Peak oil and the end of modern industrial society.

[Arminius]

Poisoning the well, poisonous water - worlwide! But don't forget the poisonous air - worlwide!

Living beings drink poisonous water and breathe poisonous air!

Living beings feed on poison!

Living beings live on poison!

How long will that last?

[ralfy]

Peak oil is a scientific fact because oil is a limited resource, and has already taken place in various ways. That is,

Discoveries peaked in 1964.

U.S. oil production peaked in 1970.

World per capita oil production peaked in 1979.

Two-thirds of oil-producing countries have reached or have gone past peak production.

Crude oil production peaked in 2005.

U.S. shale oil production will peak in 2020.

In addition to these,

Oil (and energy) consumption and demand are rising worldwide because of a growing middle class in BRIC and developing countries.

In order to maintain global economic growth, we will need to find the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia in new oil every seven years.

Shale oil and other energy sources have low energy returns. Because of that and a growing middle class, we will need the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every three to four years.

Since 2005, the five major oil players have seen their production drop by 25 pct.

From 2005 to 2012, capital expenditures doubled for the oil industry compared to 1998 to 2005, but oil production barely rose.

The oil price is now triple what it was before 2005.

[Arminius]

Peak oil is NOT a scientific fact because WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER oil is a limited resource.

But we also do NOT know whether oil is NOT a limited resource.

[Arminius]

Combine the human's fight against nature (exploitation of nature) with the techno-creditism, and you will get the reasons for the huge chaos in the future, regardless whether the "Olduvai Theory" is false or not.

[Arminius]

- Markets are never really "free".
- Globalism means that the global banks / corporations (super-organisms) dominate and blackmail the states (nations).
- Unregulated competition leads to the plunder of all resources, especially of all human resources.
- This leads to the situation that all acquirable resources of this planet are owned by very few persons or super-organisms.

[Arminius]

- Markets are never really "free".

A "free market" means an absolute free market. That's logical, even tautological. The "liberal humans" want a "free market". - Okay, here is one:

[ralfy]

Oil is a limited resource because the earth is not an infinite planet.

[denniskane]

The problem with this issue is that it is much larger than any national government can handle, precisely because it means that national governments (particularly Western ones) are fundamentally incapable of taking care of their populations into the indefinite future, in the way that they've slowly grown accustomed to over the past handful of centuries.

So, it is pretty much the job of some kind of international, well... "energy agency" to break the news to all of us.

Enter, the appropriately named International Energy Agency...

For the longest time, they had been selling us the line that all would be peachy for the "forseeable future". Then, around 2008, they started singing a different tune and saying that the global oil supply chain should be looking a little "peaky" by around 2020.

I would suggest that this link is the most authoritative, up-to-date bit of information on the interwebs about this topic. In particular, check out the chart at the bottom, titled "Oil outlook to 2025, without a pickup in conventional oil investment". There looks to be an ever widening gap between projected demand and supply curves after about 2020. These kinds of fairly business-as-usual press releases are the way that our governments are able to break the news to all of us concerning how screwed industrial civilization ultimately is.

The lesson is pretty simple: we gotta start coming together and figuring our way around/out of this predicament amongst ourselves!

[promethean75]

false alarm, man. it won't ever go down like that. long before this ever becomes an immediate problem, the powers that be will already have contingency plans in place. you have to remember this; the capitalists parasites need the wheels to keep turning or else they'd die off. they'd never allow commerce on a large scale to be put in danger, because that would stop the money flow. so all the big bloodsuckers from all the first world countries are working together on solutions long in advance, man. don't you worry. so for example you'd have few gazillionaire european, american, chinese and arabic dudes sitting in a room together trying to figure out a way to fuck each other out of some money, but at the same time work together so they can continue making money off everyone else. eventually they'll budge, because if they don't come up with something, they'll all go broke.

[Gloominary]

Oil and gas will probably become scarce long before (manmade) global warming becomes a problem.
So far global warming has benefitted the environment.
Carbon is plant food.
Thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, the planet is greening and many species are flourishing.
We have more room both for wilderness and to farm than we otherwise would, and we could use several more degrees of warmth.