- unused and mysterious.

Here on this ground, our elders are our key to food and light in the future.

We have some old folks that still raise draft horses-- for fun now, but they have the "old time club" that will still take a team out to work up a part of the field. For fun.

In this place with a strong agricultural heritage we will need and depend upon our elders.

Also, studies of primates have shown that having a "grandmother" increased the survival rate and well-being of the following generations. So do not discount the value that having a grandmotherly figure in our communities has upon the youngest generations.

My post-peak vision of my elderly self is to cook stew while minding the small ones; to use the spinning wheel I found in our attic to spin fiber; to knit clothes, dry apples, shell peas for as long as I can...

My husband's Norwegin great grandfather lived off the kitchen off the small house out here on the prairie, where his daughter raised her 12 children. He knit for his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren and led a domestically productive life. And he is remembered as being a joyful, happy man all his days. May we all be so blessed (albeit with a few less grandkids kids!!)

Hi, BlueTwilight.

Yes, I've been thinking of going back and discussing that, but I would come to a very different conclusion than you. I would demonstrate that after three or four years of oil decline, all the opportunities for conservation have been used up. I think we're coming to the end of the car as personal transportation for most people. Scooters and motorcycles, yes, but the personal automobile will soon be for the rich who can afford the initial capital cost and the cost of fuel.

This is, of course, only if the monetary system doesn't collapse, like what has begun to happen with the financial crisis but on a much much larger scale. I discuss why it would collapse in the primer (essentially, because money is debt and if the debt can't be repaid, the whole system comes crashing down). If that happens, then all bets are off until a new currency is devised and we can begin trading across the country and between countries again.

Now that people have seen the (beginnings of) the financial crisis, perhaps they are more open to seeing how precarious our currency systems really are. Take away the oil and the currency and stocks etc. essentially become worthless, in my view, because of our dependence on oil to perform work. Eventually we'll adapt, but the current stock market valuations will be wiped away.

How does Jeffrey Brown phrase it? What value do the ten largest banks have without the ten largest oil fields?