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By Norman Pagett: The oilparty is over (and so is our food party)

oilparty is over

With denial of reality, we excavate the foundation of the cliff that we continue to climb.

With acceptance of reality (and wisdom), we would climb down while building a softer landing zone.

 

Our oil age will not end through lack of it, but by fighting over what’s left.

The critical nature of oil made WWII inevitable. To sustain their empires, the Germans and Japanese slaughtered their way across Europe and Asia in a grab for resources, primarily oil. They promised infinite prosperity and their peoples cheered them on while deaths elsewhere were being counted in millions. With most of the world’s known oil supplies in the hands of his enemies, Adolf Hitler knew he had to have the oilfields of southern Russia and the Middle East to sustain his war machine.

He failed, and his dream of a ‘Greater Germany’ collapsed not because of inferior soldiers but because there was insufficient energy input to sustain his plan for world domination.

We now have maybe 20 years worth of usable oil left. There are certainly no more than 30, perhaps as little as 10. If one of the crazy sects running loose in the Middle East managed to get hold of a nuclear device, setting it off on the Gharwar oilfield of Saudi Arabia would end our industrialised infrastructure overnight. That is perhaps too bleak a prospect, but we should not discount that notion entirely.

No one dares to stand up and make the rather obvious point that we are not going to reach 9 billion. Something has to give, and that giving is going to be very unpleasant.

For the moment, nature keeps us supplied with oil, and we’ve pulled off the neat trick of converting it directly into food. Not knowing when our oil is finished and our food supply will run out is the little teaser for the early 21st century. Right now, most people think that food comes from supermarket shelves and freezers, which is just as well. The food trucks moving around the country are basically mobile warehouses, delivering food just in time for it to be consumed. When the realization dawns that the food trucks have stopped, the food held in stock by retailers will be stripped bare in hours. The oil age for everyone will have come to an end.

The link between oil and the ability to eat is clear. The UK has to import 40% of its food, and much of the rest depends on oil to produce it, which also has to be imported. It is the end of the UK’s oil age, but few admit to it being the end of a food age as well.

As the UK detaches itself from Europe, under the delusion that the ‘great’ will be put back into Britain, the reality will hit home that without oil surplus, the UK will be reduced to a third world country at starvation level. British farms cannot feed 65 million people.

The same problem is being revealed in the current fiasco of the rest of the European union, Oil-fueled prosperity is falling dramatically in the poorer southern countries. Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal and a swathe of smaller nations have to import all their oil which only worked when oil was cheap. Now it’s expensive, and they are facing bankruptcy. 50 years of ‘unity’ is dissolving like a mirage in the face of the difficulties that smaller states are suffering. Without cheap oil, their economies cannot function, and so are disintegrating.

https://medium.com/@End_of_More/the-oilparty-is-over-c06d3c723655

h/t Derek Peter Carne

By Respect Silence: Why “Saving the Planet” is a Misleading, Lost Cause

Overpopulation Denial

Nice rant.

Even in darker moods, most people are still worrying about things far more trivial than the 24/7 destruction of their only means of life. Denial is the default programming.

If people were seriously planning to stop the destruction of nature it would be echoed in the things they do and say on a daily basis, but most social chatter is about making money (from depletion) feeling good and staying entertained. Watch and listen to your neighbors and co-workers. Most are ego-driven and the rare ones who dwell on the common good are seen as less than “successful” by bling standards. There’s little evidence that enough people care about the true source of life to protect it from money-hungry urban banality. Let’s stop pretending the planet can be saved from us, by us. Benevolent aliens won’t do it either.

https://evilnoisypeople.wordpress.com/2018/06/24/why-saving-the-planet-is-a-lost-cause/

By Irv Mills: My Peak Oil Journey

Irv Mills

Irv Mills today published a very nice history of peak oil in which he summarizes what has occurred to date, and explains how his understanding of the relationship between energy and the economy has evolved and improved over time.

Mills’ essay is clear, accurate, and accessible. I recommend it as an excellent primer on peak oil.

Mills observes that oil consumption in recent years has grown about 1.7% per year despite little or no real growth in the economy. He speculates that the extra energy is being consumed by the oil industry to produce oil that is now hard, and getting harder, to extract. I suspect he’s right and recently wrote about this red queen phenomenon here.

Mills sees economic problems in our future but also expects some surprises. I agree. As readers know, I am fascinated by the fact that we collectively deny the reality of peak oil, despite it being, by far, the most serious short-term threat to civilization. My hunch is that we will never accept the reality of peak oil. Something else will happen that we can blame for our economic woes. Like war. To admit that growth is over due to nature being more powerful than our hubris, and that we totally screwed up by ignoring obvious facts, is a pill too big to swallow for our egos.

https://theeasiestpersontofool.blogspot.com/2018/06/autobiographical-notes-part-4-my-peak.html

As that average EROEI declines toward about 15, economic growth grinds to a halt and it becomes difficult to raise capital to start new ventures and to maintain existing infrastructure. Below 15 a modern industrial civilization quits working. Because this is a weighted average, choosing to produce more energy from low EROEI sources makes things worse while temporarily seeming to make them better. It has been estimated that the current average EROEI of the world economy is around 11. Of course some lucky countries are doing much better than that.

But because of our “lowest hanging fruit first” approach, EROEI continues to decline. Real economic growth appears to have stopped in the 1990s, with governments using clever new ways of calculating gross domestic product, and unemployment and cost of living statistics to make things look better in the short run. And low interest rate policies to encourage lots of borrowing and keep the economy growing, again, in the short run.

 

The major oil companies were hurt by low prices too, and cut back on their investment on discovery in order to save money. This has left us in a very bad situation as far as oil supply goes over the next few years. Trillions of dollars would have to be spent on discovery to catch up with demand. It seems to some of us that there is no sweet spot where oil prices are low enough to keep the economy growing and high enough to make the oil business profitable.

In any case, it seems unlikely that there are actually sufficient oil resources out there even if we could find the money to spend on discovery.

By Ajit Varki: Did Human Reality Denial Breach the Evolutionary Psychological Barrier of Mortality Salience?

Here is the latest talk by Dr. Ajit Varki on his MORT theory given April 18, 2018 at a conference on The Evolutionary Perspectives on Death held at Oakland University.

This talk repeats some content presented in previous talks, but also adds some important new ideas. There is evidence here that Varki, despite a large important unrelated day job, is still thinking about and developing his theory. That’s great news because, as I’ve said many times, MORT is the most important new idea since Darwin.

This slide depicts the emergence of the unique behaviorally modern human mind.

Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT)

 

This slide shows that most behaviors unique to humans no longer exist (grayed out) if you remove the adaptations for an extended theory of mind and reality denial.

Unique Human Cognittive Features

 

This slide explains the implications of the Mind Over Reality Transition theory.

Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) Implications

Varki introduces a new idea that incomplete suppression of mortality salience may explain the need for Terror Management.  I wonder if Varki might be trying to get Sheldon Solomon, who has to date been juveniley dismissive of MORT, on board?

Mortality Salience Incomplete Supression

I found this slide on ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny interesting because I’m reading Michael Pollan’s new book on psychedelics in which the human brain’s Default Mode Network is explained to be the seat of self and theory of mind, and which is suppressed by psychedelic drugs thus re-creating what may be the tripping mind of a baby. I wonder if our adaptations for an extended theory of mind and reality denial somehow affected or created the Default Mode Network? I’m hoping a neuroscience expert will weigh in here.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

 

This new idea from Varki on sex differences resulting from MORT is, I suspect, important, but I need to digest it more before commenting.

MORT Gender Phenotype

 

At the 23 minute mark Varki addresses climate change with a quote from his co-author Danny Brower which is a very nice summary of why I created this blog. If we do not acknowledge and manage our tendency to deny reality we are doomed as a species.

Brower on Denial of Climate Change

Aside 1: The video at 15:15 that Varki took on traffic from the window of his hotel room in India is hilarious.

Aside 2: The Q&A begins at 25:00 and I observe that, as with previous talks, no one in the audience seems to get the profundity of his theory.

Aside 3: I observe that the most important new idea in science, and the idea whose broad awareness may offer the only hope for our species, has 12 views on YouTube. Apparently, the only topic more unpleasant than human overshoot is our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities.

 

 

 

On a Red Queen: Diesel to get Diesel

Everything you depend on to survive, including food, depends on diesel.

Look with your own eyes at how much diesel it takes to get diesel today.

The US has already fracked about 2 million of these wells, and because they deplete quickly to nothing in only a few years, about 13,000 new wells must be fracked every year, just to tread water.

The red queen is eating a bigger and bigger share of your honey.

Now you understand why debt is growing exponentially, despite most people feeling poorer.

What you may not know is that almost all of these companies are losing money. Mainly because it takes so much diesel to get diesel.  They have survived to date because investors are pouring money into them to make sure they don’t miss out on the technology miracle that is making the US “energy independent”.

Use your own eyes to decide how much of this miracle is from technology, and how much is from diesel brute force.

Now close your eyes and visualize the Canadian tar sands. It’s almost the same story.

Now you understand why, when common sense finally returns to the stock market, the impact on our diesel dependent lifestyles will be dramatic, rather than gentle.

If, on the other hand, the price of oil increases enough to make these companies profitable, many citizens and businesses, who are already struggling to make ends meet, will be forced to cut back on the amount of oil they use, which will make them less productive, which will cause the economy to contract, which will cause the stock market to contract, which will cause many of these fracking companies to go bankrupt, which will kill the red queen, which will cause the total quantity of fracked oil to deplete at about 30% per year, which will make it much much harder to make ends meet, and eat.

Now you understand the nature of our predicament.

As with climate change, we do not discuss as adults the net energy red queen.

We simply deny the problem exists.

 

 

 

Here is the latest data from Art Berman that re-confirms most of the above.

Michael Pollan on Psychedelics

Who knew?

Michael Pollan says psychedelic drugs help terminal cancer patients accept their mortality.

As readers know, Varki’s MORT theory says humans needed to evolve denial of mortality to enable their unique brain power, and a side effect of how evolution chose to implement denial of mortality is that humans deny all unpleasant realities.

I’m thinking that a practical solution to getting people to accept and act on human overshoot and its many tentacles like climate change, resource depletion, species extinction, and the debt bomb is to inject magic mushroom extract into the water supply.

I’ll be reading Pollan’s new book soon to learn more.

 

By Jean-Marc Jancovici: Can we save energy, jobs and growth at the same time?

Thanks to Mike Stasse for finding this excellent presentation by Jean-Marc Jancovici on the relationship between energy, employment, and income.

I am not yet familiar with other work by Jancovici, but he seems to be a French version of Tom Murphy and Tim Garrett, which is a very good thing, because their quality of intellect, on the issues that really matter to civilization, are scarce.

Jancovici, an engineer, in 90 minutes, crisply demolishes 100 years of theories cherished by the “profession” of economics.

Idiots, all of them.

The depletion of natural resources, with oil to start with, and the need for a stable climate, will make it harder and harder to pursue economic growth as we know it. It has now become urgent to develop a new branch of economics which does not rely on the unrealistic assumption of a perpetual GDP increase. In this Colloquium, I will discuss a “physical” approach to economics which aims at understanding and managing the scaling back of our world economy.

Biography : Jean-Marc Jancovici, is a French engineer who graduated from École Polytechnique and Télécom, and who specializes in energy-climate subjects. He is a consultant, teacher, lecturer, author of books and columnist. He is known for his outreach work on climate change and the energy crisis. He is co-founder of the organization “Carbone 4” and president of the think tank “The Shift Project”.