Houston, We've Got A Problem!

Buzz, buzz, buzz. Twitter, twitter, buzz.

Can you hear all the noise out there?

And not just the ModernMediaMachine.

It's on Twitter, it's on MySpace, it's on Facebook, on text messages.

Houston, we've got a problem!

But, is all the buzz, buzzing about the real problem? It's NOT just the economy, I can assure you.

Did you see "Apollo 13"? Classic.

Did you catch the part in the story line where the crew was scheduled to do a live broadcast while flying towards the satellite of a small, water covered planet, third out from it's sun?

And, the ModernizingMediaMachine of the time decided that watching real live human beings flying from the tiny home planet where they evolved to an entirely different celestial object was just not interesting enough for "ratings" to rate being broadcast?

Amazing!

What does that remind you of? All those Demon Derivatives weren't too interesting until they started to crash the global economy huh? Or sub-prime mortgages, or greedy bankers or sleeping politicians.

And, do you remember the part where they were buzz, buzzing, trying to figure out how to get the astronauts home again safely and finally, at one point, one of the engineers explains that the only thing that matters is ENERGY!

ENERGY!

That's all that matters. If you don't have any energy, nothing else on the spacecraft is going to work or make a difference at all.

Hmmmm.......

Is this sounding familiar?

Every day I talk to people about Peak Oil and for even the nicest, most intelligent ones, their eyes just seem to glaze over with the whole subject.

Pick a subject, any subject. Paris Hilton, pro basketball, the Academy Awards, whatever.

Anything is better than actually discussing our emergency situation with our spacecraft.

Make no mistake about it, the Good Ship Blue Marble is in trouble!

Ask yourself, if you are reading this, and therefore at some level you "care" about Peak Oil and our energy emergency, how many people did you tell about the problem today? What about yesterday?

Make a list. I dare you. How many people do you know that can even explain what Peak Oil is?

Global Warming is warm and fuzzy now. Lots of people are freaking out over that.

But hardly anyone seems to have the slightest concern that our main source of energy is crashing and we don't have a replacement ready.

Ever since I first learned about Peak Oil in 1981 I've watched with amazement while the people around me just kept burning, and burning and burning. And, I can assure you that nobody, I mean nobody wanted to hear about Peak Oil. I learned to only discuss that "strange" subject with other "earth scientists." Nobody likes a party pooper do they?

It makes you wonder if we will end up as "lucky" as Apollo 13 and make it home again?

Missing the Big Picture

The cool thing about Peak Oil is that it makes you think. It makes you ask questions. What am I doing, and why? How do I fit in? What is my "footprint," and I don't mean just carbon.

But we live in a world where many things are compartmentalized, specialized. People tend to focus in on one little part and miss the big picture. As an example, I was recently teaching an 11 year old the "lift equation." The formula that explains the relationship of the factors that make things fly. 

Flight is one of man's greatest achievements and it still amazes me every time I execute a takeoff, or landing. In the course of the discussion about the "four forces," you know, gravity, lift, thrust and drag, we used substitution to explore the magic of one of the natural effects that God hardwired into the universe, lift. The key thing to understand about the lift equation is that lift varies with the square of the velocity. This is an incredible thing, somewhat similar to the power of compound interest.

If you double the velocity (airspeed) from 50 knots to 100 knots you don't just get double the lift. The lift increases from 2500 units to 10,000 units! I think this is very impressive and demonstrates a real world example of the power of an exponent that you just don't get by cranking through your algebra homework and getting an "A" on a typical math exam.

The interesting part was when the 11 year old asked me, "Is this math or science?"

"What a great question," I answered. "What do you think?"

I then realized that the education system this 11 year old was participating in had taught him that things are separate. You take one class for math and another for science. He hadn't really seen the connection between the two before.

Check out this video of Mark Bittman talking about food. He makes an interesting exploration of the US system of "industrialized" food production. And he presents some impressive numbers and even gets you thinking about global warming by proposing that cows (and the associated problems with industrialized food production) are affecting humanity in a similar way to how the threat of nuclear war affected humanity(and still does).

But he doesn't seem to make the connection between food production and Peak Oil. Or food production and sustainability.

This is very typical. Many otherwise intelligent people just aren't making the connection. The awareness of the Peak Oil problem just isn't mainstream. The new media darling is global warming. Not Peak Oil.

Mr. Bittman proposes that "the current health crisis *** is a little more the work of the Evil Empire." This is a veiled comment about the endemic corruption in the US and the system of corporate lobbyists influencing government policies.

The good news, he points out, is that animal products and junk food are not necessary for health. Bravo! And he explains that "marketing has created an unnatural demand(for animal products and junk food)."

Bittman goes on to explain the history of food in the US and effectively reminds us that in 1900 all people ate locally produced food. Interesting. Especially since that is what Peak Oil experts are suggesting will be part of the solution. Producing food locally.

I liked this presentation but it is a good example of the danger of compartmentalization and specialized study causing intelligent people to miss the big picture.

Bittman is right. Global warming could have catastrophic impacts on humans (IF global warming is happening, IF it is caused by men. We don't even know if there is such a thing as a climate!). But he misses the big picture concept that we can't fix global warming if we don't have any ENERGY!!! It is going to take huge amounts of energy to change the systems we use that caused the global warming in the first place. That is why Peak Oil is so important.

This is not a case of picking one football team over the other. Peak Oil and Global Warming are infinitely more complicated. But that is the challenge that America faces. American culture is permeated with a value system that places great emphasis on football, or NBA basketball and intentionally ignores real world things like the asteroid of Peak Oil.

So check out the video of Mr. Bittman. But remember to fill in what is missing. The fact that Peak Oil is the gorilla that is going to overpower other issues like eating "too much" animal products and junk food.

As a matter of fact, Peak Oil will "solve" the problem of eating too many animal products simply because the crash after the Peak will prevent the business as usual continuation of industrialized food production. There will still be some animal food production, probably through channels like Permaculture. But depending on how rapid and severe the oil crash becomes, industrialized food production will change radically and eventually will be forced to sustainability. That will be good in the long run, maybe on the 50 to 100 year scale. The problem is in the medium term with the Peak Oil crash.

 

My first lesson in Peak Oil awareness

Awareness. Consciousness, recognition, realization; understanding, grasp, appreciation, knowledge, insight; familiarity, formal cognizance.

Awareness of a problem is a precondition to creating a solution.

Do you like stories? I do! There's nothing like a good story to help us learn something new. I hope you like this one.

There I was. Circa, 1980. Standing at a gas station in Newport Beach, California. I was just minding my own business filling up the tank of my 4 wheel drive truck. And all of a sudden, in squeals a little black Porsche 911 that skidded to a stop utilizing a miraculous ad-hoc gas pump collision avoidance technique. Out pops a beautiful blond woman in designer clothes and dripping with jewelry. A trophy wife. It was obvious.

She proceeded to circle the vehicle looking high and low for the gas filler port. After about the 4th orbit she found it and realized she had pulled up on the wrong side of the island, again. Oh well, no matter :-) She popped back in behind the wheel and fired up that little black toy and proceeded to screech around to the other side of the pump island. Can you see it coming?

That's right! She jumped out again and it took her about 30 seconds before she became AWARE that she had recreated the same challenge of having the filler on the far side of the vehicle from the pump.

At this point, I discontinued my fueling operations to take advantage of my ringside seat.

The third time, she got it right, but back on the original side of the pump island and not without some spectacular circling maneuvers as she worked out in real time the spatial realities of re-positioning her lil rocket ship.

She jumped out again, and this time she actually made eye contact with me and immediately scowled. She gave me a look like I was an offensive insect and I smiled and she ignored me.

I watched her wrestle with the gas nozzle and hose, remember the old ones without the vapor-recovery system? She got the fuel filler door open and managed to pry the cap loose. So far, so good. But then, trouble. She tried to squeeze the nozzle actuator once she managed to get it in the hole, but it clicked off time and time again.

Being the consummate gentleman that my mother always hoped for me to be, I idled over and politely offered my assistance.

"Can I help you with that Ma'am?" She started with the "crush the insect" look again but changed course and put on her best "Daddy, can I have another diamond bracelet" look instead and smiled at me as she gave me one of her regularly practiced cleavage shots.

I proceeded to pump the gas for her and politely avoided any small talk so she wouldn't actually have to speak to me.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed her sizing me up.

"What in the world happened to you," she asked quizzically?

I was still dressed in my roughneck coveralls and I was covered with, oil!

Oil! The black stuff that they use to make gasoline for little black Porsches! I had just driven all night from a well we were drilling in Utah and I was still filthy from a flow test we had done that drenched everybody on the drilling floor before we got it shut in and avoided the imminent explosion that roughnecks affectionately refer to as "midnight death." I was so excited to go surfing in Mexico on my days off that I hadn't even bothered to wash up.

I told Miss Porsche that I worked drilling oil wells. For just an instant, I saw a little flicker of RECOGNITION, and maybe even APPRECIATION cross her countenance.....but then it was gone.

She said to me, "Oh, I see!" And I could easily tell that she did not.

It was that moment that gave me a powerful INSIGHT into understanding my fellow man, or Porsche-Babe, as the case may be.

I UNDERSTOOD that the vast majority of people in this world will never have the slightest clue where oil comes from and what it takes to go get it so others can live their lives.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Rock on! And why shouldn't people be able to enjoy their lives free of concern for things industrial, things of a petroleum nature?

After all, we don't live in tribes anymore. Modern society insulates the beautiful people from the dirty, grimy world of physical labor as in drilling wells for black gold.

I never forgot that lesson. I helps me even now to understand how people can be so blind to the Peak Oil problem.

I learned that my realizations are not your realizations. Everybody has to be responsible for their own awareness.

I am looking forward to sharing my expertise as this exploration into AWARENESS moves forward.