From the blurb:

"Nuclear bombs in suitcases, anthrax bacilli in ventilators, tsunamis and meteors, avian flu, scorchingly hot temperatures: nightmares that were once the plot of Hollywood movies are now frighteningly real possibilities. How can we steer a path between willful inaction and reckless overreaction?"

FWIW, I sent a note to Prof. Sunstein, asking him if peak oil "made the cut" for his book on risks, and if he considered it.  His answer was "no and no."

In this case at least, JMG, your friend from Bellingham is indeed an excellent and engaging writer.  Whether the serial comma is for him a commandment inscribed in granite is not altogether proved; but he does use it very well here:

<<
peak oil, climate change, rate of extinctions, and population overshoot
>>

Also, "population overshoot" is a brilliant neologism.  Please do not ask me to define it; but even someone like me should sort of get it.

As for this,

<<
Less than 10 left early,
>>

some strict types would wish he had written "fewer than ten."  So he played fast and loose with no less than 2 [!] rules at once.  More power to him!, say I.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

It's funny that you should take the "certainty" angle because I was thinking about that after this morning's post, though I came to a very different answer.

I was thinking about my construction "while Peak Oil represents a real risk, it continues to be an uncertain one."  I thought, that's redundant, all risks are uncertain, aren't they?

When they are known, I said to myself, they stop being risks and become losses.

So I guess you can make the bland point that for any series of numbers there must be a maximum, but that really doesn't tell us what we want to know, does it?  What we really want to know is what loss, if any, we will experience.

(caniscandida, the its/it's sounds like one of those things we know, but that we tend not to notice until the "post" button is irretrievably pressed.)

For example, at the recent ASPO conference in Ireland, former CIA director, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy, James Schlesinger announced "the battle is over, the peakists have won." In an later interview, Schlesinger said:

If you speak to people in the industry, they will concede that whatever my company may say publicly, we understand that we are facing decline in our own production and worldwide, we are not going to be able to produce more fuel liquids or crude oil in the near future and if you look at pronouncements by governments including the Energy Information Administration in the United States, the National Petroleum Council, what they show is that by the early 2020, we are going to have peaked out in terms of conventional oil production and that is an immense change from what we have seen before in the attitude of the industry.

I certainly know about Schlesinger, I thought it important enough to "break radio silence" on September 21st

It's interesting though that Dr. Schlesinger does not follow through to the part that all three of us agree is unknown, and uncertain: the losses we face.

Now.  The movie above puts a very strong stake in the ground:

"A middle class white guy comes to grips with Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot and the demise of the American Lifestyle."

The first three are arguable true at low levels today.  We may be at peak, we are seeing climate change, and the rate of known extinctions on earth may already be "mass."

But on Population Overshoot and demise of the American Lifestyle we have something else again ... would you like to define those outcomes, and state their mathematical probability?

Peak oilers hate to talk about the probabilities associated with their fears, but if I read Sunstein correctly, that's what is required to avoid "probability neglect."

When I step up and say those fears are irrational JMG (and perhaps you Bart?) steps back to say "but peak oil is real!"

I mean, Good Lord, you just quoted Dr. Schlesinger on the widespread belief in peak oil.  How does that relate to the first words of this new movie's trailer:

"All signs are that we may be facing a kind of global economic collapse because of peak oil."

Are you saying that Dr. Schlesinger supports that?  Are you saying that you have a rational case for "global economic collapse?"

Or will you step back again, having opposed me because you saw a criticism of collapse as an attack on "peak oil?"

Even though I understand the reasoning, my mind just won't accept the scenario in which billions die. And I would add that I think some people toss those scenarios around pretty casually, without really reflecting on the horror of what it would mean if a billion plus people died of starvation. Look at your family, imagine them starving, and then imagine this playing out on a horrific scale. Then maybe we can get past the casual talk of billions dying off.

For myself, I think we have a chance to muddle through without catastrophe, but only by responding to the imminent/present peak (or certainly the export peak, which will functionally be the same thing) as if it were likely to bring catastrophe.  

By itself peak oil is not a terror; but given the reality of global climate disruption, what I fear is our refusal to give up the high energy life without first trying to maintain it through use of coal.

I can assign numbers to those scenarios if you like, but there doesn't seem to be any historical basis on which to assign them; we've never witnessed an industrial society deprived of its key resource on a global scale before.  We know that Imperial Japan chose a catastrophic war rather than simply live with constrained access to oil.  We know that the Canadians are wreaking environmental havoc with the tar sands in an attempt to squeeze out a paltry few million barrels a day greater production.

One of the problems with treating peak oil/climate change as a probabilistic exercise is that the natural science is only a small part of it -- the human response is the greatest part of the problem or the greatest hope for rational action.  So your demand that people writing about peak oil assign probabilities to it is essentially meaningless -- we all agree that peak as a physical reality is occurring or is near.  From there, the question is which path we choose in response.  

I suggest that, as with climate change, it is difficult to argue against a "no regrets" strategy --- doing the things that make the most sense regardless of the underlying timing question: (1)  in this case, restoration of a functioning heavy rail network, an interurban passenger rail system, and a workable electric mass transit system for urban areas; (2) national adoption of the oil depletion protocol suggested by Campbell and publicized by Heinberg; (3) promoting bioregional self-sufficiency in food production and a massive effort to broaden the number of people able to grow food skillfully without petrochemicals or long-distance shipping; (4) education for low-energy living; (5) geonomic taxation to retard sprawl; etc.

Those things done, we become more resilient and less likely to experience anything like global economic collapse.  But the longer we insist that the social consequences of peak oil are just too uncertain to address, the more likely I think we are to experience the least pleasant of them.

Your mileage may vary; you seem to have decided that there is no organized or national scale response required, and that individual actions will suffice.  I hope you turn out to be right, because it appears that this is the view that is most congenial to the powers-that-be under the present circumstances, so it's the one most likely to be accepted.

The 5% Project

I find that to be a contradiction.

You can't assign odds (that they are very high, and we only "a chance to muddle through") and the unassign them (saying you'll give numbers "there doesn't seem to be any historical basis on which to assign them").

Isn't that a bait and switch?  You want the reader to accept Peak Oil as driver for collapse, but you don't know you to make that case.

BTW, this blurb is also very strange:

"you seem to have decided that there is no organized or national scale response required, and that individual actions will suffice."

I never said that, and indeed Gristmill reports on many "organized" and "national" responses going on around us.

My comment on those plans was this:

What should we do? We are not short on plans. The national news contains daily reports on hydrogen, wind, biodiesel, solar, ethanol, clean coal, biomass, and geothermal energy projects. And we see as many reports on the conservation front, with smaller, more efficient, gasoline, diesel, hybrid, and electric cars, efficient homes, and appliances. It's not like we aren't trying. We are just trying in the imperfect, messy, and sometimes even corrupt, human way.

Many of us wish for earlier, more aggressive, more honest, or more effective action. I certainly do. Where we differ I think is in our response to this messy and imperfect progress we see going on around us. The impatient are ready to write it off. Some essentially believe that if we still buy gas guzzlers in 2006, we'll never learn.

I don't think such pessimism is supported by the numbers, the facts, or reasoned argument. We have problems, and see responses, but we just have no way of calculating what response in 2006 is necessary or sufficient for a happy future 20 or 50 years down the line.

Most importantly we have no way of knowing how human response to "the end of cheap oil" will change over time. We know for instance that car-buying patterns change with gas prices. When gas prices rise, more people buy hybrids. When gas prices fall more people buy guzzlers. That's messy, and that's human, but it's a response. I'd be more worried, and more inclined to the pessimistic view if we didn't see the hybrid boom in times of high gas prices.

What will people drive when gas is $5/gal? No one really knows.

First, from the movie you are linking:

"All signs are that we may be facing a kind of global economic collapse because of peak oil."

Then you tell me:

"So your demand that people writing about peak oil assign probabilities to it is essentially meaningless -- we all agree that peak as a physical reality is occurring or is near."

This is deeply contradictory, and deeply irrational.

It cognitive dissonance.

In a long debate about a paper discussing Global peak energy: Implications for future human populations (which I edited), I wrote my take on predictions:

A single scenario (or even two closely related ones) gives a false claim of certainty about a complex situation. It tends to restrict our thinking, encouraging a sense of doom and fatality, when instead we need be aware of the choices and what their results might be.

The purpose should be not to get the "right" numbers, but to stimulate intelligent thinking about possible futures.

Therefore it would be good to present multiple scenarios for different sets of assumptions.

...It would be good to see scenarios for possible but hard-to-predict events, such as wars, significant energy discovery, collapse of an environmental system, etc.

Any scenario should have its assumptions clearly spelled out, as well as the reasons for those assumptions.

Peak oil
before 2012 - 20%
2012-2022 - 60%
after 2022 - 20%

Global over the next 15 years
business as usual - 10%
mild (recessions, tensions, small wars) - 40%
moderate (depression, revolutions, wars) - 40%
severe (collapse) - 10%

Global over next 50 years
Rise in consumerism/energy consumption - 5%
Fall in     "  - 35%
Severe Fall "  - 60%

Does anybody else what to quantify their hopes and fears?

Bart
Energy Bulletin

---

Abbott:  The probability is for economic and political turmoil.

Costello:  How did you calculate that probability?

Abbott:  I didn't actually, but I can't believe you asked that.  Can't you see I'm trying to frighten these fine people?

Anderson: I've been following peak oil news/analysis for about four years as a full-time volunteer. I've read a wide spectrum of viewpoints, including those of industry, governments and the military.

My background is journalism, technical writing and the liberal arts (history, literature).

I think you are asking for an engineering-type argument, odo. My response is that engineering is appropriate for physical systems but wildly inappropriate for predicting human behavior.

Technical approaches for human behavior might be chaotic systems, catastrophe theory and the butterfly effect - but these don't yield the nice probabilities you would like.

If I remember correctly, odo, you argue for complete skepticism - that is, since there are no ironclad guarantees, there is no sense in thinking or talking about the future.

I would offer an empirical argument. Looking at history, one sees that certain people and groups were much better at coping with historical change. FDR as opposed to Calvin Coolidge, for example.

FDR didn't have a calculus of human behavior which  yielded certainties about the future. Instead he had a background in history and an intuition for how it worked. Fully aware of the uncertainties involved, he nonetheless monitored events, looking for dangers and opportunities.

That is what I suggest that we do.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Basically, you look at all the hard numbers (oil production and prices), and then with your experience, and your gut, you assign "probabilities."

Surely you will admit that someone with similar background might choose a different set of probabilities?

Isn't that kind of disagreement in fact common?

It's not like everyone with a breadth of experience like yours picks the same values?

"Global over the next 15 years
business as usual - 10%
mild (recessions, tensions, small wars) - 40%
moderate (depression, revolutions, wars) - 40%
severe (collapse) - 10%"

It's odd, really, that you say "these don't yield the nice probabilities you would like" ... even as you name the "nice probabilities!"

It's also just so strange to put it on me as "my" requirement as you push "your" values.

Odo -- We've been through this before -- although I always enjoy the debate -- but any large, complex system, particularly one as mind-bogglingly complex (I think I've made up two ridiculous words already in this comment) as the global biosphere/economy, is inherently unpredictable.  There are so many positive feedback loops that any conceivable mathematical technique used by economists or engineers are completely useless.  Only very large-scale computer modelling can get even remotely close.  

Which means that, ironically, intuition is very important here.  And I don't mean just something you feel like, I mean intuition from people who have been deeply immersed in this business for a long time.  People don't respect extperts just because they have mastered technical literature, they are respected because they have a track record and a deep, intuitive understanding.  That's why one would listen much more closely about matters concerning peak oil to, say, someone like Bart Anderson, and much less to a relative newcomer, me.  Not that one shouldn't challenge experts, but there is a point in the idea of 'wisdom', backed up by logical arguments and the use of data, of course.

"All signs are that we may be facing a kind of global economic collapse because of peak oil."

That "all signs" bit is a pretty strong warning for the neophyte.

But lets talk about "intuition."  How good is that in the field of futurism, political prediction, etc?

Don't a lot of studies tell us we, as a species are not good at that at all?

Now, if a follower of Y, who closely follows Y, tells us that this is the biggest risk we face, what should we do?

Do we simply believe him (and then the adherent of risk X, and risk Z)?

Or do we look for some group concerned broadly with understanding risk assessment?  Do we look for an independent view?

In other words, why did you all run away so fast from the book I referenced in my first post above, "Worst-Case Scenarios," by Prof. Cass R. Sunstein?

Do you only want the in-group opinion on this?

Of course, other people will choose different numbers. I just offer them because you asked and as a way to get a discussion started - encouraging other people to think for themselves. As I wrote: "take them with a grain of salt."

Personally, I prefer to stay away from doomer predictions since they usually turn into non-productive arguments about things that are unknowable. I'm not wild about films like "What a Way to Go."  It's probably useful for audiences that are not aware of the issues, but once you've been exposed to the doomer viewpoint, what's the point in wallowing in it?

I'm much more interested in specifics, in following trends and reading what experts are saying.

I'm not even that interested in peak oil. It's real, it's going to happen, so let's accept it and move on.

I just wish the mainstream would start covering it so that I could go on to more interesting things like soil ecology!

Bart
Energy Bulletin

His opinions on risk (and global warming) may matter to you in the future.

In other words, models of the future are critical here, and must certainly be based on as much data as possible.  For instance, Meadows et al did pretty well with "Limits to Growth" models.  We need many more serious attempts such as that one.

To say that civilization will collapse just because oil is gone, to me, is wrong.  Oil is critical to the internal combustion engine, and substitutes would have to be found for the feedstocks it provides, but humanity could certainly get along without the infernal combustion engine, to use JMG's phrase.  Again, that's a problem of constructing the proper models of how the world works -- so let's get to it!

---

Abbott: Due to Peak Oil, the collapse of western civilization is a major risk!

Costello:  A major risk?  How do you figure that?

Abbott:  You have to admit it's possible.

Costello:  There's a difference, isntt there, between "possible" and "major risk?"

And yet Jon, I "predict" that this prediction will be made again, in these very pages.

So what do we do in the face of those non-trivial but unquantifiable risks?

grist.org

FWIW, my evidence of the "turn-off" effect in Peak Oil starts with the Harper's article "Imagine there's no oil: scenes from a liberal apocalypse."

As with Global Warming & etc., when you go too far you risk backlash.

So, you could model my utopian agenda, or you could model what would happen with cap-and-auction, with powerdown, with getting all our energy from one hundred square miles in death valley, etc., and then compare models.  Easy.  Just give me a few million dollars.

"Megan, here`s a drawing from your organization of a planned lifeboat where each home will be smaller than 1,000 square feet and will be built with straw bales, cordwood and stick adobe.  And there will be no driveways, garages, streets, lights, or air-conditioners.  There will be only wood bathroom per home with a composting toilet.

Megan, is it going to really come to that?

QUINN:  Well, violence and chaos, that scenario is a possibility.  [...]"

If you have evidence of a success rate ...

When Gristmill promotes stories of "global economic collapse" that's what it's doing.

When Bart hosts the "archdruid" that's what he's doing.

• Listen to a wide range of opinion
• Pay closest attention to those voices that are informed and well-reasoned
• Don't be fixed in one's own ideas
• Don't rule out outcomes prematurely

On the question of energy shortages and violence, one does not have to predict it. It is already here. The repressive crackdown in Burma was set off by protests against sharp increases in the prices of fuels.  The war in Iraq is mostly about oil, as the former chairman of the Federal Reserve recently reminded us.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

And when you fail to do that, when in fact you step up to support Doom Theory, you bind yourself to it.

You may pick up the random madman who surfs the web looking for new paranoia, but you'll drop a lot of rational readers who rightly say "this stuff is nuts!"

Expecting them to keep a scorecard, and to differentiate the voices in a site that reads like a Doom Club is unrealistic.

(To me The Archdruid reads like a guy so held by his vision of the future that he stops seeing it as a vision.  It is real to him, questions of uncertainty are long past.  All disagreement is denial.)

I'll remind you that you have an insular and self-referential group that accepts these ideas ... and then wonders why the mainstream risk assessment community can't swallow the whole thing, from head to tail.

John Michael Greer has published many articles (more than 60). I have met with him in person and found him to be one of the most sane people I've met. He earns his living by writing on another subject, and will soon be publishing a book on sustainability. He is in fact Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (a fraternal order).

I've also met and worked with Megan Quinn, who is also eminently sane and reasonable. A young woman, she is outreach director for Community Solutions, and has delivered speeches to major conferences (ASPO and recently Confronting the Triple Crisis).

If you want your ideas to be considered with care and respect, please extend that privilege to others.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Industrial civilization faces collapse, in turn, because when fossil fuels are scarce and expensive, and the biosphere is undergoing drastic changes, its ability to maintain itself against the challenges of nature and competition from other, less energy- and technology-dependent human social systems is doubtful at best. The forms of human society that rise to prominence in the aftermath of industrialism, in turn, will be those that can establish and maintain themselves more effectively than their rivals in the changing world of the deindustrial age. We may have our preferences, but nature has the final say.

...

It's quite likely that for some decades or centuries, deindustrial societies that would not be able to build a hydroelectric plant or a computer could still maintain the rather less demanding knowledge and resource base needed to keep them functioning, in much the way that Dark Age communities all over Europe used and repaired Roman acqueducts they could never have built themselves. Still, much of the legacy technology inherited by the deindustrial age will not be a renewable resource; when it finally breaks down, it's gone - for decades, or centuries, or forever.

...

In the middle term, societies that combine sustainable subsistence strategies and economies with an effective use of the industrial age's legacy technologies will likely do much better than the lingering fossil fuel-dependent societies they replace, or the ecotechnic societies that will replace them in turn. Only when fossil fuel production has dropped to the point that coal and oil are rare geological curiosities, and the remaining legacies of the industrial age no longer play a significant economic role, will ecotechnic societies come into their own.

...

This approach is evolutionary rather than revolutionary - that is, it relies on incremental changes and a continuous process of experimentation rather than trying to break from the past and impose an ideal that may turn out to be no more viable that what it replaces. Among other things, this means that it can be carried out on local and even individual scales, a detail that makes it much more viable in practical terms than attempts to change society as a whole from the top down. How this process might unfold will be the subject of several future posts.

That boy's got vision, I'll give him that.

"Megan, is it going to really come to that?

QUINN:  Well, violence and chaos, that scenario is a possibility.  [...]"

http://www.aoda.org/about.htm

I like the frank assertion that they do not at all claim to be upholders of any tradition reaching back to ancient Gaul, Britain and Ireland, and that they greet any such claims with skepticism.

I also like the sort of religion (like e.g. Zen Buddhism) that can either be one's sole spiritual anchor, or be an enhancement of another religious tradition that one maintains.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

There are a certain subset of peak oilers who actually get angry if you try to suggest that a sustainable industrial society may be possible-- this is my personal experience.  But peak oil in general is going to become very mainstream, in my opinion -- another prediction, I realize.  Go to global public media and listen to theh head of ASPO usa, they are about to have their annual conference in Houston, home of the oil industry, and a good chunk of the oil industry will be there.

So the moral of the story is that there is a great diversity of opinions surrounding a crisis, particularly ones that are hard to predict.

NEW YORK - Oil prices surged as high as $86 a barrel Monday for the first time after OPEC said crude production by non-member countries is likely falling even as global demand for oil is rising.

Despite the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' decision last month to boost its production by 500,000 barrels per day beginning next month, the rest of the world will likely produce 110,000 fewer barrels of oil per day than expected in the fourth quarter, OPEC said in a report.

I don't doubt that Hubbart's Peak (or something like it) will sink in.  Heck, after last night's discussion I turned on the TV and there was a BP ad saying "Oil won't last forever."

I'm not sure that the mainstream will call it "peak oil" though.  Like me, they might think that "links in" a whole lot of other ideas.

The idea was that you may have two (or more) parallel processes happening at the same time.  The final result, or output, is ... a race.  The first process to complete controls the final answer.

Wikipedia probably has a better description.

I think what we have right now is a race condition on energy, between things like public opinion, political support for ideas such as yours, and of course the rate of resource depletion.

As you can tell from above I don't make strong predictions, but I think ideas such as yours can only become more popular as resource depletion becomes more apparent.

That is the race (and here we argue about how best to present that data and those choices to the public.)

One of the ideas I floated with my fellow activists in NYC (before I moved) was that the tsunami might hit (or the economy might hit the fan, pick your metaphor), but if at least a certain set of ideas are out there that people can grab hold of, maybe we could do some good, even if we can't prevent it.  So I appreciate your thoughts as always.

This passage reminded me of your writing. Who knows perhaps she once lurked at Grist!

I'm not an economist but the only new tool I can think of to pull the United States out of the economic doldrums is a new Keynesianism, not military this time, but environmental; a push for massive investment in eco-friendly industry, in alternative energy, in the manufacture of lightweight materials for use in new vehicles; in clean, efficient public transport; in the green construction industry, etc.

This kind of thoughtless use of the English grammar is rampant these days and it is making me crazy!!!

From, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/few