"Collapse" -

[GreenTea]

That fact: We have passed the peak of global oil resources. There are only so many known oil reserves. We have used up more than half of them. Remaining reserves are growing smaller, and the demand is growing larger. It took about a century to use up the first half. That usage was much accelerated in the most recent 50 years. Now the oil demands of giant economies like India and China are exploding. They represent more than half the global population, and until recent decades had small energy consumption.

If the supply is finite, and usage is potentially doubling, you do the math. We will face a global oil crisis, not in the distant future, but within the lives of many now alive. They may well see a world without significant oil.

Oh, I grow so impatient with those who prattle about our untapped resources in Alaska, yada yada yada. There seems to be only enough oil in Alaska to power the United States for a matter of months. The world's great oil reserves have been discovered.

Saudi Arabia sits atop the largest oil reservoir ever found. For years, the Saudis have refused to disclose any figures at all about their reserves. If those reserves are vast and easy to tap by drilling straight down through the desert, then ask yourself this question: Why are the Saudis spending billions of dollars to develop offshore drilling platforms?

Ruppert is a man ordinary in appearance, on the downhill slope of middle age, a chain smoker with a mustache. He is not all worked up. He speaks reasonably and very clearly. "Collapse" involves what he has to say, illustrated with news footage and a few charts, the most striking of which is a bell-shaped curve. It takes a lot of effort to climb a bell-shaped curve, but the descent is steep and dangerous.

He recites facts I knew, vaguely. Many things are made from oil. Everything plastic. Paint. There are eight gallons of oil in every auto tire. Oil supplies the energy to convert itself into those byproducts. No oil, no plastic, no tires, no gas to run cars, no machines to build them. No coal mines, except those operated by men and horses.

Alternative energies and conservation? The problem is the cost of obtaining and using it. Ethanol requires more energy than it produces. Hybrid and battery cars need engines, tires and batteries. Nuclear power plants need to be built with oil. Electricity from wind power is most useful near its source. It is transmitted by grids built and maintained by oil. Wave power is expensive to collect. Solar power is cheap and limitless, but we need a whole hell of a lot more solar panels and other collecting devices.

Like I say, you do the math. Ruppert has done his math, and he concludes that our goose is cooked. He doesn't have any answers. We're passing the point of diminishing returns on the way to our rendezvous with the point of no return. It was nice while it lasted. People lived happily enough in the centuries before oil, electricity and steam, I guess. Of course, there were fewer than 6 billion of us. In this century, Ruppert says, there will be a lot fewer than 6 billion again. It won't be a pretty sight.

I'm not going to mention his theories about global warming, because that's a subject that inflames too many zealots. About peak oil, his reasoning is clear, simple and hard to refute.

>snip

I was fascinated by some of the directions peak oil takes him into. For him, he says, it was the key to understanding many seemingly unconnected geopolitical events. The facts he outlines are known to world leaders, who don't talk a lot about them in alarmist terms, but they explain why Bush/Cheney were happy to have an excuse to invade Iraq. And why our embassy compound in Baghdad is the largest we've ever built, larger than Vatican City. And why we're so much more worried by Iran than North Korea. They may also explain Obama's perplexing decision to increase troops in Afghanistan. An undeclared world war for oil is already under way.

>snip

I think you owe it to yourself to see it.

-Roger Ebert's Review of the new film, "Collapse"

(Full review)
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091209/REVIEWS/912099993

[AlienGirl]

1. We are just past the peak of everything.

The temporary abundance of the oil age brought with it enough affluence that here in the industrialized world, we had so much stuff and such security that we actually did away with most forced labor (as common practice in peacetime) and established theories of inherent equal rights among humans, including women.

The end of oil will be the end of civility. We are already seeing the first of it, with the "me-first-screw-you" teabagger mentality and the growing free-floating anger that permeates so much public discourse.

My biggest regret is that I am not old. I wish I were about 74, and would be gone before most of the collapse happens. I missed living through the best parts of the 20th century, and if, optimistically, I have fifty* years left, I won't see improvement in my lifetime. Nor will my children, in theirs.

Tucker




*I am pushing 40. I have already had cancer, am MRSA-positive, and have depression, osteopenia, and a family history of Crohn's and other autoimmune diseases. Fifteen years is my personal high-side guesstimate.

[AlienGirl]

2. Past Peak: A Story of the Near Future (excerpt)

Past Peak: A Story of the Near Future

The first sign we had in those early days was the lines. It started with the lines for gasoline: that was customary enough and had been done before. No one panicked when we went into gas rationing, two days a week for even numbered license plates, two days a week for odd, two for vanity plates and one day a week when no one was to get gasoline unless they had missed their regular day and their gas card had gone unswiped. It was a little inconvenient, but this echoed the seventies, as the local news helpfully pointed out with pictures comparing the lines of the current era and that one. In the first weeks, people in the gas lines would joke with each other; later, the mood tensed and tempers shortened. One day there was a shootout when someone line-jumped, and a mother from a nearby suburb died in the crossfire. After that incident I started filling up at odd hours, when fewer people might be out; I had always loved the deep early morning anyway, and three-thirty a.m. gas runs fit well into my sleep schedule.

The gas shortage was followed closely by a shortage of jobs, as businesses could not afford to pay for electricity and gas to ship products and still afford to pay workers. Of the three, only the workers were expendable. Job lines began appearing anywhere that looked like it might have work. It seemed odd at first to see middle-aged men and women in costly business suits standing in line for jobs cooking fast food or washing dishes, but we got used to it; and as the weeks wore on, the suits began to look bedraggled, a little frayed and wrinkled, a little more like they belonged.. Some of the prospective applicants had the more important pieces of their resumes written in big letters on signs that they could wave to get the attention of the management in the building. I noted these signs on my daily walk: one line twenty prospective workers deep at a Burger King contained three signs proclaiming “MA,” “MFA,” and “MSW.” Further down the line was an older, white-ponytailed man whose sign said “Ph.D Astronomy.”

I was in my third year as a court clerk, and this was a very good job to have, because the courts had become very busy. We didn't have enough money in our budget to hire on new staff, so those of us who were already employed found our workload escalating steadily. I didn't really mind, I liked my job and the longer hours were no hardship. The courthouse was only a half-mile walk from my one-bedroom walk-up apartment, so I stopped driving except on the rare occasions when I needed to go out of town.

It wasn't long after the appearance of the job lines that certain goods began to be scarce. Shoppers who still had a little money for luxuries lined up around the block at the rumor that the local grocery store had received a shipment of coffee; when the end of the line finally got into the store and saw empty shelves, the scene began to grow violent. The police arrived with one of the new microwave-based crowd dispersal units; the boy who was trampled as shoppers ran frenzied and in pain was brought to the regional hospital and eventually recovered.

Still we persevered, confident that our grandparents and great-grandparents had suffered far worse in the Depression. TV networks ran uplifting feel-good movies and game shows where anyone might become a millionaire, and we were placated. That was spring.

Full story: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=216x6000

[Zoeisright]

19. Wow, that's amazing. What a riveting story.

I hope it doesn't come true, but I'm afraid we're past the point of no return.

[AlienGirl]

25. Thanks! I started writing it about a year ago, and slacked when reality started catching up

[kestrel91316]

27. Depressing. Good, but terribly depressing.

[AlienGirl]

29. Thanks! This is what the future looks like to me

Curiosity keeps me watching to see what happens next.

Tucker

[arcadian]

28. Awesome short story

I'm digging it. :thumbsup:

[bananas]

3. What are his theories about global warming?

Ebert wrote, "I'm not going to mention his theories about global warming, because that's a subject that inflames too many zealots."

[robertpaulsen]

48. His theories are reality based. Global warming is caused by humans.

Human overconsumption of fossil fuels to be precise. At one point in the film, Michael Ruppert says something to the effect that every period of economic growth is tied intrinsically to growth in fossil fuel consumption. If we are to deal with the twin crises of Global Warming and Peak Oil, we cannot have money divorced from energy. Until you change the way money works, you change nothing.

I'm paraphrasing big time. His blog provides more detailed analysis:

http://www.mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

[bananas]

49. Thanks. The only thing I found was he believed some corporations favored global warming

because melting the ice caps would made it easier to get the oil underneath them.
I tried searching his blog, but it's full of comments by people who are convinced global warming is a hoax, so I couldn't find anything that Ruppert said himself about it.

[AlienGirl]

50. I'd think shipping companies might be excited about the Northwest Passage, too. nt

[Delphinus]

4. It is a good film.

It's not a fun film, but Mike seems to know what he's talking about.

[Uben]

5. This article is not telling the whole story

When they say "known reserves", they are only talking about fields that can be developed with today's technology. There are huge known reserves that can't be accessed with todays technology. Technology will open up more reserves as time goes by. ie drilling in the Rocky Mountains. Within our borders lies the largest oil reserves known to man, some 2 trillion+ barrels. Saying there is a finite supply is true, but not telling about the reserves we know are there is disengenuous. The reserves under the rockies is 8 times larger than the Saudi fields. "Peak oil" rhetoric is a ploy by oil companies to keep prices high.

http://www.rinf.com/columnists/news/the-us-governments-secret-colorado-oil-discovery

[defendandprotect]

6. Prices will rise based on difficulty in getting to it -- "drilling in the Rockies" . . ?????

We need a total change in culture -- values --

And I would say the push to get into the Middle East to control OIL is quite telling

as to what's ahead of us --

[Uben]

9. Technology will catch up

I was over the drill collar manufacturing department for National Oilwell a few years back. We made drill collars for directional drilling out of a patented stainless steel alloy. That technology alone has drastically changed the way oil is retrieved. I have no doubts that we could access this oil right now if we wanted to. We helped Russia access their oil fields by developing and manufacturing special sub-surface tooling. I know because I was over the manufacturing aspect of that contract back in the late eighties and early nineties, as well.
The implications of developing this field is overwhelming. Imagine enough money to pay off the national debt a million times over!
The development stages have already begun. We already have rigs capable of mountainside placement and drill bits that will do the job. I retired nine years ago, so I am not privvy to the current technology being explored. There were lots of "secret technology" related programs going on back then, so I'm sure they have come a long way in the last 10 years.
Since National Oilwell had the large machinery necessary to manufacture large parts, we also worked on the Stealth Bomber project back in the late eighties and early nineties. Due to the secret nature of this program, very few empoyees actually knew what they were working on. They were given blueprints and told to make the parts. We were making "stealthy" target pylons to test their radar evading capability.
We would probably be shocked to know what is really possible these days. Keeping these programs secret is priority one.

[alfredo]

17. In what form is the oil in the Rockies? Is it oil shale, or liquid?

[FBaggins]

22. Shale

Common shorthand anyway

[alfredo]

26. Big open pits, poisoned ground water is what I think when I think of oil shale.

[Strelnikov_]

31. That is the old approach

Now we are looking at drilled shafts with electric heaters at the bottom to cook the kerogen down into oil that can be extracted.

We still get the poisoned ground water, though, along with the coal/nuclear/? plants to generate the electrical energy needed to run the heaters.

[defendandprotect]

39. The point is . . . we can no longer burn fossil fuels . . . it's over . . .

What we need to do is wrest control from those who control our natural resources --

and move on to renewable sources of energy.

And, by the way -- 12 years of more ago, the Saudis were asking that when the time came

that they would have to stop producing oil because of Global Warming, that they would be

SUBSIDIZED!!

[alfredo]

41. Iran had to import gasoline.

[alfredo]

40. The front range of the Colorado Rockies have a long sad history with nuclear

weapons, radium, and uranium. When I was living in Denver they found 19 radium dumps, but they didn't reveal the locations to the public.

[defendandprotect]

42. Truth is . . . capitalism is suicidal --

[alfredo]

44. The problem is the capitalist are pointing the gun at us.

[Javaman]

7. Do you even know what EROEI means?

Wow, just wow.

[FBaggins]

10. Sure... it's the cop-out that peak theorists use

to pretend "those supplies don't count"

It was the same story a few years back when they claimed we had already reached "peak natural gas" in this country and told us that the massive amounts of gas we had in shale couldn't be economically extracted (either in price or EROEI). Do we need to return to how accurate that turned out to be?

The EROEI was negative for deep-sea drilling not too many years ago. It isn't a fixed figure.

[Javaman]

11. LOL cop out? LOL

fine, I can see tying to educate you will do nothing.

reality is a bitch. nice to know you are in denial.

continue your ludite ways of thinking.

[FBaggins]

13. Yes. A Cop out.

The alternative is "deliberate deception"... and I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Usually from people with little to no science background... just parroting something Simmons (etc) said.

[Javaman]

15. LOL

I'm not going to debate someone who has their feet firmly planted in bullshit. :)

tootles.

[FBaggins]

21. Didn't keep you from the compulsive response though, eh?

Hardly a surprise... This too is expected.

Care to guess how many people thought you had a valid respose but just couldn't be bothered?

Not many I expect.

[Javaman]

23. Same for you. We are all compulsive on DU. LOL or is that a news flash to you?

LOL

You may now have the last word because this has certainly devolved into plain ridiculousness.

[FBaggins]

46. True enough... but shall we play a game?

How long have you been on DU? If it's more than a couple years and you're not new to peak oil theories... shall we bet whether we can find some of your posts from the time assuming that natural gas couldn't help much because prices were going to climb as peak natural gas (in the US) became a reality? Can you honestly say that you didn't think that EROEI for shale natural gas made it unlikely to contribute significantly to our energy needs?

[Uben]

12. It was also based on oil prices in the eighties....

Virtually no field within five miles of the surface is inaccessible these days. Yes, it takes a huge investment, but the return is astronomical. With oil prices double to triple of that in the eighties and the increased access due to directional drilling alone, EROEI has all but become an antiquated term. Rotary drilling has its limitations but laser technology has opened a new door to resource recovery. It may make drilling 10-100 times faster. http://www.ne.anl.gov/facilities/lal/laser_drilling.html

[FBaggins]

14. True... but keep in mind that depth isn't the only issue.

The "fields" in the west aren't really "crude oil" in the traditional sense. It isn't just a function of getting a drillbit down to the appropriate level.

EROEI is always an issue, but the peak oil crowd often misstates the case dramatically. The amount of energy that it takes to extract an energy source depends on the technology used to access it and is by no means constant.

[Terry in Austin]

33. We're all "the peak oil crowd" now

Some of us just don't know it yet!

:toast:

[Strelnikov_]

18. You consider Rense a credible source? n/t

[Strelnikov_]

20. Further, from your source

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.

Here are the official estimates:

* 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia

. . .

this small region can produce:

Three million barrels of oil per day . . .

These are the conservative estimates. The U.S. Energy Dept. estimates an eventual output of 10 million barrels of oil per day.

The US is currently consuming 20+ Mbbl/dy, so how does 3 M bbl/dy (or even 10 M bbl/dy) solve the problem. Still seems a peak is looming.

Also, the source is referring to 'shale-oil'. Even with the recent 'improved' process on which the Rand study bases it's conclusions, no net energy is produced. The energy needed to produce and extract the 'oil' equals the energy potential of finished 'oil' product. EROEI<=1, therefore not an energy source, but an energy sink.

[Terry in Austin]

35. Trillions of barrels of hydrocarbons

After we stick a straw into the Rockies and suck them dry, don't forget there's all those trillions of barrels of hydrocarbons just waiting for us on the surface of Titan.

Nothing to it, right? -- we just run a pipeline, and we're good to go for the next few centuries.

B-)

[Spider Jerusalem]

52. And continuing to burn more fossil fuels and release more carbon dioxide is a good thing, how?

You sound awfully blithe about it. And if the idea of peak oil is a ruse by oil companies, why do most of them deny it? Why has oil production in the US been in decline since 1970? Are you aware that what oil there IS under the Rocky mountains is oil shale, and that production of oil from shale requires large energy inputs and is very environmentally destructive? It's as bad as the Canadian tar sands or the heavy oil in the Orinoco belt in Venezuela, in terms of environmental impact. And if 'non-conventional reserves' like shale, tar sands, and heavy oil are what the future of energy is supposed to be, that kind of indicates that conventional oil (the stuff that's pumped in Saudi Arabia, in Texas, in the North Sea, etc) is in terminal decline. The other stuff is a lot more expensive to produce, a lot harder to produce, and requires more refining. (And the idea that exploiting it is a good idea in the face of climate change from human activity is a bit shocking; if humans are really that stupid perhaps we deserve to drive ourselves into extinction.)

[dysfunctional press]

8. anything that can be made from petroleum can be made from hemp oil.

so it's not like plastics are going to disappear.

[Terry in Austin]

34. Yes, at a price

Plastics as luxury goods -- for people who can afford to own an automobile.

One plastic I'm sure they'll be very interested in having: Kevlar!

:evilgrin:

[dysfunctional press]

36. the last of the petroleum will be a whole lot pricier.

at least hemp is a renewable resource that can grow just fine in all 50 states, year after year.

[Terry in Austin]

43. Hemp rocks, but making plastic is also about energy inputs

There's not only the feedstock as an input for making plastic, but also the energy inputs.

A study at the Pacific Institute found that it took 50 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) energy to manufacture 3 million tons of PET (water-bottle plastic) in a year, or 16.6 barrels per ton. Other sources suggest it takes about the same amount of oil to produce the feedstock as it takes to provide the energy to process it.

Hemp also makes excellent charcoal, btw. Pound-for-pound, it has as much energy as coal -- about 483 pounds per BOE. So, if we were processing the hemp-derived feedstock with hemp charcoal, it would take a little over 400 pounds to process 100 pounds of plastic.

With about 5 tons of hemp yield per acre, if we figure how much it costs to grow that acre without benefit of a lot of farm machinery, we'll have a good start on estimating the cost of our hemp plastic.

Without going all the way through the exercise, I'm willing to bet that, yes, it will be cheaper than using the last of the petroleum. But still pretty darned expensive!

[hunter]

16. Look out the window. The engines are on fire and we are losing altitude.

The old pilot is in the first class lounge partying like there's no tomorrow, looking a lot like Alfred E. Neuman, "What! Me Worry?"

I sure hope this new pilot, Mr. Obama, knows what he is doing...

I doubt the technology fairies are going to descend from the heavens and lift us up. This plane is going down. We need a pilot who can put it neatly in the river, not someone who claims we'll keep on flying, business as usual.

If the crash of peak oil doesn't kill this civilization, the fire of climate change will. We need to be building a new kind of civilization right now, a civilization that doesn't depend on fossil fuels.

[LaPera]

24. it very obvious, yet many just refuse to see....It's much easier to pretend that all

is well.

That's why there are so many frightened sheep who need to just go along with the flow, do as they are told, don't listen to anyone but the profit makers & their handsomely paid spokespersons, only they can lead you to a happy & secure life, everyone else is lying to you....

Even as the evidence is so overwhelmingly easy to see...still, these people prefer being blind...listening & believing to the same ones preaching that are making such incredible monetary profits....

I"m not a religious person by any stretch, but this greed above all else must have some kind of religious disclaimer.

[robertpaulsen]

30. For the 2nd time in 42 years: "you owe it to yourself to see" this documentary.

Remember this review from Roger Ebert?

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060601/REVIEWS/60517002">In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film.

I hope Chris Smith gets the Oscar for this, just like Davis Guggenheim got it for An Inconvenient Truth. I've seen Collapse and I definitely agree with Ebert's edict: "I think you owe it to yourself to see it."

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-technology-fails-dont-panic.html

[AngryAmish]

32. I don't buy it

Don't really matter if I do or not. Makes for compelling film, tho.

[GreenTea]

37. My question to all..Is there a "finite" supply of oil - Or is there enough oil to go on forever?

I think that's where one must begin and where the point of all arguments, for or against, will evolve from.

[Uben]

38. Short answer is yes

Of course the supply is finite as there is a finite volume of area for it to be trapped in. Oil is located in porous formations of sand, gravel, and shale, but even drilling one well can produce oil from multiple locations in the formation. Although, finite could mean thousands of years of supply. The field located in Colorado alone is estimated to contain more than all the known fields on earth! Imagine when the ice melts in the Arctic and antarctic and the possibility of new, even larger fields could be discovered.
The U.S. and Russia are already fighting over rights to these areas.
But, what if technology makes petroleum products less desirable, and new fuel types are discovered to be more economical dollar-wise, and ecological-wise. That thousand years could be millions of years if consumption is cut a thousand-fold!

Lot of "what ifs", but mankind has found itself to be very capable of doing the impossible. With the possible exception of passing a decent healthcare reform bill here in the U.S.

[FBaggins]

47. That's really a non sequitur

The fact that the supply of something is "finite" tells you that it will not "go on forever"...


...but it tells you nothing about WHEN it will run out.

If we found a new supply of oil under you home that was ten times the size of everything ever discovered in the middle east... we would have no energy shortage in our lifetime (or that of out grandchildren)... but oil supplies would STILL be "finite" and would NOT "go on forever".

It's shocking how often peak oil theorists start off with "oil is a finite resource" and base everything else on that truism... when there's no real semantic content in the statement at all.

[roamer65]

45. The problem is overpopulation.

However, we humans will soon deal with the problem as we have in the past...this time it will be called World War III.

[AngryAmish]

51. I agree - you should do something about it

Local solutions. Just you, with a piece of rope.