It Is Simply Not Sustainable
 

Man in the past 200 years has increased his knowledge, standard of living and life span more than at anyother period of mans time on the planet. The great increases have come starting around 1900, which has been called the Oil Century. For it was oil that released the genie from the bottle. Today oil touches everything in our lives from the plastic bottle you drink your water from to the computer screen your watching as you read this. However this increase in world civilization is not sustainable, because the world has reached or is about to reach Peak Oil Production.

By releasing the genie from the bottle that oil represents, the world population has more than doubled since 1962. From 3 Billion people to 7 Billion people, all of whom want to own Porsches and live the life in Beverly Hills. To sustain the economy needed more and more oil is needed to feed the machine. However because Peak Production has been reached the cost of energy is going to continually increase over the next few decades as competion for that resource increases. At some point in time men are going to be like rats in cage scrambling over themselves to get the ever dwindling resources available. At this point in time it does not seem likely that another energy source can replace oil on the scale needed to supply an ever increasing population and their economic needs. At some point in time this economy will collapse, and there will be a rapid decline in the worlds population as the economy will not be there to sustain it.

Here in the USA Peak Oil Production was reached in the 1970s and it was at that time that manufacturing in the USA started to decline and move offshore. The main reasons were that the cost of energy and labour to sustain that industrial economy became too costly. It was cheaper to move offshore. So the USA began transitioning itself to a service economy. The Democratic Party is touting universal health care, as 47 million people are without it in the USA. This is simply not a realistic goal going into the futher as the cost of energy skyrockets. The outlook for the USA is that people are simply going to have to do with continually less and less as the cost of energy inreases. In the past it, with cheap energy available the cost of producing an item was broken down into a dime for energy cost and 90 cents for the material and labour. In the futher it will be 90 cents for the energy to produce the item and 10 cents for the material and labour.

Then comes the issue of Global Warming. As man unburys the Carbons he uses for the energy to propel the economy and releases them into the air the temperature increases. At some point in the near futher (scientists think within 10 years) the tipping point will have been reached where planet itself will be increasing the temperature to right itself, no matter what man does to modify his behavior. The planet in time will cool again but the question is will man still be here to see it?SmileWavy

Tabs buying into this Malthusian clap-trap? Oh the humanity!

$1 of GDP takes half the energy it took in 1975. Greater efficiencies for one thing. And we could half it again if we didn't live in overheated places like Vegas and drive silly SUVs.:cool:

WELCOME TO 2006

Without fuel they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men.

On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed.

Except for Tabs. Armed with an AK-47, and a long nose full of silver. He lived in the best houses after the fall, drank the best champagne, and bought women for cans of soup.

No one could stop him, and he was a small timer! The really big operators, they took over whole towns, and you don't want to know what happened there. Tabs? he was happy living in his huge home, stockpiled like Omegaman, shooting at the occasional vagrant who strayed on to his property.

Life was hard, but good compared to working for some douchebag 5 days a week. Money was worthless, you either had something to trade, or you were something to trade.

Life was hard, but good.

So the God of Technology is going to save you?

I suspect that the human race will destroy itself within about 300 years. Maybe sooner. The "humanity" that survives will be a much smaller population.

Too many people stretching the planet's resources too thin is one problem. The more immediate one (and the one that I think will destroy humanity in its current form) is that we have incredible technological innovations (most of which are designed for killing other people or destroying things) with very little respect or responsibility towards it.

There are way too many nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the world. Eventually enough will fall into the hands of people with little or no restraint or discipline for these technologies and open warfare on an unprecedented scale will result, wiping out most of the world's population.

Xenophobia, territorialism, nationalism and religion. One or more of these will ultimately destroy us through providing some nutcase with a "reason" to initiate a nuclear, chemical or biological war.

I hate to say it, but I really don't think humankind has the collective discipline to set aside these differences and avoid meaningless self-destruction. Even if we do, eventually the other problems associated with overpopulation (food, water, air resources, etc.) will become limiting and possibly result in a mass kill-off of the population.

Man has been here 2-million years, had something which has looked like civilization the past 10,000 years just after the last ice age ended.

It's been a good run, the alien experiment has run it's course. Time for us to be transplanted somewhere - up there.

The grays are only the slaves of the other 10 alien races which look over us. They will do what they are told. We are at their mercy, our actions have sealed our fates.

..............and the meek shall inherit the Earth.

http://warisboring.com/?cat=55
http://warisboring.com/wp-content/up...08/bigfoot.jpg

This is just silly - but fun.:D

sort of like a virus that generates its own toxins?

I believe coal had the biggest impact initially and if I am not completely wrong I think coal still is among the largest energy resources globally. Time to start working on that ethanol conversion kit for the 3.2 engine. :D

POP don't forget the virus that Mother Nature unleashes to kill us off.

I wonder how your Porsche would run on a lump of Coal?

People have been predicting the end is near for as long as they knew of the concept. At some point the doomsayers will have been right. But not yet. Not all is as gloomy as it seems. As the population gets more affluent, birthrates drop. Polution is eccosystem-threatening, but that is an engineering and social problem that can be solved by science and some work and planning. When push comes to shove the human race will wake up at the last second and adapt just quickly enough to avoid complete disaster. Just like it has been doing for milenia. Kind of like your average frat boy's approach to final exams.

I'm not going to worry about Tabbydoll's doom scenario. After all, didn't another thread suggest we're going to be hit by a large asteriod tomorrow?

Just people's God given ability to innovate and adapt.

Think of Vegas before the steam train, gasoline powered car and hydro-electric powered air conditioning? Just long stretches of empty no man's land...

The lesson here is that Tabs had a bad dream last night after staying up late watching "Crude" on TV.

Your smarter than you sound.

PWD, you and I ain't gona be around to see it anyway, so what the fk light up and burn as much as you want, and leave me alone.

Everything is cyclical. A mans life is finite, Empires are finite, civilzations are finite. They all have a begining a middle and an end.

Tabby, there was a price to be paid when I removed you from my ignore list.
Now you're paying it! :D

That's OK...we've got Max Rockatansky:

http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archiv...%20warrior.jpg

You can synthesize gas from coal - the Germans did it in WWII, and my guess is that the technology has improved a great deal since then.

Your also paying the price of having to listen to my BS.

As the cost of Hdrocarbons becomes more expensive alternative energy sources begins to look cheaper or more cost efffective.

I suppose the ultimate fuel or energy source would be to use a living organism (plankton) to recycle the CO2 out of the atmosphere to create energy.

People will still be diverting more of their income towards energy costs. In the old days it might cost a dime to generate a Watt of electricty. With higher Hydrocarbon costs it might now cost a quarter, which makes the 20 cents for Solar look cheap by comparison however 20 cents is still double the dime it used to cost.

Now comes the economy of scale, like Plasma TVs the more that are made and as the technology increase the unit cost can go down like Gajin suggested.

MRM...the nick of time might be sooner than one thinks or man can muster his will and intellect to meet and or solve the problem.

Mans intellect is limited however his greed is not. It should be the other way around.

Nostradamus lives! His name is Tabdullah. Dude, if I was smokin' those cheap ass cigars you buy, I'd be ready to go right now. Sell off some spoons & buy something worth smoking!

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what is heaven for?

Bonus points to whoever names the quote.

two words: solar cyborgs

As an engineer, thinking about the (in)efficiencies of the world are enough to drive me off the deep end.

I see the beautiful new house I recently moved into and I think of all the water, gas, and electricity we'll use, the food we'll eat, the transportation of all the goods we'll require. Furnace, dryer, carpet, flush flush flush.

I see the oil required to transport the oil, the coal to excavate the coal, and the energy to recycle all the waste we'll create. Rail cars, tanker trucks, big rigs, jumbo jets.

I see the power grids, the sewer networks, the highway systems and traffic jams.

I see the steel in every structure, the rubber in every tire, the chemicals in every battery, television and computer. Paper, PTE bottles, plastic wrap and aluminum foil.

Surely change is coming. In the meantime Im going to embrace the inevitable and get the most out of my P-car, Land Rover, and my 1500sq/ft as I can.

As an example of inevitable progress that will eventually save us when we are foced to adapt, my wife's company manufactures a composite pruduct lighter, stronger and cleaner than steel. It has one main drawback: No one will buy it because it is not steel.

Everyone is afraid to spec the product into their bridges, cars, buildings, what have you because they have a 500 year history of being able to predict steel performance. No matter how many lab test are done, they don't want to take the risk of the new product, just on the off chance that something goes wrong and someone asks why they didn't use steel.

Some day that won't matter and we'll accept composites and other new technologies the way that we take electronic communications for granted today.

Yes. So-called "embedded energy" is a lot harder to quantify, and a HUGE problem in a consumer-driven society like ours.

When I was doing my calculations on cost I was including the "embedded" energy costs...

I'm gonna die anyway.

The earth is still in an ice age so what is the big deal if the polars melt. Just buy some land a bit more inland and sit and wait. You'll have beach front property for pennies.

However, the ozone is tad bit more scarier.

Or, we can become Omish and drive a horse and buggy. Talk about hp!!!

Tabs get some sleep guy or at least help us to figure the rise in ocean level and where the prime properties will have relocated too :) !

Here's what happened last time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51201168

Yes and whatta guess they’ve come up with! Scientists used to be engaged in science....

A decade is hardly long enough for an end of the world discussion ! We'll check back again in another.

Notably, the world did not end then !

I do wonder how the "global warming" scientific community missed this.

As a species, we removed ourselves from the loop of nature as soon as we learned how to create and sustain fire, and have been taxing and destroying the natural order ever since.

Who the hell else would want it - given the present rate we seem hell-bent on effing things up?