Thread: Modern civilisation will be destroyed in a matter of years

I'm far from being a 2012 martyr but Xei...do you not find it interesting (at the very least) that the Mayans said that around the 2012 date the world (as we know it) would end?

No they didn't. Their calendar restarts in 2012. Just like we entered a new millennium in 2000. Woo. I ask you to please keep your discussions about how an ancient civilisation predicted thousands of years of history down to the minutest event to the 2012 thread. This thread is about reality and what to do about it.

Originally Posted by Xei

No they didn't. Their calendar restarts in 2012. Just like we entered a new millennium in 2000. Woo. I ask you to please keep your discussions about how an ancient civilisation predicted thousands of years of history down to the minutest event to the 2012 thread. This thread is about reality and what to do about it.

Our present great cycle (3113 B.C. - 2012 A.D.) is called the Age of the Fifth Sun. This time period is ruled by 4 Earth. This fifth age is the synthesis of the previous four. 4 Earth (called Caban in the Maya language and Ollin in Aztec) has several meanings, including: movement, shift, evolution, earthquake, navigation, synchronicity, clue tracking, turtle. In the Maya language, the word "ol" of ollin means consciousness.

Each world age lasts "13 Baktuns" (ca. 5125.36 solar years) in their "time calculating system" which was based upon astronomical events and cycles that were somewhat significant to the Mayans. According to their Long Count calendar, we are approaching the end of the "Fifth Sun", or the 5th world age, which they believed to come with important changes on "The Earth Element" (geological events that cause catastrophes like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc.)

They did not mention "the end of the world" but they prophesied a radical change on the way human societies live on this planet, with the beginning of a new world age, "The Sixth Sun".

Since this is your thread, I will respect your wishes and keep 2012 talk isolated to the 2012 thread. I think your blatant disregard of synchronicities such as this warrant a brow raise. That's all I will say about 2012 in your thread - however, should this topic come back up (on my part), it will only be because I am addressed about it.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by Xei

Half of it is gone. But that isn't the issue; the issue is that a miniscule deviation in the 70s caused a crisis. We now have a big deviation which is going to continue increasing and never go back up again. We've reached maximum production, and there's nothing that can be done about that. The problem is that our dependence on oil has grown with production. The world population is ridiculously huge now; there's no way that it can be sustained without oil.

You're trying to have it both ways, saying we're heading into an inescapable downward spiral because of oil demand outstripping supply, while ignoring the fact that oil's very centrality to our economy means any disruption leads to a sharp drop in demand.

No tree grows to heaven.

Before we get anywhere near "running out" of oil, cost will run so high that we won't think of burning it, but will reserve it solely for plastics and chemical manufacture.

As far as food production, the removal of oil may well be a blessing, because the replacement for oil in agriculture is people: human labor. Maybe it's my Amish blood, but the dedication of up to a third of our man-hours to the getting of food strikes me as a positive development. The developed world can't rely nearly as much upon meat as it's grown accustomed, but again, it's a good thing.

We can't simply yank civilization's plug out of the oil derricks and plug it into sun or wind or nuclear, and carry on business as usual. If we don't radically transform society, we're facing a huge setback.

But.

You underestimate the natural, automatic corrections, the time they'll buy us, and the motivation they'll provide. Yes, we've dragged our heels so long it's going to hurt like hell, but it's not the end of the world.

All of this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

Thanatos is behind the wheel of will. Eros must steer the ship in another direction.

Originally Posted by Cyclic13

All of this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

Thanatos is behind the wheel of will. Eros must steer the ship in another direction.

*Grabs popcorn* nom nom nom....

I do not wish to partake in this conversation, because I'm not informed enough to really make any statements.

However, http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/ has some things to say in respect to the peak oil scare.

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/...ex-doomer.html

An essay I suppose you could call it, followed by what the writer claims are four "flaws in the logic behind LATOC." (LifeAfterTheOilCrash)

I'm not writing off the peak oil problem, it exists, and a change is sure to come, but I don't think it will be as catastrophic as many people claim.



If you have something to argue against him for, go ahead, but I'm not going to try to back him up or make his case for you. I intend to learn about this topic as much as I can, but I'm not going to make any solid predictions of my own. I simply don't know the issues well enough to state my own opinions about the problem.

I do however think it best to try to find ways of fixing the problem, rather than submitting to fear and apathy while waiting for the problem to kill us all.

Here is where he gets to what he considers to be flaws (I have not read them yet).

Spoiler for four flaws:

First, doomers tacitly assume that anything short of our current energy consumption level would be catastrophic. They also count as a shortage the expected growth in energy demand from industrializing countries like China and India, perversely using an expansion of modern civilization (that they don't believe can occur!) as further proof that it will collapse. Truth is, there is tremendous waste in our current use of energy. A trip to the grocery store is like going to a monster truck rally these days. Is it really necessary to drive a 5000 pound vehicle to buy groceries? To go anywhere? Huge amounts of food are wasted. In fact, a lot of food is grown to feed animals for meat, a very inefficient way to produce food. (I like meat - I just don't eat that much of it.) We could cut back a lot and not miss it. In an emergency, we could cut back even more, just like we did to win World War Two. It wouldn't be much fun, but it would be possible, and no one would have to starve.

Doomers usually respond to this by making the silly argument that conservation won't work because of something called Jevon's paradox. In 1865, Jevon, writing about coal resources in England, argued that improving the efficiency of use of a resource would only cause demand to increase for the resource as the price dropped. Ergo, conservation causes demand to go up and you run out anyway. Doomers are dead wrong about conservation, though. In fact, surprise, they're dead wrong about what Jevon actually said, too. In the 1970s, conservation efforts and efficiency improvements in cars alone made a big dent in oil usage, enough that you can see it in the world's oil production statistics. Europe made the changes permanent by using taxes to keep demand down. The US didn't, so when the bottom dropped out of oil prices in later decades, we went back to our wasteful ways. Europeans use roughly half the oil per person than the US does. This all proves two things: conservation can enable us to get along with less oil if we have to, and people respond in predictable ways to price changes. Doomers forget that Jevon's so-called paradox assumed that the resource in question was still abundant. But once it runs short, all bets are off. If oil production started falling, the price is not going to go down unless demand goes down even faster. Even Jevon predicted that the price of coal would soar eventually, as the resource became scare in the 1930s - doomers don't know or don't mention that. Incidentally, Jevon was wrong about the end of coal spelling doom for industrial England - he couldn't forsee the switch to oil.

The second flaw is in assuming that because we use oil to do something now, we have no other way to do it. In particular, doomers argue that none of the alternatives will work because they all require oil to implement. Wind farms and nuclear plants require oil to produce the materials they're made from, to transport the materials to the site, and to run construction equipment. Electric cars take oil to manufacture. Even coal mines need oil to run mining machinery. Once we run out of oil, we won't be able to do any of those things anymore, goes the argument. The most obvious problem with the argument is that while these activities require energy, the energy doesn't have to come from oil. We use oil for many of them now because it's cheap and convenient, but that doesn't mean we can't use another energy source when oil's no longer cheap or available. Another problem with this argument is that many of these activities don't even use oil now! They use electricity or natural gas (natural gas will also eventually start to run short, but most likely a decade after oil does). The final problem with the argument is that if things really do start to get as bad as LATOC would have you believe, building energy infrastructure will have much higher priority that most of our present transportation uses. In an all-out emergency, rationing could be implemented giving first priority to food production, energy infrastructure, and long-distance transportation of goods, especially food. The annual road trip to see Aunt Tilly and the annual vacation getaway to the Caribbean would be below the line.

The third flaw in the argument is a bit more subtle. It is the assumption that the energy required to switch to alternatives must come on top of what we are using energy for now, rather than instead of some of it. For example, Savinar argues that we won't have the energy to power a crash program of building efficient cars. This ignores the fact that we are already building cars, millions of them every year. The energy used to build them is already counted; the energy needed to build efficient cars doesn't just add to the total. It takes roughly the same energy to build an efficient car as an inefficient one. It would take 10-15 years to turn over the automobile fleet - it doesn't have to happen all at once. Another example: we are today using energy to expand the infrastructure associated with oil consumption, things like roads, airports, and shopping malls. If things get as bad as LATOC says, we won't need those things anymore. That energy and construction equipment could be used to build power plants instead.

The fourth flaw in the argument is even more subtle. Perhaps you've guessed it by now. Doomers argue that there is no energy source we can switch to that can take oil's place in modern civilization. That might or might not be true, but it's beside the point. No single energy source has to, provided we can put enough of the others together. LATOC and others knock down alternatives one by one. But if (for example) we can produce biodiesel from fuel crops, why can't that be used to run construction machinery to build power stations? I've come to believe that no single energy source will take oil's place, but rather that by combining all the ones we know about, we can put together a workable solution that will be good enough to last 200 years or more - enough time for our descendants to come up with something else, or, if they can't, to gradually reduce their numbers without letting anyone starve.

By now, I had become what the doomers call an optimist, defined as anyone who doesn't think a collapse and dieoff are inevitable. I prefer to think of myself as a realist. The real optimists think the peak in oil production won't happen for another 10-20 years. They could be right, but it almost doesn't matter because we need to act now either way. A later peak just means we have more breathing room to get our act together. It's like finding out that exam you haven't studied for was postponed a week - you still need to study for it, only now you don't have to pull an all-nighter cramming! I personally think we're at or very near peak production now, on a plateau that will probably not be enough to satisfy the newly industrializing countries while supporting our wasteful usage.

I should thank you though, this had made me decide that my career should be in renewable and alternative energies. Engineering here I come.

I'd like to point out that Crude Oil contains all of the thousands of chemical compounds that make things such as plastic, gasoline, jet fuel etc. They are separated during the refining process. You can't just reserve oil for another use so it would do no good not to burn the last bit of gas.

Originally Posted by Bonsay

I don't want to repeat myself but... nuke =/= instant death (obviously). Fallout depends on a number of factors and if they are favourable you might evade and survive. When I said duck and cover was a good idea I didn't mean you should stay that way for a day or two, but only as long as necessary. I don't know what I said that such idiocity is brought up.
If you are close enough to be vapourized - fine you're dead
If you are close enough to be affected by other stuff like the the shock wave, heat in whatever radius, then you might have a chance if you don't make yourself an easy target.

The way I understand your logic is that there is an imaginary circle around the "area". The people inside are dead, the ones outside are alive. I'll say it again. This isn't a precise alien cleaning device. But do as you wish. If there's an explosion I'll take cover and you can just stand there in awe if it suits you. I didn't know this was such a big deal. Blown way out of proportion

The best course of action would be to escape the area, and drive away from the explosion..

I just don't think hiding under a desk is gonna do much good, if the fallout is coming your way you'd do best to get your ass moving not hiding.

The issue isn't that these technologies aren't possible, its that we didn't start researching them in time. Although the photoelectric effect was discovered around the beginning of the 20th century, research into solar power only really became mainstream in the 70's. Right now, Even though the technology is there, there simply isn't enough time to set up the level of infrastructure needed to run the world on solar, especially since the world leaders are dragging their feet, hoping to get as much time out of the oil infrastructure as possible.

Other energy sources are about the same. We have the technology to run the world on nuclear energy, or geothermal energy, its just that in order to get it up and running before the total collapse of oil would require that every country make it their top priority now, and that isn't happening.

Even so I don't think we've exhausted all the oil options in the world, their are still many unknown sources I'm sure.. We are slowly making our way towards this reality of other options we just got to keep the movement going.

Originally Posted by Xei

Originally Posted by acatalephobic

Wouldn't it also make sense then, that they would do so while simultaneously be setting up for a similar monopoly of influence concerning any other source that may become the fuel of the future?

Problem: there is no other source.

wait...what?

Originally Posted by Xei

Renewables simply aren't an option. To match the power output of a single coal fired powerstation you need about 15,000 wind turbines. It's not going to happen.

I apologize but I must respectfully disagree with you on these points. I mean, if you want to replace one fuel monopoly[oil] with one other singular fuel[solar,wind,hydro,bio,geothermal,etc., but only choosing one], isn't that exactly what got us in this mess in the first place...relying on one source for all our needs?

Diversify, conserve, innovate. Only options, as I see it. [This is of course, merely my humble opinion.]

When the time approaches that oil reaches crisis levels, prices will skyrocket as they have in other countries and then some. Will people be driving down the block to the store or leaving the lights/computer/heater on when they're gone? I doubt it. Unless they're rich and could care less.

It's not something that will happen overnight, and it's not something that can be solved by one end-all solution. It won't be cheap either. But that doesn't mean it has to be a catastrophe.

Resigning oneself to an obstacle as hopeless is just another way of giving up. The only way to do anything about it is to work toward something with the idea that it is possible. Best thing to do is to make changes for yourself, forget what everyone else is doing to solve the mass-problem. Waiting for the world to do it for you will only lead to greater frustration.

I don't mean to sound rude or claim as though my ideas are the only ideas, I just think it's worth believing the problem is avoidable/fixable. Otherwise we'd all just be sitting ducks. Sitting ducks sitting around saying, "oh but this won't work, and that's pointless, better just stick together where we are now", but sitting ducks nonetheless.

I call the inevitable future event in which we run out of finite resources that we are dependent upon, and the ensuing chaos, The Crisis.

It's bound to happen within a few decades. I'll most definately be alive to witness it.

Me and my Dad predicted the impending Crisis long ago. You're behind the times, kiddo.

It's old news.

But seriously, good job posting a thread to get more people in the know about it. It's going to happen, and it can't be prevented. The hivemind that is humanity will not give up its finite resources (not just oil, this also includes fresh water which may be consumed faster than it can be replaced, coal, marine life, land life, wood, and much much more) until it is too late.

It's good to know that I'm not the only one who sees the trend and is prepared for The Crisis.

Although a Zombie Apocolypse would be a so much cooler way to thin the human population to a manageable level.

Who knows the Oil scarce is a bold lie. A trick to have us all believe it's scarce and pay alot more for it.

And even if Oil is to be completely disappeared one day, we will switch to Hydrogen motors. Still the ongoing rapid destruction of nature is going to be the demise of modern civilisation.
And having enough oil or hydrogen motors isn't gunna save us from that.

wait...what?

What do you mean, what? What is going to power vehicles apart from oil?

I apologize but I must respectfully disagree with you on these points. I mean, if you want to replace one fuel monopoly[oil] with one other singular fuel[solar,wind,hydro,bio,geothermal,etc., but only choosing one], isn't that exactly what got us in this mess in the first place...relying on one source for all our needs?

No, that has nothing to do with it. The problem was relying on one finite source for all our needs. If oil was somehow regenerated there would be little problem relying entirely on oil.

I don't mean to sound rude or claim as though my ideas are the only ideas, I just think it's worth believing the problem is avoidable/fixable. Otherwise we'd all just be sitting ducks. Sitting ducks sitting around saying, "oh but this won't work, and that's pointless, better just stick together where we are now", but sitting ducks nonetheless.

Just how?

Except for those with physics or engineering degrees, what difference can any one of us hope to make?

I should thank you though, this had made me decide that my career should be in renewable and alternative energies. Engineering here I come.

Focus on fusion, I'd suggest.

Before we get anywhere near "running out" of oil, cost will run so high that we won't think of burning it, but will reserve it solely for plastics and chemical manufacture.

What about transporting this stuff though?

And what about farming machinery? Western farming is entirely dependent on oil. Every Joule you eat burned 10 Joules of oil. What are people going to eat? The population is too large for subsistence.

Why do you prioritise plastics over food?

Originally Posted by Xei

Just how?

Run your house on renewables.
Get job that isn't entirely dependent on a machine.
Grow your own food, make your own clothes.
Walk.

My grandma grew up in a family that had no car until she was 18, used a wood burning stove and candles, used an outhouse, grew/canned their own food, raised their own livestock, made food out of feed sacks...They didn't go to the grocery store, they didn't have a tv or a radio, they didn't sell off what they had to make more money...they used what money they had to make their lifes sustainable. They also had six kids and managed to make it work.

Only people that have no idea how to grow their own food[a simple skill to learn] will starve. Children who think that food grows on grocery-store trees will starve, unless they have a parent smart enough to understand how growing food works.

I mean I'm not saying it would necessarily come to that, I don't know if it will. But that doesn't mean you can't start now. Why wait until the possible problem becomes a real problem to do anything about it? If you're looking for solutions as to how to become less dependent on oil rather than just writing off any idea put forth as useless, it's possible. It just might not be as convenient as you'd like it to be. And it involves doing things for yourself rather than waiting for the world to do it for you.

You seem like an intelligent guy, come up with your own solutions. If the end of oil is as catastrophic as you claim it will be, maybe for once people will have to relearn how to survive on their own without expecting a machine or another person to do every ounce of work for them.

You seem to be forgetting that humans survived for manymanymany thousands of years before oil and cars and the industrial revolution. Even though we're a part of the technological age, doesn't mean our way of life is like a blink of time's eye when compared to all the ways of living that came before us. I apologize if it comes off as rude, but to say life would be impossble after oil is gone seems a bit absurd to me.

Originally Posted by SKA

And even if Oil is to be completely disappeared one day, we will switch to Hydrogen motors. Still the ongoing rapid destruction of nature is going to be the demise of modern civilisation.
And having enough oil or hydrogen motors isn't gunna save us from that.

Expanding on what SKA said:

http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/toyot...en-vehicle.htm

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2...01/026882.html

BTW, that is a Hydrogen fuel cell.

Water powered car:


Who's killing Hydrogen cars?
Edit:

Originally Posted by Xei

What about transporting this stuff though?

And what about farming machinery? Western farming is entirely dependent on oil. Every Joule you eat burned 10 Joules of oil. What are people going to eat? The population is too large for subsistence.

I covered it in the same post you're quoting. If we pissed oil and shat coal, we would still need to reorganize agriculture away from them to preserve life on earth. It will mean more labor intensive production, localized distribution, and perhaps large scale migration, but we will probably be better for it.

The chief source of energy to replace oil will be the same one now in use where oil or the infrastructure to exploit it are lacking: human work.

I guess we all go through a phase where we stumble upon Peak Oil Theory and it scares the hell out of us, and it's now your turn. When I found it 5 years ago, I thought the sky was falling (or would be). Now I know better. Let's talk about this a minute.

Humanity needs energy to survive. We need energy for food production, for transport, and for heating. Without abundant energy our civilisation will stop. For the last 150 years, oil has been a fantastically cheap (relatively) source of abundant energy and we have exploited it to its utmost.

Now think about that for a second - why did we go with oil and not say, bio fuel or solar power 150 years ago? Well if not for the simple fact that neither technology had been invented yet, oil was cheap to produce and a fantastic product to sell (because of its many uses, not just as fuel for the automobile). The driving factor here is profit. Profit makes the world go around. When profits start to decline, you have one of two choices to follow: Continue what you're doing, watch your profits decline, and eventually go bankrupt - OR - adapt to the changing environment and switch to comparatively better/cheaper fuels and sources of energy. Those that adapt, survive. Those that don't, don't.

The cars of the future will be electric and hydrogen powered, or a mixture of both. For anyone that's had their head in the sand about just how far electric cars have come (yes, I saw "Who killed the electric car?" too), watch this video:

The Tesla Roadster

This baby is a beast. And that's not a concept model, they're being built by Lotus in the UK and sold for about US$90,000. And that was two years ago, the technology is constantly getting better, cheaper to produce (and buy), and more crash resistant.

When demand for petroleum fueled cars drops off, the demand for petroleum will go down. When demand goes down, the price goes down. Ultimately I foresee a future in which oil-based fertisilers become MORE affordable for third world countries because first world demand for it as a fuel source have all but disappeared. Now you have clean energy for many, and food for many more that didn't have it in the first place. Lessen the demand on a resource, and you can stretch that resource further, it's simple economics.

Once oil has been reduced as a heavily weighted factor in our world economy, the economy will much more robust and less susceptible to major declines and upsets, far more stable than it is now. That's not to say it will have much effect on a situation like the major banking institutions going under again, that's an entirely different beast. But it's a fair statement to say that when a civilisation has access to plentiful, abundant resources and energy it will prosper.

A lot of people will say that it's all well and good that you have an electric car, but doesn't the energy that fills the batteries in that car have to come from somewhere? Well yes it does. If its before dusk right now take a look out your window. You see that big nuclear fireball hanging in the sky? Our ancestors worshipped it like a god, and for a damn good reason. They knew it was the reason plants grew. They knew without plants, they didn't have food. And without food they would die. The Sun was then, as it is now, the giver of all life on Earth today. Enough solar energy falls onto the surface of the Earth in a single day to power our entire civilisation for up to a year. Solar cell technology is becoming a big business, and the tech gets better every single year. One of the problems with solar cell tech up until recently has been the difficulty in producing large quantities of cells. Recently I've seen on Discovery and read an article in Nature on a process that GROWS solar cells using crystal growth. Imagine growing a 'forest' of solar cells via crystallisation (someday). Utterly remarkable achievement in science.

The technology has become so good infact, that as of 2005, the rules for the Darwin to Adelaide Solar Challenge had to be changed to include "follow the Australian road speed limit of 110km/hr" because the cars can now reach those speeds. In 2007 they added two new classes of competitors for those that want to up the ante and include further restrictions, such as decreasing the total amount of solar panelling allowed (driving higher efficiency in energy generation and storage) or to allow for passengers to be seated upright instead of lying on their back/stomach to keep innovation moving.

Solar energy will be the input for creating hydrogen out of water via electrolysis. This is the only conceivable way to create abundant hydrogen, because anyone with even a high school education should know that if you have to put energy INTO water to get fuel OUT, you're not gaining anything in the process (you're actually losing energy in the form of heat anyway). If they starting energy for hydrogen doesn't come from the Sun, then you're just moving the goal posts backwards and that doesn't help the situation at all.

I put my faith in human ingenuity and design. You should too. We're as stubborn as we are resourceful, and won't give up our current standard of living without a fight. Peak Oil Theory isn't a doomsday prediction. It's a gradual curve spanning decades in which market forces will act to pick up the slack. We're not going back to the horse-drawn cart and Amish life. Machines will play a bigger role in our future industry than they do now, until one day in the future they completely replace us from nearly all forms of intensive labour. The sky isn't falling, 2012 will be nothing more than another year on the calendar, and 100 years from now humans will look back on the beginning of the 21st century as the time when we broke our hydrocarbon addiction forever. This is an exciting time to be alive, if only you look around and notice

I have questions about the hydrogen cars.

Are they destroying the water they use?

Yes.

Originally Posted by Sandform

I have questions about the hydrogen cars.

Are they destroying the water they use?

lrn2lawsofphysics. Burning the hydrogen creates water.

There are 2 types of hydrogen cars. One that combines water and oxygen to make water, and one that burns the hydrogen created from water separation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle

Are they destroying the water they use?

...no. They get hydrogen from water in the first place, it just takes a lot of energy. Then the hydrogen can be burned as fuel, forming water again, and they use the energy they get back out to drive the car.

It doesn't use anything. Just think of it as a way of converting electrical energy to a method of powering the car.

I don't need to learn to laws of physics . I was asking because I wasn't sure, and because an article I read said that it did indeed destroy the water, and it tried to justify destroying the water by saying that the Earth is hit with ice commits all the time that evaporate in the atmosphere.

Man people are so childish. Heaven forbid anyone ever ask for clarification about things they are told. It really isn't my fault that people are spreading disinformation, causing me to have to ask.

I'm not even sure what you mean by 'destroy the water'. Matter and energy can't be destroyed, only interchanged.

The original electrolysis process puts energy INTO the equation to split H20 into its component parts, H2 and 02. Now you can either use the pure 02 for other purposes or just let it float freely into the air, it doesn't matter. When you burn the hydrogen, you're removing energy from the equation in the form of work and heat. Nothing can burn without oxygen so you're just adding the O2 back in and creating water, that flows out the exhaust pipe. Or you can collect it and use it for watering your plants, drinking or whatever else you want to use water for, since it's completely pure.