Too many cooks spoil the broth — TheMadFool

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics." is very good. But the most pungent proverb I know of was coined by Dr. Thomas Lehrer, Harvard Mathematics professor:

"What you get out of a sewer depends on what you put into it."

I'm not sure if that's directed at me — Moliere

Sorry, I wasn't thinking of you at that moment.

Are we the individual, here to carry out some Protestant Work Ethic ethos? In more general terms, are we here to maintain institutions? To consume, to work, to live in a country is to maintain its institutions. Are we the maintenance crew of some sort of institutional perpetuation. — schopenhauer1

You may not care, but the Protestant Work Ethic (as conceived by Luther) is that all work is holy and in the service of God and one another. Capitalism certainly doesn't give a rat's ass about work being holy, but it took over the PWE for it's own purposes.

On the topic of what we are here for, Jesus the Primo Protestant said

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"

From a Christian POV (Protestant or Catholic) that is what we are here for.

As for the Protest Work Ethic, what the Protestant agitator himself (Luther) said was:

…the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks…all works are measured before God by faith alone.

All work is holy work, and it is through our work that we care for each other--love one another.

This is ONE VIEW of why we are here. I recommend it only to the extent that it beats whatever you've got.

wind-eggs — Cavacava

Never heard of this before.

Yes, for instance... Leftists in America having so little real assets to fight over, go for each others throats on the very finest points of theory, and denounce each other for not having precisely the correct view of the current struggle for... unionization among Mt. Everest sherpas, or something. The fact is, most of the leftists in America share a lot (like 95%) of the same ideology. Their publications, however, don't all use the same typeface. They might as well fight over that!

In this sense, you are 100% correct: ideology in public can be a damned nuisance, IF it get's in the way of common effort among people who essentially agree.

Ideology:
• a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy: the ideology of republicanism.
• the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual: a critique of bourgeois ideology.

• archaic visionary speculation, especially of an unrealistic or idealistic nature.

late 18th cent. ( sense 2): from French idéologie, from Greek idea ‘form, pattern’ + -logos (denoting discourse or compilation).

Peak Ideology was reached in the late 20th century; use of the both senses of the term is declining. Moreover, ideology's day in the sun has been short -- the first usage (or the second -- Google Ngram didn't differentiate) really picked up about 1950. The archaic usage catches the flavor of one current pejorative meaning -- unrealistic.

In some ways, 'ideology' gets a bad rap. But generally, ideology is just an organized set of ideas. How they are presented might be an expression of the individuals presenting, or it might be an effect of the ideas themselves. The ideology of dictators will be dictated.

For instance, I was at a workshop on cognitive behavioral therapy, and the presenter said (really!) "I expect 100% agreement with this method." She was serious about the 100% bit. There is nothing about cognitive behavioral therapy that requires this sort of rigid dictatorial approach. The presenter was merely a rigid hitch.

I have found the ideas in basic Marxist writings to be very helpful, and the ideology of Socialist Laborism (from Daniel DeLeon, a 19th-20th century American Marxist) to be helpful in organizing my thinking about capitalism and social change. The ideology of the Democrat and Republican parties has not been helpful in that respect -- it's more of a hindrance.

that at a subliminal level human beings in fact contain an understanding of all things — Robert Lockhart

It's a funny old world where ideas like that are still given credence. The truth is closer to "on many levels people don't know jack shit".

as a "simple utmost truth" it's not doing much for me.

I don't have a huge amount of trust in the class that owns and operates nuclear power plants. Would they cut corners to save money and increase the risk? Is the pope Catholic?

And BC, don't correct my narrative. It's factual. :P — Mongrel

What are you referencing?

I also drive a hybrid vehicle — aletheist

Driving a hybrid is better than driving a gas guzzling highway behemoth, for sure. But... the model of halo you get for driving a hybrid vehicle is made out of cheap yellow plastic. It never glows--even in bright light--and you have to hold it over your head yourself.

Australian Greens — Wayfarer

Boil the greens until tender.

Wind turbines slow the movement of air that was set into motion by mostly atmospheric pressure — VagabondSpectre

True. So do hills, mountains, tall buildings, and big trees. "A turbine's 116-ft blades atop a 212-ft tower for a total height of 328 feet sweep a vertical airspace of just under an acre. The air above 328 feet (all the way up for miles) is sublimely indifferent to windmills, even if there were 1 million of them.

Nuclear energy is filthy — VagabondSpectre

It's "clean" in terms of carbon dioxide (though it isn't 100% pure on that front either.

Nuclear energy could be better (safer) IF we standardized parts (the way the French have).

Nuclear power would be safer if we took the dangers more seriously. The design of the Fukushima nuclear plants put the storage pool for very radioactive and thermally hot fuel rods on an upper floor of the plant. The same design is used in many other nuclear plants. The nuclear reactors themselves are not in a melt-proof bottle. When things go wrong with a nuclear reactor, things can get very bad very fast.

Nuclear power would be safer if we buried the waste very deeply in very long term storage. Can we build long term storage? Sure we can, but "the perfectly safe" storage cavern is impeding the progress of the extremely safe storage cavern (like Yucca Mountain). So instead of burial, we have it piling up on the grounds of nuclear plants. Not good, Kemosabe.

No method of sequestering nuclear waste will last forever, but then, highly radioactive isotopes don't last forever, either. Most of them last a lot longer than we can plan for, however. Who knows what shape human culture will be in 200 years from now? 2000? 20,000? However we put it there, it has to stay stable without further attention for what...25000 years, give or take a few millennia or two.

The list is too inclusive to differentiate fascism from other kinds of political arrangements. Most of these have existed in most western countries fairly often, to varying degrees. Are all these countries therefore fascist? I don't think so.

A tighter definition of fascism than this list is needed.

I am totally opposed to labor power being suppressed, but suppressing labor, in itself, isn't fascism. It's a common practice of the small wealth-monopolizing class. Anti-intellectualism and disdain for the arts is a major flaw among people who are educated; I don't consider it surprising that the proles react to intellectual condescension and artistic obscurantism with disdain.

Intense nationalism, disdain for human rights, a conservative religious establishment serving a militaristic society, and an obsession with national security focused on an enemy (real or imagined) brought together in a political program -- that comes closer to what I think of as fascism.

Fraudulent elections, corruption and cronyism, corporate power protected, controlled media, rampant sexism, etc. are not good by any stretch, but they aren't fascism, either.

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If a simulation is complete, and completely convincing, how could one possibly know that it was a simulation? Likewise with divine creation: How could one know that a divine entity had or had not created the universe?

The most sensible theory about existence is the simplest and most parsimonious explanation: this world really exists; we are really in it.

It could be that the world is a simulation; it could be that the divine being said to have created the world is running the simulation; it could be that we exist in a video game of enormous complexity and are not real. But one has to bend over backwards and turn one's self inside out to think that this is so.

There are various technologies that can provide energy and/or liquid fuel: coal made into gasoline; biomass made into gas or liquid; nuclear; solar; wind; hydro; etc. The problem with all of these is that can not provide the huge output of chemicals and energy at a price or in volume that petroleum has provided. The world uses 96 million barrels of petroleum per day. That's 4 billion gallons. I don't see any sustainable alternate energy source that can do that. The world also uses huge amounts of natural gas every day.

What the alternates (aside from nuclear energy) can do is provide methane for limited use, and modest output of energy. These outputs will be lifesavers for small areas that have these systems in place when oil becomes too expensive to use for fuel. Turning animal waste, garbage, plant waste, etc. into methane for cooking can be done quite easily, but in fairly limited quantities. Solar and wind would make a major difference to a small population with no other source of electrical energy. For very large populations, solar and wind probably won't produce enough.

Using alternative fuels for 7 billion people (and rising) is a non-starter.

The whole modern world economy is a result of inexpensive oil, and there is nothing that can "fill its shoes".

The BDO is speculative, for sure. But at some point, insufficient agricultural production will result in population reduction. It can't help but reduce the population.

Kunstler goes off the deep end, I think, in his predictions about disease and horrific global pandemics. Unless some mad scientist/evil political cabal decided to bring back small pox, or engineered a really devastating influenza virus (worse than the 1918 version), I don't see a disease-related MDO.

But starvation is still a real and present danger, not tomorrow or next week -- but we have had crop failures on a national scale in the recent past -- fortunately compensated by good crops elsewhere (like in Australia and Argentina when the USA or Russian wheat fields did poorly). Insects, unseasonable rain, drought, hot weather, late or early frost, wheat rust, corn smut, etc. are all potential threats to a particular harvest.

Water is, indeed, a highly problematic element in our future.

Just as oil is not all equal, coal isn't all equal either. Some coal deposits are better quality than others. Some coal deposits are easier to get at than other deposits. Even if it was all good, would that be 200 years of using coal for synfuels, steam power, electrical generation, et al? Probably not, and don't forget yet another horseman of the apocalypse--global warming.

Plus, tearing up land to get at coal, and extracting and processing coal is very dirty; it produces a lot of very bad crap.

Are you sure we even have a future? — TimeLine

I hope we have some sort of future, but... No, not sure.

Coal/steam equipment could be made again, but it hasn't been made in around 60-70 years. We'd have to research, retool and rediscover techniques for it's optimal operation. The last steam train I saw actually working was in the early 1950s. Also, coal is pretty dirty (global warming) and there isn't an infinite supply of high quality coal, either.

as we have abundant plutonium — Wayfarer

And just how did you get all that plutonium, and what is Australia planning to do with it? Or maybe you have abundant uranium?

Huge amounts of stuff to be hauled--for one. Concrete and steel are made with fossil fuel--huge amounts of heat needed to make portland cement and steel. Construction equipment all runs on oil. All of the vital pumps in a nuclear power plant (or any other kind of plant for that matter) require heavy duty lubrication. Things like that.

In other words, for most of society as naive realists or materialists it feels intuitive to think that when you die there is nothing — intrapersona

There is little evidence that most of society thinks there is nothing after death. A solid majority in quite a few societies thinks there is something after death.

Their opinions are no proof. But neither are the beliefs of the those who are pretty sure nothing follows death.

That death means eternal rest in the arms of God, or eternal nothingness can both be comforting, and when one contemplates one's death, people want to feel comforted that there either is something (like heaven) or there is nothing. The two options serve peace of mind differently.

renewable energy is a technology the military has no time for. — TimeLine

Right. I don't see the pentagon running big windmills and biomass plants to keep the aircraft carriers going.

Kunstler (among others) is very pessimistic-to-downright dismissive of renewable and alternate energy schemes. He doesn't claim that solar panels or windmills don't work, of course. They do. But they are dependent on affordable and readily available oil for their manufacture, transportation, and installation--as is so much else.

Synthetic oil can be manufactured from coal; biomass will produce gas and oil. What they won't and can't do is produce petroleum replacement in the quantity that 7 billion people require, and there isn't enough coal and biomes.

So what will we all be doing in the future?

What we will all be doing is trying to grow food. Farming is our future because without oil (tractors, combines, all the heavy duty equipment) we'll all be out hoeing what crops we can grow on whatever land we can find. What happened to all the land? It will still be there -- just that most people don't live on the land anymore. Most people live in cities, and it will take time to redistribute remaining populations.

Remaining populations? There will, of necessity be a "population decline" shall we say? A big die off. Oil gave us the carrying capacity for 7 billion. No oil, no 7 billion.

Your fable is quite precisely Kunstler's point in The Long Emergency. Our efforts to adapt to the depletion of our oil puddle will be frustrated by the fact that most of our 20th and 21st century technology is predicated on cheap plentiful oil. Without cheap plentiful oil, it will be very difficult for us to do what we might want to do.

For instance, world-wide nuclear generating plants can not be fabricated, transported, and built without oil. Neither can world-wide solar and wind technology. Life as we know it doesn't work without cheap oil and gas.

There will be a Big Die OFF (BDO). The BDO will leave survivors who will have to be very clever to find ways to operate using low and lower-tech methods. They who can grow potatoes will live better than they who know not how a potato grows. They who have an old wood stove, a big tree, and an axe to grind will survive winter better than they living in the all-electric high rise.

As your fable concluded,

Unsurprisingly, things went badly. — hypericin

believe shale methane hasn't reached peak yet. And last I recall there is something like 200 years worth for the US to run off in the country alone. Also, shale oil/gas is a US innovation that hasn't yet taken hold of the rest of the world due to limiting the tech to the US to benefit initially from it the most last I recall. — Question

All fossil fuel has to be extractible at an energy cost substantially less than the energy produced, or it is not worth doing by any measurement. After the end of the fairly short Age of Fossil Fuel there will be a lot of oil and gas still in the ground because it can only be extracted by putting more energy into the extraction than is gotten out of it. That doesn't make any kind of sense, and it won't be done.

The same goes for all other energy projects: The output has to substantially exceed the input. Hydrogen, for example, isn't freely available on earth. It has to be pried out of its preferred molecular forms. That takes substantial energy. Hydrogen, once obtained, is expensive to move, expensive to store, and is far more dangerous than methane. It's also corrosive (because it interacts with other elements) which is a problem for moving, storing, and using it.

I agree -- global warming is in progress and it won't be put into reverse any time soon.

Global warming is thawing the permafrosted organic matter in the arctic areas of Canada and Eurasia. As it thaws, it rots producing methane. Whatever organic matter is under the ice in Antarctica won't be thawing in the near or intermediate future

I'm obviously joking, but I certainly don't want to be the first on Mars. — Question

You may not want to be the first person on Mars, but somebody has to go there to investigate geothermal energy on the Red Planet. You have an interest in that. It will be a lonely dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

This is true: without oil (and all the technology that depends on cheap oil) there will be less reason -- and ability -- to go to war on a big scale, like WWII. But there will be plenty of fighting over the last few billion barrels of oil, rest assured.

There's also natural gas as mentioned — Question

Sorry, natural gas passed it's peak of production too.

Do you see any signs of miracle births?

Also, I wouldn't count on a lack of oil bringing an end to war. People did just fine fighting wars before the first bucket of oil was poured into a barrel.

At some point diesel could become so expensive that entirely electric based alternatives (which have yet to be designed as far as i know) will have to become the replacement. — VagabondSpectre

Freight trains, for instance, can run on electricity. You know those long trains pulled by 6 engines...? The 6 are needed only to get the mile long train moving up to speed. Once a mile long train is moving, it only takes 1 diesel locomotive to keep it moving (barring a climb through the mountains, say).

I don't know if electrified trains make sense to move coal from Wyoming to Atlanta, for instance (assuming Atlanta couldn't find any other way to generate electricity by non-hydrocarbon methods).

Anyway, here in Australia, we had one of the world's best Carbon Emissions schemes, and the then government abolished it, having first politicized the whole question, and we're now 'skating backwards at the speed of light', to quote Steely Dan. It's a disgrace and an act of perfidy on an international scale. — Wayfarer

It is incomprehensible to me, it really is, why your (or my) government, and our industrial leaders can not grasp ANYTHING about climate warming, alternate energy, peak oil, or anything else. I mean, sometimes I can't see any angle in their opposition that would benefit them. Like with ObamaCare -- what makes people froth at the mouth over it?

Carbon taxes, for instances, affect all industries equally (presumably). No competitor is getting an advantage because everybody pays the tax. Usually businesses accept that kind of economy-wide tax. It's an equitable scheme directed toward a sensible end (reducing the severity of global warming).

it's not a question of when we switch to alternate sources, but a question of how long the switch will take. — Pneumenon

This is true.

The "proliferation of alternate energy" is a good thing but I don't think this accounts for cheap oil right now. All the oil that is offered is getting bought; prices are not high. Why? Because the biggest oil produces don't want to cut back--thus making prices rise, and destabilize the industrial economies that buy their oil. Plus, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, UAE, et al can not afford either a reduction in income or an unstable world economy. The population of the middle east oil producers grew enormously with the income of oil income. Even some of the non-producers grew as a result. The oil regimes need to keep the cash flowing in their oil economies OR face possible regime change in an uprising of the people.

Besides, wind and solar supply electricity. Oil isn't used much for electrical production in most situations. Where oil is used is in diesel powered generation plants which run only when absolutely necessary to take up slack on the grid. Most of the time those plants are sitting idle.

the known reserves of oil were enormously increased by some major finds, like the Tupi ocean field, off Brazil, and the sudden and unexpected resurgence of American oil production. — Wayfarer

The Tupi (now Lula) field has 8 billion barrels -- about 3 months worth of global demand.

The US passed it's peak production years ago; that means the best quality, cheapest-to-produce oil has been sucked out o the ground and used up. "Peak" doesn't mean "the last", so sure, we have more to pump and we can pump more. But the return on investment, or EROEI (energy return on energy invested that Apokrisis mentioned) is much less favorable, and it will continue to get more unfavorable. Also, the more we pump now, the sooner we we reach the 1:1 ratio, where it takes as much energy to get the oil out as there is in the oil.

A good share of the Bakken field in North Dakota is shut down now, because the price producers get for crude right now isn't high enough to support the cost of fracking.

What's true for the US is true for the world: The world has passed peak production. Even Saudi Arabia has to squeeze to get oil out of one of its huge fields. It pumps sea water in to squeeze out more oil, but it also brings up a lot of that sea water with it. (That isn't to say S.A. is about to run out of oil next week.)

Thermal depolymerization holds a great deal of promise and is already up and running. But whatever technological advances come the final instance of life with oil and life without will never come. What will come is an agonizing reappraisal of who or what wakes up with all the chips when we start doing things a different way. I suspect that is your point. — Monitor

What is the cost-benefit of thermal depolymerization? How much energy input (heat and pressure) does it take to get so much energy output? If oil disappeared, my guess is that the feedstock would be pretty much plant based, and that the end product would be somewhat different.

James Howard Kunstler for sure thinks there will be an agonizing reappraisal.

I accidentally flagged your post. Sorry. Can't de-flag it.

Oil companies are already interested in renewable energy and non-petroleum industries.

The thing about diminishing oil is that it might not be all that gradual, and by and large there are no other substances that readily replace oil as chemical feedstock. Oil doesn't just provide energy.