Read the 300-400 replies in response to Kunstler's latest to get what that means in full.

"It's hard to locate in history another society so devilishly rigged for implosion than the empire that runs from sea to shining sea."

I think we need to seriously contrast sentiment like that to Al Gore's call for "Reason."

(FWIW, I think the trick will be to talk about peak oil, without using the words "peak oil.")

and verifyably channeling developing countries' proceeds of trading their surplus entitlements

into Adaption measures
(particularly food production and extreme weather defences)
and into Mitigation measures
(particularly sustainable energies and widespread reforestation).

In this context the more clearly we Northern activists focussed on the two phenomena
can recognize that they are in effect filler-cap plus tail pipe issues,
and effectively inextricably intertwined,
the better.

And the sooner such a recognition triggers a strategy review the better,
for two main reasons.

1/. As PO becomes more widely understood, many grossly unsustainable options' lobbyists will try to exploit the anxiety generated -
that is both nuclear and, absurdly, the Liquid Coal, Tar Shales/sands & Methyl Hydrates options.

And we can forecast very serious anxiety attacks once public recognition of PO occurs.

2/. The Denialists, having been exposed as paid shills or callous morons or both,
show signs of starting to exploit news of PO as a spurious disproof of IPCC projections,
as a means to try to further delay public demand for remedial measures.

(So just what did the US do with those people who ranted on about the glories of misunderstood fascism, once Pearl Harbour was wrecked ?)

So Jon, while I well agree with you, I'd go further
and say that it's now crucial that we (GW activists)
 rapidly improve our inputs and interactions with the PO activists' sites,
with a view to integrating the two campaigns ASAP.

I've no doubt of a welcome from the brighter and more practical fraction.

Regards,

Bill

I couldn't agree with you more about joining peak oil and global warming activists together, which I am trying to do in my way here. I also think that environmentalists that are worried about mass extinction and ecosystem destruction need to in on this too, or else we wind up with biofuels as the solution to PO and GW, not to mention the feedback loops among PO, GW, and forest clearing, for example.  

But as far as getting the PO/GW people together, one place to start is to talk about eliminating the use of fossil fuels, as opposed to just reducing carbon emissions, because the former addresses both communities.  Another small steop is to keep up on PO sites such as energybulletin.net, which has mentioned my articles and even published one of them, and also theoildrum.com, which has comments sections following their articles.

"out-of-control mob when gasoline heads towards $10/gallon."

has more to do with the rate of oil production decline than the date of peak oil.  Having read on this issue for 3+ years, I am struck on how little solid science or data there is on "the shape of decline."

Sure, Hubbert's model makes sense.  Sure, discoveries are slowing as quantity demanded continues to grow.  Sure, consumers are split between a few early "efficiency" adopters, and the mainstream.  All true.

But the unknowns about if/when we hit $10 are many.  We are making hidden conjectures about supply and demand.  If you are going to assume some numbers, I'm going to ask (ruefully quoting "Thank you for smoking") where are the data?

many thanks for your reply.

Most heartening.

Herewith the best British PO site, which has some decent, and insightful, people inhabiting it,
as well as some more prozaic types.

www.powerswitch.org.uk

Odograph -

I share your concern over the fuzzyness of the PO data,
but this is in a sense the core of the problem -

most of the producers seem fundamentally opposed to reserve-data transparency,
which is not only unhelpful, it also hints at problems being hidden.

As with IPCC, we can but put our trust in the best of the researchers,
and in their ability to form a consensus,
at least, in this case, around just what are the indicator events we should expect.

Regards,

Bill

Basically when you say "missing data" supports a conclusion you have to check yourself (as in "most of the producers seem fundamentally opposed to reserve-data transparency, which is not only unhelpful, it also hints at problems being hidden").

To get back to core issues though, I support the general ideas that conservation of a limited resource is a good idea.  Limiting CO2 emissions is an even better idea.  I support the idea that walking and biking are part of a healthy lifestyle.

The people I'd join, more than the fearful peak oilers, are the "bright green" futurists, who think we can be happy, even as we ride bikes and walk to nice restaurants.

You don't need "mobs" at $10/gal to make that work.

Jon already hit on the simple, true, and powerful idea that can unite those concerned about peak oil, those concerned about climate change, and those concerned about energy independence:

Get off fossil fuels.

That's the North Star. Everything else follows from it.

grist.org

Yeah, it must be hard to visualize what will happen when the climate rapidly goes south-the only thing to compare it to is that time the electricity went out for a couple of hours.  Oh well, buy a hybrid car and purchase electricity generated by windmills-then you are doing your part.

On the other hand, if you really visualized the catastrope that is about to occur due to rising greenhouse gas levels, you would do more to save billions of people's lives:

It is unrealistic that mankind will cut their greenhouse gas emissions so fast and so severely that runaway global warming will be avoided.

Instead, I suggest improving nature's ability to remove the CO2 from the air using genetic engineering-perhaps seeding a GMO into the seas.  Biosequestration is a low cost and technically feasible solution to global warming.

Or, you can continue to devote your attention to the subject of social justice and corporate greed.  Soon, that won't matter much anymore.

OK, yes, I know, given how the world really is, that is science fiction.  But really, once the concept of social justice is raised -- and it ought always to be raised, and visible before us -- , we are required to rethink everything in so radical a fashion.

2. Responding to Odograph, Billhook sent us this very interesting, and troubling, observation:
<<
Odograph -

I share your concern over the fuzzyness of the PO data,
but this is in a sense the core of the problem -

most of the producers seem fundamentally opposed to reserve-data transparency,
which is not only unhelpful, it also hints at problems being hidden.

>>

If this is true -- and why would dear Billhook tell us anything other than the truth?! -- , that there is no universal accessibility to knowledge of a basic geological fact about this planet, on which we all most needfully and painstakingly do our best to live; but rather, that that knowledge is controlled and guarded by a small number of people representing an even smaller number of interested parties; then that is yet another great social injustice, against which we must protest.

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

1. Eliminate fossil fuels

2. Go bright green (though I suspect electric vehicles will be more popular than walking and they'll be serving a useful purpose by being the enabler for smart grids via V2G energy storage services)

I didn't read it then, but perhaps if grist is "bridging" to PO I should go back and see what your conclusions were.  Anybody got a link?

On "eliminate" versus "reduce" fossil fuels ... I think "eliminate" is to scary, but that is perhaps a political conclusion.

I have no problem with eliminating them long-term, but I think the real question for America is how you get people out of their Tahoes in 2008 and into a Prius.

Randy Park
www.EnergyPredicament.com

Somewhat paraphrasing Herman Daly's logic of what sustainability really means, the only logical -- and moral -- use of fossil fuels, in my opinion, is using to them to get to a renewable energy-based society.  So you use them to create windmills, apartment buildings, trains, permaculture,etc.  Of course, this is not happening, but that seems to me the logical thing to do (David Brooks accused Al Gore of being "Vulcan" in his new book, I stand accussed).

DobermanMacleod -- social justice issues are quite often life or death, or close to it -- involving, quite often, theft of land or property, often in the Third World.  So this is one of the reasons it has such support.  I suggest looking at Paul Hawken's new book, "Blessed Unrest".

Odograph -- I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic, which is fine, I like humor, but the link to my first post is here, which has a link to a post from David Roberts on the countereffects of fear.  I agree, fear is not a good way to go, and creating a vision for a better society is.

Biggav -- I hope walking is popular -- that will be quite a revolution, no?!  But since I lived in NYC for a long time, I can tell you that people who were quite clearly tourists used to driving in cars seemed to be having a great time walking around.  And as Kunstler points out, people throng to walk-centric Disneyland.

RandyPark -- I think Peak Oil is already becoming a reality, and I would maintain, is the reason gas is near $4 per gallon.  While people may choose to deal with global warming or not (unless they live in New Orleans), they can't choose their gas prices.  The question then becomes, can we start to talk about a sustainable society?  Can we sell people on a rail-centered society if we put it out say, 20 years, 30  years, or 40 years from now?  Would a particular time period help?  

I think we might be at something like peak oil, but I think it is a mistake to be very definite.  There is a great tradition of children's stories about calling the threat too soon.

Really, Nassim Taleb, "Fooled by Randomness."

If I say we might be at the peak for light sweet crude, but that the heavy sour stuff might peak later, I might be right.  But I have to be prepared to be wrong.  It might be a little time yet.

Similarly, if I say (as many informed folks do) that it is the end of cheap oil, that might be a better bet.  But then, all it takes is a recession (somewhere) to reverse that for a bit.

The most definite things we can say are about the world today.  Those are things that are hardest for opponents to deny.  If a case can be made that a hybrid or a bicycle (electric motor optional) can save you money, or make you happy, today ... what's not to like?

I was referring to being serious about using fear, not peak oil.  A friend cautions about being "apocalytic".  This is an interesting question in itself, because after all there are some, well, apocalyptic problems out there.  The best way I've come up with is to try to lay out the problems as clearly as possible, and then lay out the alternatives so that people have a possible rational response, as opposed to just either hysteria or apathy.  Gore frets that people switch from not believing global warming is happening to not believing we can do anything about it.  Yes, people can start very easy and with baby steps -- such as buying a bicycle, certainly -- but I think eventually they need to be able to take grasp of a larger -- very large, like global -- vision of the future.

As far as Taleb is concerned, from an admittedly superficial look at Amazon, it seems to me that he is dealing with the general problem of complexity, chaos, and unpredictability.  And he seems to be dealing with a relatively simple problem, the stock market.  Now throw in the global biosphere and 6 billion human beings, and things get really complicated (I much prefer reading ecological scientists as to how complex systems work, or perhaps Thomas Homer-Dixon, instead of financial writers).  Since we have a very hard time with reasonably exact predictions of a complex future, we can at least try to come up with something we do have some control over, the shape of the society, that is, to make it more democratic and sustainable.

Without writing a chapter on it, peak oil relies on inductive logic, and has a different relation to falsifiability than deductive arguments.

Deductive arguments can be proven by their premises.  Inductive arguments are fuzzier, and as the excellent wikipedia page describes, are classed as "strong" and "weak."

Read that, and you might see why I think peak oil relies on "weak induction" to make its case.  It might be true ... but it is hard to prove.

BTW, you can get a good vibe on Taleb if you just listen to this mp3 from IT Conversations.  If I recall correctly, he mentions oil predictions explicitly at one point.

Therein lies the rub.

When coal is consumed we die.

If we sustain this drunk party with endless kegs of oil and gas then our lives, and the Earth as we know it, will be destroyed by coal.

The party is over.  Go home.  Take a shower.  Get some sleep.   Then get to the work.  

Our challenge is to create and build a warm, safe, and a happy future.

Thanks for the link to Taleb, it was very interesting.  I particularly relished his conclusion that economists have a worse track record concerning prediction than just looking at the previous history.  I will also note that he emphasized that he is not against prediction, just basically, be humble and as empirical as possible.  

Now-- treading on the choppy waters of scientific philosophy here -- there was a famous dispute between Popper and Thomas Kuhn.  Popper felt that a theory should be falsifiable.  Kuhn came along and basically said, that's all very well and good, but here in the real world people use the best alternative they can find.  An accepted theory might not pass all the right tests, but it's better than the other theories (e.g., global warming).  As far as we now know, for instance, hubbert's idea that oil follows a bell curve is the best theory, even if we can't falsify it.  

The problem is that the other theory of how our society will deal with declining oil seems to be , "we always find a way, technology will save us".  That might be a fine theory, but I have a feeling it's even worse induction than hubbert's, even though oil companies/countries won't give us great info on their oil fields.  Ecologists have been doing good science concerning animals that run away from them (to paraphrase a quote from a famous ecologists) for some time now.  

So, we can't know exactly when something will happen,but we can get a pretty good idea of when it will happen, with a very large error, just as an ecologist can make decent, but very long-term predictions of how an ecosystem will evolve.  For instance, Darwin speculated that if you submerge a continent and it turns into many islands and then the sea level goes down, certain life forms will outcompete the other life forms from the now reconected ecosystems.  So in conclusion, it's very difficult to make precise numerical predictions, but we can use our best models of how the world works to see through the mist and get a good general idea of what is going to happen.

But of course, even the IPPC is not beyond criticism. They seem to have swallowed whole the "official" numbers on fossil fuel resources. In this case, it seems to be only a small group of scientists at the USGS who have asserted that PO will not happen before 2037, (and other government agencies have adopted this number). But Deffeyes and others have criticized their methodology and it seems to me paramount that other geologists take a second look at the USGS analysis.

Incidently, I had to look up what Cockburn said about Stalin because a casual reader might think that Cockburn was in some way a Stalinist. It seemed to me that Cockburn was questioning the numbers of Stalin's victims in an effort to find the historical truth, a worthy goal IMO. Cockburn does think Stalin "evil" and seems to promote a sort of grassroots radical democracy in his writing. But one can only hope that he soon puts his considerable intellectual acumen in the pursuit of environmental activism that recognises global warming as established science.

As far as we now know, for instance, hubbert's idea that oil follows a bell curve is the best theory, even if we can't falsify it.

We've run the experiment tens of thousands of times.  All that would be needed to disprove the theory is one counterexample.  So far, the theory of peak oil (a/k/a/ "the insight that within any boundary of analysis from individual wells on up, wherever oil is produced, its production curve roughly follows a logistic curve) has held every time.  

I guess someone could say that we haven't run the experiment on a global basis quite yet.  So I guess you could argue that it's possible that the entire globe could act differently than all of its constituent parts.  (This is kind of like putting thousands of green M&Ms in the bag one at a time and saying that you might get red M&Ms when you pour the bag out.  Anything's possible.  But how do you want to bet?)

We don't understand gravity very well, but we've yet to find a counterexample, so we rely on our empirical understanding of gravity all the time, and I don't see anyone saying gravity isn't falsifiable.  Show me an apple falling upward and I bet we revise our theories about gravity right away.

In contrast to gravity, we have a good theoretical understanding of why oil should follow the logistic curve, and we have many, many of confirming examples and not a single disconfirming one.  

So why do you suggest that the theory that the production from oil producing areas (wells, fields, areas, countries, regions, and, yes, the world) follows the logistic curve can't be falsified?

As has been noted here many times, this isn't the best site for a discussion of peak oil; yet, it inexorably arises here, because peak oil is likely to be the catalyst for the world's fateful decision:  do we attempt to try maintaining the energy intensive lifestyle by substituting other carboniferous fuels for oil or not?  Will our addiction to automobility be our doom, as we careen from one environmentally destructive substitute to the next, even more destructive one?

The 5% Project

peak oil is likely to be the catalyst for the world's fateful decision:  do we attempt to try maintaining the energy intensive lifestyle by substituting other carboniferous fuels for oil or not?  Will our addiction to automobility be our doom, as we careen from one environmentally destructive substitute to the next, even more destructive one?

That is ineed the question.  I'm no expert on Hubbert, so I'll take your word for it.  I think I've read about the tail being extended because of better recovery, etc. etc., but that only prolongs the patient.  The diagnosis is that fossil fuel addiction is a terminal disease (hey, not bad, eh?)

Since "solving" peak oil is easy.
All you have to do is liquify our Coal reserves.
http://greyfalcon.net/fossilenergy.png

Solving global warming on the other hand, you need to tap into Renewables.
http://greyfalcon.net/greenenergy.png

-David Ahlport

• The idea of a production peak in an oil field is well accepted.

• The idea that a region, state, nation or planet will also peak is accepted.

• Dispute arises, among informed readers, not at the underlying geology, but in the strength of the modeling: for peak date and production decline.

• As I said much earlier, I think understanding of production decline is fuzzier than understanding of peak date.

• People who build fearful cases for PO often rely on assumptions of near-peak and steep-decline.

We especially don't want to write a narrative based on a series of worst case fears ("first A happens, then B, then C, then .... kaboom!").

Put another way, lots of people understand that oil is a finite resource, not everyone is ready to leap to Kunstler's conclusion that:

"It's hard to locate in history another society so devilishly rigged for implosion than the empire that runs from sea to shining sea."

Put another way, lots of people understand that oil is a finite resource, not everyone is ready to leap to Kunstler's conclusion that:

"It's hard to locate in history another society so devilishly rigged for implosion than the empire that runs from sea to shining sea."

And this quote that you continue harping on is about more than just PO. Context matters.

But I think also there there is some interesting sociology going on.  One thing in particular is that "peak oil" conferences tend to bring together folks who "merely" follow Hubbert's Curve, and have them share the podium with people who speak next on the decline and fall of human civilization.

I'm not making that up.

And, it affects the way the "peak oil" message plays in the broader media.  Harpers ran and article that made some waves: Imagine there's no oil, scenes from a liberal apocalypse (now behind a paywal).  And there was a painful episode when Joe Scarborough asked "peak oilers" about the need to "run to the woods to form lifeboat communities."

I'm not making that up either.

I thought it was interesting, as I read his 2006 book, to note that he didn't use the words "peak oil" even once ... as he described a problem that many would think of as "peak oil."  (He mentioned "Hubbert's Peak" which carries a bit of a different meaning.)

I think now that he had the right answer.  Discuss the problem, but don't signal a connection to the decline and fall types (until they can make a more rational case), and certainly don't share the podium with them.

That sets you up for Joe Scarborough asking about the shape of your hut ;-)

How did you conclude that nuclear is "unsustainable"?
nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/UraniuamDistribution
.

With "unsustainable" options like that, who needs "sustainable" ones?

  Also, speaking of interesting visions of the post-peak society, the new Harpers (July 2007) has a terrific article about the re-greening of Detroit (literally) called "Detroit Arcadia."  Talk about a serious relocalization effort.

The 5% Project

On the new Linden article, you can see that it hinges on an assumption of steep decline:

Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production plateaus before beginning to decline as depletion of the world's remaining reserves offsets ever-increased drilling. Some experts argue that we're already there, and that we won't exceed by much the daily production high of 84.5 million barrels first reached in 2005. If so, global production will bump along near these levels for years before beginning an inexorable decline.

What would that mean? Alternatives are still a decade away from meeting incremental demand for oil. With nothing to fill the gap, global economic growth would slow, stop, and then reverse; international tensions would soar as nations seek access to diminishing supplies, enriching autocratic rulers in unstable oil states; and, unless other sources of energy could be ramped up with extreme haste, the world could plunge into a new Dark Age. Even as faltering economies burned less oil, carbon loading of the atmosphere might accelerate as countries turn to vastly dirtier coal.

In a way "peak oilers" of this type achieve success because they can paint such vivid scenes of disaster.

But that should be a caution.  As that good old Time magazine article discusses, we humans have an attraction to vivid fears, even when they are beyond the data.

It is, as we think about human nature, a strange contrast between an "attractive" idea and a rational one.

The doomsayers tell us that any effort to "green" or "bright green" society in those years will be wasted, because the "inexorable decline" will be too much for us, even then.

That is (as my theme) unproven.  And certainly trying to build a better world is the right thing to do.

But in general, pessimists have scripts.  As I mentioned, "first A will happen, then B, then C ..."

In a way it is like writing a disaster movie.

The plot may hinge on not having enough oil to even get food to market, etc.

Now, no coal would definitely be a problem because of its use for electricity, and of course we have a lot of discussion here about alternative electricity generation, but no oil?

Coal is the problem, not oil.  Alternative electricity is not going to cause "no coal".  Just look at how we use electricity.  Use half as much power and coal shrinks like a decaying dead dinosaur.

that is, I follow Gar Lipow on the possibilities of using renewable solar/wind for most electricity needs.  Again, civilization will not come to an end if all the electricity used for illumination in cities and suburbs at night when everybody is asleep is turned off.  And if there are no suburbs, and we use apartment buildings for economies of scale and passive heating/cooling, that should take care of a good chunk of electricity use as well.  And -- the manufacturing use of electricity could be cut by recycling metals instead of making new metal, particularly aluminum (again, no die-off because we don't have aluminum foil), and use paper more wisely (ditto for bloated corporate reports).

But, the "fall" is supposed to come because we refuse to do that, or oil dries up too rapidly for us to do that.

Raed Sherif, director of concentrator products at Spectrolab, says there is every reason to believe that these metamorphic solar cells will top 45 percent and perhaps even 50 percent efficiency. Sherif says those efficiencies, combined with the vast reduction in materials made possible by 1,000-fold concentrators, could rapidly reduce the cost of producing solar power.
...

Boeing promises to cut the delivered price of electricity via concentrated solar to 15 cents per kilowatt hour by 2010, from an estimated 32 cents per kilowatt hour today, and to cut that price in half again by 2015. That would make solar power less expensive than electricity from the grid in much of the United States, where the average price of electricity in recent months has been about 10 cents per kilowatt hour.

You continue to ignore the effect of increasing demand, coupled with declining supply. Demand increases in places like China and India have an inertia that will take some time to turn around, not to mention us oil-addicted North American sheeple.

"Steep" decline is a relative term, which no one can nail down, of course. And you hold PO'ers to a higher standard than for Global Warmers. That is, having to predict an uncertain future with absolute certainty. In the face of uncertainty, is it not wise to consider a range of scenarios?

And you mischaracterize the rantings of Kunstler as simply "apocalyptic". All he's saying is, everyone pay attention to how our civilization is designed around cheap oil, cheap oil is very likely going away very soon, we're in for a rude awakening, we better wake up and "make other arrangements". Alarmist, certainly. Some scenarios may border on apocalyptic, especially given the social conflict implications. I see nothing wrong with hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. Kunstler helps us think about planning for the worst. Seems prudent to me.

And by the way, while we Gristmillers are busy solving all the planet's problems, the VAST majority of sheeple are too absorbed with celebrity grab-ass to grasp the significance of our collective nut-sling. Important to consider how much water we're going to need to turn around this ship of fools. Kunstler is correct to advise "us" to put down our ipods and get busy.

I think the key is to note that not only have I responded, I support much more aggressive action.

The difference between me and optimists or pessimists, is that I have not called the final outcome.

If YOU are going to call a final outcome, make a rational and mathematic case, don't just say that I "You continue to ignore the effect of increasing demand"

Fill your hand Ned Pepper!  Show me your math.

I, like Kunstler, am not calling a "final outcome". I think I used the term, "range of possible outcomes" or some such phrase.

In the face of my not having run any numbers (I'm just a simple country boy, after all), I'm simply suggesting that there's more to the story than just declining supply. I'm not so handy with graphs, but imagine if you will, a supply curve and a demand curve, each headed in opposite directions. At some point, we're going to have to reckon with that. And it may be sooner, rather than later.

By no means am I impugning your personal commitment to this reckoning. I just think you are being unfair to many in the PO camp by dismissing their notions as apocalyptic, by suggesting their notions need to be testable to be rational, and by presenting an incomplete argument by not including the effect of demand in your metaphorical equation.

But seriously, the folks I disagree with are not the people who "have concerns" but rather the people who call an outcome, sometimes an outcome out across decades of time.

Kunstler has a position that PO will make suburbs into wastelands, or at least slums.  That is an outcome, across decades.

And I don't think he has the math to support it.  Instead he has a storyline.

"I think general environmentalists should probably learn more about the sciences of geology and oil recovery, and how the economics of current globalization interact with that.  No question."

I think we will have some interesting times, as markets adjust to prices, and decide (along with GW concerns) how quickly they want to reduce demand.

That drop in per-capita gasoline use in the Pacific Northwest (another thread today) is good news on that front.

He is still there.  His sign now says, "THE WORLD IS NOT COMING TO AN END".  What a nut!  The poor guy does not read blogs.

Of course, by refusing to make a call, one ensures that one is never wrong.  So there's some real wisdom to that. However, what I think the story about suggests is that it's not peak oil that's going to get us; it's what we do to ourselves because of peak oil that's the problem.

That is, if we were all smart and judicious, we could in fact act cooperatively and intelligently to target USA circa 1900-1910 as a target landing zone, and see if we could glide there.  We could target reaching a country of lots of zero energy homes, maintain public infrastructure for clean water, sewage management, rebuild localized agriculture, rebuild the rail system that was the envy of the world, etc.

However, on this planet, Americans are primarily concerned with maintaining car culture, and yes, Prii are a big part of the problem.  Ulimately, a Prius is simply a device for allowing someone to keep driving longer, further down the slope of decline in affordable oil availability.  Worse, having a lot of Prii in the hands of upper class white folks persuades the politicians in charge of infrastructure that they should keep doing what they've been doing for 60 years:  more roads.  

Peak oil does not have to produce any sort of cataclysm or apocalyptic nightmare.  But continuing to invest in energy-intensive infrastructure and social organization in the face of present or imminent peak oil does create a strong likelihood that our future choices will not be intelligent.  

That is, the more effort we pour into maintaining car culture in the face of peak oil, the more likely we are to reach for coal when the ethanomania subsides in the cold dawn of reality.

Peak oil is Scylla; Climate Change is Charybdis, the rock and the hard place.

There is a remarkably narrow channel between them that we have to thread if we are going to reach a sustainable low-energy future and not totally screw the climate.  

People who minimize the difficulty of navigating through that narrow channel without a chart are not actually helping any more than those who like to overdramatize the consequences of hitting either hazard.

If you want to read a sobering book about what Peak Oil could do to us, skip the peak oil porn and try Laurie Garret's magnum opus "Betrayal of Trust" about the world's global public health systems (including in the US).  And everything she documents happened when energy was CHEAP and readily available.

The 5% Project

If you want to read a sobering book about what Peak Oil could do to us IF WE DON'T QUIT TRYING TO MAINTAIN CAR CULTURE, skip the peak oil porn and try Laurie Garret's magnum opus "Betrayal of Trust" about the world's global public health systems (including in the US).  And everything she documents happened when energy was CHEAP and readily available.

The 5% Project

Kunstler has a position that PO will make suburbs into wastelands, or at least slums.  That is an outcome, across decades.

And I don't think he has the math to support it.  Instead he has a storyline.

Of course he doesn't have math to support it. The math doesn't exist. But you can't explain everything in the universe with math, let alone make predictions. It's speculation. But it has a logical sequence. It's not just science fiction. Does he exaggerate for effect? YES. He's also very sarcastic and irreverant. That's just his style. But in my opinion (and I have no math to support it), he's out in front of the masses in terms of thinking about the consequences of how our civilization has developed AND how it may soon turn out. His are not the only ideas I would consider. But I think they are worth considering.

And by the way, even the hallowed scientific method allows for speculation. It's called hypothesis generation. You look at the world around you. You make intelligent predictions based on previous knowledge and logical assumptions. The trouble for Kunstler (at least, apparently, in your eyes), is he can't test his predictions. As far as I know, he can't even construct a process model, because there are too many variables, too many unknowns. But do we need a process model for everything we can't empirically prove? Personally, I would find that to bit a bit intellectually constraining.

You say it's not just SF, but we could put his future-history on the shelf, next to a dozen others ... how we we assign odds for each one?

If I knew that, I'd be in Vegas.....or on Wall Street.....oh what's the difference?

But once again, why must we assign numbers? Logic, or perhaps more appropriately, logical speculation does not require enumerative valuation to have merit.

We each have our own bookshelves. Put your copy next to Nostradamos (sp?) if you so choose. It's still a free country, although I wouldn't put it off for too long...

Second, there are a lotta other risks, and by focusing too much on one outcome, we disregard others.  Hard core peak oilers have little concern for global warming, to give an example.

To give another, I sometimes worry(*) that if we don't hit resource constraints, and don't mind our environment, we'll just keep going.  I wonder if "china everywhere" is the planet's future.  That is, no "crash" even but continuing human growth with "nature" abused and squeezed smaller and smaller.

Did we hear that cancer was the leading cause of death in China these days?

* - but not singularly or obsessively

As for my intellectual multitasking abilities, I guess you can go ahead and label me a soft core PO'er. I am concerned about climate change, biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, mass transit, invasive species, toxic pollution, social and economic justice, and terroir-based wines. PLUS PO. And most of these artificial categories are inextricably linked. And I suspect I'm not the only multi-tasker who also happens to consider peak oil a serious issue AND thinks Kunstler might be onto something.

As for your third point, I think you may have unwittingly agreed with me, and perhaps even Kunstler. The sheeple may need $10/gal gasoline to wake them from their television-induced stupor. Apparently preemptive war for oil ain't gonna do it. And not to promote the hard core propaganda, but Kunstler's latest published hand-waving tome is entitled, The Long Emergency. It's a nail-biter, but he leaves room for a sequel. Who knows, maybe even with a happy ending. But I wouldn't put odds on it.

Pick a story from the bookshelf, put your "worry eggs" in one basket, and call people "sheeple" when they don't come along.

Or, say that you are telling them scary stories, but since yours is really "the one true scary story" it's OK.

No, you misunderstand me if you think I have "a story" that I set in competition.  I mention another just to show that more are out there.

I try to look at the simple, moderate, rational steps we can take today ... steps that will help us in great swaths of stories (or futures).

I tell people that looking to their own diet and exercise will do more for their future than sweating peak oil.  That is itself a rift on the Time Magazine article - but simple, healthy, and happy lives really do help us (and the planet).

Sure - I couldn't agree more - I walk almost everywhere and I'd hate to go back to a car dependent lifestyle.

But I'm lucky enough to live near the centre of a city and have most of what I need (especially work) close by. A lot of people out in suburbia - the ones who currently drive everywhere - will continue to need car based transport by and large - and its easier to switch the global vehicle fleet to hybrids then electric than it is to reconfigure the suburbs, by and large...

Really? Your life would not change substantially if your city stopped receiving cargo and fuel?
spectrum.ieee.org/jun07/5138

Cities are "entirely dependent on cheap energy and absolutely secure lines of communication and transportation," Rees says. "In the absence of that, you've got a huge problem."

A lot of people out in suburbia - the ones who currently drive everywhere - will continue to need car based transport by and large - and its easier to switch the global vehicle fleet to hybrids then electric than it is to reconfigure the suburbs, by and large...

Yes, it would be much easier, and that's why it will probably happen. But wouldn't it be better to think ahead and wonder what if global peak coal really does come by 2020? What if even with massive investment in wind/solar/geothermal/tidal, nuclear, even we can't keep up with a (modest) 2% net fossil fuel decline? What if we are faced with power blackouts and poor people dying from heat exhaustion and freezing to death as their oil and gas furnaces run dry ? Would it have made sense to have promoted to these people the tools to continue their unsustainable suburban way of life?

Of course, I don't know if the future will be this way. My reading of our energy predicament is that we'll have enough trouble supplying enough renewable energy to keep people warm and fed nevermind able to commute 50 miles a day. But die-off is such a horrendous possibilty that I think it would be short-sighted for environmentalists to promote a mode of living that the auto/tire/oil/agro corporations will gladly and gleefully market anyway.

Better in my view to use the energy we have now to redesign out communties to be long-term sustainable. Perhaps after we've done that we can think about two electric cars in every garage.

How about using nuclear energy?

But to throw around a little more data, it's interesting that it only takes 5.1 days of world oil production to power agricultural production for a year.  More at that link about the usage at other stages of the pipeline.  Apparently home preparation & storage currently requires more energy (7.6 days) than ag production.  I guess that makes sense, when you think how much farmers try to squeeze costs, and how many of us have bad refrigerators.

It's also interesting, as we get back to prediction, and what happens next in all this, the results of a little experiment.  Sorry for the longish quote:

George L. Wolford of Dartmouth has lent even more support to this view of the left hemisphere. In a simple test that requires a person to guess whether a light is going to appear on the top or bottom of a computer screen, humans perform inventively. The experimenter manipulates the stimulus so that the light appears on the top 80 percent of the time but in a random sequence. While it quickly becomes evident that the top button is being illuminated more often, people invariably try to figure out the entire pattern or sequence - and they deeply believe they can. Yet by adopting this strategy, they are correct only 68 percent of the time. If they always pressed the top button, they would be correct 80 percent of the time.

    Rats and other animals, on the other hand, are more likely to "learn to maximize" and to press only the top button. It turns out the right hemisphere behaves in the same way: it does not try to interpret its experience and find deeper meaning. It continues to live only in the thin moment of the present - and to be correct 80 percent of the time. But the left, when asked to explain why it is attempting to figure the whole sequence, always comes up with a theory, no matter how outlandish.

I'll try to resist my tendency to belabor ... but my thought for the day is, "maybe it's sometimes smarter to relax, and not try to 'out-think' the future."

We can do what's right today, without worrying which light will blink next.