Tags
ASPO-USA, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Collapse of Mexico's Cantrell Oil Fields, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Evan D.G. Fraser's 'Empires of Food', Gail Tverberg, Guy McPherson, Jay Hanson of DieOff.org, Mass Die Off, Nate Hagens, Neoliberal Capitalism, Peak Oil
Excellent summary by Jay Hanson(America 2.0) on a new report covering the peak net energy situation in America:
That’s interesting that 2015 is pegged as the time when maximum U.S. production will occur from our present drilling binge. That’s the same year mentioned in this report:
US military warns oil output may dip causing massive shortages by 2015
And Nate Hagens mentioned in my previous post that in 2015 Mexico would become an importer of oil due to the precipitous drop in production of their once great Cantrell oil fields.
Craftier, but apparently no wiser than yeast, the human species will follow the same path of other biota in the well-worn process of overshoot and collapse. Gail Tverberg explains:
As far as future scenarios are concerned, I thought the following exchange was telling:
Some believe that a near-term financial crash will prevent the further catastrophic burning of fossil fuels. I think that just the opposite will occur. The financial system will be kept artificially propped up and industrial civilization will indeed burn as much fossil fuels as it can lay its hands on… until climate chaos wreaks havoc on our ability to mass produce food. The money system can be manipulated to keep industrial civilization going until real world biophysical constraints come into play. With higher energy prices, the economy will be cannibalized to keep the whole fetid system chugging along, as it has since 1970 when neoliberal capitalism emerged. Yeast eats itself [autolysis] after using up available sugars, so why would humans behave differently after burning through our keystone resource?
This whole post reminds me of another article I read a few years ago which gave me chills. It’s no longer available at its original source, so I’ve reproduced it here:
We think we have free will and the ability to forge the future, but from a biological systems perspective the human species appears to have no real control over its final fate. As Brutus said, “The future is the future is the future whether we subscribe to it or not.”
Collapse of Industrial Civilization 
Don’t have time to read all of it right now, but looks like a great compilation of information objectively shedding light to just where we are in the big scheme of things.
Thanks.
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The following video illustrates the problem. We tighten CO2 emissions, but export our coal for others to burn:
What has been said, has been said before:
Epitaph for an Evolutionary Deadend: More Oil and Coal than Brains …
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Excellent article. One point though in regards to oil in the US. The article you posted didn’t mention the Monterey Shale formation in California which is being readied for exploitation as we speak. The BLM is selling off parcels of land in CA for as low as $2 an acre to multinational corporations. California will soon be pumping more oil than the Bakken formation, insuring that the US empire is in domestic oil for 5-10 years longer you say in this article. This is not a win for “progress” though. As many California cities flounder in bankruptcy they are more than willing to give up land rights and mineral rights to get out of debt. It’s the perfect example of disaster capitalism. I live in Joshua Tree, CA in the Mojave desert where they are putting in huge solar farms at the expense of dwindling native wildlife. All for cheap energy and low paying jobs. California’s future is as America’s energy ghetto.
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I don’t know what the EROEI is of Cali’s Shale deposits, but it appears to be less than the Bakken:
Then we get to the crux of the matter – the immediacy of the human economy over all other concerns:
Balancing a short term economic buzz with long term environmental damage. That’s not balancing, that’s eating the seed corn.
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20 million barrels a day, 15 billion is what? 750 days? not counting the energy to get it out. are they talking about fracking in CA? that’s going to work out really well.
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I’d like to concur with Paul, this post and blog in general are a tremendously usefull and enlighting compilation of information. Would just like to say thanks for the hard work you put into it.
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I heard a story on NPR this morning about Americas energy supply boom. Apparently we’re going to have a big problem soon of what to do with it all. Of course they made no mention of EROEI, as if one to one is just as good as 30 to one, so long as there is a lot of it in the ground. And of course no mention was made of passing the 400ppm mark of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere…So it’s good news all around if you are an unwitting consumer of mainstream news, and people like myself seem even crazier.
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Goes back to what Kevin Moore just said about our corporate-controlled propagandist echo chamber we call the mainstream media:
“Any society that places a taboo on discussion of the real issues [by the mainstream media and by the politicians] is utterly doomed.”
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NPR, PBS, BBC, you can get some good info there, but really, what they are is just high class propaganda for the college educated. look at the hidden history of academia and you will find that many of these bastions of higher learning have been working hand in glove with the MIC for quite a long time. well, i guess the ruling class and the apparatchiks must be educated somewhere.
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There’s a really good podcast on higher ed recently done by the ExtraEnvironmentalist [financialized higher education], if you can get through their nerdy intro.
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Here’s proof we are doomed:
The once respected but still the most widely distributed newspaper in the world, the Wall Street Journal, recently presented this insane piece. Remember that this is the news outlet that more than any other influences the people of our world with the greatest power: bankers, investors, industrialists, politicos, corporate leaders, etc.
The WSJ does not seem to find the space to present the overwhelming consensus of scientists concerning climate change, but they recently published other pieces by these nuts that told the important people of the world that the climate was definitely getting colder.
In light of this, we are decades away from changing our system based on doing everything we can to mine and pump and burn more and more fossil fuels. Scientists and activists and concerned smart people are no match for the power of the Wall Street Journal types of the world. Ruppert Murdoch knows it, and as owner of the Journal he can ensure that we stay on our present course toward global ecocide. Can you think of any personalities in all human history that were any more pathological and destructive to humanity?
Anyway, here is that illustrious piece Ruppert presented to the world:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323528404578452483656067190.html
Climate progress compares the article to something that would appear in The Onion:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/13/1994871/not-the-onion-wall-street-journal-hits-rock-bottom-with-inane-op-ed-urging-more-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide/?mobile=wt
Here is the nonsense the WSJ published in January:
No Need To Panic About Global Warming
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html
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@ Paul
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Humans have been severely degrading the Earth since coal-powered machinery and TNT became available in the late nineteenth century. The switch to petroleum-powered machinery put degradation of the Earth into ‘hyperdrive’.
Any society that endorses and encourages the manufacture, sale and use of leaf blowers and patio heaters is utterly doomed.
Any society that endorses and encourages the production of vehicles designed to go around race tracks is utterly doomed.
The meltdown of the Arctic ice is currently a little greater than 2012; we will know around July how bad it is likely to be in September. Messing up the jet stream and messing up longstanding climate systems is already incurring a horrendous cost. The US Drought Monitor has had large regions of ‘blood red’ for nearly two years. 2013 could have a very ‘interesting’ summer.
Any society that places a taboo on discussion of the real issues [by the mainstream media and by the politicians] is utterly doomed.
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We’re too lazy to even shovel snow!?! Appears electric, but likely from a coal-fired plant. Gotta put those fossil fuel slaves to work…
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XRMike, I thought maybe with your great video talents you could set this to music: http://www.slideshark.com/Landing.aspx?pi=zBbzO9Z8Vz0z0
I have comment from earlier today in moderation purgatory btw.
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There are some good pics in there. I’ll see what I can do.
Moderation purgatory? I never saw it. It must have been sucked into the internet Blackhole.
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copy and paste of something i posted elsewhere. links may not still be active.
right now we should be preparing for the worst, building underground, planting, planting, planting, but we aren’t; the very same industrialists who ruled 100 years ago are shipping products around the world, burning up the fuel.
same old song and dance.
here’s the problem, the best way to sequester carbon is thru plants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_carbon
but if you read carefully here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration
there is a limit to what soil can store
“several long-term studies have indicated that as plants continue to add more carbon to the soils, the carbon “sequestered,” or stored, in the soils increases proportionately. But other research has found that, in some soils, the levels of carbon in the soil did not increase, despite the addition of more carbon from decayed plant matter.
This suggested that there might be an upper limit to the amount of carbon that can be held by the soil, or in other words, soils can literally become saturated with carbon.”
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8757
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Just for laughs? No, these technophiliacs are serious:
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The best way to sequester carbon is the way nature did it ten or hundreds of millions of years ago……coal, oil, natural gas, and methane clathrates etc.
Here we are desequestering carbon at some unknown rate of the order of 33 billion tonnes per annum.
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We seem to be experts at unraveling the chain of life.
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an addendum to the links about carbon in the soil. when soil becomes saturated with carbon the photosynthesis cycle braks down. plants take CO2 from the air, they deposit in the soil, when the soil gets saturated there is nowhwere for plants to deposit the carbon, then they die. i can’t link it, but i have read it, it’s true.
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Dammit, I want that link derkthered!!! Also how does one measure whether the soil is saturated with carbon??
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i read stuff, then things from years ago pop into my head, i did read this in an article about CO2 levels.
from the Wiki link above
“The effects of soil sequestration can be reversed. If the soil is disrupted or tillage practices are abandoned, the soil becomes a net source of greenhouse gases. Typically after 15 to 30 years of sequestration, soil becomes saturated and ceases to absorb carbon. This implies that there is a global limit to the amount of carbon that soil can hold.[13]”
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i would trust the Pentagon on this, the Pentagon is the largest purchaser of petroleum products (single entity) on the planet. no matter what you may think about the MIC or the military, they know what they will need to do what they do, i believe their estimate.
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