littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You know this or is it conjecture?
Detroit is about the worst example you can give. It has halved in population and is utterly atypical.
Systemic Collapse: The Basics
- Thread starter Falcon
- Start date
Detroit is about the worst example you can give. It has halved in population and is utterly atypical.
I've lived there and driven round most of it. It is unwise to extrapolate from your knowledge of UK urban centres to the dynamics of US urban centres if you haven't seen them.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I lived in the us for two years. Moreover I lived in poor areas in the towns I was in. I have first- hand knowledge of bits of down at heel us. It isn't as you characterise it. That kind of demonisation usually comes from an outsider's view looking in and not understanding what they see.
Do you have evidence that subprime was concentrated in city centres?
Do you have evidence that subprime was concentrated in city centres?
elbows
Well-Known Member
Im glad I called you slippery earlier, blimey you are exhausting with the way you hop around and mix stuff up.
So now you are talking about all unconventional oil, which is not the same as what you said earlier that I was responding to. You said:
So that was mere hyperbole. You didn't just mean biofuels at all.
As for the plateau and institutional data, I am again forced to disagree. Unconventional oil equivalents have added a fair chunk to the total, but the data I've been looking at doesn't suggest they are what has maintained the plateau up to the most recent point we have data for. I mean oil has been plateauing as well, on its own. Depending on which figures you use you may see a slight decline or a slight rise in crude oil production levels in recent years, but nothing that shows a clear post-plateau decline just yet. That day will come, and then the bulk of what you are saying will be valid then, but to say these things right now is over-egging the present situation a little isn't it?
For example:
Above is one of many interesting graphs from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9106 which used EIA monthly report data.
Based on this they say things like the following, and I don't know why this you are so keen to go beyond this right now. Its more than fine to talk about the sort of thing you are on about as happening in the future, and it could begin at any moment. But from where Im sitting your argument becomes slightly weaker rather than stronger when you try to apply it to the past too.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
If you put oil into its proper perspective, it's fairly obvious why these doom and gloom graphs are extremely misleading, and why this statement isn't really right.
Between 1985 and 2010, total annual world energy consumption from all sources grew by approximately 5,000 Million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe).
In that same time frame oil production increased by approximately 1,000 mtoe, so only approximately 20% of the increased global energy supply of the last 25 years has been sourced from oil.
The bulk of the remaining rise has come from gas and coal, but almost as much increased energy generation has come from a combination of nuclear and renewables in that 25 years as from oil.
Also, in the context of peak oil and population increases, the proportion of energy coming from oil is at its lowest in those regions with the highest levels of population increase.
Now, if we could all stop getting hysterical over this, we could maybe just get on with solving this issue - not that it's going to be easy, but then previous generations had stuff like world wars 1 & 2 to deal with, so I personally think we should stop moaning and get on with sorting the situation out.
Attachments
OK. Some do. Some don't. They measure "core vitality". Metropolitan areas with strong cores have been less affected by declines. House prices went down less in cities with high core vitality and more in cities with low core vitality. The point is: there is a lot of variation in core vitality, so it's a bit simplistic to speak of "demonising".
Source: "Driven to the Brink: How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs" (PDF)
Nope. I have (and gave) evidence that mortgage costs had a less significant impact than energy price on economic recession. I have none that quantifies different levels of insignificance of mortgage cost.
Well, assume 80% of the green stuff, red stuff and grey stuff isn't there (the Carbon Bubble effect). Now imagine what you'd have to do to expand the yellow and blue stuff to take up the slack.
The "doom and gloom" graphs are, in fact, far more optimistic than climate change permits and our substitution requirements far larger and more rapid than we currently realise.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
That response was so predictable I almost wrote it myself while waiting for you to make it.
Well you have to admit, it was a pain in the arse enough when we were arguing about the power consumption of the global industrial system you need for your solar projects. But now we have to switch 80% of it off fairly soon, the nature of our solutions has fairly substantially changed.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
love detective
there's no love too small
No you haven't
elbows
Well-Known Member
You are going to wear that gleeful use of the 80% figure out pretty quickly at this rate
Anyways if I had to place my bets Id say that alternatives won't take up all the slack, much will be handled on the demand side. Some things will collapse, others will be propped up, new systems will be created. Things will be very different as a result in a number of fundamental ways, some ugly, some deadly, some that offer silver linings that humans will cling to as they continue to exist on a mood diet that is much better balanced than doom only, never mind the horror of certain realities.
At a bare minimum its going to be exceedingly messy, and we'll just have to look at the details as they come up, none of us can predict quite how all the different things will mix together, even when we have strong beliefs about how certain resources etc will trend in future.
Time will tell how much of our remaining capacity is redirected towards sane applications such as new systems and new sustainable infrastructures, how much of it goes towards horror or is destroyed in unnecessary ways before the point when resources alone would have rendered it unsustainable for a moment longer.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
The point though, is that all your stuff about us already dropping off an oil production cliff, and it being too late for us to take action because we won't have the energy capacity in the economy to do it etc etc ignores all the other energy sources that are available.
Also, only the most extreme of climate change evangelists are calling for us to stop using all fossil fuels entirely immediately. Most are calling for a compromise of in the region of a 60% reduction in fossil fuel use vs 1990 levels by 2050, which would still leave around 3500 mtoe available from that green, red and grey stuff.
Even at 2010 levels there's around 1600 mtoe available from nuclear, hydro and other renewables (inc liquid biofuels).
Add that to the fossil fuels we can allow ourselves in 2050, and that's 5100mtoe even without any increase in nuclear, hydro and renewables.
Renewables however are increasing at a rate of something like 15% per year, Hydro at around 5%, and nuclear is hovering around the same point. Without going into great detail, just to get an idea of the potential that could be achieved by 2050, if we were to assume that renewables and hydro continued to increase at those rates all the way to 2050, then these contributions would increase to
5,200 mtoe - Hydro
36,900 mtoe - Other renewables
Now, will the other renewables sector be able to maintain 15% growth rates, or hydro 5% growth rates for the next 40 years... probably not, and I doubt we'd really want them to even if they could. I strongly suspect that it can maintain something of that order until around 2030 or so, which would see other renewables increase to around 2,000 mtoe by 2030, and I suspect could realistically be at somewhere between 8,000-12,000mtoe by 2050, significantly more if really needed.
eta - and this is without even contemplating the massive potential for efficiency improvements in that timescale.
Now, do we really need to continue this woe is me bollocks much longer, or would our collective efforts be better focused on getting on with implementing the solutions? I've made my choice on this btw.
Also, only the most extreme of climate change evangelists are calling for us to stop using all fossil fuels entirely immediately. Most are calling for a compromise of in the region of a 60% reduction in fossil fuel use vs 1990 levels by 2050, which would still leave around 3500 mtoe available from that green, red and grey stuff.
Even at 2010 levels there's around 1600 mtoe available from nuclear, hydro and other renewables (inc liquid biofuels).
Add that to the fossil fuels we can allow ourselves in 2050, and that's 5100mtoe even without any increase in nuclear, hydro and renewables.
Renewables however are increasing at a rate of something like 15% per year, Hydro at around 5%, and nuclear is hovering around the same point. Without going into great detail, just to get an idea of the potential that could be achieved by 2050, if we were to assume that renewables and hydro continued to increase at those rates all the way to 2050, then these contributions would increase to
5,200 mtoe - Hydro
36,900 mtoe - Other renewables
Now, will the other renewables sector be able to maintain 15% growth rates, or hydro 5% growth rates for the next 40 years... probably not, and I doubt we'd really want them to even if they could. I strongly suspect that it can maintain something of that order until around 2030 or so, which would see other renewables increase to around 2,000 mtoe by 2030, and I suspect could realistically be at somewhere between 8,000-12,000mtoe by 2050, significantly more if really needed.
eta - and this is without even contemplating the massive potential for efficiency improvements in that timescale.
Now, do we really need to continue this woe is me bollocks much longer, or would our collective efforts be better focused on getting on with implementing the solutions? I've made my choice on this btw.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
for the hard of thinking, that'd be a potential of somewhere in the region of 15-20 mtoe by 2050, which is somewhere between a 30-70% increase in total global energy supply compared to 2010 levels.
Obviously those figures are incredibly rough estimates, just designed to provide a counterpoint to Falcon's oil obsession.
Obviously those figures are incredibly rough estimates, just designed to provide a counterpoint to Falcon's oil obsession.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
remember I was being taught climate science and responses when you were still merely an oil industry lacky happily going on your way in blissful ignorance of such things.
a rapid 80% cut in fossil fuel use to reduce the impact of climate change simply is not going to happen, even if it were a sensible idea, so it's barely even worth debating as an issue.
Even if the political will were there, it would be a completely suicidal policy, as we need that energy to actually enable us to put the renewables infrastructure and energy efficiency systems in place that will sustain us on this planet for generations to come, aside from it being far more economically and socially devastating than the increased level of global warming it would be aimed to mitigate against. It's therefore not a sustainable policy, and not one I'd even contemplate supporting.
The worst possible scenario at this point would be the total economic collapse such a suicidal policy would inevitably lead to, as all the remaining 20% fossil fuel energy would be taken up in the struggle for survival, with none left for actually doing anything to improve the situation.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
btw, I'm not saying that this is what inevitably will happen, I'm saying that this is what could happen if we make it happen.
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
I'm wanting to find out more about peak oil and related topics, but I'm not too sure where to start. I've tried looking for documentaries on youtube but most of the ones I've found have been made by conspiraloons who want to link everything to 9/11 being an inside job etc. Are there any decent peak oil documentaries out there? If not what would be a decent book to start with?
It is great that you want to get to know this. Peak oil is one of those areas with huge and vital "I didn't even know I didn't know that" concepts and you can quickly get to a position where you can detect it in the arguments of others with some basic reading round the subject.
The documentaries are accessible, but light on detail. However, they are good for orienting yourself before reading. You might find The End Of Suburbia interesting - US perspective, but covers the dynamics. Also pay attention to the contributors - (Kunstler, Klare, Campbell, Deffeyes) as their names will come up.
There are several good, general text introductions. I think the best on the link between energy, the economy and the environment is Martenson's "The Crash Course". It offers, I think, the most accessible foundation on the basics of exponential growth, peak oil and gas, how debt based, fractional lending financial systems work (or, rather, don't), and the implications of their coupling to the energy system. It will help you cut through a lot of the nonsense that gets spouted. You can do it online in his lectures, but you'll get more out of the book.
Another excellent book is Jackson's "Prosperity Without Growth", which offers (again, accessibly) a critique of the problems of growth dependence in neoliberal capitalism and neoclassical economics, and discusses the deep problems that are associated with "steady state" (i.e. zero growth) economic programmes.
Finally, if you've the stomach for it, Ahmed's "A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation" ties energy, food, climate, finance, and militarisation together and offers a really interesting viewpoint from the perspective of Marxist theories of resource scarcity as a political framework. This differentiates itself from conspiracy theory by the quality and depth of the references.
Good luck, and come back here and discuss what you find. It will cement it, and inform others.
Those days are already over in New York City and San Fransisco, Philly and DC aren't far behind. It's going to be like France, with the poor projects ringing the wealthy inner cities innit.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
That carbon is going to be burned regardless
A compromise which, regrettably, the atmosphere doesn't give a shit about. "You can't fool reality", as the say.
Analogies are risky, and I deploy them with caution. But imagine ten men on a submarine with only enough air for two. Imagine you arguing that they've "compromised" and have decided that there is enough for six of them. If you understand that analogy, you understand how irrelevant the "compromise" is. We are dealing with hard planetary limits, not discretionary allocations.
Indeed. But I've picked up a couple of distinctions in relevant Masters degrees since those days, so please don't patronise me.
I entirely agree. Psychology (or psychosis, take your pick) is an essential discipline in understanding system collapse. Hence the premise of this thread: "Systemic Collapse: The Basics".
Is that true? We are already on course for irreversible climate change in five years at the current rate of capital investment in coal fired electricity generation (ref). The latest technological fantasy - gas fraccing - has a 20% higher carbon footprint than coal. I detect the climate scientists really starting to shit themselves over the dozens of positive feedback systems we have identified so far that more or less ensure we will engage thermal runaway and hit 6 degrees, which is a species extinction risk. I accept (indeed, claim) that cutting 80% of carbon consumption will be economically and socially devastating, not least from its immediate effect on the food system. But so does burning it to keep the economy going. And, indeed, so now does burning it even to build replacements, because we left it 40 years too late.
No, I don't think that is the worst possible scenario at this point. 6 degrees is the worst possible scenario at this point.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
If you look through this thread you'll see that a large proportion of it is made up of you patronising people, so take your medicine like a man.
fuck knows what they taught you on these much vaunted masters courses of yours, but I'd be asking for my money back if I were you.
As an aside, I tend to find masters graduates who didn't have a standard degree in the subject before hand tend to come out from their masters absolutely certain that they know what they're talking about, but only having picked up certain parts of the subject, and if they had preconceived notions going in to the course, they merely use the course to verify those notions as there's not time in the courses to actually stop and test those assumptions properly, or give a proper grounding in the subject.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
It's this sort of nonsense that I object to, and that people who claim to be academically trained in the discipline should know to steer well clear of. It's bullshit.
That figure's now 6 months old anyway, you really ought to be counting down if you're going to use it, so using 4 years 6 months til irreversible climate change if we're doing it by the month, or maybe it's such an accurate figure that we should be doing a daily countdown.
We are already in the process of irreversible climate change now, in 5 years time if we continue down this course we will be even further down the line to even greater irreversible climate change, similarly in 10 and 15 years time. There is no magic cut off point, or more correctly, there could be in terms of the various feedback mechanisms, but we're relatively clueless about what it is likely to be and whether we have already passsed it or at what level of greenhouse gas concentrations will will pass those limits.
I believe you're referencing the IEA report, and getting all hysterical about us missing the 450PPM target. It's been blatently obvious to anyone with half a clue that we were going to overshoot that notional target by a long way for at least 10-15 years, basically since the US (coaxed along by the oil industry you were working for at the time) refused to ratify Kyoto or participate in any meaningful greenhouse gas reduction treaties in the 90's, so forgive me if I fail to get excited because the IEA have now worked out at what point that is likely to become an actual certainty.
What we need now are clear long term commitments from all countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a sustainable manor in order to get them to level out as low as possible, not some short term panic measures that entirely destroy the worlds economy in order to attempt to meet some notional target figure. Short term panic measures are never going to work here, and this sort of nonsense merely builds us up for a massive fall in 4 years 6 months when little has happened, as a large proportion of the public / policy makers will get it in their heads that the sky hasn't fallen in, or that we're fucked anyway so no point making any further efforts etc.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
Risk assess it.
How many people are likely to die from option A vs Option B?
How much time will the world have to adapt to this situation under options A and B?
Is there an option C that is between options A & B that reduces the impact of both?
If there is an option C that reduces the impact of both, should we not opt for that rather than A or B?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
or to put it another way.
What you're proposing would cause utter devastation to the world economy now, and over the next few years, and billions would die in that timescale as a result, with billions more ending up in abject poverty trying to scratch a living from the land, with no time for any measures to be put in place to mitigate this problem.
Even if we were to build in 6 degrees of warming, that full 6 degrees is never going to happen inside this century, and the changes would occur relatively gradually, allowing a timescale of several generations to adapt to the new conditions.
The entire point about reducing the impact of climate change is to reduce it's impact on the ability of the planet to sustain human life at a reasonable quality of life. Proposing methods of mitigating climate change that would immediately cause impacts on the worlds population that were every bit as bad as the worst possible impacts of climate change would be utter lunacy.
Aside from that, it's also never ever going to happen, so you may as well go and lock yourself in a padded cell for the next 5 years for all the good you'll do spouting this kind of nonsense... actually it would probably help the situation as it would stop you from spreading needless panic and disinformation.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
or more succinctly - get a grip ffs.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is symptomatic of your approach - implying certainty where there is no certainty. It is almost certainly too late to stop some global warming. Reducing emissions by more than half by 2050 will make a huge difference compared to doing nothing. We still don't know exactly what difference - because we don't properly understand all the complex feedback mechanisms of the system - so the Met Office and others produce ranges of likely scenarios. In all these ranges, a 60% reduction in emissions is massively preferable to no reduction. Your analogy is incorrect because it implies that there is a binary choice - prevent climate change or apocalypse.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Just had a quick look for some figures, and here is an illustrative study from 2002.
A-D are just different-size cities. So there are a fair few subprimes in inner city areas, but they are outnumbered by those in outer areas, especially in the largest cities. Not surprisingly, in all cases they are concentrated in poor areas and also in areas with large numbers of black or hispanic people.
It's striking just from a brief scan of academic articles how there were clear warnings of the folly of subprime lending as far back as 2001/o2.
Also, I stand by my demonisation comment. Subprime is concentrated in the kind of areas that are demonised by those who don't live there, just like you did with your comment about being likely to be 'shot in the face' in places where subprime dominates. That was a crass and incorrect generalisation. It is something you hear a lot in the US, particularly in the south - white people think anywhere where mostly black people live is a lawless ghetto filled with people out to murder you. This opinion is usually based on ignorance and prejudice, not experience.
(Forgive me if I ignore your other personal insults. It's water off a duck's back by now)
You appear to be violently disagreeing with yourself, while violently agreeing with me. I'm at a loss as to your point.
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