I'm a Patriot, and a Traitor

I'm a Patriot, and I love my country....

But I'm also a Traitor to my country's cause of maintaining unequal control of global resources as described on page 188 of TPIO (Richard Heinberg's The Party is Over).

My definition of politics is:

The intentional inequitable allocation of finite resources.

It is probably more accurate to call it a mis-allocation.

We live in a world of more than 7 billion humans where the Bottom Billion live on less than one dollar a day and the Bottom Two Billion don't have access to clean water.

This insane global inequity is fueled by oil and controlled by politics. It's just that simple.

Peak Oil is going to change all that.

No more BAU (Business As Usual).

Although my analysis indicates that it is less likely that we will experience an out-of-control "collapse," we are definitely now experiencing what is described as Energy Descent and Energy Collapse remains a constant threat. (I'm a One-Four-SixtyFive-Thirty).

As the PeakOil fueled BAU world unwinds, human awareness will shift towards sustainable living and relocalization of food production which will tend to disarm the politically powerful and empower the disenfranchised.

The WorldWideWeb is already spreading the basic ideas of sustainability faster than the PowersThatBe can control them. My intention is to be part of that solution, part of the wave that shifts the inequality back to our human compatriots.

So, I am a Traitor. A traitor to the cause of BAU. This is not heroic or really very interesting. It is really just a matter of education, understanding, awareness and acceptance. BAU is done anyway, whether I am a traitor to it or not. I'm just fortunate to have evolved as a human and been educated as a geologist and tuned-in to the fundamentals of resource depletion rather than suffering the fate of my fellow "Patriots" that were taught to "Pledge Allegiance to the Economy."

Soon, very soon, the celebrity-worship ModernMediaCircus will be unable to hide the truth of Peak Oil Energy Descent.

Unfortunately, the US government doesn't have a PLAN. That's because they don't have the courage to get realistic about the problem.

Instead, the ModernMediaMachine continues to serve up a menu of tasty tidbits in the form of soundbites attempting to rationalize why President Obama's escalation of a war should be rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize and Tiger Woods' lying, cheating and thieving should be rewarded by continued reverence and undeserved "respect" for privacy. Don't be fooled. The Party is Over.

The cool thing is you don't have to make a choice between being a Patriot, and continuing your allegiance to a fundamentally flawed economic system and the government that protects it, and being a traitor to that system.

The reality is that in the new world after Peak Oil, a traitor can express their commitment and fervor by positive action in the form of investing in new world systems of sustainability.

There is nothing to "fight about." No bullshit "war on drugs" or "fight against cancer" or other phony nonsense. The old system is imploding on itself no matter what your politics and what your allegiances might be.

We don't need to round up all the Traitors and throw them in an internment camp. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what the government doesn't want to do. We need to keep people out there struggling for solutions and learning how to rewire everything to run sustainably. This is a good thing.

So maybe for the first time in history, one can be a traitor, and a patriot both.

Listen to my friend Jackson Brown sing about it, and don't forget to raise your Peak Oil Freak Flag high, HIGH!

Blinkenlights on the Peak Oil Machine

ACHTUNG!

ALLES WIRSCHAFTSWISSENSCHAFLER (ECONOMISTCHEN) TURISTEN UND NONTECNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS.

DAS PEAKOILMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.

IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.

ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.


In other words, if you are not a Geologist or OilHand and you've never done any mud logging or thrown the spinning chain, DON'T TRY TO FUCK WITH SHIT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Just sit back an enjoy watching the BlinkenLights on the global Peak Oil Machine economy as the world slides down the Peak Oil Crash Depletion Curve.

Thank you for your attention. Auf widersehen.

Hey Mr. Economist, the war is over!

Remember those Japanese soldiers who were left behind to fight on little islands in the Pacific after World War 2 ended?

This is a picture of Lt. Onoda who was one of them and remained convinced for 29 years after the war ended that the world he used to know still existed. You can check out this fascinating true story about the Lt.

Just imagine meeting Lt. Onoda and trying to explain to him that things have changed a little and now in fact, men have "walked on the moon."

Ha, ha, ha, ha! You can almost here Lt. Onoda laughing. "No way! Men walking on the moon! Nonsense," he would say.

Funny thing is, this is pretty much the attitude I observe with Wall-Streeters, Bankers, CEOs, Biz School Grads, Government Officials and just about everybody else, including all those "educated" types that went to "Haaa-vaaad" and Yale and LSE or whatever.

Guess what guys? The joke is on you. The war ended a long time ago. Didn't you get that memo? Didn't you notice all the leaflets dropping from the sky?

It's incredibly strange that all these otherwise intelligent people have continued to ignore the signs. You know, little things like the fact that US oil production peaked way back in January 1971.

Hey! Guess what?

1971 was 29 years ago!

Just like Lt. Onoda hiding in the jungle for 29 years, these same masters of the universe have continued to "believe" in the myth of infinite cheap oil and GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH.

It almost sounds like some kind of cheer, doesn't it? Or scarier still, some kind of chant. Imagine a whole stadium full of economists chanting together, "GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH." Although I always enjoy it when they do "the wave." (otherwise known as the Wall Street Journal; nothing but entertainment) ;-)

Economic growth, as we know it in the late 20th century and early 21st, was completely dependent upon the exponential rise in the availability of cheap oil for transporation fuels and food production and everything else. End of story.

The Global Crisis is caused by the change in the vector of oil production. Simple.

But economists and the ModernMediaMachine remain convinced that the war is still on!

Maybe we should drop some leaflets down on them in the jungle and tell them the war is over and to come on out and get with the solutions to Peak Oil?

The United States of Terrorism

I spent a couple of minutes today reviewing one of my favorite books, one that taught me more about the system of modern medicine than any other- "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry.

Let me share one short passage with  you.

"As terrifying as the disease was, the press made it more so. They terrified by making little of it, for what officials and the press said bore no relationship to what people saw and touched and smelled and endured.  People could not trust what they read. Uncertainty follows distrust, fear follows uncertainty, and, under conditions such as these, terror follows fear."

So, you see. Terrorism, I mean real terrorism, not just silly boogeyman bullshit like the Department of Homeland Security masturbates about all day long, is created by government officials and members of the mainstream media.

This is true whether the subject is the H1N1 "SwineFlu" virus of 2009 or the Iraq War or especially Peak Oil.

People are stupid, but not that stupid.

Just because 60 Minutes is dumb enough to broadcast a story about there being plenty of oil in Saudi Arabia doesn't mean that people believe its true.

I found it interesting last week when everybody jumped on Joe Biden just because he gave an "honest" answer and realistically recommended that you keep your loved ones off the mass transportation systems. He was right. If the H1N1 was as virulent as the 1918 H5N1 then it would make good sense.

Believe me, as a former airline captain, I love the airlines, I love the freedom of being able to fly wherever I want to go on a moment's notice. But I also understand the potential for the airlines to spread a pandemic disease so wide and so fast that it gets out of control.

The best that I can tell, the world got lucky in March and April 2009 and the H1N1A didn't kill a hundred million people. At least not yet. It could easily come back in a newly mutated and more virulent form after multiple passages through humans over the next few months. Don't be surprised if we have to shut down all the airports in October or November if the H1N1 gets turbocharged again or the H5N1 goes wacky.

The bigger danger is the threat from the terroristic policies of governments and corporations and the media stooges they control.

You can fool some of the people some of the time....

I talk to people everyday about Peak Oil.

Most people look at me kinda sideways and make sure to nudge their children closer to them.

Peak Freakers are scary to soccer moms!

But I'm stuck in a world where I need everybody else to help me survive, I can't do it by myself.

I'm committed to spreading the awareness of Peak Oil to anybody who gives me even half a chance.

But it is obvious that most people feel terrorized by their own government. They know the government is lying.

Bailing out the banks? What a joke! I can't imagine why anybody would ever pay taxes again.

Maintaining the status quo is the obvious plan of the U.S Congress and whatever administration is in power at any given time.

Pointing the finger at Osama Bin Laden is a neat trick but I think lots of people are starting to wise up and realize that the so-called "War on Terror" is a big joke and the joke is on anyone stupid enough to believe that the infinitesimal threat from some fanatics on the other side of the world is anything like the immediate danger from a ModernMediaMachine that is completely manipulated by lobbyists and Political Action Committees.

Terror is terror.

It starts with distrust. Any idiot can tell the media is bullshitting them.

I respect your right to "believe" that Obama and his green shoots are going to turn the "economic crisis" around and soon we will be back to growth and Business As Usual as long as you respect my right to tell you you are totally wrong and the world is experiencing an energy crisis not an economic crisis and that the U.S. economic system designed on exponential debt and phantom dollars whipped into existence out of thin air by the Federal Reserve and not connected to any physical reality is a fundamentally flawed system.

Peak Oil is the Black Dragon. We already peaked 4 years ago so there won't be anymore growth. Get used to it.

The terror comes from the fact that the government and the media is making little of Peak Oil.

Is the World Wide Web Sustainable?

I like the Web, don't you?

Email is convenient for me. News is convenient. Weather data is a snap.

The Web has become so fundamental to our way of life that it is obviously assumed to be sustainable, that it will last forever moving forward. But, is it really sustainable?

The consistent decrease in net energy available to civilization necessitates an exploration into the future viability of the Web assumption.

I haven't heard any discussion about the sustainability of the Web. Have you? Please send me some references if you have.

The analysis of the sustainability of the Web reminds me of some of the truly nutbag statements I see on a daily basis about our energy choices, for example: I often hear people try to "explain" to poor little old me about the "fact" that "wind is carbon free" or "solar doesn't use any oil."

Well, those kind of statements just emphasize the complete lack of competency of the author to discuss energy.

Solar panels use tons and tons of oil. They do so at every level of the supply chain that it takes to design, develop, fund, manufacture, transport, install, maintain, sell them and deliver energy to the grid.

The same with wind power. You have to build factories, with oil. Build components like steel towers and even carbon-fiber blades, with oil. You have to transport the components, with oil. Feed the workers, with oil. Etc., etc..

The Web is the same.

It takes oil to build the components. It takes about 630 units of energy from oil to make one unit of silicon computer chips.

It takes oil to build the servers, the switchgear, the cabling, the fiber optic, to lay the fiber optic, to build satellites and deploy them, to fill the maintenance trucks with fuel and feed the maintenance workers.

It seems to me that at some level it would be interesting for some clever doctoral candidate to attempt to conduct a real energy-based cost analysis of the Web. I'll bet the real numbers would make us gasp. Unfortunately, life calls, or I might attempt such a difficult analysis here.

All I am saying is that I doubt if it is going to be so simple to keep the Web up and running in a world of collapsing EROEI.

But, I think the military, for one, will take resources away from something else to protect the continued operation of the Web. Like, taking energy away from somebody that they could otherwise use for food production. This is more than sad. It is potentially inhumane.

Think about it.

Enjoy the Net Energy Free Fall as it gets worse this year, and next.

The Crisis is Energy, not the financial markets!

The idea that the Global Crisis is financial in origin is a catastrophic misunderstanding that is continuing to prevent the creation of a solution. Wall Street, global media and governments are filled with fools who mistakenly think that sub-prime paper was the origin of the problem.

These people have a fundamentally flawed view of reality.

They fail to understand that the growth of the industrial world over the last 100 years was only possible because of cheap energy from oil, not because of "brilliant" financial geniuses and "talented" leaders.

The U.S. property bubble and it's collapse was entirely due to forces driven by energy and the complete failure of governments to use energy from oil to build an energy-sustainable world before Peak Oil caused the current catastrophic crash in global energy markets that is forcing a Power-Down from the unsustainable days of essentially free energy from oil.

The longer the world stumbles along thinking that the problem is with financial markets, the deeper the energy crisis will become and the harder it will be to start to rebuild fundamental infrastructure that could eventually bring back the possibility of new growth.

The world will have to learn how to adapt to the new paradigm of NO GROWTH because global oil production will no longer support it.

Massive debt taken on by the U.S. and other nations during the current crisis will likely cause the collapse of many nations, including perhaps the U.S., unless the economists start to understand that the economy is supported by energy, not the other way around.

This is hard for most people to grasp. For a simple reason.

Everybody alive today has been taught the wrong lesson. We have all been taught, every day of our lives, that energy was "free," meaning that rock oil was so cheap that it was basically free.

That was never true and now we are getting bit by our failure to understand the fundamental nature of natural resources like oil and the necessity of the peaking, depletion and lowered EROEI or net energy on the downside of the curve of production.

If this view of the economy doesn't quite make sense to you, I suggest you watch some of Chris Martenson's videos to learn about the connection between energy and the economy.

"Growing Liquids Supply Challenge"?

The "Growing Liquids Supply Challenge"? Hmmm....

Doesn't that sound like it could be Peak Oil?

Check out the graph above from page 12 of the "One Year Later" September 17th 2008 update to the 2007 "Hard Truths" report issued by the National Petroleum Council, an oil industry organization.

Go ahead, click on it. I dare you.

It's interesting how this oil industry group avoids the term "Peak Oil" at all costs. They don't want to call it Peak Oil. They want to sanitize it and call it a "growing liquids supply challenge."

Well, too bad. I'm going to call it what Hubbert called it, Peak Oil.

Peak Oil, Peak Oil, Peak Oil. There, we got that straight.

But, check out the graph. Do you notice anything scary about it?

See that prominent gray band starting from the left at about eighty-something million barrels of oil PER DAY? Then, going DOWN to the right, the gray band is prominently labeled "4-7% Production Decline."

Production decline, starting in 2007, and going DOWN all the way to the end of the projected period in the year 2030.

That means Peak Oil. Plain and simple. And, this data is mostly from 2006 and 2007 and was updated in 2008.

Peak Oil is HERE! Even the oil industry is showing this.

But, it gets worse. Notice the UPPER gray band? That range shows the projected DEMAND curve according to the 2008 International Energy Outlook.

Look how bad it gets. In just 2015, a mere 6 years from now, the projected shortfall in "liquids" is 30 to 45 MILLION BARRELS PER DAY!

By 2030 it is even worse, catastrophic! The projected shortfall, to keep up with the projected demand of about 110 MMBOPD is 70 to 100 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL PER DAY!

That is just outright ridiculous!

No way is the world all of a sudden going to find and produce an extra 70 to 100 MMBOPD in 2030 when we can't even keep producing eighty something per day in 2008!

No way!

Notice up at the top of the graph, it says clearly, "Increasing Demand and Natural Production Decline Create Growing Need For Significant  New Production Capacity"

That might be the understatement of the century.

This is why the Global Economic Crisis is about to get a lot more interesting.

Are you living sustainably, with your own private energy supply?