Citing determinism and its inherent complexities WRT nonlinear and chaotic systems is a crutch to explain reource depletion. Simple stochastic models with linear effects makes much more sense and actually allows us to predict decline from intuitive principles.

That is what I have learned

I suspect that the most important key point that I ever learned was in 1948 - believe it or not - from reading Time Magazine one night when I was bored with studying.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,886484-1,00.html

Later Dr. Wiener wrote The Human Use of Human Beings and also became prominent in imaging science, (Wiener Spectra).

I used to believe that Peak Oil was a problem (been a TOD member for 3+ years now). But now I believe it will be a non-event because the annual decline numbers are so small. (ASPO predicts decline from 80 Mbpd in 2010 to 55 Mbpd in 2030; this is 1.25 Mbpd per year, less than 1.6%)

I use to think Peak Oil effects would be more dramatic than I now do. I thought Peak Oil would cause more or less permanent high prices. I now think that periodic high prices will put a lid on oil demand by crashing the economy so long as it is dependant on oil.

The economic decline will reduce demand to a level that the reduced oil supply due to Peak Oil is adequate and the oil price will decline even though the supply is smaller than it previously was.

This price roller coaster means that increased investment in oil is discouraged. Alternative liquid fuels like my favorites ethanol and biodiesel will be held back because they are not competitive with cheap oil.

I see no good outcome to this dilemma unless the price of oil is held artificially high by a large tax at retail. But the tax will act as a permanent drag on the economy unless it can be recycled equitably. That is not likely due to politics.

All I see now is "muddle through" and "toughing it out" as most likely outcomes. Perhaps that is the way it has always been and always will be.

lifes biggest epiphany occurred about 50 years ago in a comparative anatomy class when i realized evolution was absolutely, without a doubt real. Raised a baptist in the south i experience considerable cogitative dissonance up until that moment. Since then i have subscribed to Charles Darwin’s maxim of evolution: "Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die" The cull has begun.

I also learned that TOD was the best place to monitor what's going on, just in case one of you smart folks find the magic elixir. I wish you all the greatest success.

In 1988, I was dozing in the back of a conference room at The Johnson Space Flight Center. An automobile wiring harness manufacturer was speaking. She said, “It takes less skill to fabricate a computer chip than it is to sew a collar on a shirt”. Instantly, I envisioned Hudson Valley electrical/computing engineers being replaced by Indian engineers at a fifth of the cost to the manufacturer. That vision has directed my personal view and actions for the past twenty years. Our standard of living must decline until it is at the level of the so-called undeveloped world. We have used debt to hide this fact for at least two decades. Independent of Peak Oil we are now past the point where debt can support our accustomed life style.

I stumbled on to TOD about three years ago. In one evening of reading TOD,I became convinced that PO is real and imminent.

In my view, an economy that is unsustainable independent of resource limitations will completely collapse under the burden of expensive energy.

There may be a technical solution to the problem but, in my opinion, hydrogen fusion is the only currently proposed concept that has any possibility of preventing massive die off in the next two decades.

Therefore, we should be developing small community groups to cope with the evolving collapse of society. The current project in my small community is to catalog post PO skills, tools required to exercise those skills and compare that list to the skills and tools that we currently possess. This will be followed with training and acquisition programs to fill the gaps. The local Grange is the focal point for these activities.

Not even sure when all this started for me. Fews years ago I guess. But because of the work done here and blogs like it I woke up on many different levels. I own a CPA/financial planning firm. On a largely unimportant but quantifiable level I helped many others see the path we are on and they took the appropriate actions. Started with my partners. Family. Clients.

Some paid off debts. Most moved their money from the risky asset classes I had preached for years and years into cash. I looked like a genuis.

That good feeling lasted a few weeks. Then it was the realization of what's next.

Now I have moved up Maslow's little pyramid. Downsized, readjusted, planted. Much happier. I owe many people a world of thanks around here.

I think WestTexas put it best sometime late last year when he said even if this peak resource thing is just flat wrong, global warming is BS and we keep growing and reproducing forever, you will be happier if you simplify.

So what have I learned? WT may just be the next reincarnate of buddha:)

By reading the Oil Drum, I have realized that even the brightest are really wedded to their pre-existing beliefs. Without assuming I am the brightest, I am, too.

I think collapse will come over several decades, but what do I know? A few on TOD think nuclear (esp. thorium) gives us a bright future indefinitely. I have posted a couple of times to ask for an article explaining how nuclear can save us and hoping the issues would be addressed systematically. Haven't seen it yet. But those folks belief it to be so, and I believe eventual collapse to be so. I'll agree to disagree and strive to keep an open mind.

I have changed my mind about nearly everything I was taught in high school and most of what I learned at college if it has anything to do with history or politics.

I also long ago learned to appreciate Twain's comments about the education of his father.It seems that his Daddy was maybe just a little dense,but when Twain returned home after a couple of years on his own,he realized that his pop had learned one hell of a lot in a short period of time.

You can count on human nature to stay pretty well constant,but every thing else involving homo sap head is temporary,including homo saphead himself.You just have to live a long time to realize it.

Nate

It is only recently that I have been seeing the point of view that the masses will not necessarily be better off if they had the same understanding of the issues of resources and population as those of us blogging our little hearts out to alert the public.

I have come to the conclusion that it is somewhat counterproductive for the mainstream to be alerted to the issues. Since I have been aware of the issues for 40+ years, have a degree in Ecosystems Analysis & Conservation, this has been my intellectual fodder and bread and butter for a long time. The first impulses were always to have other be aware of what I considered valuable information. And to also try to think about the possibilities for solutions to the problems that were inevitable 'in the future'.

My change of heart, as it were, has been because the reality of the masses ignoring the information [excepting China and its one-child policy] made me realize that real solutions must come from the masses. Us outliers may be able to think in more abstract forms than the general public, but that doesn't mean that our solutions will be any more effective. Think - unintended consequences.

The more a solution is based on the far future, the more likely it will prove to have missed a swan or two. Better we should work to align ourselves with the reality of life lived in the moment. Intellectually it seems short-sighted, but our organism was made to respond in just this way.

Maybe the only satisfaction us doomers will have is to be able to say 'I told ya so'.

Vicky

This was a great idea, Nate. I can't wait to read the rest of the responses.

I'd like to be able to remember everything I used to think, but it's been a long, un-journaled journey, and I've forgotten some of the things I didn't know.

Key points and un-wrongs:
1. Despite an education which included actuarial science and economics, I had to learn that population levels and mortality are actually functions of dynamic nonlinear systems, and that people are made out of food.

2. Conservation of mass and thermodynamics apply in biological systems. These are central to ecological stoichiometry, the study of the interaction between mass/energy balance and biological organisms.

3. Gender roles do, in fact, exist, and the dance of attraction and seduction between men and women doesn't work at all as portrayed in popular media.

4. If you want to see different results, you must first change your primary actions.

5. Seek first to understand. Most of us, through no faults of our own, do not understand.

New/refined insights:
1. With practice, the brain can remain plastic and capable of rewiring itself indefinitely.

2. As a means of resource exchange, money enables more complex societies than barter.

3a. Free will does not exist the way people think it does, and we are not in as much control of ourselves as we'd like to believe.

3b. In an increasingly complex and overwhelming world, more and more people run on autopilot in order to survive.

4. Our legal system, as currently designed, can never be made workable for a sustainable society.

5. Money doesn't create resources. Human-usable resources are always "created" through appropriation and usurpation.

6. There is a significant yet unseen force which goes beyond the necessary intelligence, education, patience, emotional resilience, resources, and personality to be collapse-aware: luck.

7. Debates about beliefs are almost never about specific beliefs, but about underlying and unmentioned benefits and threats of the system of belief.

8. Many of our human evolutionary adaptations served to make us increasingly prolific sexually.

9. Space-time probably has a fractal, self-similar geometry.

10. Peak oil, climate change, mass extinctions, and population overshoot are symptoms of unmanageable complexity. The unmanageable complexity stems from our creation of a way of life for which we are ill-designed.

11a. As members of the same society or culture, we are much more different from each other than our tribal ancestors. We are not held together in the same way as they were, by stories, myths, and experiences which were shared, immediate, and local. What holds us together is money, cheap energy, and our reliance on coping mechanisms and synthetic substitutes (bland entertainment, religion, porn, drugs, and chasing false hopes).

11b. Another primary driver of consumptive behavior is that synthetic substitutes don't effectively take the place of what may be actually missing (positive socialization, exercise, sunlight, sleep, healthy diet, sexual expression, etc.). A new, higher level of "more" is then sought after to compensate for what was never solved in the first place, resulting in a persistent, unaddressed deficit. Wash, rinse, repeat.

12. Sexual orientation is neither a choice, nor is it genetic. It is a result of the interaction of genetically-guided biology with specific environmental cues. If certain environmental cues change, sexual orientation can change as well.

13. Fear is the reason that both sex and death largely remain mysteries to most people, because we are taught to be afraid of them when we're children.

When I first learned of Peak Oil, late in 2005, my world literally changed overnight. At first I developed an apocalyptic view of our future, PO was going to result in a more or less instant collapse of the capital markets and therefore of our economies. Now I see things differently. I do not think apocalypse will happen, but I do think a slow grinding recession/depression with oil being pushed higher and higher up the value chain is going to play out over the next several years. The fact that BAU is over will only seep slowly into the official mind; and they will try and fix "the problem" in many ways that are ultimately futile and wasteful (like building more roads as they are here in Australia as part of Rudd's nation building program).

In my view the destination is a zero/negative population growth economy with elderly people maintained on state pensions. The world must relocalize, rely on rail for mass transport; and develop closed loop food/energy/water/sewerage systems. Factories, shops must for the most part be local. This all implies a lower consumption life style, with virtually nothing thrown "away". Quite how we will get there I have no idea and there still remains the chance of apocalypse through war (resulting for social pressures caused by resource shortages and/or the effects of climate change). That is why we must try and be smart now.

Explaining all this to 'the masses' will be counterproductive and actually accelerate social decay.
I have finally come to accept this, and have some equanimity with people I interact with.
Even with strong intention and an arduous education, story and myth are what most of us humans use as reference points, with pattern recognition enhancing the conspiracy theories that propagate around the story and myth.

A) What are some key points you learned that you were previously unaware of and/or what were you wrong about before and now see differently?
and
B) What are some areas where lateral thinking (connecting dots between different subjects) allowed you a higher level synthesis/insight into our situation?

The really astonishing moment for me was in Dec 05, when I discovered a somewhat-organized subculture of people existed talking about this stuff - stuff that I had assumed for decades was not subject to useful human discourse.

I'm a trifle odd - bit of autism or somesuch thing - and from birth my thinking was predominantly abstract-visual, which made the very-verbal humans I was surrounded with seem wildly irrational in annoying and dangerous ways.

I read voraciously until about 8th grade, and then decided to quit it, because it seemed that the ways I saw the world made a lot more sense than what seemed to be conventional wisdom, and I could "fake" it in my classes using methods which were more natural to me. Between age 19-21 I created a greatly-edited human personality/interface which worked well enough for me to function in society and get girls.

The human population/energy crash was apparent to me and looming at that point, so I spent a few years trying to figure what a sentient creature should do about it.

By age 23, after analyzing oil data (I was working as an oil seismologist, so had access to relevant data books), I had developed a fair notion of "peak oil" and when the crunch would hit, though I'd never heard the term. One fine day in the Louisiana salt marsh doodlebugging, the clanking marsh-buggy broke down and I volunteered to guard it, as the rednecks who comprised the rest of the crew chugged off into the distance.

This gave me an afternoon and an evening to ponder peak oil and what I should do about it, as the natural world came back to life around me and a light rain fell. I figured 2010-2020 as the probable systems-crash period, which left the intervening time squarely within my presumed lifespan (that was '74). I quit the next day and started a less-probable career of trying to optimize which species, diversity, and principles would make it through to the other side of the bottleneck. You are all familar with my work, if not my existence.

Fast forward three decades.

My wife got quite sick late in 05, and I needed to be at her side; so I decided maybe I'd see about fleshing out a book from one of my many skeleton-drafts, to try creating a cult audience and raising a little coin. I was about a month into it when I had a phone board meeting for one of my groups and a board member asked, after it closed, what I was working on. I described it, thinking that he'd be impressed or horrified, and he just said "sounds like Kunstler's book". What? Someone else is talking about this stuff now?

So I junked the book idea and instead read about what "peak oil" "dieoff" and related themes had to offer, feeling an incredible relief from self-imposed isolation. And it was a strange sensation to see many of the "visual" concepts I'd worked with expressed in words, sometimes eloquently.

The very existence of Nate and many of the rest of you was amazing to me.

Regarding lateral thinking and synthesis, I think that's the only way I naturally think. Whether it's a feature or a bug has long been open to interpretation. In school I was considered retarded by some, a savant by others, and odd by all; hence the personality redesign.

It's communication of my perceptions which is hard for me. I have a reasonable command of language, but I've mostly failed to describe how I've operated (with considerable success) in affecting the world. It gets very offbeat very quickly. I'm beginning to realize that I may ultimately fail at that. The way I think has always been alien since I was a head-banging kid, and it may well remain too alien to be passed along to the normally-wired.

That said, I vastly appreciate the real-world lucidity I've found here. The discussions here are more congruent with my thinking than any I've seen, and I've quite a bit of respect for many of the posters.

Rave on, gang.

To my surprise, I've spent so much time this decade concentrating on oil that I had not fully appreciated the advance in total global BTU demand. It was only several months ago, when I started digging in to the deeper guts of the BP statistical review that I gained the fuller picture. As always, it does not unfold over the mind in just one day. It's been about 90 days. And, I can say I am completely blown away by it.

The scientist Richard Gott proposes that few of us ever get a change to see the end or the beginning of a big paradigmatic era. He suggests that most of us are fated to live in the boring middle of time. Well, I now think we will have a chance to see something at least as similar in importance to the transition that started it all--the shift from biomass to fossil fuels.

The other reality I had not fully appreciated was the scale and the breadth of the global infrastructure that was erected not just with fossil fuels--but with cheap fossil fuels. I was looking at a lakefront house for sale in N.E. suburban Cleveland today, online. Cheap fossil fuels built that house, caused the diasporas to come to that neighborhood, and sustained an inward flow of labor there for decades. Like a glacier, the fossil fuel era disturbed boulders and left a wake that other smaller forces simply could not have created. How awesome.

It's all way, way too big to be run on energy that's not concentrated like miracle oil. The triple stacks of a California freeway, the almost endless square footage of commercial and office space, the thousands of miles of streets, and the airports. And of course, we opened up credit contracts on top of all this stuff, attached to all this stuff, with myriad other participants. All based on the idea that it would keep expanding.

And as I was a part of this era, I thought it would keep expanding too. After all, it's nearly impossible to see where you are, when you are deep inside the belly of a paradigm.

G

Even though I read TOD daily and get a kick from all the theories and comments, I no longer get worried or stressed by any of the information or insights, because I've come to realise that nothing really matters.

I have finally accepted that Pee-Coil is inconsequential.

It could just as easily be peak water, soil, NPK, toothpicks, or Peek-A-Boo’s we still will not face it, not accept it.

It’s all about wealth. Thats all that matters in this paradigm.

The right to pursue wealth.

The perhaps most important of all, the desperate attempt to preserve wealth.

These are sacred truths of life on planet earth and can not be challenged.

This all guarantees a bloody, ugly, fragmented future where nobody wins and everybody is guaranteed to loose.

Welcome to the jungle.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I fully believe that earth rules could lead us out of this mess but wealth will get in the way and not allow for truth to prevail.

Just my opinion.

And by the way I intend to intelligently resist this inevitability with all the powers I possess, to the very end, with my last breath.

CHEERS!!! (no really)

I guess the central thing I have learned is that while we have an infinite amount of energy available to us in our pratically infinite universe, harnessing that energy is not so simple, and so the declining availability of cheap oil and the possible eventual end of all oil does create problems and opportunities for human existence. I had at one time simply assumed that we would be clever enough to invent new ways of harnessing new forms of energy so that we could continue our human adventure forever. Now, I'm a little more pessimistic.

I have always led a frugal and simple life, so the current situation has not affected me; I adapt well. And since I was born and grew up in a third-world country, I have no qualms about living in a world of limited petroleum-based energy. I find all the noise and pollution of this so-called "advanced" country to be somewhat annoying, so less oil would be better, I think. Since I think we waste too much of our water "flushing" and should universally move to composting toilets and dryer-less washing, the end of oil does not entail the end of fertilizer for our agriculture--but, rather, an improvement to better fertilizer, natural and plentiful.

Like everyone else, I have no idea how things will turn out in the long-run. I think that the world at large may have a hard time because of the arrogance and sense of entitlement to Earth's resources that Americans have--and their willingness to use their military power to take whatever they want. America's military is the greatest threat to any peaceful decline, if that is what happens.

I don't think peak oil will have any long-term consequences for human civilization; civilization existed long before oil and can go on long after it's gone. Excessive global warming or a new ice age would have far more dangerous consequences for humanity than PO.

Not really a mind-change, but rather a realization that there really are no 'solutions' but only strategies.

Oh yeah, on the "nature abhors a gradient" thing.... possibly lifted from the book 'Into the Cool'. I would say "Nature loves a gradient" instead. Nature would not exist without energy gradients. It's kind of like saying "I hate food so I try to eat it and get rid of it as fast as possible."

Just a quibble.

I'm not sure I've changed my mind as in a sense discovered that people don't want to embrace collapse. Intrinsically we generally reject the notion. I use the word embrace in the sense of acceptance. When a loved one dies you have no choice but to embrace the event or go crazy. In many ways its the same when a civilization dies.

Originally I was pretty much a silver bullet type. I was concerned about global warming and peak oil but I did not really see anything really horrible in the sense that maybe change was not possible.

Now I think that our intrinsic inability to accept change even bad things which is really cultural is itself the root of our problems.

Peak oil, Global warming, Debt bubbles over population etc etc are not causes they are results of a civilization that has gone intrinsically astray.

There is no fix sure depending on how events unfold certain events may be delayed maybe even for a generation or two but we have to fix ourselves first and eventually part of that fix is accepting and indeed embracing the death of our current culture because its intrinsically flawed.

A) What are some key points you learned that you were previously unaware of and/or what were you wrong about before and now see differently?

Our brains were largely shaped at a time in the history of our species when chronic energy deficiency was widespread. Trading three meals the day after tomorrow for single meal today would have been a good trade; our ancestors may not have made it till the day after tomorrow if they didn't get the meal today. I used to puzzle how a couple of friends continually get entrapped in high interest quick loans, I've laboriously tried to explain the negative feedback loop to no avail, but now understand our neural circuitry sometimes works against us.

5) Peoples pre-existing belief systems will trump fresh facts the vast majority of the time.

Corollary: Using reason, one is unlikely to alter a belief of another if it was not arrived at by reason.

10) Melting ice is endothermic. (it absorbs energy, not releasing it). Duh.

How about condensing water vapor?

11) There are likely no sasquatches alive at present.

Likely no sasquatches were alive in the past either, unless you broaden the definition of sasquatch to include Gigantopithecus.

I became PO aware about 2 years ago. Since then there have been many changes in my life:
- I used to vote right wing, now I vote green.
- I used to avoid recycling because it damages industries making new stuff :); now I recycle everything and have reduced our family garbage by 75%.
- I avoid driving and walk more.
- I eat less meat.
- I shower only when dirty.
- I wear the same clothes until they are dirty.
- I turned down our heat and try hard to not waste electricity.
- I avoid mass media news because their ignorance and idiocy makes me angry.
- I dropped out of my executive career and am planning to buy a farm. In the mean time I am doing some volunteer work at a community demonstration organic farm.
- I am staying out of the stock market and have moved 50% of my savings into gold.
- Climate change worries me more than PO. I suspect PO will likely accelerate climate change.
- I worry a lot about my kid's futures and how little I did to prepare them in their formative years.
- I've slowed down trying to educate friends and family having learned that most don't want to discuss the issues.
- I spent the first PO aware year frantically searching for BAU solutions, now I understand that the only possible outcome is for everyone to consume less. I see many possible ugly paths to our destination but I pray (in an atheist's way) for a smooth and peaceful path.
- I'm getting better at connecting dots. I now see all of our problems in the light of living beyond the means of the planet.
- I now seek the underlying physical forces in everything I try to understand. Sincere thanks to the brilliant people on TOD for teaching me this. The rule "what can't continue, won't" is a very powerful prediction tool. And I love the work of Nate and others at explaining the biological basis for the human behaviors I detest.
- I used to blame them (politicians, government, corporations, media). Now I blame us.
- All my old heroes have faded away. My new heroes are Albert Bartlett, Jason Bradford, Nate Hagens, Chris Martenson, David Holmgren, David MacKay, Edward O. Wilson, and Michael Pollan.
- I am less happy and often depressed now that I understand the big picture. There is something to be said for ignorance.

I've not changed my mind very much...

I'm sure that studying farming will be useful, that talking to others about PO on any level is useful, that economizing will be VERY useful.

We're actually watching the energy slowly draining out of our economy. We can't see energy, we can only see cars, food, goods, etc. It's truly puzzling for many to see jobs they've had for years just evaporate.

Others are relieved tyo see the end of all the building, the driving, the consuming and the polluting.

Finding out about PO four years ago clarified the human relationship with the earth for me.

Darn it Nate, your a good editor, you've done it again. If the job of an editor on this board is to bring out the various responses and thoughts of contributors, you manage to drag me in every week. I swear off doing any writing,swear off beating a dead horse once again and going back around the rhetorical merry go round, but your subjects and questions are too fascinating, even when I disagree with some of the original premises, I still have to think about them, and I have a tendency to think by writing. So once more I can't resist!

Your questions:

A) What are some key points you learned that you were previously unaware of and/or what were you wrong about before and now see differently?

B) What are some areas where lateral thinking (connecting dots between different subjects) allowed you a higher level synthesis/insight into our situation? What are the new insights?

In answer to A)I have been wrong about a great deal, but my biggest error was in letting so many distractions and panics pull me away from the big picture. I had read Alvin Toffler in the 1970's (Future Shock) and 1980's (The Third Wave) and found him to be one of the great perceptive thinkers of our age. I am still in many ways a "Tofflerite" in much of my intellectual construction, but Toffler had made a very profound prediction in the 1980 book "The Third Wave": He had said that the "industrial world" as we knew it was already at the end of it's growth. Toffler took the view that the technology the West had used to create wealth had played out all of it's options, and that due to the speed up in information exchange the new modern "wealth production" system that would replace it would crash into the old age like a tidal wave creating dislocation, confusion, but potentially a massive leap forward for humanity.

But Toffler had said in 1980, during the worst decline in oil production since the birth of the oil age to this very day, that before the old outdated industrial age could be changed and transcended, the old outdated energy system it had created and was based on had to be transcended. Toffler predicted this to occur "not in decades but in years." On the timing, he missed. In the 1980's and 90's oil and the fossil fuels came roaring back. Toffler had been wrong, and I had been wrong with him. That error cost many young people dearly.

But I have never lost my belief that we are indeed at the end of an era. The nature of energy and wealth production must change. Toffler I was certain had been right in fact but wrong in timing. For the individual that can be deadly to planning and to personal prosperity.

From the age of 14 when I read "Future Shock" (also the year of the 1973 oil embargo) I have believed that the growth of the age of oil was soon to end, and have always viewed that as a good thing. The hegemony of oil had long enough stopped the world from advancing into a new and more efficient and creative age. The end of oil as the monopoly supplier of transportation energy is a GOOD THING. I have never doubted this. But I had been very wrong about how long it would take.

The key things I have learned on TOD is that (a)While the tool of EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) is often misused as a sword to attack alternative energy, it is a real and useful construct, and must always be kept in mind in planning alternatives. It is not the only tool, it can be easily abused, but it is a fundamental tool to understanding our situation.

Another thing that TOD has taught me, and this is an amazing one, is that the world does not use nearly as much oil as we think we do, and it is not the central power source that it is often made out to be.

This post on TOD was far and away the greatest paradigm shifting post in my understanding I have read to date on TOD:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2186

The implications are astounding. The world (not just the U.S., but the world) uses about a cubic mile of oil per year. I am involved in market research for a living, and I did a poll among knowledgable friends and business associates: Not one of them guessed a number this low, and most guessed a number 10 to 20 times greater, some guessed 100 times greater! Thus, the oil industry is blessed with a halo of invincibility, since people believe in their minds that the amount of oil the world uses is so great it cannot possibly displaced!

The real amount of oil the world uses in cubic volume should be published EVERYWHERE, but of course the industry does not want the fact that we are enslaving the world for this little bit of oil known to the public. It would be catastrophic to their interests. Just consider the implications for a few moments: Of the cubic volume of the earth, which is 260,000,000,000 (that's 260 billion miles) ONE CUBIC MILE of oil is used per year. Astounding. And the volume of solar energy that falls upon the earth dwarfs the amount of oil we use.

This brings me to another point that I feel I had been wrong about for MANY years of my adult life: After tinkering with solar energy in my high school and post high school youth, I dismissed it as "pie in the sky", and believed it would not develop in my lifetime.

I now feel that I was absolutely wrong and that my childhood faith in solar was correct. it is the ONLY energy source that breaks us loose from the depletion treadmill, is carbon clean and therefore is the inevitable path forward. I now feel this will occur MUCH faster than I originally believed it would, perhaps not in years as Toffler believed but in the next decade. Almost no one seems to know how staggeringly fast the technology is moving and it is still accelerating. It will make the so called "computer revolution" seem like a corner candy store by comparison.

So the big picture trends, what Toffler called "The Wave" that would be so large as to overcome all waves are (a)Renewable energy and the following massive technological development that will come with it (b)the absolute certainty of decline in oil consumption as well as production (they are married). I am more certain every day that the OECD nations have already seen the highest consumption of oil they will ever see, and one more...(c)the power of demographics. I had known this one for all of my adult life, but had forgotten it or been distracted from it by all the panics and distractions. The aging baby boom in the developed world is THE driving force behind economic development, booms and busts far more than the issue of resource depletion. Resource depletion matters a lot. The aging and dying of the largest and richest generation in history matters more.

To the issue of your question (b concerning lateral thinking, I will make this rather short: I have learned in my adult life that the power of aesthetics means EVERYTHING. People will create the world they want, not the world they need. The most powerful and prosperous can afford to defend the worldview they choose if they have to enslave and even murder the masses to do it. The pyramids were built while the slaves died. The palaces of the Renaissance glistened in gold while the natives of the new lands suffered a holocaust of epic scale, and the peasants of Rome went hungry.

The aesthetics mean EVERYTHING. Those with power will build the world they want to see. The only way forward is either to (a)be a member of the elite or (b) create a vision of the future that is so beautiful and at the same time so humane even the rich and powerful elite cannot resist it. This is why we need the artists, the writers, the poets and the visionaries bought into a new world of clean, efficient and "elegant" wealth production. We must make the new world visable not only to the mind and spirit but also to the eye. Very few people have the power to VISUALIZE, it is even rarer than the power of thought. This for me has been the ultimate connecting of the dots.

Thank you for your time, Roger Conner Jr.

I came across PO 2 years ago at a conference that Chris Vernon attended, but it didn't really sink in until last year, when I was several months pregnant with my daughter. If I'd really understood it before, I'm not sure I'd have been brave enough to have a child.

I've learned since then that efficiency can't save us, but only frugality. There are simple answers out there: Use less! But they are not easy as they go against the cultural directions so strongly.

I work in the water industry. It's shockingly wasteful of energy and other resources, and is absolutely going in the wrong direction. I used to be quite interested in wastewater reuse schemes, high-tech water reclamation. Now I realise that the (unpalatable to mainstream) answer is that we must stop putting feces in water.

The most hopeful thing I've seen recently is the Transition Town movement. They realise the importance of giving people a positive vision of the future. But I've also been reading books like Akenfield, on the way of life in Suffolk about 100 years ago, and have realised that we can't romanticise a low-impact, local way of life either. People got disease from their local water supply. Most of the children didn't go to primary school.

We are in for some interesting times. There was definitely a feeling amongst my peers at university (early 2000's) that modern life was dull and that they wanted a real challenge. Maybe this will be it.

I was around for the post WWII baby boom. Population growth during that period became frightening. Along came the sexual revolution together with advances in birth control technology including the pill and the IUD. Seeing the precipitous drop in the birth rate in many countries was encouraging. One surprise. During the late 60's I attended a conference led in Santa Barbara by Garrett Hardin seeking the legalization of abortion. I recall thinking that this probably won't happen in my lifetime. It did happen within a few years. Dr. Hardin's papers including the notes from that conference are available in Special Collections at the UCSB library.

.

Well Nate, I haven't really changed my mind, nowadays I actually feel more vindicated than anything. After a solid taste of how our system worked, (I was in Chicago in 68) I ended up neck deep in people like Herman Khan, Daniel Bell,John Naisbitt, Toffler,Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall. And of course "Limits to Growth"

All the information was there long ago. Conclusions were obvious for anyone who really cared to take a deep look. So I got the hell out in the early 80's. Land, owner-built passive solar home, water, gardens, and livestock. I found I was really well suited for this lifestyle and still enjoy it. My own self-reliance has given me a rock solid sense of security. Much more so than any cookie cutter job society might have offered.
There's are real joy to living close to, and walking lightly on the land.

So now I kind of sit back and watch, observe. It reminds me of some of the great sci-fi reads of my teens, I'm not skipping any pages but I am anxious to see how it turns out in the end. The twists and turns along the way are fascinating, and I can see them daily here at TOD.

Don in Maine

What have I learned? Nice question. Condensing several hours of reflection down to a postcard...

Technical problems are the easy ones. All the hard problems have to do with what's inside people's heads. There is no "best", or even any "least bad".

Social structures have huge inertia, and determine behaviour. Stories matter more than reality.

The third response to any problem (after ignoring it, and then denying it) is to try to manage it, so society grows ever more complex, while it can.

I come here to get a dose of reality. I need motivation as I am an extreemly lazy man.

I lost two fine women because they were unable to accept the need for radical action. If they won't pull in the same direction as I, I shall not drag them by the hair. Yer on your own Lassie.

Just finnished Talib's "Black Swan's". He does not address inevitable disasters such as geometric curves. He overly emphasises discontinuities. However, smooth curves can reveal nasty ends. ("The Report to the Club of Rome".)

Yes. Yes Iknow about the suprising complexity of Chaos Theory but it is a multi-dimentional case of the non-smooth line. Beautiful and facinitating.

I expect that the end of civilisation will be a fractal event. Self similar at different scales.

Reading TOD and pursuing my own information about PO on the internet have caused the following changes in my life:

1 - Caused me to change my processing of news that I read. I absorb what is found on MSM, blogs, and alternative news sources and then make my own conclusions...usually somewhere short of either extreme.

2 - I have learned not to become stressed about anything that I discover in #1. Most is predictive and theoretical. Things that MAY happen but not set in stone.

3 - I have developed a better understanding of geology, financial analysis, and international politics.

4 - It is wise to be prepared, but not insane or one will lose friends and family connections.

5 - Periodically disconnecting from technology and internet news/blogs goes a long way towards fulfilling #2. Connecting with outdoor activities (garden, dog parks, biking, etc.) is a great substitute for that time.

6 - Viewing the world as if today will be the last where petroproducts are plentiful and cheap. This causes an appreciation for what we currently take for granted.

7 - Connected with neighbors I never knew and found friends I could enjoy spending more time with if petrocollapse ever plays out in my lifetime.

8 - Preparing my kids for a more difficult world...learning karate as a family, how to make things, how to garden, how to be frugal, how not to think the world is their platter, etc.

What have I learned since I began reading TOD shortly before Hurricane Katrina?

That the oil peak I anticipated in the 70's is upon us now.

That no combination of possible technologies will allow the world to continue as it is.

That governments know this but are afraid to acknowledge it and upset BAU.

That we and our local communities are on our own.

That TODers have moved on from speculating about the date when Ghawar will tank to "how can I prepare to save my family".

That reading the thoughtful comments and even the heated arguments on TOD is not only enlightening but the best intellectual entertainment there is.

Thanks to all!

I've finally realized that the Hokey Pokey is what it really is all about.

When I started my peak oil education campaign in 2005 (subsequent to the first ASPO conference) I thought it was just a matter of starting the fire and watching it grow. Now I have returned to the garden. And in the garden I have begun to ponder whether conservation is a help or hindrance. Does it prolong the inevitable and allow greater numbers of people to experience collapse or does it buy into our religion that modern humans are capable of protecting the last tree.

I've never feared peak oil, learned so much in the journey, met so many incredible people, happy to be alive at this moment in time.

I started with "The Population Bomb" back I think in the 1960's and have read much of the literature since then on population problems. I have ever since believed that overpopulation would be our downfall.
I have learned much on TOD about energy problems (3+ years on TOD), but the most valuable insight I have learned is that it is not going to be just any one problem that is going to hit us, but many different problems at the same time which is going to cause much misdirection on the path to the future.
On a more personal level, I managed to get what little I had set aside for retirement in the stock market out of the market at 11,000 and then watched it climb to 14,000 with much wondering if I had made a mistake. But I had promised myself that I would stay out until the end of 2008. Whew! Everyone else I know took a bath in the market - Even though I had told all of them to get out. This has taught me that it is hopeless to try to warn people of an adverse future as they just don't and won't hear the message. Now I just try to enjoy retirement and plan as best I can to try to be self sufficient for the coming decline.

"A) What are some key points you learned that you were previously unaware of and/or what were you wrong about before and now see differently?"

1. Professors are often wrong and set in their ways. I was brought up thinking they were the intellectual masters that we could trust and use as a baseline for lateral beliefs. Now I know we need to examine the facts and make up our own minds.

2. Most of the beliefs that we as a society hold to be true, are in fact myths perpetuated by an industry that profits from that myth.

Example -- buy and hold stocks because over the long term they always go up. Seems funny now, but almost nobody questioned it one year ago.

Corollary: Everything advertised should be assumed false, or at least wildly deceptive.

Example -- buy soft drinks and you'll have lots of fun and be popular with the opposite sex.

3. Politicians only act to protect their jobs, and therefore represent those who contribute the most money to their re-election. Therefore, moneyed special interests are the true leaders of society.

"B) What are some areas where lateral thinking (connecting dots between different subjects) allowed you a higher level synthesis/insight into our situation? "

1. High school biology experiment, 1974 -- yeast cultures in a closed environment grow exponentially until they run out of food and die swimming in their own waste. Conclusion, isn't the earth just a larger closed environment which will eventually run out of resources and be full of pollution?

I still see some of my classmates and I was the only one who drew that conclusion. It was not the intent of the lesson. But it was a life-changing experience for me. I instantly became a believer in peak oil, environmentalism, sustainable living and population control.

The book theme sounds similar to the post I started more than a month ago, but still haven't finished: "What if I am Wrong?" My intention is to explore the implications of being wrong, for me, but also for the opposition.

I came to PO awareness around 2003, after reading Chip Haynes prescient article, "Ghawar is Dying." It seemed incredible to me how fragile "our way of life" was, and how few people were aware of it. After delving into the subject I still think that an apocalyptic vision of the future, full of large-scale societal meltdowns, is the most realistic view.

Ultimately, it will not be PO, but decisions made by governments, based on the reality of PO, that will determine mankind's future. As such, I'm not optimistic. The global industrial society has been held together by baling wire for a while, and the pressure points are growing exponentially on that vulnerable wire.

I fully expect to see widescale manifestations of breakdown by the end of this year, to advance apace in the ensuing five years after which everything will become increasing local in scope.

Nate: re group selection, keep in mind Dawkins' distinction between "replicators" and "vehicles" (built by replicators to facilitate replication -- bodies, groups, etc.). Genes that promote group membership in a "positive sum game" group are selected. Groups don't replicate -- unless you are talking about the the memes in their group meme pools.

For an excellent talk on memes (and "temes" that replicate in computers rather than brains), see Susan Blackmore's TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html

Re my own change of thought: until recently I could see no viable, CO2 neutral, and scalable replacement for oil that would "save" us.

Craig Venter to the rescue. His comments about "replacing the oil industry" with genetically modified algae that produce oil is worth a look.

See:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/craig_venter_is_on_the_verge_of_creat...

Start of his comments re algea -- at 13 minutes into presentation.

Genetically modified algea would "eat" CO2 and sunlight, and produce oil. CO2 neutral. Scalable.

He calls this "4th generation biofuels."

He says:

"... (we) have modest goals of replacing the whole petrol-chemical industry."

and

"we are a ways away from improving people, our goal is to make sure that we have a chance to survive long enough to do that."

Also see:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science-channel/34120-brink-algae-to-oil...
http://www.livescience.com/environment/090406-pf-algae-fuel.html

Anyway, gives me a shred of hope on which to cling...

I'm a 19 year old university student, with a huge interest in Peak oil, climate change, and many other issues. I have been sporadically visiting TOD for about a year now, and to be honest I have always found many of the posts a little above my reading level so-to-speak. But reading your comments above is extremely enlightening and easier to grasp given the more broad nature of our topic here.
It is certainly reassuring to see the ability of many of you (from what I understand from your comments)to change from being financially motivated, capitalistic induviduals to people more accepting of the merits of the simple life.
My issue here though, is that many of you seem to have become somewhat cynical about our future and have retired to farms and gardens with the money that you have made over your carrers in order to escape the horrors that may come with a societal collapse. Although I see how this makes perfect sense in the interest of protecting you and yours, I don't yet have this luxury. The vast majority of the planet's people do not have the ability to move to the countryside and live off the land becasue of a lack of funds and skills. I sincerely hope that you--part the few who may have the ability to find solutions to our coming decline that will reduce our suffering--realize that a solution that saves only a few at the expense of the many is probably not the best answer.
It is easy to say that a dieoff will happen because of our overconsumption and exploitation of the earth's resources, and that we all must look after ourselves and our family. But to me the underlying cause of all of our overconsumption has always been our selfishness.
Our desire to improve our own situation and compete with others has driven us to find a new way of life, but we cannot arrive at it as the same people that screwed the pooch the first time.
As a famous Canadian television character and icon always puts it, "We're all in this together".

As far as what I have learned over the last year or so is concerned, I think the best proposal for a society that may work for all of us in the future comes from the zeitgeist movement. This video is the zeitgeist movement's activist orientation presentation. It centers around the creation of a resource-based economy, where mass-transport and cybernetics are key, but money, and ownership no longer exist. If you are not familiar with the zeitgeist films and movement, then I would encourage you to take a look, I think that many of you may find it very interesing, honest, and innovative. Here is the address:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=4232612861705916224&ei=eqQZSt-GIZ...

Nigel, Canada

I've learned that Jay Hanson is right, die-off is coming. The man's logic is irrefutable. I've also learnt that we are born optimists, anticipating discontinuity is one of the toughest things the mind can do.

Reading some of the optimistic comments above about muddling through and all, we are facing the biggest economic collapse in the history of the planet. Oil production due to a lack of credit could make oil production plummet to 20 million barrels per day or so in Gail's adverse scenario. Those wishing and hoping for renewables are living in dream land. With the coming greatest depression, people will have to worry about food, water, shelter, heating and keeping alive not some of these fancy techno-fantasies.

I learnt about peak oil 4 years ago, forgot about it, came back and then lost interest as the effects of peak credit are going to hit just as hard as peak oil. I wonder how people think that America will remain stable given the massive amount of looting taking place to the tune of trillions and the utter toothlessness of the judicial system. If America accepts such third world country behaviour - endemic corruption and crony capitalism then at this current rate it will become a third world country. The price of freedom and liberty is eternal vigilance. Political and economic stability are not a given.

All in all, TOD and Nate especially have taught me a lot but I don't expect a muddle through or things to look up. A collapse in living standards is painful, as Gerald Celente says, "when people lose everything, they lose it"

This is a great thread. I especially love the posts by "710" and "ThatsItImOut". I have the optimistic view that we have energy resources that are almost limitless, (but we haven't learned how to use them yet). I do, however, think that 710's view on sexual orientation is simplistic. Sort of an off-topic comment in any case. I believe there are both genetic and environmental factors that influence sexual orientation. You might be interested to know that homosexual men tend to have anatomical traits that, statistically, differ from straight men. For example, heterosexual men are more likely to have a fourth finger that is longer than the middle finger than homosexual men. Nobody knows why this is true, but there is speculation that it is related to in utero exposure to different levels of testosterone. This would certainly seem to suggest that there is at least somewhat of a biological component contributing to sexual orientation. I agree with 710, though, in believing that sexual orientation changes over time. I know this because of personal experience.

Great thread folks, nothing to add, all the sensible answers are scattered here.

I've decided that a collapse is a collapse so I might as well produce an album of music and sing about it, any way of embedding music.

Before attending to my garden, a couple of thoughts on Nate's most reasonable observations:

The majority of humans are not emotionally 'strong' enough to overcome our baser impulses. I.e. rational neocortex is not the supreme behavioral commander that most believe.

We could use the education and public media systems to "lend a hand" to those lacking strength. Pie in the sky.

The likely role of peak oil 'outreach' will be to lay a foundation of knowledge to be used (and remembered) after the paradigm change - not actually to create it as I once hoped.

Better start etching TOD onto stainless steel sheets if you want it to be remembered for after the paradigm shift, microprocessors will be rare in a low energy world.

Melting ice is endothermic.

Why this odd fact?

I am not my brother's keeper.

My understanding of what is now coming down goes back almost 50 years. Nothing has been hidden. I'm sorry if you have made the wrong choices but it's your problem. The usual response is, "Lots of luck buddy. We'll take what we need." We'll see.

Todd

Years ago I was strongly influenced by two books: The Club of Rome's "The Limits to Growth," and EF Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful," so I have always had a consciousness in the back of my mind that everlasting growth and development was both impossible and undesirable.

My biggest lesson in reality, however, came from an African in a drought-stricken village when I (then an engineer) asked him angrily why a communal irrigation facility was standing unused. "What is the point of planting," he replied, "When you will not enjoy the harvest?"

I realised then, and I have seen it confirmed since, especially as a trustee of a condominium, that people will not change unless they see some personal advantage in it, and they will do almost nothing for their community, believing it is "someone else's job." And enforceable property rights are supremely important.

So I live simply, and don't preach, and don't expect too much. TOD has confirmed my world view rather than changed it.

I started reading TOD about a year ago after reading "The Long Emergency". My eyes have been opened to a future much darker than anything I would have thought possible in my prior state of sleep-walking. My wife has been a little slow to follow - I think it has been harder for her to adjust her expectations, especially where our young son is concerned. Nevertheless, we have learned an enormous amount in areas we had never given much thought to in the past, ie energy and economics. Actions illustrate this - in the past year:

1) we sold the Jag and SUV and are driving a Jetta TDI wagon and Mercedes B200 (that one only until the plug-in Prius becomes available)

2) we sold our beautiful, recently renovated house (took a beating in this down market) and are renting now

3) I started taking the bus to work

4) we moved out of equities and into money-market, cash and precious metals

5) at work I drafted a paper on peak oil and its potential effects on under-privileged populations

6) I attended a conference on peak oil and public health

7) I have raised these issues with the politicians and senior bureaucrats with whom I work

8) we are looking for arable land

9) we are considered "doomers" by many of our friends who prefer we not talk about these things.

I realize these are small steps in comparison to what many of you are doing, probably laughably so, however, they represent significant adjustments in our lives. I also appreciate that much more adjusting will have to be done as things unfold. We still live comfortably and food security is not an immediate issue. I expect these conditions to change. And, I am not optimistic that we can avoid a chaotic social disintegration leading to harsh and dangerous times ahead. I fear that the clock has run out on the opportunity for planning and action that would have been able to mitigate the coming changes and that a large die-off is inevitable. I know this sounds bleak, but it seems to me that what remains now is to improve one's personal chances of survival.

When I discovered PO about 5 years ago and generalized out from there to the converging crisis of industrial civilization, I was pitched headfirst into the Slough of Despond. All I could see was corpses out to the year 2100.

My major shift was that I finally realized there was in fact reason to hope, but it took a long time for me to see it because the hope doesn't occupy the same worldview as the crisis that TOD spends most of its analytical energy on. I had to completely change my understanding of the crisis as well as my definition of what a successful response might look like in order to accept that my perceptions of hope were legitimate. In taxonomic terms, the crisis and the hope are orthogonal - the sets are non-intersecting.

I've concluded that the crisis of civilization is not really a convergence of technical, environmental and organizational problems. These visible problems are only symptoms of a philosophical and perceptual disconnection so deep that it is best understood as a spiritual breakdown. The disconnection is the sense of separation that allows us to see ourselves as different from and superior to the rest of the apparently non-rational universe we live in. In this worldview the mutual interdependence of all the elements of the universe is replaced by a simple dualistic categorization: there are human beings, and everything else in the universe—without exception—is a resource for us to use.

The only way to keep this planet from being ultimately ravaged and devastated is to change that worldview by healing our sense of separation. Unless we can manage that breathtaking feat all the careful application of technology, all the well-intentioned regulations, all the unbridled cleverness of which we are so proud will do little to delay the final outcome, and nothing whatever to prevent it. What we face is not a technical challenge, but rather a deep existential or spiritual one.

I believe to my core that this challenge is already being met, through the viral agency of the millions of environmental, social justice and aboriginal rights groups that comprise the world's largest social movement, as described in Paul Hawken's book "Blessed Unrest". This will never be a popular perspective on TOD, it's far too soft for engineers and the there's no math. But I think there's a greater chance of "success" down this path than down the technical/political one.

Bodhisantra

Interesting thread and many fascinating stories. By comparison my life has been an easy, charmed ride through the peak of the petroleum age. A child in the sixties, my family moved to a rural area when I was seven, and I spent my adolescence thinking about cars, girls, and reading sci-fi and fantasy books. By the tenth grade I noticed I was a nerd, and set about to change that, which I did with reasonable success. I then spent the rest of high school, all of collage, and many years after partying and engaged in social pursuits. I never really applied myself very often, never put much effort into anything beyond the superficial.

At Lehigh in the early '80s I attended a Freshman Seminar on the limits to growth given by a Professor Sheeser. It was interesting and disturbing, but the impacts seemed a long way off, and clearly something would be worked out.

After a near-fatal car wreck 1991, I decided it was time to get more serious about life. I bought an old farm house and began to restore it, soon married and had children, joined a local church mostly for the sense of community (I had considered myself an atheist). But by the mid 1990's there were cracks beginning to appear in the edifice of official society.

I had always been a dedicated liberal and Democrat, but I struggled with the obvious conservative policies of Clinton. The right wing Christian fanatics had appeared in our church (we stopped going). I had gotten involved with local politics in an attempt to save our small rural farming area from development, but that effort was failing due to pressures from the housing bubble.

However the biggest cracks appeared due to medical issues. My wife battled Lyme disease, and my son was likely born with it. On top of that, he suffered vaccination damage from a system gone insane. He was clearly showing autistic spectrum disorders, was violent and uncontrollable. At two. We fought like hell to bring him back, with no help whatsoever for any of it from the established system. We got used to living in a different universe from those around us, and soon that didn't bother us in the least. I set up an old used laptop on the kitchen counter, we got a second phone line and it was always connected. We had access to information and began to really think for ourselves. We learned that to understand the world meant that you had to put an effort into it, to spend time reading and to make your own decisions about the truth. We fixed our son (he's still a tough kid at ten, mildly aspergers, but plays a mean electric guitar and his brown eyes will melt you).

There came the coup of 2000, subsequent events where the official story beggared belief, and all faith in the political system vanished. In 2003 we realized the cause was lost and abandoned our beloved farmhouse. We traded for a larger property farther away in an area with lower property values and have never looked back. But the "damage" was done - we no longer believed in the illusions. There's still a laptop on the kitchen counter (and many more old machines). We stopped watching TV.

I found TOD on 2005 while reading about the hurricanes. I was fascinated by what I read, and followed many links to other topics. There were so many knowledgeable people. TOD had become the catalyst for the continuing education that I never pursued, and helped continue the opening up of my intellectual side that began back in the '90s. At first I looked for ways to ease the transition. Then I mostly focused on trying to understand the timing of the various large crises that effect us now (energy, climate change, economic, and political).

What did I learn?

The use of fossil fuel is at the root of all of these problems. It made everything we see around us possible in an incredibly short period of time. The economic and political issues are simply social symptoms of the energy and climate troubles. But Ilargi and Stoneleigh were correct on the timing, and the economic crisis hit first, to be followed closely by political turmoil, and these are the things that we will see and feel first. They will help to prevent us from acting in any appropriate ways to deal with underlying problems.

Lack of fossil fuel energy and fertilizer derived from it will make it impossible to feed the present world population. That is the biggest effect of peak oil and NG.

The big hammer will ultimately be climate change. CC will make many of the most heavily populated parts of the world uninhabitable. How long it may take is unclear, but CC may happen fast enough to make all of the rest of this moot.

I learned that there is no technical solution. There is no energy source that can compare to fossil fuels, certainly not one that can be brought into widespread use soon enough......soon enough to what? To prevent a population crash, to preserve our present way of life? If we had more fossil fuel we would only make the CC problem worse, and if we had some new source of energy we would only make the overpopulation problem worse. There's no way out.

Primarily this is a social problem. It does not appear that any of our societies are prepared to take constructive actions in appropriate time frames. I do not really think “we” as a species will do a blessed thing in the face of these merging disasters, other than fight. I generally agree with Greer, in that these problems spell the end of the industrial petroleum age, and the process will be playing out for the rest of our lives – and long after.

Once I thought that nothing much would happen during my lifetime, and I often thought that this society we've made was unfulfilling. I now have a much better understanding of why it felt that way, and see that we will likely live through the beginning of some of the most massive changes in human history. How it will play out is unknowable in detail, and so I think the most important adaptation you can make is to understand and accept change. My assumptions will likely be wrong in at least some way, so I must stay alert and be prepared to adjust my mental model. This is just the lot we've drawn. There can still be love, happiness, laughter, friendship, beauty and meaning to an individual life, but life will be fundamentally different from anything we were told.

Great thread Nate, I first became Peak Oil aware back in 1998 reading Thom Hartmann's book, "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight". The whole concept that our spectacular economic growth and the human population explosion were all linked to easy sources of energy that borrowed upon stored sunlight. We were living off of savings that were unsustainable and then I saw somewhere in the future TSHTF would happen, with either massive economic and social dislocation and/or huge population dieoff.

A key point I have learned digesting the coming implications of PO, are to live fully today and enjoy in gratitude what we can do and experience NOW.

ELP is what I keep returning to when I wonder what on earth I can constructively do. So I learn how to live on less NOW, grow food, get to know neighbors and build community, and not worry about a lot of the daily soap opera on NPR & in the news.

The future is viable, but it will look much different than our world today, and a deeper understanding of what SUSTAINABILTY truly is will be as valuable as understanding mathematics and how to read are to us today.

Family and friends matter, if TSHTF in a bad way (as my rational analytical mind tells me it likely will) then our personal connections will be much more valuable than tons of ammunition & stockpiled food.

A positive mental attitude, an accepting world view that understands the implications of Peak Oil, will give one a long head start on adapting & productively changing with or even ahead of crisis. This will be much like the difference between someone caught unawares by a tsunami versus a surfer paddling to catch a big roller.

Sex is a basic human need but reproduction is not. The jury is still out as to "whether humans are smarter than yeast." God seriously needs to explain this to the Vatican and all the Imams.

And lastly, the world would be a much nicer place with a lot less humans on the planet.

A) What are some key points you learned that you were previously unaware of and/or what were you wrong about before and now see differently?

(Assuming a time frame of 'before you found and became interested in peak oil'.)

1. That some people do not have a deep gut level understanding of ecology and resource limitation.

It has always been obvious to me that there were limits, that we were hitting or exceeding them, and that there was no reason why humanity should be immune to the consequences of overshoot.

2. How bad the damage from agriculture is.

I knew we utilized artificial fertilizer, and that ancient techniques caused undue soil loss, but had no idea just how bad the current soil loss was, nor the level of overall depletion of arable land. Along with this, the depth of our global water situation, especially the aquifers in the Midwest USA.

3. The approximate timing of the oil depletion curve, and why guessing it from social response was inadequate.

I'd previously assumed a downslope beginning around 2030-2050, merely because noone had responded obviously yet at that point, so it "couldn't" be so soon.

4. The potential value of space travel, other than pure exploration.

Along with it, why so much space-faring fiction begins with end of oil, development of solar and nuclear power, a third world war, and mining the asteroid belt. What goes up, must come down, unless it reaches escape velocity.

5. A far more detailed mental map of the pollution and destruction of habitats on Earth.

At one point, the term Superfund Site was not even in my vocabulary. Nor were uranium tailings used in building homes, coal mining refuse used in building playgrounds, etc. Our culturally beneficial capacity to concentrate and refine substances has shown its dark underbelly.

6. The human need for hope in engendering creativity.

The use of cultural dogma to refine a spectrum of possibilities is unavoidable, regardless of its accuracy or lack thereof. When this impacts attempts at developing large breakthroughs, though, it's easy for important things to be overlooked. So I hope the best and the brightest do believe, deeply, that there is a solution, because without that belief they would be less likely to find one.

B) What are some areas where lateral thinking (connecting dots between different subjects) allowed you a higher level synthesis/insight into our situation?

I don't generally use any purely lateral or purely vertical thought form. Every one of my above points involves both.

But, the most important thought tools I got from studying peak oil:

1. Thinking of process feasibility and return in terms of application of energy and refinement degree of materials. Especially from a full life cycle viewpoint, including its waste products.

2. Consideration of long supply lines, just-in-time delivery, and just how quickly a disruption can develop.

3. Awareness of the role of resource mining in geopolitics.

What have I learned here?

That TOD will never tell you what to do or how to do it.
It will 'point the way' if you read others comments that have discovered what is really happening and will happen.

Those are the ones 'pointing the way'. The ones who will be most likely to survive but I no longer think that TOD will have practical value as to surviving that future.

Here is where I am currently or wish to go in my mental attitude.Some apply more than others.I am trying.

1. The Earth is our MOTHER, care for her.
2. Honor all your relations.
3. Open your heart and soul to the Great Spirit.
4. All life is sacred: treat all things with respect.
5. Take from the earth what is needed and nothing more.
6. Do what needs to be done for the good of all.
7. Speak the truth.
8. Follow the rhythms of nature; rise and retire with the Sun.
9. Enjoy life's journey, but leave no tracks.

The above is mostly taken from a flyer I picked up in Hopkinsville,Ky while visiting the Trail of Tears park and museum there. It is a Native American Ten Commandments(I left one out and altered another).

For hundreds of years the Cherokee farmed the southern areas and lived wisely. They tried hard to deal with the whites who came. They created an alphabet, a newspaper, some went to Congress, and they often fought with the white man against other europeans.

Yet their lands were taken and they were forced at gun point to leave their lands and go elsewhere by the very men they helped. The Supreme Court upheld their petitions and ruled in their favor but the then President defied the court and issued orders to move them.

They were my ancestors and lived easily on this earth and left few footprints. They built and lived in log cabins. They are still the largest of all the Native American tribes. They treated their women with respect and allowed them membership in the tribal councils. They revered the earth.

We took it from them and then destroyed it.

This is what I have learned. I am still seeking but I think that at 70 years of age I have enough to continue as I am currently. I will walk MY PATH until I reach that clearing at the end of it. I fear little now. I feel better now than I ever have in my whole life except for watching the earth disintegrate before me and hope that the destruction ends before too much is lost forever.

Here in the four river counties of western Ky we lost 8.6 billion dollars in forests and woodlands as a result of the worse disaster since the 1811/12 earthquake , being about a 9 on the Richter Scale.Source is Kentucky Forestry and Wildlife.

Many on TOD have seen the 'light/path/way' and know what to do. They will surely, be part of a future remnant. They will learn what and how to do what needs to be done. There is IMO little need to go beyond that except to help others who ask, if you can.

Airdale

I have realized and learned;

The Earth is flat-Why else could we fall off the edge?

Everything I learned at school was wrong. The re-education process has been a slow and somewhat painful adventure.

I am surrounded by a largely unconscious mass of people and the exit is small.

Our cousins, the chimpanzee behave better than we do.

Ignorance is not bliss-unless you are a slug.

There is good reason for my porn habit.

Life's a bitch and then your dead.

7) Government, politicians, billionaire etc. are not responsible for our problems. There was not some devious plot forged on Jekyll Island for world domination. Where we stand today was arrived at by a path dependent series of small steps of people pursuing power in culturally condoned ways. It's a giant chinese finger trap with huge momentum- but the players are mostly benign, with few true conspiracies.

This attitude will prove most costly in the end, as it always does. Does it matter that I can find quote after quote after quote from people like Albert Pike, Helena Blavatsky, HG Wells, Bertrand Russel, and countless others, saying exactly what the elite are going to do and how they're going to do it? Nope, because its all a conspiracy theory! lol. "It doesnt exist, and it will never exist, because I will never read any of their books." That is the prevailing attitude, and it is a suicidal one. These people are cold blooded killers, and they lay their plans right out in front of everyone for all to see, knowing it wont make any difference, because they understand human psychology.

There is only one way this sequence of current events could have played out in such an absurd manner: with a deliberately dumbed down sheep-like mass of people. That is a fact. An educated and informed population would never be acting like this. It's pure madness, and no amount of denial will change that fact.

Now read this quote from Bertrand Russell: "Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so."

Our educational system is modeled after such ideology. And it has functioned exactly as it was designed to function. If you cant see profound implications in that then I'm really not sure why you'd even care to study any of these subjects, especially resource depletion. Why not just let the cattle march themselves off the cliff? Or, even better yet why not help them along by joining the chorus of eugenicists who want the dieoff to be as big as possible? Or do they not exist either? All those people, and all that money directed at misleading humanity off the edge of a cliff? And you believe none of it is real?