Apocalypse Soon?

Perhaps "peak oil" (for Gulf of Mexico) comes in 2018 (or 2019)?

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More text at: http://www.fool.com/investing/gener...tion-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-is-about-to-e.aspx

 

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The "peak people" problem to hit Capitalism's dependence upon growth? (Worse than higher cost oil which can be replaced by renewable sugar cane - see post 1436 of this thread.)

* Due China's "One Child" policy, China's population will peak even sooner than 2030, and Chinese are ~1/4 of world population now. Most advanced countries are already below replacement rates. US may not be - it depends on the extent of immigration allowed. Immigrants tend to bring their breeding habits with them, at least for the first generation living in the US.

Again, I note that the real possible, but still not certain, of an Apocalypse is Global Warming. If the ocean evaporation rate continues to increase as CO2 increases (and with it the more serious GHG CH4 concentrations increase with positive feed back as ever more methane hydrates* decompose) so that both average temperature and humidity increase to produce a week or so of wet bulb temperature of 35C , then at least 95% of population where that happens will die.** (If 35C wet bulb only last for a week, then the rich can survive with their air conditioners; but if 35C wet bulb last a month or more nothing much will still function - no electric power, no food delivers etc. - too many are dead.)

* They store more carbon than ever was in all the world's coal and oil!
** Humans make ~ 100W even while sleeping they must dump to the environment. They, with their 37C bodies, do that "heat dumping" under normal conditions by perspiring (and exhaling moist air warmer than the dry air they inhaled); but with a wet bulb of 35C that 2 degrees differential can not remove 100W from their bodies. Also no one could do any work, like walking around, as then they need to dump more than 100W.

 

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Good article in the Economist this month:

=========================
Yesterday’s fuel
The world’s thirst for oil could be nearing a peak. That is bad news for producers, excellent for everyone else
Aug 3rd 2013

THE dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices). It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber. Other liquids produced in the refining process, too unstable or smoky for lamplight, were burned or dumped. But the unwanted petrol and diesel did not go to waste for long, thanks to the development of the internal-combustion engine a few years later.

Since then demand for oil has, with a couple of blips in the 1970s and 1980s, risen steadily alongside ever-increasing travel by car, plane and ship. Three-fifths of it ends up in fuel tanks. With billions of Chinese and Indians growing richer and itching to get behind the wheel of a car, the big oil companies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and America’s Energy Information Administration all predict that demand will keep on rising. One of the oil giants, Britain’s BP, reckons it will grow from 89m b/d now to 104m b/d by 2030.

We believe that they are wrong, and that oil is close to a peak. This is not the “peak oil” widely discussed several years ago, when several theorists, who have since gone strangely quiet, reckoned that supply would flatten and then fall. We believe that demand, not supply, could decline. In the rich world oil demand has already peaked: it has fallen since 2005. Even allowing for all those new drivers in Beijing and Delhi, two revolutions in technology will dampen the world’s thirst for the black stuff.

The first revolution was led by a Texan who has just died. George Mitchell championed “fracking” as a way to release huge supplies of “unconventional” gas from shale beds. This, along with vast new discoveries of conventional gas, has recently helped increase the world’s reserves from 50 to 200 years. In America, where thanks to Mr Mitchell shale gas already billows from the ground, liquefied or compressed gas is finding its way into the tanks of lorries, buses and local-delivery vehicles. Gas could also replace oil in ships, power stations, petrochemical plants and domestic and industrial heating systems, and thus displace a few million barrels of oil a day by 2020.

The other great change is in automotive technology. Rapid advances in engine and vehicle design also threaten oil’s dominance. Foremost is the efficiency of the internal-combustion engine itself. Petrol and diesel engines are becoming ever more frugal. The materials used to make cars are getting lighter and stronger. The growing popularity of electric and hybrid cars, as well as vehicles powered by natural gas or hydrogen fuel cells, will also have an effect on demand for oil. Analysts at Citi, a bank, calculate that if the fuel-efficiency of cars and trucks improves by an average of 2.5% a year it will be enough to constrain oil demand; they predict that a peak of less than 92m b/d will come in the next few years. Ricardo, a big automotive engineer, has come to a similar conclusion.

Not surprisingly, the oil “supermajors” and the IEA disagree. They point out that most of the emerging world has a long way to go before it owns as many cars, or drives as many miles per head, as America.

But it would be foolish to extrapolate from the rich world’s past to booming Asia’s future. The sort of environmental policies that are reducing the thirst for fuel in Europe and America by imposing ever-tougher fuel-efficiency standards on vehicles are also being adopted in the emerging economies. China recently introduced its own set of fuel-economy measures. If, as a result of its determination to reduce its dependence on imported oil, the regime imposes policies designed to “leapfrog” the country’s transport system to hybrids, oil demand will come under even more pressure.

. . . .

The biggest impact of declining demand could be geopolitical. Oil underpins Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy. The Kremlin will find it more difficult to impose its will on the country if its main source of patronage is diminished. The Saudi princes have relied on a high oil price to balance their budgets while paying for lavish social programmes to placate the restless young generation that has taken to the streets elsewhere. Their huge financial reserves can plug the gap for a while; but if the oil flows into the kingdom’s coffers less readily, buying off the opposition will be harder and the chances of upheaval greater. And if America is heading towards shale-powered energy self-sufficiency, it is unlikely to be as indulgent in future towards the Arab allies it propped up in the past. In its rise, oil has fuelled many conflicts. It may continue to do so as it falls. For all that, most people will welcome the change.
===========================

 

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Yes it is. 33 pages back I said essentially the same:

Two posts later, Futilitist said one could not understand my "peak demand theory" and a few posts later called it a "whacky theory." As he never admits an error, he must think the Economist is whacky too!

He has not learned that man adapts, even when told how as in my post 896* above, and just a few posts back (#1499) he still states same message as his OP:
"Our civilization has vastly overshot it's resource base, and a collapse and die off are simply inevitable. It is just a question of when, not if."

*or in post 1436, where it is shown, with some details and numerical analysis, that in the decade required to replace the current gasoline powered cars with others, especially sugar cane alcohol fueled IC cars needing only very modest modifications, both to the existing cars and to the car factories, the entire world could cease burning oil.

In view of the last part of post 1542, (section now red so you can find it with ease) that may not only be very desirable, it MAY be necessary for human survival.

PS by Futilitis's whacky theory, we should all be dead 100 year ago when we ran out of whale oil - or at least illiterate savages without light at night.

 

[video=youtube;Z0GFRcFm-aY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY[/video]

as/re futilitist:

different forums, same story.

Within 120 years everyone alive now will be dead.
.....................
(wild guess dujour)
We ain't at peak oil production yet--------------soon(remains undefined)

 

It is now the fall. Haven't seen any "major social unrest" beyond the fighting in Syria. The economy in the US and in Europe continues to recover. Time for a "reprediction?"

 

lets wait until late October 2013 (not Halloween 2014):

Its a funny thing about things, like living beyond your means, borrowing from China, etc. that "cannot be sustained indefinitely." - They aren't.

See link for more on why Congress is more inept this time.

 

Well, over a year has gone by since this particular "end of the world as we know it" prediction and - nothing much has changed. We've even made it past October without some sort of catastrophic budget collapse.

Summer has come and gone, and no major social unrest. 90-95% of humanity has, oddly enough, not died off. The economy continues its anemic recovery, the climate continues warming more slowly than our worst case predictions, and we continue to creep forwards on energy efficiency, smart grids, alternative energy sources etc.

 

I'd been considering bringing this thread back as well. Besides pointing out the obvious failure of the Futilitist's predictions, the EIA pre-released their 2014 energy outlook last month, which includes:

-An increase in predicted vehicle (car) miles traveled projections, but:
-A decrease in gasoline usage projections due to faster than previously predicted efficiency improvements.
-Faster than previously projected domestic oil production growth and a higher than previously projected peak. And:
-Faster than previously projected domestic natural gas production growth and a higher than previously projected peak.

In short, our energy prospects look good for the next several decades and the impact of the disruptive new technologies has not been fully incorporated into those predictions, making the predictions look even better from one year to the next.

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/pdf/0383er(2014).pdf

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/pdf/0383er(2014).pdf

 

Yes, Futilist's collapse "coming soon" as world is running out of oil has proven to be non-sense, as I stated many times it would be earlier in this thread; However I did, and still do, agree a collapse is coming.

I even bravely (or foolishly?) told when nearly 7 years ago! I did give my self a + or - 7% margin of error on the date. (7years x12months x 0.07 = 5.9 months) Thus, I still expect a run on the dollar 31 October2014 (end of month 10) so we enter my error range, shortly after April fools day. That seems appropriate for a nation that is still creating 3/4 of a trillion new thin-air dollars annually to mainly boost stock prices for the already rich.

Just at end of 3Q13, I replied to your post (directed at Futulist, not me) in post 1547 with: "lets wait until late October 2013 (not Halloween 2014)" as I did expect (as has come true) some social / governmental problems to be evident as "pre-cursors" to the coming Halloween 2014 collapse as stresses were building.

For example in addition to Syria, (and its adverse effect on Jordan, etc.) that was known last year, but now:
(1) Egypt has fallen back into the military dictatorship, tourist don't come, the economy is in such state of shambles that many are going hungry, now.
(2) Ukraine has had more than two months with 100,000+ demonstrating on the streets every week-end in bitterly cold weather, and they have forced the entire cabinet to resign, with government likely to fall soon.
(3) Bosnia and Herzegovina & Lebanon are both on the verge of separate civil wars, again.
(4) There is starvation in South Sudan now.
(5) Iraq is in much worse state than when Saddam ruled - on the verge of civil war (Sunni vs. Shiite) and a de facto Kurdistan exist in the NE part and signs the contracts for its oil to be extracted with no need to even tell Baghdad what it has done. (as I predicted before the 2nd Iraq war even started it would if US the second time did not have the good sense to avoid sending the army in to get rid of Saddam, as first Bush president did have.)
(6) Turkey has seen its currency fall at least 15% in a week, and has great internal political conflict after street demonstrations
(7) and of course no progress is being made toward the "two state" solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
(8) Cyprus has set the example of how US et.al. will pay part of their debts - confiscate large bank accounts and retirement fund assets
On this note the new "My RA" is really Social Security II. I.e. like the original, a new "Ponzi source" of income the government can spend now and issue bonds to a trust fund. The SS trust fund is now in "collection mode" with SS payments greater than the SS tax income, a drain on the Treasury, not the funding source it was until about 3 years ago.

 

Anyone know if this is true?

1980 + 500/18.4 = 2007.17 which is 5+ years ago, but their sales have decreased over the years I think so, it might be true. The Saudi ability to enforce the PetroDollar is very probably already over. I.e. Some years ago when Saddam started to accept non-dollar payments, the Saudis turned on the pumps and drove the price below $10/ barrel. As Saddam's production cost was at least $17/ barrel he quickly got the message and resumed membership in the petrodollar club.

 

For the real scary Apocalypse (large scale extermination of most mammals, humans included) see: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?97892-Climate-gate&p=3186464&viewfull=1#post3186464
But here, from today released report of 300 scientists are some minor effects now observed.

 

Hey Futilitist, what went right? Why are you so wrong?

But my time to at least taste some crow may be coming soon: I entered my + or - one month timing error margins yesterday (on my call made more than 7 years ago that run on dollar would happen on Halloween 2014). Like you, no doubt, I will just admit (on 1Dec14) I got the timing worng if dollar is still showing strength.

 

The apocalypse only occurs for those who see the glass half empty. Or if you lack belief, or lie. Or whatever, but it won't happen because all of that stuff won't exist because God is good and mr. Good is God.

 

Yet ebola exist and so did Hitler's mass murdering when a simple heart attack might have ended it.

 

Still, this world is an ever changing position of perception. It's all about what you know, and how deep you can reason and use logic. Whoever said pandora doesn't go back in the box hasn't reasoned with it. For the sake of happiness the ebolas of the world. And the Hitler of history will become nill to all our senses. We will be left with the knowledge that Hitler is certainly gone to not.

 

Hard to follow your point here, assuming you have one. All I was noting was that you can not assume God will step in and avoid economic collapse as he did not is some quite serious disasters. (I assume here that God does not take his/her "marching orders" form you.)

 

Double

 

Happiness is my point. Your disasters don't exist to happy head. All negativity can be reasoned to non existence, even to have not happened. You just need knowledge and lots of it. Happiness will take care of things.