Peak Oil twenty years later

 

This guy has a family resemblance
to my own humble self, LOL

John Michael Greer´s peak oil update. 

Short form: while fracking saved the oil industry and "solved" the peak oil problem, the deeper predicament is net energy. More and more energy and economic resources are needed to get the oil (and many other non-renewable resources). And since those resources presumably aren´t renewable either, well, brace yourselves for a new energy crisis in the near future and another chapter in the saga of the long descent.

Oh, and note the comment in passing on NGOs and USAID!  

The fall and rise of peak oil

Lords of the Fall

 

John Michael Greer has retired from Wagner-posting, now its peak oil and decline of modern civilization again! Welcome back, bro. ;-)  

Lords of the Fall

More and more familiar

 

Credit: Guillaume Baviere 

I already linked to these before, but here we go again. A propos the creeping (or not so creeping) demographic crisis. The implications are downright staggering!

An unfamiliar world

Deindustrial warfare

Everything is Fermi´s paradox

 

Or suffering? 

A new speculative study suggests that even if an advanced civilization would take all its energy from renewable sources (such as solar power), it would still collapse after about 1,000 years if energy consumption continues to grow exponentially. 

The only solution seems to be - surprise - to limit population growth and hence energy use. So limits to growth is apparently a thing on all possible alien worlds. Blasted! I mean, who knew?

Of course, the above would solve Fermi´s paradox. Either aliens kill themselves in a gigantic heat death of their home planet (fossile, fissile or solar) or they give up space flight and accept being marooned for a billion years...

I know what I would chose, and no, it´s not "rather one year as a space faring lion than one billion years as a grazing sheep", I´m with the sheep on this one!  

Alien civilizations probably killing themselves from climate change, bleak study suggests

 

Waiting for Tom Navy

 

The above is AI:s take on the arrival of John Frum and Tom Navy to New Guinea. The century seems to be wrong, though.

It struck me that perhaps our own predicament isn´t so far off from that of a cargo cult. Our rituals include demanding more money for CERN and fusion power research, building windmills, avoiding certain "offensive" words and symbols, and (I suppose) make dank memes about trans-humanism. Some of us probably worship AI in secret!

If we do this, it seems, a "Tom Navy situation" (or is it singularity) will apparently manifest itself and then...everything will go back to normal again. As in perpetual progress, and then some. 

Nothing like those stupid Melanesian Natives, naaah.  

Abiogenic and acerbic

 

Sabine Hossenfelder attacks both climate change deniers and activist climate scientists in this video. Meltdown in the commentary section in 10, 9, 8...

Apparently, far right commentator extraordinaire Tucker Carlson has rediscovered "the abiogenic petroleum theory" (or conspiracy theory), which probably isn´t true. And even if it would be true, extracting all that oil might still fuck up the climate.

On the other hand...Sabine Hossenfelder believes that the problem isn´t the use of fossil fuels per se, but rather the carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. Translation: if we could only find the technology to stop *that*, we might continue using fossil fuels. Not a popular message in some circles. 

Ms Hossenfelder is good at triggering both sides in an infected conflict!

Wise Use

 

Some hot takes (pun intended) on climate change, foreknowledge, the oil companies, et cetera. Did "They" really *know*?  

The sodium solution

 

Not sure wat means? And as per usual, the techno-geeks are offering their five cents (or is it bitcoins) in the commentary section...everyone pretty much disagreeing with everyone else.

Is a "natrium reactor" less efficient than a standard one, but easier to build and operate? Or is it both cheaper and *more* efficient? 

I suppose both options are worth looking into. You know, climate change, peak oil, that kind of stuff. Note also who finances this little operation! Hmmm...

Now, do thorium reactors.  

A really angry atheist

 

The Amazing Atheist rants and raves about the end of the Amerikan dream. Seminal! 

A literal cold war

 

Russian scientists have supposedly discovered an enormous amount of oil in Antarctica, enough to last for 500 years. There is just one problem: it´s on territory claimed by the British. And very close to territory claimed by both Britain and Argentina. These territorial claims are invalid according to an international treaty, but who will care in the future? If Russia and/or China moves to extract the oil, all bets are off. 

Argentina currently has a pro-Western government, but this could change in the future, and then Argentina´s old claims to the Falkland Islands might be dusted off. Thus, we could see a geopolitical confrontation over fossil fuels in the South Atlantic between a Sino-Russo-Argentine alliance and an Anglo-American ditto.

The consequences for the world´s climate if even more oil is used up is not mentioned in Daily Mail´s article (probably because of their right-leaning political sympathies), but Russia and China are not known for giving a damn about "green transitions". The massive use of aerosols to mitigate global warming is probably inevitable at this point...  

The scramble for Antarctica´s black gold

Drill, baby, drill

 

After exploring geoengineering c/o Björn Lomborg, we now take a look at geothermal energy. Can it help us avoid both peak oil and climate change? 

It would be ironic if modern civilization saves itself from these twin dangers...only to be destroyed by, say, overpopulation, rampant hedonism, nuclear war, class conflict or low IQ, but I suppose no civilization can just choose its apocalypse.

Oswald Spengler may be proven right, after all!

See also here:

Man and Technics

Take the oil

 

“Three Days of the Condor” is a classical 1975 US spy thriller, featuring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Max von Sydow (the Swedish actor). I think von Sydow´s part in the film – he stars a cold-blooded paid assassin – created quite a splash in Sweden back in the days. Not sure why, considering that Max von Sydow´s main claims to fame are two really noire Bergman films!

“Three Days of the Condor” was made shortly after Watergate, and it does show. At the center of the plot are a number of conspiracies involving high level CIA personnel. The main character, Condor, works for the Agency, only to find his entire team assassinated, apparently by other CIA operatives. Or perhaps by rogue elements and free-lancers? The hunt is on, and Condor soon realizes that he (probably) can´t trust anyone – not even the good guys in the official CIA hierarchy.

The most intriguing character is the paid assassin Joubert a.k.a. “the Alsatian”, who pursues the fleeing Condor only to turn coat in one of the more breath-taking plot twists I´ve seen. As already mentioned, actor von Sydow is Swedish, but for some reason, the director thought he would be excellent for starring a man from a Franco-German border region. I agree that his accent in the film doesn´t sound entirely Swedish. Condor himself comes across as extremely unrealistic. He is supposed to be a bookish nerd, but he turns into some kind of pro in the blink of an eye. Handling guns, manipulating phone lines, tracking down secretive CIA bosses, and getting fair women in bed are all part of his repertoire. Dude! He must be good at handling the AI-like computers in the film, too. Machine learning (and problems with prompts) were presumably a thing already 40 years ago...

The multi-layered conspiracy turns out to be about US plans to “invade the Middle East” (all of it?) and occupy the oil fields. The 1973 oil crisis is the obvious backdrop to this part of the story. At the end, a CIA official explains to Condor that it´s not just about oil. “Tomorrow, it´s the food”. Here, the background may be something like Paul Ehrlich´s warnings about overpopulation leading to famine even in the Western nations. So yes, “Three Days of the Condor” feels very 1975, but it´s not entirely removed from our own predicament in 2024. The Middle East conflict, including US attempts to occupy the same, is forever with us. It´s still about the oil. And while *de*population is apparently the big problem today, the skyrocketing food prices (and oil prices!) does make me wonder about that famine bit.

Watch it before it´s banned!

The depopulation bomb

 

John Michael Greer on the real crisis of our time. Not overpopulation, but the exact opposite: population contraction. A crisis, that is, if you like modern civilization...

If you don´t, welcome to a world both strange and beautiful! 

An unfamiliar world 

Huspessimist

 

Komet slår ner på Aftonbladets redaktion

Aftonbladets egen huspessimist har tydligen skrivit en ny bok. Som jag ännu inte har läst. Jag antar att årtalet 2040 kommer från gamla goda "Limits to Growth". 

Men okej, det är svårt att säga att han har "fel". Fast personligen tror och hoppas jag att civilisationen inte kommer att kollapsa förrän 2100. Och att någon någonstans kommer att kunna behålla den ännu ett tag till...

Ny bok varnar för civilisationens kollaps år 2040

The Great Famine

 

"Yes, my dear Zorglub, the humans
didn´t factor in our energy needs,
I mean, we almost starved to death,
thank God for the alien intervention of 2025!"

The hype about "AI destroying humanity" is BS, since AI needs enormously large amounts of electricity to work (and hence fossil fuel and/or nuclear power).

Which we don´t have.

Next question!    

Salami sandwich

 

Had I been US president, I would have secured Hungary´s vote in favor of Swedish NATO membership long ago.

Hungary gets Russian oil and gas at cheap prices. But how? The country has no border with Russia. Or even Belarus. Look at a map. Presumably, there is a pipeline going from Russia through Ukraine all the way to Hungary. 

Ukraine?!

Threaten to bomb the pipeline. Seriously, what´s the problem?  If he says yes, he can have the 30 billion euros. Who cares? 

 

Reconaissance

 

A sobering essay by John Michael Greer. 

What he misses, though, is that before the era of absolute resource depletion and depopulation sets in, the great powers (and some not so great ones) can still use whatever they have left to bomb each other back to the Stone Age. 

What *really* stops Israel from nuking Gaza, Iran from nuking Israel, Pakistan from nuking Iran, and Trump from nuking everyone? Or Russia from nuking Ukraine, for that matter. Only fear of the other side´s  nuclear weapons, or the public opinion in your own country (irrelevant in some cases).

So in the decades ahead, we are probably headed, not for Adrianople, but for a messy combination of both high tech warfare, drones and terrorism.

Come to think of it, we seem to be there already!  

Deindustrial Warfare: A First Reconaissance

No more bauxite mines

 

A fascinating essay in which John Michael Greer sounds almost scholarly. Usually, he sounds more like a tinfoil hat...or is it a Druid ditto? ;-)

Jokes aside, the blog post below discusses why the high cultures of China, Egypt and Mesopotamia - China in particular - managed to recreate themselves in cyclical fashion after civilizational collapses. The short form is that China had access to abundant supplies of water and a form of agriculture that didn´t deplete the soil of nutrients. This ever-present resource base could be tapped to recreate and sustain the Chinese civilization even after political collapses and military defeats. 

The somewhat longer form is that China today no longer has this ability, and will therefore collapse in pretty much the same way as the declining modern West. Most of its population will presumably die off one way or another, and since traditional Chinese culture is long gone, the eventual successor civilization centuries into the future will probably be something entirely different...

In other words: we finally discovered how and when China will fail. May you live in interesting times!   

Surviving Catabolic Collapse: A Case Study

Mr Canfield, I presume?

 

Will survive 

From a recent discussion on JMG´s blog:  

>>>As for a Canfield event, keep in mind that the Black Sea is already anoxic — fifty million years from now, there’s going to be a lot of petroleum where that sea used to be — and that oceanic anoxic events are fairly common in the history of the planet; they’re one of Gaia’s normal responses to a greenhouse event, and while they cause a lot of extinction in deepwater species, species elsewhere are basically unharmed. I expect an oceanic anoxic event in the tolerably near future, for whatever that’s worth.>>>

No more sushi, then? 

Beyond the mirage

 

"Oh no, it´s that peak oil doomer again!"

John Michael Greer is back in force. 

Neither nuclear power nor "green" energy can save us, fossil fuel production and consumption will continue until the bitter end (despite this or that mostly fake climate protest), the bitter end being "peak oil", the inevitable downfall of modern civilization and its replacement with some kind of post-industrial future on a planet heavily marked by climate crisis...

Still, the human race will survive. 

Beyond the Peak