This report was originally published by Chris Martenson at PeakProsperity.com
My years working in corporate strategy taught me that every strategic framework, no matter how complex (some I worked on were hundreds of pages long), boils down to just two things:
- Where do you want to go? (Vision)
- How are you going to get there? (Resources)
Vision is the easier one by far. You just dream up a grand idea about where you want the company to be at some target future date. Yes, there’s work in assuring that everybody on the management team truly shares and believes in the vision, but that’s a pretty stratightforward sales job for the CEO.
By the way, this same process applies at the individual level, too, for anyone who wants to achieve a major goal by some point in the future. The easy part of the strategy is deciding you want to be thinner, healthier, richer, or more famous.
But the much harder part, for companies and individuals alike, is figuring out ‘How to get there’. There are always fewer resources than one would prefer.
Corporate strategists always wish for more employees to implement the vision, with better training with better skills. Budgets and useful data are always scarcer than desired, as well.
Similar constraints apply to us individuals. Who couldn’t use more motivation, time and money to pursue their goals?
Put together, the right Vision coupled to a reasonably mapped set of Resources can deliver amazing results. Think of the Apollo Moon missions. You have to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there to succeed. That’s pretty straightforward, right?
So, it should be little surprise that the opposite, a lack of Vision and/or Resources, leads to underperformance — and, eventually, decline. Think Kodak or Xerox. Or third-generation family wealth that has dwindled away to nothing. In a changing world, refusing to change with it is a losing strategy.
A great strategy aligns people’s interests and motivations with the available resources. More importantly, it provides a meaningful framework for action, one that gives a sense of purpose that will motivate everyone through difficult or trying times.
The grand goal of defeating the Nazis provided sufficient motivation for people to buy war bonds, scrimp on consumption, plant victory gardens, and go without nylon. A large part of our national resources were dedicated to the larger strategy of winning the war. Because of the strategy everyone shared, practically nobody complained of this repurposing as a ‘time of sacrifice’ or as an imposed burden.
Given the right framework and the means to achieve it, people will literally crawl through mud in freezing temperatures — and find it deeply satisfying. But given zero context or insufficient resources, people quickly become demoralized or rebellious (just observe how quickly most folks get royally pissed off at having to sit on the tarmac for a few extra minutes before their airplane takes off.)
Strategy matters. A lot.
A Nation Adrift, A World In Denial
Here’s why I’m harping so much on strategy: the US is operating without a viable one.
We neither have a compelling Vision of where we want to go, nor any sense of the Resources required to change with the many transitions underway around us.
The current ‘strategy’ (if we can be so generous as to call it that), is nothing more than “business-as-usual” (BAU).
The US is assuming it is always going to have more cars and trucks on the road this year than last year, more goods sold, a larger economy, more jobs, and the world’s most powerful military. That’s the BAU model. And it has largely worked for the past century.
But it can’t work going forward. And the longer we pursue it, the more of our future prosperity we ruin.
Why? Because the future of everything is dependent on energy. More specifically: net energy.
Having a powerful military consumes a tremendous annual quantity of energy. The US military eats up 100 million barrels of oil each year. By itself, America’s Department of Defense is the 34th largest consumer of oil in the world.
In total, the US consumes over 7 billion barrels of oil each year. And that represents only 37% of the nearly 100 quadrillion of BTUs of America’s annual energy consumption (the rest coming from natural gas, coal, and other sources). For comparisons sake, the rest of the world consumes another 450 quadrillion BTUs.
And world energy demand just keeps on insatiably growing year over year. The (notoriously conservative) EIA predicts it will jump by 28% over the next two decades.
Will our energy production be able to keep up? As I’ve been warning for years, it will be very challenged to do so — or, to do so at prices anywhere near as low as today’s.
Putting Our Plight Into Concrete Terms
Putting those staggering figures aside for a moment, let’s focus on one — just one! — of the crises ahead of us when it comes to our future energy needs.
The nations of the world have made the truly regrettable decision to build so much of their infrastructure using concrete reinforced with steel (re-bar, mesh, etc.). As I’ve explained in detail in previous articles, because the steel rusts over time, the concrete is busy being destroyed from the inside out — something we can detect easily enough by the cracks and spalling (sheets flaking off) so readily apparent on every bridge that’s more than a couple of decades old.
This has created a ticking time bomb. The world’s crumbling concrete buildings, bridges and roadways will have to be entirely replaced in just 40 to 100 years of their original construction dates. Where will all of the energy come from for that?
Also, note that China has poured more steel-reinforced concrete over just the past few years than the US did in the entire 20th century(!). All of this, too, will need to be replaced later this century.
Given that the sand required for all of the world’s *current* concrete projects is now in very short supply, where all the sand will come from for all that future concrete and cement work? Who ever thought we could run out of sand?
But such are the unpleasant surprises that crop up during the late stages when running an exponential economic paradigm (i.e., “Growth forever!”).
Fooling Ourselves
And it certainly doesn’t help that we’re remaining willfully blind to our situation.
It’s probably safe to say that the majority of the population in the US is confident that the “shale revolution” has assured America’s energy security for a long time to come. Heck, the governor of Texas recently tweeted this to the world:
This is wrong on so many levels.
Yes, Texas produces oil and natural gas. But the US is still a net oil importer to the tune of about 3 million barrels per day. The US is not independent with respect to oil. And it won’t be until it produces another 3 million barrels per day (and that’s making the generous assumption that consumption remains flat).
Further, to claim that the US will NEVER AGAIN depend on foreign oil is beyond bizarre. As I’ve been explaining for years, shale fields deplete and decline ferociously. Even the hyper-bullish EIA thinks that the shale fields will peak out in 2025 (I think earlier) and then go into permanent decline.
In my world, NEVER AGAIN is a lot farther out into the future than 2025. But Mr. Abbott has apparently ingested one too many petroleum sales pitches and received a terribly inaccurate impression about the true state of the US’ energy predicament.
Much more likely is that US shale production does not EVER exceed US consumption before peaking out. So it would be more accurate to tweet the US is now and will ALWAYS AND FOREVER be dependent on foreign oil.
Finally, even if the US were a net oil exporter (highly unlikely), we’d still be tied to the world price for oil. Should foreign cartels decide to limit production and spike the price, that would still effect the US. So we still wouldn’t be “independent” of their influence.
But sadly, Mr. Abbott speaks for the nation in that tweet. We’re “swimming in energy” and need not have any worries. The drum of our chest-thumping will scare them away.
In other word:, there’s no strategy beyond BAU.
There’s no acknowledgement of the challenges we face in the coming decades, of declining net energy per capita. Of greater competition between the developed and developing nations for the remaining BTUs.
There’s no compelling Vision to marshal the public towards what fits the realities of the future. We could, and should, be working on solutions for entering a “post-growth” era with grace. Or at a minimum, aggressively using today’s Resources to create a new energy infrastructure that plans for the inevitable decline of fossil fuels.
We could be doing so much better than this.
Getting Our Priorities Straight
What if we started by embracing these three facts?
- Fossil fuels have provided a supernova of surplus energy. One that has enabled literally everything and everyone you see around you to spring into existence.
- Fossil fuels are a very recent discovery for humans (barely 150-years-old). Half of our consumption of them has happened in just the last 25 years alone (due to exponentially increasing use).
- Fossil fuels will not last forever. They are finite and will someday peak and then decline, representing a once-in-a-species bonanza never to be repeated.
It’s beyond dispute that fossil fuels are 4/5ths of the current total global energy mix, that our use and dependence on them has grown exponentially over time, and that they are a non-renewable resource.
Among the fossil fuels, oil is, by far, the most critically-important to sustaining both our current level of technology and the human population. It’s how we move virtually everything from point A to point B and it’s a critical element for food production and distribution. It also remains absolutely essential to the manufacture and installation of alt-energy systems, like wind and solar.
Given the three facts above, it only makes sense that a responsible global society should have a credible and very publicly-stated energy strategy providing a road map for weaning itself from fossil fuels before they become prohibitively expensive/scarce.
But since we don’t have one, the alternative path we’re taking is to sleepwalk into the future with no plan for feeding 9 billion people or re-building a crumbled global infrastructure — let alone facing the additional challenges of running out of critical minerals, dealing with destroyed ecosystems, and being unable to field the necessary fuel and economic complexity to install a brand-new energy infrastructure measuring in the hundreds of quadrillions of BTUs. This BAU path will be marked by the three D’s: despair, demoralization, and death. (Is it any wonder that young people aren’t as inspired by BAU as their parents’ generation?)
So if instead we want a future that’s prosperous, regenerative and abundant, then we have to begin doing things very differently from BAU. And fast. (The best time to have started on this was decades ago.)
For example, if we decide we want electric transportation powered by wind and solar to be anything more than a meaningless tiny percentage of the total BTU mix, then we’re going to have to use a lot of fossil fuels to make that happen. It takes an enormous amount of fossil fuels to manufacture, install, maintain and repair/replace every single alt-energy component.
The question then becomes: Where do we want to be when that future arrives? If we want to have livable cities and towns with nearby greenbelts and an alt-energy infrastructure delivering clean energy sustainably forever into the future, then an enormous amount of planning and building is going to be required to get anywhere near close to that.
It all comes back to strategy. We need a compelling Vision of this future to inspire society, and then dedicate the appropriate Resources to make it happen.
With an appropriate energy strategy that matches reality, we can engineer a reasonably bright future. Without one, we’ll just pursue BAU until it literally destroys us as well as the ecosystems we depend on.
A New Energy Strategy
So here’s one way to go about doing that.
First, identify all the energy demands that absolutely have to happen just to maintain systemic integrity. The DoD has needs, the current fleets of emergency vehicles and school busses have needs, as does maintaining the existing stock of bridges, roads, and buildings. This exercise will reveal to all that simply maintaining ‘the way things are’ is extraordinarily energy-expensive. But it has to be done if we want to avoid economic collapse and massive joblessness. It also bears mentioning that the energy required to keep things going is energy that cannot be dedicated to building the new future. It’s a sunk-cost of prior decisions.
Second, make a credible list of energy needs for building the future we want. How many solar panels will that be? How many wind farms? How many miles of electrified train track? How many fully-electric vehicles will have to be built? How many charging stations with the nationwide road system need? What sorts of improvements and modifications to existing cities and towns will have to be made? This is the Vision. It answers the question Where are we going?
Of course, these sorts of new activities and building projects will be very energy expensive. If we want them to happen, then we have to consciously budget an appropriate amount of energy to accomplish the Vision.
Next, develop the very best possible estimate of total economically recoverable fossil fuels. Do this by finally measuring the full-cycle energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) for the remaining deposits. After all, we’re going to build out the future with the surplus energy extraced, not the gross (surplus = Total BTUs extracted – BTUs expended during extraction). This estimate will represent the total principal balance of our national energy bank account.
Last, calculate if there will be any energy left over. If so, save it for future generations. They’ll have their own sets of needs and desires that we can’t possibly know today. (Sadly, I’m willing to wager that there won’t be any excess fossil energy to pass along).
A Sample Scenario
By way of example, suppose that the US undergoes a thorough, exhaustive, peer-reviewed and thoroughly debated examination of all known remaining fossil fuel resources – coal, natural gas and oil – using the very best and well-funded EROEI methodologies (yet to be developed, by the way). If we arbitrarily say that there are “100 units” of net energy left, we might discover this:
- 25 units will be required to simply maintain the economic system so it doesn’t crash and can support the build-out of the new Vision for the future.
- 60 units will be required to build that future out.
- 15 units are not yet assigned. We might decide to leave those to future generations because that would be conscientious and prudent. Or perhaps we discover that they shouldn’t be burned because of the environmental impact.
Results such as these yield important insights.
First, we’d understand that if we accidentally burned through, say, 45 units blindly pursuing BAU, that would steal 25 units from building out the future we want.
Next, we’d realize better that our chances of manifesting the Vision are improved by limiting the amount we spend on maintenance. That insight would help to spur better decisions around conservation and efficiencies — such as not driving 6,000 pound private SUV/Truck vehicles to transport a single passenger to a desk job, or building homes with inadequate insulation to save a few thousand dollars on the front end of a 100-year capital investment.
Finally, we’d appreciate how our energy resources are finite and limited, and that how we choose to utilize them is quite possibly the single most important decision society can possibly make. Leaving the fate of our precious energy resources to the short-term interests of the markets and politicians would suddenly look too risky and nonsensical. We’d agitate for greater stewardship of them.
Were I in charge, the most well-funded institution in the land would be the Energy Institute. Our very best and brightest minds would be heavily incentivized to work there, applying their considerable gifts at science and mathematics towards matching our energy resources with our shared national goals. Gone would be the days of our top talent working for Wall Street and private money funds to move electronic abstractions of wealth hither and yon, skimming money while creating absolutely nothing of lasting value for their country or the world.
The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World
However, we both know that no such strategic energy plan is forthcoming. There’s no strategy in the US (or Japan or Europe or China, or anywhere) that aligns finite resources with a well-defined, sustainable vision of the future.
BAU rules the roost.
It’s so powerfully embedded that Ford Motor Company recently decided to scrap selling sedans and small cars in America. It will only manufacture SUVs, trucks and commercial vehicles. You know when Ford will no longer make cars, they’ve got to have really chugged the shale oil Kool-Aid to make that decision.
Concrete is still poured with steel rebar every day. New homes and commercial buildings are built with expected lifetimes of only several decades and little attention to insulation. And the Federal Reserve focuses with manic precision on assuring that the credit markets continue to grow exponentially.
Each of these and a million other activities consumes finite, irreplaceable energy at the expense of a sustainable future. At some point, perhaps already passed us, that goal becomes no longer possible.
My point is we don’t know where that line in the sand is. We haven’t done the work, made the plans, and performed the necessary visioning to know one way or the other.
But what we can be sure of is that BAU is headed in the wrong direction and it has no long term future. One way or the other, endless growth on a finite planet will run its course and end. The only remaining question left to answer is: How painful will the reckoning be?
None of us know what will finally break the largest and most destructive credit cycle ever unleashed on the world (thanks central banks!) but we all know that The Everything Bubble has a bitter end. All self-destructive delusions do.
Our analysis concludes that the hard-stop for this credit bubble is resource-based. And I predict it will be a sudden spike in the price of oil that will be the pin that the central bank enabled bubbles absolutely cannot grow beyond.
They will encounter this pin and burst.
There will be plenty of time for tears and regrets then. But right now? You need to get ready.
In Part 2: How The Coming Oil Shock Will Impact Absolutely Everything we go deep into the data showing why a global oil supply shortfall is unavoidable by or before 2020. That’s less than two years away.
If gas prices at today’s $70/barrel price bother you, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The spike in oil’s price that will result from the coming crunch will shock the world.
As an increase in the price of oil feeds into the cost of everything, it acts like an interest rate increase in terms of depressing economic growth. If we haven’t already entered one yet, this coming shock will absolutely throw the global economy into recession. And if we’re already in one when it hits, heaven help us.
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)
There is plenty of oil. as long as someone can profit by selling oil products it will be readily available.
“Here’s why I’m harping so much on strategy: the US is operating without a viable one.”
Bullshit. Another FOOL who cannot discern intent from actions: TRUMP has a PLAN and that PLAN is to restore America to its full potential: a potential ARRESTED by the Globalists as they systematically transferred American factories, jobs, and wealth offshore for their own benefit and eliminated competition at home by over regulating small business: stifling new corporate formation and suppressing job growth.
He is deploying it masterfully to the chagrin of the NWO Globalists, PTB, and Deep State. Internationally he is LEVERAGING American Military and economic power, evidenced by Saudi Arabia today increasing oil production at his request. SA knows that the USA protects them from Iran, so the Prince COMPILED; as they should if they expect US to defend them.
Allies will be allies supporting the USA or they will be pushed to the back of the bus, dumped from the TRUMP TRAIN, or thrown under the bus. The Free Ride is over. Everyone will pay their fair share and America will have a level and fair playing field in which it can compete.
THAT IS THE PLAN.
There is a New Sheriff in town and everyone who comes to down to party must leave their guns at the Marshal’s Office.:-)
There is NO Energy Crisis. Just Greedy Bad People in charge of Oil Production that will destroy entire nations and cultures for manipulative market share. Prices are manipulated at the sneeze of a global conflict to jack up the price for more profit.
The Key is for each person as individuals to make the choice to GET OFF THEIR GREEDY GRID TIED DEPENDENCY, and produce your own RENEWABLE Energy, like by using Solar. I have not had an Electrical Bill in 40 months. Do the math. My electrical energy costs have been locked in for the next 25 years away from their Grid Price manipulations. Grid Down? Not here, still got plenty of Juice as long as the Sun shines here in FL, the sunshine state. If you want to go live where the sun down not shine very well, then thats your bad decision shame on you. Keep sucking on the Grid Titty, and stop complaining you Grid Slave Genocidal lovin Chumps. STOP FEEDING THE BEAST.
Solar power for the whole world could be generated from a relatively small patch of land, says report – NaturalNews.com
ht tps://www.naturalnews.com/2018-06-18-solar-power-for-the-whole-world-could-be-generated-from-a-relatively-small-patch-of-land.html
Now can the Mindless Oil Drunk DOLTS take this info and adapt accordingly. Innovate or Evaporate!!
100 square miles of Arizona desert could power ALL of the energy needs in the USA. Solar on rooftops wherever it is viable, should be viewed as a STRATEGIC resource and subsidized. 🙂
I have heard this oil crap since the embargo in the ’70’s, now more cars everywhere incl. China. New oil find in Texas and Utah I hear. Still would like to see electric cars for those who don’t travel much, easier maintenance.
The world is AWASH in oil & gas. Alt energy percentage of the entire energy demand is growing quickly. New technologies will cut that “fossil fuel” component of the whole even farther.
Magnetic motors are the future of clean energy, even for transportation. They are not being pushed because the PTB are invested in oil & gas AND because the PTB will wait until the patents run out on MM and then “REVIVE” them and scale them up.
As always, follow the money. 🙂
Number 1: Oil is not a fossil fuel. If so, it would contain the same elements as dead plants or animals.
Number 2: Russian scientists say that oil is actually produced by some natural process deep in the earth. Therefore, we will always find more oil. We haven’t looked everywhere yet.
Number 3: There’s no shortage of sand. The sand just doesn’t happen to be next to the building sites. Just the Sahara Desert has all the sand we need.
Since Saudi Arabia announce that they’re increasing production, and we’re producing a lot more, the gas stations here have reduced their prices. The last I bought was $2.709 per gallon.
There’s always nuclear energy, and soon there’ll be fusion energy, which really will be unlimited. That energy can be used to manufacture fuels for airplanes and other things that can’t run directly on electricity.
There are only three things that will probably happen to control earth’s population: war, disease, and space colonization. There is a fourth thing, but I don’t think we’ll ever get all the world’s population groups to agree to it. And that’s voluntarily having fewer kids than necessary to replace the current population. That would cause the population to gradually decrease. First world nations are already doing that, but the third world nations aren’t.
We will survive one way or the other.
Archivist:
I agree. And add this.
Overpopulation fear has Caucasians reducing their numbers too rapidly. White people of European genes regardless where they live, are dying out. As a species, they are the only race on earth threatened with extinction. There are three main races: Negroid, Mongoloid, Cacasoid or if you will; Black, yellow, white.
White European people need to increase their reproduction. White people must ignore the problem of overpopulation, with respect to themselves, and have more children. The duty of every young white person is to marry young, stay committed to having and raising 3,6,12, kids or more.
This is especially true for those with higher intelligence and no serious inheritable diseases. The future of mankind rests in the hands of white womanhood. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
_
Ever consider that white population is where the majority of liberal progs comes from. The ones living like ants in concrete hills that don’t think it is proper to have babies any longer. Are those the people who you are referring?
B: When people like me have lived in cities or travel to other cities even small to average size, we see over pop. and traffic grids 24/7, Take Atlanta, Jacksonville or Montgomery, Mobile for ex. Women have had to work full time to make ends meet for decades now, unlike mid century when women stayed home had larger families. Genetic diseases many people have for ex: Thyroid disease, breast cancer, prostate C., etc, type one and 2, auto immune diseases, etc. should not breed, but adopt as an option or even foster. How the H can people afford more than one kid now, when day care is thru the roof, medical and college expenses, etc? Yet, the wealthier ones don’t want large families. Another issue: high divorce rates and decline of moral and cultural values. Many see America has a zero future anyway. Many blue collar workers I knew lived on food stamps while both parents worked, living hand to mouth.
If we ever get unlimited energy we will be completely screwed.
Just like all energy in the past, fusion power will only be available with a bill. You are going to have to pay for unlimited energy.
The game will never change until it is over. Free has never had anything to do with it.
Archivist, agreed. Especially about the reproduction. The third world groups won’t reduce the amount of sex they have. Bank on it.
Imagine the actual reality of the internal natural resources of the USA versus the lies that you have embraced due to Free Trade and globalization.
What should be the actual value of a natural resource within a country since the amount produced is declining over time? The true value should be INFINITE. Why? If your citizens require that natural resource to sustain life, and you actually cannot produce more, then the value is priceless.
Now look at petroleum. We require every barrel of oil because we will end up needing ALL of it and should never sell any of it. We are long past peak production yet there are vastly more consumers of oil. Using basic economics, only a fool sells critical natural resources.
Yet instead Americans accept the LIE that petroleum prices are set by the market exchange of all of the foolish nations selling their priceless petroleum and based upon how much is extracted and shipable.
Such is the lunacy of the international free market. Only a dolt sells away the very materials needed by one’s own family members.
And straight away, if Americans understood this REALITY, then we would not waste what precious petroleum we have on other nations.
An immense amount of oil is needed to feed the world and defend the world. Why is that an American responsibility?
Instead, if we stopped practically all international trade and only traded within the USA Republic, then we could repair our crumbling infrastructure, have full employment, produce our own goods, protect our own nation SOLELY, and America would be a utopia.
That’s right….the only reason America is not a utopia is we accepted the lies of the globalists who want to strip American natural resources, turn us from an industrial superpower to a hollow shell using service workers, and waste our soldiers lives fighting pointless foreign wars.
Meanwhile, suddenly Americans would realize that foreign oil sales create the money needed to support terrorism and we should NEVER buy foreign oil.
And likewise there would be a mass impetus to foster algae based oil which is the most plausible solution coupled with thorium reactors and potentially nuclear fusion.
Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. “Click here for Part 2” Payment required.
This is how you know collapse has begun. Real news is hard to come by, and you have to pay for it. Fake or not you won’t know until you hand over your money.
Pay walls.
Elmer and Maude still think FOX is real news.
Hmmmm….,do not need articles that require one to pay/sign up i.e. give personal information,just screw that noise,screw this partial article,actually,fuck this partial article!
IIRC
There is these things called the laws of Thermodynamics.
You are taught them in University level physics classes, possibly also in high school.
Even that big fusion reactor 93 million miles away from us will someday go out and quit working.
What the author of this article fails to do is suggest alternatives.
There are sources of energy all around us but due to politics we do not use them, Thorium reactors, coal, fission reactors, Hydrogen, et al.
Our energy problem is one caused by man, not by lack of resources.
Chris, let me tell you the truth:
1- Enough sun falls on the earth in one hour to power the earth’s total energy needs for a day;
2- Through electrolysis, Stanley Meyer got 100 miles to one gallon of water on his modified vehicle; he was later murdered (as were other water powered inventors threatened);
3- Enough free energy inventions exist to do away with oil but the patent office and the military will not release those;
4- Nicola Tesla powered a vehicle on a device that sucked in electricity from the earth’s atmosphere;
5- Nicola Tesla also wirelessly transmitted power (electricity) for free but it never became funded because the financiers could not make money off of it, hence we get a utility bill every month;
6- Magnetic engines that power vehicles have also been suppressed.
I could go on and on. I would prefer you do some research and share a vision we can all buy into instead of positioning speculative content in order to obtain a sale.
– the Lone Ranger
Electrolysis is just a variation of the perpetual motion machine scam. If you use electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and then recombine them, either by burning or explosion, you don’t get as much energy out as you put in to do the electrolysis.
It simply does not work. It violates a couple of the laws of thermodynamics. And those are laws, not suggestions.
Archivist, do a week’s research on “overunity” and you will conclude you and the whole world were the ones who got scammed and duped by those who have suppressed many things.
Start with vortex heat exchangers, or motor generators that power cars without a battery or gasoline. Or start with Raymond Royal Rife who cured cancer. I could go on and on.
But won’t.
As for the laws of physics and other laws, you will find as I have that 1) the laws that physics teachers were taught, were taught wrong (on purpose, long story) going back 60 years or so;
2) those laws aren’t really laws as such when they become defied.
Happy wife, happy life. Open mind, growing soul. Facts confine, Truth liberates.
Your choice. 🙂
– the Lone Ranger
“Truth needs to be repeated as long as there are men who disbelieve it.” – Gandhi
There are no alternatives to crude oil. You can make electricity with nuclear, thorium(?), solar, wind and hydro but you can’t power all the trucks, farm tractors, mining trucks, planes and cargo ships with middle distillates like diesel and bunker fuel.
If it’s abiotic it’s not replenishing itself as fast as we use it.
If there were so much easy to pump crude they wouldn’t be cracking rocks and steam cleaning sand to get it. That’s called scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Sure, tight oil gave the US a slight reprieve, but most of that oil is API 40 and above and is mostly useful for gasoline, coleman fuel, lighter fluid and feedstock for plastics, etc.
The majority of the world runs on lower API grades that can be cracked into middle distillates like diesel fuel.
It’s getting to the point where it will require more energy to bring a barrel of oil to market than that barrel contains. That’s when it stays in the ground no matter how much there is left.
You can’t print energy and you can’t vote prosperity into office.
“…WITHOUT middle distillates…”
Someone on here with some sense. Peak oil is a natural and mathematical certainty. Just not enough data to predict when.
JRS,
The commenters on this site are not only ignorant as fuck concerning energy, but arrogant as well. Perhaps the most dangerous of combinations.
I wouldn’t even waste my time trying to convince this group of intellectual lightweights about thermodynamics or oil depletion or anything else.
As for you dumb as fuck commenters, are you living in the USA? I ask because when the SHTF I want to be no where near idiots like yourselves.
You can easily use electricity to manufacture whatever fuels you wish for powering any types of engines. You don’t have to use the electricity directly.
My old man told me a story of a guy who bought a car back in the 60s or something that had a carburetor and it got like 60mpg one day he brought it in for service drove out and was getting like 10mpg he went back and said something was wrong with the car it wasn’t getting good mileage. When he opened the hood he noticed there was a different carburetor. Yup there was more to the story I just dont remember the details. Anyway it turned out that the people who designed the carburetor went out of business. Which means they took the deal and are now keeping their mouth shut ?. There was only two of these carburetors ever made and they got them back from what I understand. You can imagine the impact on the oil cartels profits with something like this coming out that’s why the company that developed it was paid off and had to surrender the patent to the oil cartel as part of the deal. I’ve said it before you develop something revolutionary with potential to change the course of the world your gonna get approached with the deal and you will take it. mark zuckerberg bill gates and Elon musk all took the deal. If we know about it the gov knew decades prior.
To the “Blame the USA FIRST group”, F*** O**
How anyone can ignore this articles conclusions is mind numbing. The normalcy bias, paranoia and cynicism that drowns our reason is a sobering revelation. Some of you arrogant ly crow that since we have never run out of oil before, of course we will not in the future. Sure we will always find it somewhere right. Never mind the increasingly difficult and costly logistics of extracting it from “ wherever” it might be(Atlantis maybe). And of course when these bits of undiscovered resources are found it will not COST us as much energy to retrieve it as we might extract, never has in the past so of course it will not in the future. Then the cynical amount you will say that TPTB do have a plan and will reveal it when they have sucked the last centilla of profit from the old model. The people actually running the world have always been brilliant and have never pursued any policies that have been shortsighted and destructive, surely they would not pursue a policy that basically ensures everyone’s even THEIR eventual destruction. Then there are the paranoid who cling to the belief that anyone daring to use real science and reason to wake the populace to what is happening are engaging in “ fear porn” , after all the oil and resources that has allowed the worlds population to grow to 10 billion( very soon) will always be there and even if not we will pray to the God of technology to sustain us.
I have a grand child that is a year old. I have looked at the science and the lack of coherent policy from our leaders and it depresses me beyond words. If the half dozen other calamities that could befall us, war, economic collapse, etc. don’t do us in first, this WILL , it is logical ,reasonable and enevitable. As Bill Paxton said in the movie Aliens, “ Were on a rollercoaster to hell.”
They want to scare all of us with Peak Oil Charts. As if we are going to run out of oil. Its all propaganda manipulation invented crisis, like to boycott Venezuela oil so Saudi can make more money by selling their oil.
I could have written this entire article with just these 7 Words: War Blood, Oil, Money, Greed Power, Control.
The US has $20+ Trillion in unproduced business just sitting in the Patent Shelf Office doing nothing, because Big Corporations buy these patents, then squat on the invention to protect their existing monopoly or market share. Its killing us.
So I propose a law that prevents Patent Squatting, and if you have not produced anything from that patent within 7 years, you lose the patent protection and it becomes public domain and anybody can use the patent to create manufacturing base again and more jobs.
When Ben Franklin invented tge Franklin Stove he refused to patent the stove because he said, I want all Americans to be warm in the Winter and anybody can make my stove. Its for the good of America.
Look how far gone America has lost its way. MAGA!! Ban Patent Squatting!!
WhoWuddaThunkIt
When we run out of oil, then humans will do something different. No sooner. There, that is all folks.
You wanna shock 8% of the world? Tell white people they were 25% of this worlds population in the 1950s , Now they are 8%. Genoside anyone?