It's a fair question, I guess.. but one I get tired of hearing, I have to say in all honesty.

There are a million 'Yah, but..' statements that hit you when you are trying to talk about what you see as a systemic problem, and this one and 'Jeavon's Paradox' are the ones that sound most to me like excuses NOT to alter course. It's as if their argument is that instead of slowing down, averting our material dependencies and not hitting the wall quite as hard is being countered with.. if we keep running full bore, we'll REALLY know there's a wall there.. with some folks postulating that our financial products and mechanical innovations will somehow cut a door for us at the very last second.

This is the classic 'Yelling fire in a crowded Theater' scenario. Most of us here do have the pretty certain feeling that the upshot of Oil's Downslope will be as dangerous as being crammed in a burning theater for our societies. If you send out the alarm wrong, then sure, there is a danger of people trampling each other, or getting stuck at undersized doors.. but it means 'Think hard about how you share these ideas' , not 'Let's sit here for a couple more scenes and see what develops..'

Part of an 'adventurous undertaking' is that you will probably have to be ready for many course corrections. You don't just plow forward stubbornly and blindly.. I mean, who was flying the fwiggin' helicopter, anyway? (I'm guessing Sarah Palin)

Bob

Hi Nate,

I think this is a fascinating question. On one hand, as a 70 year old guy who hopes to ride is bike for 20 more years and then have a few years of reflection before death, I wonder if we are just tilling at windmills and wasting our time. Maybe we should just spend this time smelling the roses because most people just dismiss us as “doomers”. As I recall, in one of your other posts you commented that facts don’t count for much (or something to that effect). Or, if we really try hard, we might get a few laws past that would result in the “small delay of the inevitable” as your friend suggests – this would not be much to brag about.

On the other hand, I think about my 14 month old great granddaughter who will be entering the adult world about the time I’m leaving it. I think about how my Irish ancestors struggled and sacrificed to create the comfy world I live in today. What am I doing to pass on a great quality of life for my great granddaughter? Do we just shut up because most people think we are nuts? And, how certain are we that we truly have the correct information to support our POV? What if we are wrong?

My answer is that I base my existence on science and logic. I don’t accept religious superstitions just because my parents did. Facts do matter. Science is the best we have for figuring out what to do next as a community. I am certainly not going to look to the christian bible for guidance.

Could my friend be right, (or at least in the ballpark)? That educating leaders to put the breaks on our consumptive trajectory might alter the natural human impact pulse just enough to pull in currently non-scarce resources from the periphery, making us worse off in the long run than if we attempt to mitigate?

I think the question is incomplete. I subscribe to the 3 scenario idea: BAU, Muddle Through, and Rational Plan. I think it is possible to see our glass as half full if a truly rational scenario could emerge from today’s predicament. My inclination is to keep pushing for a rational plan (along the lines of Brown’s Plan B 3.0 suggestions) but I suspect that the probability of meaningful acceptance is very low.

And, of course we need to "mitigate" - how does you friend think we will develop a plan for mitigation if us PO folks remain silent?

What awkward phraseology! ...you are efforting to avoid? Arghhh! Send your friend back to school!

I rather think your friend posed a false dilemma and you got hung up on it. What are the unintended consequences of not speaking out? Are we better off speaking truth to evil, or should we just let Rush speak his vile mind? And the question is so presumptuous anyway, for it presumes that if TOD did not speak out then no one else would.

Maybe, however, you should think of switching from TOD to TOC ("The Oil Conundrum") because TOD has made its point and all that's left now is arguing over when and to what extent PO, when people should be discussing: Given PO, what now?

My ex-wife and I were very influenced by the original Club of Rome report to not have children and to otherwise moderate our lifestyle. Our children would have been upper middle class high-consuming Americans; in our case I can't think of a downside to our increased awareness.

That said, I don't think that she and I are typical. It's my perception that the average person is way more influenced by family, friends, and 'authorities' than they are by any educational outreach by contrarians. As a result, I feel that my compassionate, empathetic attenpts to raise friends' and familys' consciousness are quite ineffective; it seems the only consequence (unintended or otherwise) is some little peace in knowing that I tried. Seems like a harmless hobby to me....

Well, here's an oldie but a goodie.

But encouraging the sentiment that oil will be more scarce in the future, the Peak Oil message drives up the futures market, making it profitable to buy oil and store it. As less is delivered to market, the current price eventually catches up big time, bringing down a rather vulnerable economy and lowering consumption of oil. There is thus less exploration for new oil, but then the economy picks up and people start buying things including more oil.

Rinse and repeat.

In the absence of "the message", there might be less of the destabilizing oscillations which make it hard to develop alternatives that are needed.

How can you be certain that all yours and others 'outreach' efforts will only result in slowing down our consumption paradigm just enough to allow for 20 or 30 more years of pulling in resources from the periphery, thereby unintentionally causing an ultimately greater ecological disaster than the one you are efforting to avoid?

I have two responses to this. The first is that I don't care about the Earth, only about people. Slowed consumption allowing more time to put in solutions to our problems is a good thing for humanity, even if it's a bad thing for the environment.

The second is to turn the question around. If not slowed consumption while change happens, then what? What's the alternative? Raise consumption, and then have a catastrophic crisis? Instead of lots of little crises, one huge crisis?

By this reasoning, it was better to have Hurricane Katrina than to have a few hot summers, better to have World War Two than to have had a brief war when Germany militarised the Rhineland, better to have a ninety-minute nuclear World War Three than have the half-century long Cold War, better to have a heart attack at 55 than exercise 20 minutes a day from 25 and live till 75.

I don't believe that. "Let's wait and let there be a catastrophic crisis," is the mark of a lazy person, one who seeks excuses to do nothing. Bugger that.

Thought got humanity into this mess and thought will not get us out of it.

Because of our capacity of thought there is an over population of humanity on the earth. Because of thought we think we need to survive at this level as a species. (Nature, god, gaia) will kick us down a notch and for some reason we think we can still fight against the law of nature. We think we are in control of our evolution but that has been a fallacy since the eugenics movement when we first misinterpreted Darwin's biological theory as a social theory. We are children throwing a tantrum.

By jerry-rigging a few more years of "normalcy" we are, in fact, creating a higher cliff from which we will fall. And for those of us who see the truth of the coming catastrophe, we will be pushed off the edge by the momentum of the mass of unaware.

Let go. Do less. Live by your deeds, not by your words. I will not prolong my life by medicines, by the products of thought. My discomfort is unimportant and is impermanent. Let go of the thought that you need to survive, that your children need to survive.

Most of you are aware of the problem, which is the purpose of these blogs. But awareness is not compassion. Like the man who is aware of the bum on the street but uses that awareness to walk over him.

Love as long as you live.

So glad to see a Wulf-Morgenthaler piece here. I've silently admired their work for years but figured their interpretation of the human experience was way too juvenile or gruesome for other intelligent people to appreciate. This has caused me some concern and self-doubt. I have now re-evaluated my WM position thanks to your post which is thought-provoking enough, even without illustration.

For me, personally, it comes down to a genuine sense of legacy. To answer your friend's question, I would say "Great! Perhaps that will create a soft landing and give us time to make adjustments".

What I hope and expect to get out of this 'alarmist' proselytizing is nothing. That is, society will make the progressive small changes and as Fatih Birol says, "leave oil before it leaves us". Later on I expect people to say, "See, what were you so concerned about. Things turned out fine." And, I will be regarded as the fool on the hill, but I will be a contented and smiling fool.

If our reason for warning, alarming, or cautioning is truly altruistic, then we must be prepared to be proven wrong about the consequences over the long run because people actually listened.

I can live with that.

I guess I feel more strongly about this with each passing day.

We people mostly live within the conventions passed along to us -- unspoken premises as well as articulated conventions.

We who are "middle class" -- or even economically better off -- in the "developed" nations tend to see our own rather comfortable lives as normal and as something we are entitled to. We also tend to see the kind of life we have lived for the last 40 years or so as something that will continue on for our children and grandchildren.

All of this is just how we are generally wired.

Some people do question conventional "wisdom" and even struggle to find truth and to understand the complexity of our individual lives or even of the human problematique.

I think that we who seek to understand choose to do what we do because that is the most authentic expression of our human passion that we can find. We need to talk the talk and walk the walk because that is who we are, not because we will necessarily shape a better future for ourselves or for others.

We do not govern our habitat, let alone our own species. We can express our convictions with passion, but outcomes are simply a mystery. There are infinite variables in terms of what the physical universe might do, and in terms of what various people will do when exposed to various ideas.

I sustain absolute vulnerability. I control nothing -- perhaps not even my own attitudes and actions. Even so, I act according to my own passions and convictions. Your friend might do well to reflect upon the inscrutability of the infinite mystery into which we are born as conscious beings.

Our "leaders" might do any number of things. All courses of action will be loaded with more unknown and unintended consequences than with known and intended consequences. That is the nature of the human predicament.

So is life meaningless and absurd? Yes. Is life meaningful and filled with decisions which we must make according to our own deepest values, passions, and convictions? Yes.

I passionately love the habitat that gave me birth -- Mother Earth. I also love the infinite mystery that surrounds my experience. I am too painfully aware of what appears to be human mortality and vulnerability to suffering.

Above all, I am aware that we are ephemeral clowns -- we do what we do based on too little information. We do what seems to be wonderful things. Sometimes those things cause consequences that prove us to be fools. Sometimes our folly is wiser than our wisdom.

I am passionately committed to the idea that we are here to help each other through whatever this is -- Vonnegut's answer to the question "why are we here?" Add that to my love for the habitat that gave me birth and gives me life, and that is a good basis from which to live life. Others have their own ideas -- or are happy to live with little or no original thought at all.

I say that we each walk the walk we feel compelled to walk, and talk the talk we feel compelled to talk. To do otherwise seems to me to not live at all.

We stand at the edge of a ledge due in part to mass ignorance allowing a small vested minority to make all the system sized decisions.

For democracy to work people need to be informed, failing that: fascism as per USA today.

False delimma, incomplete question, a person relaxed in the arms of unconsciousness.

Have to agree with Zen and Love however. Let go, lift the viel.

None of us can know the extent to which our words or actions have impacted others, but I know that mine have made a difference in my corner of the world as yours have in many corners of the world. Sometimes you plant a seed and sometimes you start an epidemic. A friend once said to me that it wasn't until he heard me speak on peak oil for the third time that he "got it." His views on a whole host of issues changed; his life changed. The Oil Drum does that every single day.

Energy is such a rich subject, and if you catch the energy virus, it motivates you to learn more, reach more, be more. Sometimes unintended consequences are better than the intended ones. What would you be doing now if not this? Would it be more fulfilling, inspirational, or satisfying? Would you have educated thousands, inspired them to take stock of their lives, motivated them to action? I don't think so.

I'm in awe of you and the others at TOD who work tirelessly to make this the best site on the web. If I had to take a guess I'd say your friend is really expressing what many of our friends and family experience--a changed relationship as a peak oil widow.

The Human experience, or better put, the momentum of civilization, has been as Catton proposed in his famous 1982 book, Overshoot, overshooting our resource capacity into what he referred to as phantom capacity. We over populated, over constructed, over indulged into a phantom, collective illusion. The idea that today equals tomorrow. That what we can use today makes us greater the faster we can make it happen. Don't worry about where more will come from, but instead worry about how fast you can do it. Why we can frac, inject and horizontal drill ourselves to greater extractions of oil, so much faster for a better life for all.

The speed that everything is done and is demanded of projects is such that speed alone is the absolute most important factor. Whomever you work for the story is the same. How fast can you get this done? The other guy can do it in 3 weeks, but we need you to do it in 2 1/2 weeks. What do you think? Can you do it?

Humankind forgot about resource depletion, carrying capacity, or any other 3rd base coach signal about whether to expand or not. The answer was always expand and do it faster. So now we face a post oil peak world that is stuck in a mode of ever faster expansion and cannot even begin to comprehend moderate growth, conserved resources, and maybe even doing without. No, in fact Hummer wasn't dismantled, it was sold to a Chinese heavy machinery manufacturer. Think of the symbolism of that transaction. The US is slowed by a recession due to a mortgage meltdown and resource depletion causing sky high prices, yet the pinnacle of avarice is kept in tact and sold to the next big growth country on the block, China.

We couldn't even get the message when it hit us hard and flat in the face. At least not as a planet of people. No, we sold it and now China will produce and probably sell the same product here in America at a lower price. I wonder if the 100k deduction will still be available?

We're a specie moving ahead when we get any kind of chance at breakneck speed towards an energy depletion catastrophe, with no chance of stopping ourselves. Its just not in our mode anymore to moderate our actions.

Hello Nate,

I am always in favor of full-frontal Peak Outreach [which includes birth control by my definition] as it offers the best chance for Optimal Overshoot Decline. If one examines Duncan's latest Olduvai Update: it predicts the US will plummet at breath-taking speed to roughly 3.5 BOE/C by 2030 as MPP gradually re-equalizes BOE/C worldwide. This is obvious to me, but YMMV.

As our population increases 3 million/year, and as ELM decreases our imports, aided by a dollar losing value, plus an increasing govt deficit program where now 1-in-6 is govt. dependent [not growing their food & energy]: I would expect US BOE/C to probably be decreasing by 2 BOE/C/year. This represents the loss of 80,000 hours of energy-slave labor/year--far faster than we can adopt meaningful conservation & mitigation wihout Peak Outreach. IMO, the US leads the world in energy denial so it will get hit especially hard in terms of a smooth adaptation to ever less BOE/C.

Without Peak Outreach: this rapid energy decline should bring huge US stress levels and widespread erratic behavior promoting many violent acts due to the genetic expression of Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome [GAS]. This is a contra-indicator to building family, community, and national unity, which is obviously the best way to mitigate Overshoot into Optimal Decline.

Thus, successful Peak Outreach might promote many miles of Alan Drake's RR & TOD proposals to make the decline less worse than it has to be. If we can adopt minimal water usage strategies, full-on O-NPK recycling by SpiderWebRiding, Earthmarines to protect habitats plus their enlargement, plus all the other good TODer ideas: this will be much better for the environment's health overall as the extinction rate might even decrease to help in this time of need.

In summary: the more Outreach the better!

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

I think that is an intelligent question, and it comes up whenever anyone tries to do anything worthwhile that does not necessarily solve the situation.

For example, when I was working in community health centers, I often wondered whether I was part of the solution (health care for those who otherwise could not afford it), or part of the problem (somehow making a bad situation just tolerable enough to keep the status quo going).

In the end, though, it is not the question that matters. We are pretty sure that on this trajectory, we are toast. It is not impossible that we also be toast on another trajectory, but it sure is worth changing our present one. Your friend is clinging to the mortal danger that is familiar rather than launch herself into the unknown. I am not condemning her - after all, I read and comment on TOD to help me get a glimpse of the unknown, as the known is deeply unsettling.

I think it depends on your message.

Mine is pretty simple regardless of what we do billions of people will die and we will go through one of the most trying times mankind has faced. And this will be done with many nations possessing nuclear weapons. Its not the end of the world but I suspect when it is over WWII will be looked on as a skirmish before the big one.

There is absolutely no hope.

However if we do act not on trying to save ourselves but to start laying the seeds for a new civilization after ours thats a good thing.
I think that false hopes like EV's and windmills are actually worse than doing nothing at all since they prevent people from making the really hard choices that would have to be made to try and contain the horror will will face.

The almost correct solutions are in my opinion the worst ones since as your topic points out they probably result in even steeper collapse later.

Like an alcoholic or drug addict only very tough love works.

Below are some private emails that I think are appropriate for understanding why I'm so harsh.

Me:

By definition complex systems always fail at the point of maximum complexity.

One of the few simple laws of my complexity theory. In fact its the
zero law if you will.
Therefore if you have a complex system thats throwing out obvious
failure signals the it will fail.
It has no choice.

Thats not to say it can't simplify and then discover a new way to
create a ever more complex system.
Look at evolution after every single extinction event by any measure
the world eventually became more complex.
Certainly some DNA lines are lost but eventually not only are the
niches filled again they are speciated with creatures that already are
more evolved from the last post extinction burst. Some refinements are
lost but overall the system gains increased capacity for complexity.

The next thing is given complex system collapse at the height of
complexity between the time that collapse starts to happen and when
the system begins to become simple (i.e collapsed ) It has to lie
about its real state.

To prove this assume you know for a fact the system is about to
collapse obviously between that point in time when you know the truth
the current evolution of the system is a lie. Its in a sense making
promises that it will increase or maintain the current level of
complexity when you know it can't. Obviously after the event has
happend you know the truth and can know with absolute certainty that
the system was no longer telling the truth i.e that it would continue
to maintain or increase in complexity. Thus by considering the rear
view mirror case you prove the system on the verge of collapse is
effectively lying about its future complexity.

This is what I mean when I say the system lies what I mean is that any
measure of the systems variables and its complex interaction would
result in a prediction that the system will continue either in its
present state or grow.
At worst a small setback or reordering event is in process. Complex
systems out of necessity sometimes rewire
causing in some cases short term simplification or better a new type
of growth in complexity.

As and example species go extinct all the time and new ones come into
exsistance without general ecosystem collapse.

Of course if you throw humans into the mix people will play of the
expectation of business as usual or a return to the golden years any
day now to perpetuate various scams as long as possible. The greater
the claim that we are close to a return to normalcy when the facts
state otherwise the more assured you are that real collapse is even
more imminent.

And last but not least given all of this our civilization is not only
complex but its based on growing cheap energy supplies and overall
growth. The biggest lie of all is that it will survive declining and
expensive energy and contraction. One reason I detest the alternative
energy crowd is by my metrics they are telling the worst lie you can
given the situation that some how the society will transition with out
collapse bullshit.

Thats not to say enclaves wont from that are eventually based on
alternatives and represent the seeds for a new society but that does
not save the old one.

observer1:

WOW!! Awesome post Dude! Complexity just became a whole lot simpler : )

Yes, I'm afraid that the example of extinction "simplifying" things is both too close for comfort and unfortunately true. So are we going to be simplified? Well, what are the preconditions for simplification?
Hmmm...

Number 1 is....OVERPOPULATION! (the snow is too heavy for the lower layer of snow to hold it so it separates and...)

2 would be environmental degradation thereby threatening food supply. Check. (Simplification in action i.e species loss and pollution dragging everything (complex forms) with it...

3, well that's easy there is no shortage of mendacity around : )

4...Perhaps the great hope that keeps people focused on the wrong thing i.e. Technology! or more simply electric cars : ) which is of course in the realm of lies.

So yes, even I can see a whole bunch of preconditions present : (

So, down to timing. Ahhh, much tougher! : )

But the simple answer is not to guess but observe. I suggest that the last year is credible evidence that perhaps we should pay attention?

Nawwww, the mkt will save us. Adam Smith will arrive in the form of The Second Coming and the Laws of economics will provide for all exponentially increasing humanity in perpetuity : )

And my response:

:)

I don't think its all that hard for the most part you just derive from
this zero law.

On the time aspect whats interesting is the lying about the state
makes the time variable indeterminate.

If you think about it a complex system at the virge of collapse that
tells the truth collapses immediately.

I'm going to collapse NOW. BOOM.

Thus the only thing that keeps the system from collapsing is not
telling the truth aka lying.

When the system finally collapses is determined by when the lie is
pierced i.e when the truth
becomes self evident and the lie is shown to be a lie.

This is indeterminate and effectively happens when the system runs out of lies.

Black Swans can be seen as nothing more than random events that happen
to pierce the lie and
cause early collapse before the lie has in a sense run its course.

The lies of course work because the effectively redirect parts of the
system into maintaining a sham.
A ponzi scheme is the classic but its better to consider them as a
sort of parasite on the host.

In the case of a collapsing system the parasites actually play a role
in killing the host in fact most lies
have the property that the even the lie is trying to prevent or
coverup or a worse one becomes more certain.

So lies about the collapse tend to work to make the collapse both
worse and more certain.

This is why I have proposed controlled collapse as the correct
solution its the only solution.

Complex system are actually defined in terms of their properties i.e a
system is complex if it can lie.
The ability to tell a lie is the signature of complexity.
The certain test for a complex system is to collapse it and see if the
timing of collapse is indeterminate i.e it can lie.

Quantum mechanics by definition is complex. Now I think you can see
why I get all fired up about quantum.
This is more basic. The Universe is effectively the last observer of a
complex system that reads out the truth values
of the quantum not-universe. Its less fine grained in a sense than
quantum mechanics or better quantum systems exist
outside our universe. Small wonder relativity does not easily fit into
quantum its because its not.

More likely the Universe itself is a quantum system acting as the
observer of another quantum system our reality our our universe is in
a sense the overlap of two quantum not-verses with different rules.

Hopefully the memes I strew through the internet can work to pierce the
lies allowing a more controlled collapse.
It why I keep writing. We can I think save the system if we force it
to be exposed for what it is a big lie.
And by save I mean collapse it before more is destroyed. The sooner we
collapse the more resources available for the next civilization.

The rationale for doing straight-up educational outreach on this has eluded me even as I've done it some. It "feels like" the useful thing to do... and one should always give extra thought to decisions when that's the case.

Problem is, in a real sense, perturbing human culture is analogous to perturbing an ecosystem, the systems are really very similar. Intuition is not a good guide. There are mongooses in my yard now which have eaten the native species, which were introduced to eat the rats. The rats are thriving in harmonious coexistence with the mongeese.

I'm sorry to just come upon this post as I'm shutting down for the day, and won't be back until late in the day tomorrow - Hawaii timezone and all - but I'd like to expand on the notion that there are some classes of action which are effectively unpredictable in terms of the probability of moving things toward a class of target states, and others which may be more predictable.

Suffice it to say, for now, that I see a clear rationale as prerequisite for some of the most effect types of planning, and thus action.

Once again, a fruitful campfire topic by Nate....

g'nite all, hope to see you tomorrow. Wish me luck with the rats and woozles; and yes my chores of the day will directly involve them.

I think I read a recent post by you stating that the Johnny Carson toilet paper effect had caused you to rethink the wisdom of an educated public. Have you changed you mind? (sorry if I have you confused with another author)

I thought a lot about this and concluded that there is no hope without truth and perhaps a little hope with truth. I'd rather have a little hope than no hope.

With respect to blogging, speaking and educating, I have always felt that the facts are on my side (I suppose all of us, even CERA, believe so).

Absolutely, which is why it's crucial to remain open to the idea that one's facts are incomplete or even incorrect.

Some of these facts are:

-we are wired to compete

We're also wired to cooperate. (Indeed, more primates than just ourselves are wired for fairness and altruism.)

-the OECD, and social democracies in general, are incredibly dependent on cheap, just-in-time liquid fuels, a fact that cannot be meaningfully mitigated in less than 10-15 years.

Define "meaningfully". Mitigation is a matter of degree, not of black-or-white.

Moreover, we know for a fact that liquid fuel consumption can drop significantly in short periods of time, since we've just seen that happen. What allows you to state with confidence that this cannot continue to a "meaningful" degree?

(Moreover, what does this have to do with "social democracies"? Liquid fuels aren't a political question.)

-debt/leverage/credit replaced cheap energy for a time

Isn't physical energy different from notional money? How can debt "replace" energy?

It's worth stating things clearly, regardless of whether they're facts or "facts". Indeed, stating them clearly can help differentiate one from the other.

drawing marginal projects into production that are now below break-even. Higher oil and gas prices are needed for long term investments, but supply and demand won't justify such prices.

The observables are (a) current price has fallen, and (b) investment has fallen. Based on what do you conclude that the cancelled investments are needed to satisfy long-term demand?

An alternative explanation of the observables is that if an investment is needed to satisfy long-term demand, then the expected return on that future demand is what will justify an investment, not current prices that the project would never see anyway. If lower current prices are reducing investment, it should rationally be because they're changing expectations about future demand, and suggesting to investors that these projects will not be needed to satisfy that future demand.

Not saying you're wrong, but you do seem to be using different reasoning than the normal supply-and-demand justification you seem to be referencing.

-we become habituated/addicted to higher novelty/stimulation via the ratchet effect.

And we become habituated to lower stimulation in much the same way. Set point theory doesn't explain everything, but it does make a strong case that we can adapt down as well as up.

-historical resource per capita drops have been met with wars.

Not always. The biggest drop in recent years was the 1979 oil embargo; despite a readily-identifiable "culprit", the resource drop passed relatively peacefully.

Moreover, it's far from clear that major wars tend to be associated with such resource drops: primary energy consumption per capita seems to have increased leading up to both WWI and WWII.

Accordingly, it's not at all clear that there is a significant causal link in recent history.

***

All of your "facts" might actually be true, but it's imperative that you look critically at these foundations of your argument, and be willing to abandon them if they are not supported by evidence.

Could my friend be right, (or at least in the ballpark)? That educating leaders to put the breaks on our consumptive trajectory might alter the natural human impact pulse just enough to pull in currently non-scarce resources from the periphery, making us worse off in the long run than if we attempt to mitigate?

Of course he could be right. We don't know enough about the situation to say which potential future is "true" and which are "false"; all we can do is guess at how probable each one is.

Is it possible that mitigation efforts will lead to collapse? Of course.
Is it possible that lack of mitigation efforts will lead to collapse? Of course.
Is it possible that no collapse will occur regardless of what peak oilers do? Of course.

The question is not whether something is merely possible; the question is what is the expected benefit from taking an action. If you believe that outreach efforts have a 50% chance of saving humanity and a 20% chance of making a doomed humanity suffer more, then of course those efforts make sense: a higher chance of a larger benefit vs. a smaller chance of a smaller hindrance means - probabilistically - a large expected benefit.

Think of it this way: your friend is having a heart attack, and driving him to hospital will save his life. It could also kill you both in a car accident. Is it worth driving him, despite the risk?

Focus on the expected result, not on an unlikely extreme.

Nate, I suspect your friend's argument is a logical/ethical fallacy that has a Latin name.

I agree with Pitt the Elder's refutation:

The question is not whether something is merely possible; the question is what is the expected benefit from taking an action.

I have bad memories of a similar argument that was advocated by a few radicals during the 60s/70s. The idea was that radicals should make conditions as bad as possible (poverty, injustice, racism), so as to hasten the Revolution. There were a few problems:

1. The Revolution may never come and you are left with poverty, injustice, racism ... and some people who are really pissed off.

2. Revolutions (like ecological catastrophes) are violent, destructive events. You may have to deal with them, but it is inhuman to wish them on people.

3. It is bad karma to know what is good and not do it.

Bart / Energy Bulletin

"No good deed goes unpunished."author unknown?

Seems like there's a possibility that the longer we stretch things out (by, e.g., conservation), the larger number of people will suffer (due to population growth) when the "cliff" is eventually reached -- barring all-out pandemic, war, etc.

This is a job for Mr Darwin.
Each of us will have to formulate a response to his ecological niche.
1 in 6 will succeed. That is the empirical carying capacity of the planet sans oil.
The ratio might be worse due to overshoot.
Why waken the opposition?
Together we stand?
Call it, and throw the dice.

THE "PEAK" DEBATE IS OVER BUT WE WILL STILL BE HERE.

I would really like to say something on this subject, but am having a bit of a crisis of conscious...I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or sound as though I am being insulting in any way, but there are some things that must be said to keep this discussion realistic, to pull it back to reality in some way.

So all I can do is issue a preemptive disclaimer: What I am about to say is NOT intended to insult anyone, especially the people here who seem to me in many ways to have such a broad and inclusive view and such observational skill and talent, but on some issues seem to have some astounding blindspots. Just as a banker would not be expected to argue for the end of the use of money, people so close to the issue of peak oil may easily miss certain viewpoints that go against everything they have taught themselves to believe. We all make such errors and have to guard against them.

So, here goes: As part of what I do for a living I do polling and research, such questions as "Have you ever heard of X?" "Where did you hear of X?" "Which do you think is more important(or a greater concern, threat, etc.)X, Y or Z?", and many questions much more deeply involved about what people want, want to do, want to learn, want for their children,families and communities, etc.?

I cannot say who I work for (although some of you may know who go back several years reading my posts)and who funds these surveys, but allow me to tell you (if you do not already know by working in industry, finance or media) that the business community of the developed world know more about human fears, desires, goals, motivations and hopes than we as individuals can ever know about even those closest to us. The business class knows the people of this nation better than you know your most intimate lover. This is true in the entire developed world, and becoming true in the developing and third world as well (do you know that major western polling and research firms are growing by leaps and bounds in China, India, Pakistan, and Africa? Did you know that polling and door to door and phone research is done by Western firms throughout the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran? INFORMATION IS POWER.

I can assure you that the "outreach" or educational" efforts of the peak oil community will cause ZERO drop in consumption. It just ain't gonna happen. Sorry. Real fear of peak oil DOES NOT EXIST in the mass community of the world and is only marginally accepted by even thouse who are aware, and almost no one has heard of CERA, The Oil Drum, M. King Hubbert, Matthew Simmons or any of the peak oil celebraties that are more known here on TOD than the antics of Britney Spears, but to the masses, more know Britney by a factor of thousands. Sorry.

For those who have heard the term "peak oil", ask them to define it. There is no agreed upon definition of "peak", or "oil" or exactly what can be defined as "peak oil" even in the peak community. I have been making this argument for the three years I have been here on TOD and have seen ZERO evidence that anything has made the definition of peak oil, peak, or oil any clearer. In fact as the technology continues to outrun theory, the ability to define "peak oil" has grown increasingly more difficult as I predicted it would here on TOD some three years ago. If you expand out to a discussion of "peak energy" the ability to set definitions becomes almost a philosophical debate akin to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and has no relation to the world people actually have to deal with daily and they know it. Sorry.

For purposes of comparison, we should examine the terms that DO in fact have real presence in the minds of the mass population, the policy makers and the elite: Climate change and carbon release. These have so gripped the imagination of the public and the policy makers that even those in the business of producing carbon by the millions of tons must pay homage to the "reality" of the need for carbon reduction and the danger of climate change (global warming).

People may not know exactly what carbon is or what it does, but the consensus is that release of it must be reduced. This is now accepted almost as a religious idea in the developed world. Just as all moralists agree that "sin" and "evil" must be reduced (even though they don't know and can't agree on exactly now this is to be done or even agree on exact definitions) anyone who is to be considered a "modern" informed member of Western culture must accept that carbon release must be reduced. There is no point in arguing any other option (imagine if some executive or government official stepped onto the podium and stated "carbon release is NOT an important issue" he would be laughed off the stage by the Intelligentsia!

The carbon issue is now THE ISSUE as it relates to energy. Here comes the part that may hurt a bit to accept (as if I haven't already pissed everyone off enough!)and it can be stated clearly and simply: Given the overwhelming concern about carbon release, the debate concerning peak oil is essentially over. Here is why:

Imagine that we agree that for the world economy to grow at a level acceptable to lift the world's population out of misery (whatever that level is determined to be), not, mind you, to increase the luxury of those already well off but simply to reduce misery, starvation and suffering, and further imagine that it would require (this is an example) seven new Saudi Arabia's worth of oil to do it, and further imagine that we knew for a fact that those seven Saudi Arabia's were found! Peak oil would be solved! Except...

How much would the carbon released from seven new Saudi Arabia sized oil producers be? Would ANY MODEL EVER DEVELOPED since the birth of the climate change model allow for the biosphere to survive under such circumstances? Does any model of climate change allow for the possibility of even a doubling of oil consumption in the world without predicting catastrophic outcomes?

The same is true for natural gas (slightly less so because it contains less carbon, but still true, and for coal (much more so because it contains much more carbon per energy produced). Here's the important part (capitals are for stressing the FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE OF THIS POINT, not out of rudeness) THE GREATER MAJORITY OF THE EDUCATED CLASS, TECHNICIANS, SCIENTISTS AND POLICY MAKERS ACCEPT THE ABOVE ARGUMENT AS ABSOLUTE FACT.

I repeat the same argument that I have often stressed here over several years: Peak oil becomes a non issue in the above scenario because even if the oil (or coal or natural gas) is found in easily extracted abundence and at a cheap price, it will not be able to be burned legally in the near future in the quantity that it would be needed, especially not in the developed world!

Accepting climate change ends the peak oil debate, for that matter the peak fossil fuel debate. It's over. That train has left the station. If you want to view it as a contest of ideas then we have to admit it: The game is over, and climate change won. Sorry.

Do any study, any polling, any research in the developed world and prove me wrong. I have seen the research and the polling. From the Prius to the windmills, from the new efficient water heaters to the renewed push for solar and/or nuclear energy, they are all being sold to the public on the basis of carbon reduction. Almost no one fears peak oil. Almost everyone accepts and fears climate change, and the businesses and policy makers know it. They do their research.

People accept, as they should, the end of the age of fossil fuels, but not because of a fear of peak oil. The fossil fuel era is finite and mortal, and it is coming to an end. We all should have known this day was coming, and now it has, peak oil or not.

So why are we still here, still posting, still discussing? The answer is TOO simple...we enjoy it! We like each other, we like each others company online, we have in a certain way come to know each other. TOD in many ways has become a social gathering, a group of people joined by mutual interests. Just as there are still many people who chat about jazz music or polo or collecting cuff links, even though these things may have gone somewhat out of style to the masses, so we still discuss peak and oil and energy.

Energy is still important and even if we discuss fossil fuel declines and consumption reduction for the less popular reasons, we are still on the right side of history, peak oil or not.

Because the truth is that oil has peaked (no matter how much may still be out there somewhere) and we are are now essentially discussiong the world post the age of oil. What caused the world to leave the oil era no longer matters now, what matters is discussion of, as the byline at the top of the page stills says "Energy and Our Future", whatever type of energy or future that may turn out to be. I know I still enjoy the discussion and still like the folks here(even the ones I may differ with)! That's why I "crisis blog". I still want a say in trying to urge the direction I think the world should go, and I still enjoy finding new ideas.

Someday in not all that many years those who were here at the start of TOD or here in the early days will die away. Only the newer younger posters and readers will decide whether TOD will continue. Will the "crisis blogging" have changed the world? Almost certainly not. Will it have been worth it being the member of any long term group held together by mutual interests and ideas? Absolutely.

To me, TOD is much more interesting than discussing polo or cuff links or jazz (although I lke cuff links and jazz!)and a bit more relevant. Humans will do what they like to do as long as that is possible. That is why we "crisis blog" even after we know that our chance to "change the world" either for better or worse is gone.

RC

Those societies or nations with a high discount rate (short term thinking) will continue their BAU ways with perhaps some slight energy efficiency measures. Those nations with foresight will make preparations to "get off oil", but will be challenged to do so on national security grounds ("are we able to defend ourselves?"), economic grounds ("look at those BAU countries making huge profits on cheap energy!"), and politicians who want to be elected by promising "drill, baby, drill" is an easy solution to the problem.

CERA is owned by IHS, an oil company, so they're going to bend their projections to maximize IHS profits (i.e., keep the addict hooked). Yergin, in true form with such a philosophy, has said "The fall in oil prices is a great bounty to hard-pressed consumers."

The Global Warming (aka Climate Change) movement started as outreach.
Now they have Congress Critters fretting about AGW/CC.

Is your friend more worried about getting the message out and making it part of the public consciousness or about getting personal credit for the effort when he questions the value of outreach?

If no one raises the alarm then more of the herd will keep stampeding towards the edge of the ledge. Do you feel good about that prospect? Are you your brother's keeper or do you look out just for number one? Maybe you should "whisper" fire to a few of your friends in the theater?

__________________

Have just listened to your talk on Youtube.
Very good lecture.
Agree though with Pit the Elder on evolved co-operation.
And just a thought - are there other forms of sexual dimorphism?
(i.e. resulting from female selection as the well-developed theory of competition for female selection suggests).
Somehow humans also evolved longer life-spans overall than other primates, but women tend to survive longer than men. Bigger resource investment in grandmothers? I have this theory that during the very long period of hunter gathering in small bands, who rely it seems on intermarriage, that all kinds of survival including genetic quality depended on the quality of the grandmothers and their skills and knowledge base and ability to keep the mating system on the road.
(A nomad grandmother only semi-jokingly tried to recruit my eldest daughter and her pal somewhere out on the edge of the Mongolian steppe.)
Joking apart, unintended consequences already abound in the current USA. (Brits are about 5 to 10 years behind you). As you made clear in your talk, obesity has to be the weirdest happening. Worth looking at why things are so lousy. What is the buzz sitting in a traffic jam - popping sugar or a cheesy snack?

Firstly, I think this post provides an excellent formulation of the problem.

There is a certain nature of depletion that will occur. One perspective presented above was that it will plateau after 2030 and then slowly decline. This is an answer. Regardless of your position, you should be able to accept the assertion that a correct answer exists because oil production will follow a certain production curve throughout the coming decades and in 50 years we'll know what that answer was.

What are your ethics?

As present-time beings, we have the ability to control the progression of events in the future (within limits, mostly of geology). Ideally, we would like to position ourselves to have a future with say, the least suffering. Naturally, the future with the fewest deaths isn't the same one as the one with the least suffering. Which one of those two you prefer depends on your personal values system you have established.

If you believe in a severe form of peak oil, our collective 'understanding' of the remaining extractable oil plays the largest role in the determining of which of these futures we 'choose'. Presumably, if it were up to a vote, we would all choose the path that is the best by our collective value system. One measure we generally think loosely corresponds both with happiness of general desirability of one's lot is economic output. Call me a greedy capitalist, but that is the most universal of such measures, thus it makes sense that when we're looking for something to optimize, we optimize economic output, or here, Gross World Product (GWP).

Efficient market? Not quite.

In any kind of efficient market theory, the world in which future economic output will be the highest is the world who's understanding of oil depletion is most close to reality. Reality of the oil depletion curve depends on cold hard geology - not entirely - but it's not a bad assumption, and plus, it allows us to decouple oil production activities from adjustment of oil consuming activities in this thought exercise. So people adjust their consuming actions (all non-oil market sectors really) based on the expected oil depletion profile, and the dream of economics is that doing so with correct data gives the highest GWP. But we all know that the market is NOT efficient in reality. Saying this makes me think of all the pundits declaring that economics is 'dead' after the financial crisis that it was oblivious to.

A commonly posed scenario is that true oil depletion in the future will be much faster than commonly thought by society. So let's say we change that right now and reset our understanding to the much more doomsayer reality. The original quote:

How can you be certain that all yours and others 'outreach' efforts will only result in slowing down our consumption paradigm just enough to allow for 20 or 30 more years of pulling in resources from the periphery, thereby unintentionally causing an ultimately greater ecological disaster than the one you are efforting to avoid?

Would seem to indicate that society thinking the accurate numbers (versus the fantasy status-quo numbers) for oil depletion would lead to a lower final GWP. To me, that's a tall glass to swallow, but I don't doubt you could formulate events to make it true. In the world where many people adjust, many more are left not adjusting and continuing present patterns for a longer period of time. Whereas the status-quo world of watching the impending train crash would lead everyone to make the necessary changes after the initial not-so-bad crash.

Is the secret ingredient... integrity?

Think about how strange this sounds though. You're telling the world that you know better than it. It's agreeable by most that having the correct geologic numbers for the remaining oil on Earth won't result in the most ideal post-crash world. For some, the number that gives the most ideal post-crash would would be a world where geologic numbers are slightly over or understated representing small market inefficiencies (I'm personally in this camp), while for others, like the source of the above quote, the world with the most ideal post-crash situation is one where geologic numbers are vastly over or under stated.

I claim that the latter still makes sense. There is a chance that it is correct. But I also claim that it's simply not the route to go. It's a case of treating all of humanity like a child, telling it what you think will produce the best output instead of telling it the truth. Sometimes happiness (utilitarian ethics) and GWP are not the best measures to go by. This would be one of those cases IMO.

Plus, it's only a chance that spreading the bible of TOD will make things better for us. It's much more likely that knowing the reality of oil will make things better in the long run. That's not provable. But we don't need to.

Spreading the truth is reason enough for some. And it should be reason enough for all of us.

If everyone spoke the truth without fear of consequences the world would be a better place. So why go about the convoluted path of applying your values to the most likely world that your actions will create and act by the action that produces the most favorable one when you could just directly apply your values to the action at hand?

The notion of Peak Oil has been around since the Limits to Growth was published and the two energy crisis of the 1970's. I recall discussion of the solutions back then and comments to the effect that solving the energy shortage with some other energy sources, such as nuclear, would lead to continued growth in resource consumption and thus increasing in other impacts on the environment, which would make the overall environmental problems worse.

Looking back, that's what has happened as we've seen both continued population growth and resource consumption has increased. As another poster commented, humanity's efforts have just built the cliff higher, so that we are likely to find the downfall to be more painful. That's because the underlying carrying capacity of the Earth hasn't changed and increasing the energy flow into our consumptive processes just shifts our problems toward some other "Leiberg Minimum" limit, such as that presented by Climate Change.

Efforts at Peak Oil outreach are just a form of education. I think that we are attempting to educate the folks about just one of the Limits to Growth. Once they get the Peak Oil message, people may respond by attempting to solve the immediate problem in an attempt to continue BAU, as in:

There's less oil available so let's find another energy source

Or, they can approach the situation by addressing the underlying problems:

There's less of everything, so lets reduce both consumption per capita and reduce population

I think that the outreach efforts must continue to focus on more than Peak Oil and present the larger situation along with the message of stagnant or declining output of oil. The wide ranging discussions on TOD include many viewpoints and thus the education process extends far beyond just the problems as might be seen from an energy industry perspective. Matt Simmons and others who have focused their efforts solely on the production side of the situation, while doing a great job, are missing the larger problem.

The impacts of "crisis blogging" as you call it can drift away after the crisis is past. Last summer's oil price shock may have been seen as a crisis and thus as oil prices declined, it might have appeared that the problem was over. Peak Oil isn't a "crisis" in the usual sense, as it does not appear to be immediate. For many people, the present "crisis" is the economy and the job situation. Without a job or other source of income, survival in the capitalist world becomes very uncertain, to say the least. Thus, the public's attention has shifted from concerns about Climate Change to the economy and I think it's obvious that people will do whatever is necessary under such circumstances. Again and again, the natural world has lost out to the demands of the human economy, our short term survival needs being first priority.

One can only hope that efforts at "crisis blogging" can overcome the natural tendencies individuals to take what they think they need from the Earth while there's still enough left to allow long term survival of the Earth's natural life support systems, so that humanity might survive as well. Having watched events closely for more than 40 years, my perception is that we aren't going in the proper direction, but we must try as best we can to shape the future. All we can do is get the message out as widely as possible and be ready with solutions as events unfold.

E. Swanson

"How can you be certain that all yours and others 'outreach' efforts will only result in slowing down our consumption paradigm just enough to allow for 20 or 30 more years of pulling in resources from the periphery, ..."

This overestimates the impact of blogs and outreach, most of which is preaching to the choir.

I have noted that many TODers mention their friends are blissfully unaware of impending events. They only know what the mass media is telling them:
the stock market is recovering! (sucker's rally),
buy that house now because we're at the bottom of the market! (because every realtor interviewed agrees that now is the time to buy),
the government is working to solve the problems! (by kicking the can down the road)

Yes I believe Nate's friend is correct.

Let me give a concise example.

In the southern woodlands areas are many pulp mills. Some make chip board, some make paper products. They consume enormous quantities of our valuable, receding woodlands and forests.

Its close in my mind to mountain top removal but has been going on for a far far far longer period of time.

Many acres of dead trees are in huge piles in their wood yards brought by many many big trucks hauling them there.

And so a slow, gradual decline in our societies usage of these products means that less and less of our possibly last remaining resource to preserve life will have disappeared. What to heat with? What to cook with? What to build with?

My hope after being immersed in the looming crisis over the last 3 or so years has lead me to hope that the failure of our wasteful culture is halted as rapidly as possible so that at least the survivors have some resources to start over with again.

We need to end this charade as soon as possible.

Now I see evidence that many of these mills are starting to shutdown.
Is it too late? Right now I don't think so but I could be wrong. Many species of trees are becoming rare or already receded enough to likely never recover.

Oak,pecan and walnut are valuable trees.Why are we sending them to China? Remove enough nut bearing trees and there is soon no more 'seed trees' to propagate the species. This is happening right now and has been for some time.

White oaks are just about all gone around here. Red oaks are rapidly disappearing. Hickory is the only standard bearer left and its going to. Other trees like pecan left long ago so now only a few in yards are left as perhaps ornamentals.

As the timber cutters left the upper NorthWest I think they picked the southern woodlands as their next stop. Enough poor people to not defend the land. Fewer tree-huggers to mount campaigns.

Same with hog confinement feeding. Chased out of N. Carolina by public opinion they came to Kentucky.

We need to shut down. Now. Go to whatever is next before there is no more "NEXT".

Nate's friend needs to put up a Campfire post detailing HER views. IMO.

The land is crying out, we ignore it....a generation needs to die off to make room for another,another that is able to survive,one that is not resource hogs and ugly feeders at the troughs who give nothing back. We need to have something left for the children of the children who will inherit these wastelands. Our offspring have taken us here. Not the hippies but those who came after.

There once was a generation who saw this very clearly. They raised the alarms and tried. They failed and many were beaten for daring to do so. I remember Chicago. I remember Kent State. I remember far more. I still have their books and enough old Mother Earth magazines to refresh my mind as to how it once looked promising. How they tried.

Then we turned and walked away.

Airdale

Nate,

The human tragedy is that we were not all created equal. Some are definitely more equal than others.

Some believe in fairies, some believe in God, some believe in witch doctors. It is always only the converted who hear the call to their belief.

Only the Intellectuals see the big picture, (that is the definition of intellect) the rest only see the minutiae of their own wants and needs. To try to get them to see the big picture is an impossibility.

The three unavoidable realities of peak oil are

a) The exponential function of limited resources.
b) The exponential function of population growth.
c) The vested interests who always see no evil in status quo.

There is only one workable solution for achieving the longest possible run of sufficiency.

Like a person caught in the desert with a limited amount of water. They cut their water consumption to the absolute minimum and then hope that they reach the end before the water runs out because they know damn well it will run out.

If they do not make it they cannot whine because they did cut to the minimum and no further cuts would have been possible. They did their very best and could have done no more.

If we do not cut energy usage and reduce our footprint on the planet to the absolute least possible we are going to lose the race either sooner or at best later.

If we each do the absolute best we are capable of and we fail we know it was not to be, but we did our utmost. Otherwise each and every one of us is personally culpable and we must not whine when nature plays her final hand.

Graham

Thought is a limit function.

In other blogs, these kinds of posts usually get tagged with a "meta" label. Reading through many of the comments, I noticed much introspection and self-justification as to "why am I here" (to quote Admiral Stockdale), or in terms of "are we doing the right thing?".

For the record, my main interest is to quantify the oil depletion glide path. I figure that if we can get beyond the hand-waving and introduce a more rigorous approach that we can do better in terms of policy planning. We have people like Debbie Cook participating here who know how to work the grass-roots politics.

Planning is in effect all about avoiding unintended consequences. Business plans are more often about making sure that you don't lose your shirt, than about making tons of money. Of course, it can't mitigate everything but better to plan with a formal quantitative analysis than to SWAG it.

"How can you be certain that all yours and others 'outreach' efforts will only result in slowing down our consumption paradigm just enough to allow for 20 or 30 more years of pulling in resources from the periphery, thereby unintentionally causing an ultimately greater ecological disaster than the one you are efforting to avoid?"

My try for an awnser:

The longer you go into the wrong direction, the bigger the desaster will be. An example is the current economic crisis. It was clear to many people that houses are overpriced already several years ago. But instead of allowing a small correction in price, people kept buying houses on credit. The price rose further and the burst of this bubble was desastoras. A earlier small correction of the direction might have been less painfull.

Option 1: If we use our PO knowledge now it has 2 positve effects:
- We need only a small correction from ever inreasing energy demand to a small anual decrase in demand.
- We have 20-30 more years for preperation until resources become very scare.

Option 2: If we don't use the PO knoweldge:
- We are going in the wrong direction for a longer time.
- The change in our consumption habbits we be at a higher consumption level. An the change will be more radical.
- There will be less time for adaption (new technologies ect).

I think option 2 is more devastating than option 1. Unfortunatly on a global scale i guess the world acts more like the second option.

I hope i could help you with this arguments. (Sorry for my bad english. I wish i could explain my points in more flowery language.)

BTA

There can be unforeseen and unintended consequences of any course of action we might take. There is nothing we can do about consequences that cannot be predicted (e.g. stepping out onto a crosswalk at just the moment a drunk driver is coming around the bend). So we must focus on elements for which we can link cause and effect.

The issue is about "thinking" about possible consequences of taking or not taking certain actions. This requires systems thinking about the likely and possible outcomes of an action. While the specifics of WWII could not have been foreseen as an outcome of the Versailles Treaty, certain negative impacts on Germany and Europe as a whole could have been foreseen. We must also accept we'll always have high uncertainty and limited knowledge.

Regarding the specifics of resource depletion and peak oil, one needs to consider consequences of both the option of speaking about, taking actions and educating people, or not.

From my perspective, there is a lot of momentum on this train, and the station is likely too close for a smooth stop. Remaining silent and taking no action leads to the same consequences as the majority who believe we can build magic breaks, stretch the rails or jump to another track (plus those who either simply don't think about it, or trust that "they" will find a solution). Taking action and trying to educate people isn't likely to cause a full-scale breaking effort to lessen the impact. But it could help some regions, some countries, some communities, some people. At the very least, it could help explore a different path than the mainstream (rather than simply floating along with the maintream as a silent observer). And if a tipping point passed, and full-scale breaking took hold, that has the potential to apply remaining resources to solutions instead of squandering.

Could some concerted effort cause more depletion? Not likely, since desperate people and nations will likely do this in any case. Increasing awareness of the need to reduce consumption and live within bounds doesn't seem to have a direct causal link to increased consumption and pushing bounds. However, belief that we just have to pass a rough patch and continue on the same path can easily be used to justify further over-reach and impacts (after all, it would only be temporary....until we find the ultimate energy source and can the extract resources from space...).

Considering potential consequences is very important, and should absolutely be done. But one should focus on plausible causal links to taking or not taking action. We should not get hung up on unintended consequences that cannot be envisioned, as that leads to procrastination and inaction, and hence having no impact whatsoever on the train wreck we see approaching.

Hello Nate,
Is it possible to have copy of the presentation you used in your speech? thanks!!

I regret that I'm zooming past too quickly today due to other stuff I must do, so won't be commenting much as I'd hoped in this very-salient string of posts.

However, even though I have yet to convince myself of the rationale for outreach blogging, I don't think things are hopeless and don't wish to leave that impression. To the contrary, I think there's a game afoot that must be played with all the skill we can muster.

In between the extremes of blog-chatter and political revolution are classes of action which can and will steer large-scale outcomes over reasonable time frames (say 1-20 years) and which may be successfully undertaken - towards any agenda - by relatively small groups of actors.

Those who learn to work with the real dynamics of complexity, who embrace a probabilistic future worldview, and who then make the transition from talk to audacious action and risktaking will tend to account for a disproportionate amount of the steering which is possible.

My non-academic opinion.

best to all the posters, it means something important to me that you're here. And with that, I gotta go...

My general comment on these questions is that we need to distinguish between the possible unintended negative effects of information about peak oil, and the possible unintended negative effects of actual policies adopted in the wake of peak oil.

There will likely be unintended consequences from 'peak oil outreach'. Are they more likely to be positive or negative? What might some be?

Negative unintended consequences are possible, but highly unlikely.

The main negative consequence of information outreach concerning peak oil, would be if the information were taken out of context. The Hirsch Report provides a good example of how this might happen: if people who are saying "we need to do something about peak oil" are taken to mean "we need to convert coal to oil" (one of the Hirsch Report's mitigation recommendations), then we might be labeled as coal-to-oil advocates. However, at this point "peak oil" is heavily contextualized in countless ways and it still hasn't gone mainstream. (When Congress starts debating it, we'll know it's gone mainstream.)

Could my friend be right, (or at least in the ballpark)? That educating leaders to put the breaks on our consumptive trajectory might alter the natural human impact pulse just enough to pull in currently non-scarce resources from the periphery, making us worse off in the long run than if we attempt to mitigate?

Again, theoretically possible but highly unlikely. The reason is debt. Political leaders aren't going to even try to put breaks on our consumptive trajectory until we have reached the clear crisis stage: massive unemployment, hyperinflation, or financial collapse, that sort of thing, so that people say: "This isn't just the worst thing since the Great Depression; it IS the Great Depression all over again, or worse." They'll keep going until the whole thing collapses. There's too much political traction behind growth. Our strategy, IMHO, should be to have a fairly detailed plan to whip out when things reach this stage. We can try to prevent it, for sure, and if we could do the Vulcan mind-meld on our political leaders that would certainly help. (Where's Spock?) But such efforts are relatively "safe" because they are so likely to"fail" (pre-collapse).

Mitigating overconsumption, overpopulation, and resource depletion requires a longer term view. But perhaps focusing on making the next 10-30 years more sustainable discriminates against 30 years and beyond?

Yes, this is a definite problem. We need to advocate radical change when things get to the Great Depression Moment. If it's just, like, "O. K., let's mobilize the country so we can further 'sustainable growth,'" this could be a problem. I am especially concerned about soil erosion (and related agricultural issues), population growth, inequality, and the structural aspects (like debt) which propel us towards a growth economy.

In short, we need to go for "full frontal outreach," as the Smarter-than-yeast guy puts it, and explore all kinds of wild and crazy proposals, refine them, and make them as good as we can make them. There are not likely to be unintended consequences of too much outreach on peak oil. There may be unintended consequences of the plan we put into effect when the problem becomes undeniable.

Keith

It seems many answers don't address the question. A key line is

allow for 20 or 30 more years of pulling in resources from the periphery

But people say It is bad karma to know what is good and not do it. or we are doing the right thing , or saying that your friend is having a heart attack, and driving him to hospital will save his life .

But the question, I think, is more in the line of:

Blogging and outreach are going to create a much harder landing, with more pain and catastrophes.

Or taking Pitt the Elder's "expected benefit" example ... what Nate's friend could de asking is "outreach efforts actually have a higher probability of bringing catastrophe than not doing anything".

The underlying idea, I think, is:

• blogging, outreach => less consumption => more time to actually strip bear all our resources (oil, minerals, soils and what not) => a situation humanity won't be able to come out of => big big time disaster :(

Now that is to be contrasted with:

• no blogging, britney spears, BAU => more consumption => Hit some limits of the system => Big Crisis (possibly wars, population decrease, etc) but there are still lots of forests, fish, minerals, etc to be used for Civilization 2.0 (only the system hit an "error, reboot" before stripping the world bear of resources.

Of course that's a crude simplification, but that's how I understood the question of "unintended consequences". My Answer is that IMO outreach will have little effect until the limits impose themselves. That is not to say it won't help pave the future, or stir the boat in the storm... but until the storm starts it won't change much. Very few people know about TOD, Peak Oil, etc... let alone do something about it. I'm pretty sure in the years to come it will become as fashionable as Global Warming ... but it will most likely have the same electrifying effect on the majority of the population: NILL.

A lot of talking, one in 20 000 US-Americans will buy themselves a pseudo-energy-saving hybrid, politicians waving their arms, emission raising and consumption "flourishing".

The current outreach I think helps a minority today: The TOD bunch, our friends, family, etc. But it may well help people make quick decisions when they face hard questions later on.

2c from London. Massagran.

Fong's Conjecture: Ceteris paribus, the sooner and more complete mankind's contractions in complexity, the better off humans and the earth will be over the long term.

Blog accordingly.

I hold these truths to be self-evident:

1. Non-renewable resources are, by definition, non-renewable. They can and will run out. (Yes, there is a lot more stuff out in space, including enough hydrogen in the universe to power the universe. Unfortunately, the distances involved and the resource inputs required to span them quickly impose a very harsh law of diminishing returns, so that isn't going to be the golden bullet. Earth is our home.)

2. Once the non-renewables have run out (or very nearly so), we will have no alternative - none - but to rely entirely upon renewable resources.

3. The extraction and utilization of non-renewable resources doesn't just keep increasing exponentially and then suddenly reach a cliff and drop to zero; instead, they all follow a curve which rises gradually to a peak and then declines gradually to zero. This applies to all non-renewable resources, not just oil.

4. We are at or very close to or just past the peak for oil right now. Ditto for most other non-renewable resources.

5. The notion that there are and always will be more and more non-renewable resources available to not just sustain present economic levels, but even to sustain continued economic growth, is simply not credible. Substitution is a perfectly workable strategy when only one non-renewable resource has peaked and there are many other non-renewable resources that have not yet peaked. As more and more non-renewables go post-peak, substitution becomes less and less feasible. Similarly, as more non-renewables go past peak, shortages and bottlenecks force other non-renewables to peak sooner than they might otherwise. A law of diminishing returns comes into play as the cheap and easy resources are exhausted and what remains is increasingly difficult and expensive to extract. It does not really matter how much of something is ultimately in the ground; capital is also a finite resource, and imposes real limits on what can be extracted and how quickly it can be done.

6. A global economy (and, by implication, all national economies) dependent entirely upon renewable recources cannot grow beyond the limits of what those resources can support. If the global or national economy is presently operating beyond those limits, courtesy of non-renewable resources, then that economy will have no choice but to contract and decline as the non-renewable resources deplete, at least until it has reached a level that can be sustained within the limits of its renewable resource base.

7. Thus, we (globally and nationally) are now entering into an era of inevitable and unavoidable economic decline. This must be, we have no choice.

8. Where we DO have a choice is in our response. We can accept the reality and inevitability of decline and pro-actively adjust and adapt to it, or we can be in denial and fight decline with counterproductive and futile actions all the way down. "We" in this sense applies to both individual and collective responses.

9. Even those who make appropriate choices and are trying to positively manage decline may nevertheless make some mistakes along the way - the "unintended consequences" issue of this thread. I see this as being every bit as much inevitable as the depletion of non-renewable resources and the consequent economic decline.

10. Nevertheless, accepting the reality that decline must happen, and that we must end up at a permanently lower level, is powerfully useful in helping individuals and collectives - all the way up to national governments - to stay focused and to not be tempted to make choices with a high probability of being counterproductive or producing unintended consequences. In contrast, those who cling to the vain hope that our economy can somehow be sustained at its current level, or even enabled to continue to grow, are highly vulnerable to making choices that will prove to be highly counterproductive or carry huge unintended consequences.

In sum: I don't know exactly how things will pan out. It is therefore quite probable that I'll make some mistakes along the way. I do have a high degree of confidence as to the general direction in which our economy is heading - down. Knowing this is very helpful: maybe I can avoid the big mistakes and just make small mistakes.

I also share the three way view.

1. We forget mitigation and have a blow out. Crash early. Leave large portions of the Earth's ecosystems in a recoverable state.

2. Find ways to consume every last BTU of energy out of the Earth to slow our decline. Eat every last morsel that can sustain us. When the crash really hits, we'll leave our descendants a barren planet.

3. Find a means to get our population growth turned severely negative now, so that we in effect, reduce our footprint, maintain our high tech civilization, and live in an Earth that can recover from our excesses.

For the last eleven years, since I read, "The End of Cheap Oil", by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherre in the May 1998 Scientific American, I've watched us cling to number one, while proponents of number two brag about making small inroads. Further, for eleven years the proponents of #2 have continued to try to make me a believer in a wide array of alternatives that are on the 'verge' of becoming economical, if only this or that obstacle could be removed. After waiting patiently since the 1960s for fusion power and my new flying car, I'm a bit jaded on the idea that we're on the verge of a new energy source or energy paradigm, that will allow us to chase endless population growth for hundreds of years.

Further the happy talk of population growth slowing for first world nations, is presented as a one dimensional argument, that ignores the dynamics of the real world in which it exists. That is, the first worlders enjoy the luxury of slowing growth on the backs of the working class in other nations. The laborers continue to grow in population. Now that the stability of this system has been shaken up by an end to energy growth, there's no guarantee that first world population growth will continue to stay at low levels.

To follow trends that might slow world population growth through affluence, might well mean that we will need energy production to grow at a much faster rate than we've seen in the past. It must outpace population growth. Though many alternative energy proponents believe that this is possible through the use of algae biofuels, or wind, or solar, or whatever system they've become emotional invested in, we still run into the problem of limits. If we take algae ponds and assume they must grow at 10% a year, we quickly get into some mind boggling acreage, requiring incredible quantities of water and other inputs to maintain.

The power of exponents says terrible things about any long term plan that is intended to fuel growth. It doesn't matter what it is. Infinite growth on a finite planet, is impossible.

Though we are following the path #1 at the moment, I have faith that we will, piecemeal and without adequate planning, pursue #2 when things get rough. We'll cling to civilization like a cat clings to a drowning swimmer. We will consume every last fish we can catch. We'll turn as much topsoil into fuel as we can. We'll contaminate water supplies the world over in a our quest for ever lower quality energy sources.

Though #3 in my view, is the more rational goal, if we wish to manage our decline in numbers. I have no faith at all that we could manage it rationally, nor could we even pull it off. In my view it would require a plan might limit births to one child per ten couples, or some similar drastic action. In light of human history, this is an impossible feat, so for this reason, I am a doomer. I believe that we are incapable of making the tough choices that will stave off disaster.

As both #1 and #2 are essentially plans to kick the can down the road, they don't actually stave off the disaster, that comes from over consumption of energy, coupled with continued population growth.

I seriously doubt even CERA buys their own bull. Remember what Cheney said 10 years ago?

"By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?"

Well it has been 10 years since he said that, and we're a stone's throw away from 2010. Yet those 50 million barrels did not arrive. In Cheney's own words, oil is the "basic, fundamental building block of the world economy". They all admit how important oil is! But our order of building blocks only partially arrived. We dint git no 50 million barrels a day. What did we get? 10? Perhaps not even that. These cretins are not stupid. They know what caused the financial crisis. I really wish people would stop giving the benefit of the doubt, and start seeing these creatures for what they are.

[unintended consequences] One consequence of "drawing things out" in hope of a miracle pops to mind immediately: We end up with too many people globally for a soft-landing, and instead end up simply eating each other.

Humanity went from <2 billion to nearly 7 billion over the space of a few generations buoyed almost entirely on free energy (fossil fuels). Free energy (free as in freedom) is free not because it has no cost of collection or processing, but because it is not bound to orbital physics and is free to move across time and space. Oil is free energy because it can be bottled and moved around, stored, used as needed, it is not tied to location or seasonality. Incident solar energy is (in paradox) not free because you have to be some-place at a particular some-time to get at it, including not-at-night. Storage tweaks to this paradox to not mitigate the physical realities. The equatorial regions are better positioned -- and anyone owning/holding land is in general better positioned -- to get solar energy via the usual route, which is crops. These realities impart a stark and unavoidable cost to solar energy reliance (which was BAU for 1,500 centuries, and will be again shortly) and that overhead cost is what kept populations globally in check. If you doubt the overhead, ask yourself how much overhead goes into getting a bunch of bananas from Ecuador to New York, where never a banana was grown. If you still doubt, ask yourself why equatorial civilizations where so rich, and circum-polar civilizations mostly invaders to the former.

Free energy ended all those limitations, for a while. 7 billion people was the resulting answer, for a while. A return to available solar energy (with it's paradox of overhead cost to anyone not well positioned) will mean a return to <2 billion people, the time it takes to make that transition depending on the weighting of people respective to the solar maximum on Earth; essentially, those further from solar maximum (good land near the equator) will perish all the faster.

If we wait to ween ourselves *entirely* from free energy we ensure that more people are added to world populations, and a good number of those will be far from solar resources. Thus we will likely burn our last barrel of oil not flying to Paris but moving a meager stock of food goods from Mexico to New York. And then people will start to migrate toward the sun, or else perish.

If we ween ourselves right now -- totally, cold-turkey, no modern BAU of any kind by any means -- and go 100% solar agriculture and standards of living we'll still fall to <2 billion, but from no more than where we are now. We'll use our last barrels of oil creating sustainable practices and demolishing parking lots and freeways to get at the dirt under them (try that kind of work without a diesel tractor, I dare you) and perhaps improving water collection/retention methods. People might be too busy working to reproduce much, and we'll decrease our numbers without obvious carnage (so long as we don't fail to reproduce entirely, which is a very real risk.)

But I don't see that kind of soft-landing happening, ever. Does anyone?

cougar

Look at Ethanol. In theory, (if you don't look too close,) it looks like a promising solution to peak oil. But if you look closer, it makes the problem worse: Not only does it not increase usable energy, but it depletes topsoil and raises food prices. So given the choice between Ethanol or doing nothing, doing nothing looks pretty good. And given that most other "solutions" haven't been studied to death, (unlike Ethanol,) it is quite possible that they are less than ideal than we've thought as well...

That said, even assuming the worst, I have a very hard time saying "just cause everything we've tried so far doesn't work, we should therefor ignore the problem and not discuss it." I'm just not that sort of person.

Hey TOD readers,

My wife and I have a blog at : http://sv-macha.blogspot.com -- we would love feedback from this community.

Our peak-oil adaptation strategy is to live on a 38 foot engineless sailboat in the San Francisco Bay area. I believe that reviving traditional seafaring skills and lifestyles among coastal communities is going to be an essential element of maintaining worldwide trade, travel, and communication. I would love to dialogue with other TOD sailors.

Our blogging strategy has beeen to balance fearmongering with humor, big picture abtractions with day-to-day lifestyle changes. I'd love to know what y'all think...

- Ari