I suspect the world economy will decline from now on due to resource thinning and accumulated burdens. However one Federal Treasurer and RBA Governor after another assure us everything must get better. Look at the evidence. Casualisation of work, inability to buy a home, relentless food and fuel price inflation rising higher than wages. Young people question whether it is worth incurring a HECS debt to go to uni to be subsequently underemployed.

Complicating the message is the fact up til now Asia wants to buy our commodities so they can also consume big time. As that phenomenon wanes perhaps everybody will realise there is not enough wealth to go round. A temporary hiccup the suits will tell us. Let's see what it's like five years from now.

Meanwhile the lying rodent was featured in this mornings papers predicting that everything is going to get better and better for everyone both here in Australia and everywhere else too.

It has been a while since we've had a 'we're all rooned' story from the anti-population lobby.

Michael is the titular head of the Stop Population Growth Now Party, "a body of Australians seeking to reduce Australia's population growth to zero as a matter of urgency." (from his website).

When every you read stories such as these think to yourself 'this isn't a story about energy or economics, it's a story about zero population'.

People who advocate for ZPG have more in common with the American National Rifle Association than any pro-environment movement.

Not only are they anti-family - they want to legislate what you do in bed. What they know about economics and trade positions you could etch on the head of a pin head.

No doubt about the “big” part, but lies and fantasies morph into each other in this world of politics, where ordered society is led by a supremacy of narrowly focused competition: this is the engine pulling the train of social/economic advancement.

The ancient Greeks, as they plundered their own and neighouring landscapes, had their fantasies - such as the horn of plenty. During his infancy, the God Zeuss suckled from this, and out of it came unlimited goodies. More than three millennia later, we are not fundamentally different. We have done little more than accelerate processes, especially during the past two centuries. And if that other cornucopian energy source, human-engineered atomic fusion, become available - what would that do? Unfortunately it would accelerate the approaching depletion of all fundamental resources upon which our species depends.

With a continuing material growth paragidm, that is inevitable.

There's nothing wrong with a good lie if it gets you laid.

Just ask any Co2 hugging global warming scientist. They know its DNGW (Dirty Nappy Global climate change) that is occuring but there are penalties beyond comprehension for telling that truth. Women can be bitches if they are not allowed to destroy the environment with their issue and get away with it scott-free and with ribbons and bows on.

Easier to blame CO2 and get famous, rich and laid!
And while we're at it there will never be Peak Oil and there will always be strong 4% economic growth because the world's resources are infinite. If this were not true Our Governments would not be so powerful and clearly we ARE.

As long as the world is full of suckers - never give 'em an Even break!

Yours truly Wayne Swan

Australian Treasure par excellence.

Michael Lardelli

The present upheaval in the energy industry as a "small uptick" in shale oil production.

BBBBBBWWWWWWWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!

Michael, have you given up reading altogether? Surely you cann't have cut yourself off from the energy industry news so completely as to ignore the massive increases in reserves of shale oil and gas? It is, most emphatically not a figment of anyone's imagination or a lie. Canada has become a major oil producer whether it fits in with your beliefs or not.

While there is necessarily some initial hype associated with these discoveries, don't kid yourself that it will go away or that US oil production will not escalate - albeit after a few years.

Production has levelled off in the past few years, mainly due to OPEC's failure to invest in production facilities, but the industry itself has taken a massive turn that has thrown all projections of a few years ago out the window.

The article is basically nutty throwback and should be ignored.

Meanwhile of course plain old water is more fundamental to human and biological life that any form of external energy. Our bodies are structured water - 75-80% wate.
No water no life.

Everybody knows that the most of the world is confronted by a humungous water supply problem. And that the ever increasing human numbers and the consequent world-wide demand by everyone to live the "good life" as defined by TV advertisements and glossy magazines, is exascerbating this situation.

Such is an inescapable zero-sum game which no kind of technological cleverness can turn around.

Daffy Duck

Water supply problem? After two years of flooding you are seriously pushing water supply issues? What water shortages where?

Boy oh boy Cheryl, do you ever need a cold shower!

Twice recently I’ve tried to entertain a bit of discussion with you but you won’t be drawn into it. You won’t come back and defend your nutty statements. So I won’t try here.

Alright, I’ll let you go have that shower!

Curmudgeon you've been watching too many repeats of 'Top Gear'. If there's so much new oil how come unleaded petrol is now $1.50? The world is on a volume plateau of 85-90 million barrels a day but a lot of that like biofuel and tar sands is less energy rich than petroleum. There's also the slight problem of 2 bn people who want to drive cars but don't have one. That could be why they are heading to Australia in leaky boats to join our happy motoring society.

Even if we stay on the liquid fuels volume plateau for a few more years the price of everything like food and transport will keep going up. When fuel production declines then what? I'm not seeing too many battery powered semitrailers on the road. Things must go bad, it's just a question of sooner or later.

Hasn't abiotic oil been discovered? They're making it in Russia using some microbes. Big oil doesn't want the process released because they will be out of business.

The green movement and AGW have been so good for Big Oil; they have stopped exploration and made oil relatively scarcer and allowed prices to increase.

And what about thorium? Generally there is enough uranium in the oceans to power humanity for a million years.

And gas, and fusion and ZPE. Anything except wind and solar.

And remember individual prosperity is the best social contraceptive, assuming there is no religious imprimateur operating in the society, which stops prosperity anyway, so if people are rich and not religious they will generally have less sprogs.

And cheap, reliable energy is the only way of achieving prosperity.

What a misery guts article!

Curmudgeon - I did say that most of the the world has water problems - this in an undeniable fact. Even mainstream hard-headed economists (even The Economist Magazine) and techno-realists know that this is the case.
In fact I did not even mention Australia.
But dont let the facts get in the way of your blinkered ideology.

Let me paint an energy scenario for you. You live in a large high rise or modest village/suburb. The body corp/local council treats all biological waste onsite. Given we will almost always create biological waste the resultant energy will be both carbon neutral and endlessly sustainable.
All biological waste is fed through a 2 tank system, set at the lowest point to eliminate as much as possible energy sapping pumping stations. The first tank, roughly the size of a shipping container thoroughly sterilises the "product" and the second generates copious quantities of methane on site. The methane is stored in a simple bladder and is fed into a ceramic fuel cell on demand. Enough energy is created to completely power the high rise or village. A by product of the process is endlessly available free hot water. The addition of food scraps and wastage creates a saleable energy surplus. The treated waste can then flow on to a nearby algae farm, where the nutrient load and the waste water combine to create 100,000's of tons of algae, annually. Algae consume twice their bodyweight in Co2 emission and under optimised conditions, double that bodyweight every 24 hours. Some algae are up to 60% oil, which is child's play to extract as a ready to use endlessly available ultra cheap bio-diesel.
We don't need population growth to support endlessly sustainable abundant lifestyles and a big enough economic pie to ensure everyone has enough of everything they need. All we need ever do is eliminate poverty in all its forms wherever we find it. This along with complete recycling, and the end of designed obsolescence, will allow a natural and sustainable economic growth pattern to progress and prosper us all.
We are surrounded by water and recent design advances make desalination, more economically viable than myriad dams designed to store and evaporate copious quantities of rainfall. Similarly, wind-powered dehumidifiers, can supply most households total needs. Sensible recycling, will address climate change; but only if we humans avail ourselves of the foregoing or similar solutions, during this very decade. Rhrosty

Dear Ludwig, that's because your posts ends up in self referentialism which posits that technology is bad, people are bad, the earth is doomed. But at least you're honest.

The 'big lie' here is that the article is a front for depopulating the earth. It's barking mad and so are you if you support this kind of thinking - which I don't believe you do.

This article is a trifecta of loony demand side thinking that blames the human body for consuming oil while attacking capitalism for destroying the earth and causing climate change.

When an author resorts to paranoid fruitloops like shadowstats to “prove” that governments are “lying” to us about economic growth, you can tell they are getting desperate. Apart from confusing shadowstats’ arguments about manipulation of the CPI and GDP growth, does anyone really think we’d have a better measure of inflation or economic activity if assume we still have the spending patterns of 1980 (when no-one had a desktop or laptop computer, internet service or mobile phone, for example)?

Let me add to my previous post by saying we are not discussing pie in the sky solutions. The onsite creation of power through digesters, is already in operation on Norfolk Island, Great Britain, and Denmark. A modest firm in Melbourne is manufacturing ceramic fuel cells, which work just as well on methane as hydrogen. An firm in Perth manufactures wind powered dehumidifiers. Gatton university has bred a diesel tree, which reportedly can supply up to 5 tons of diesel per annum per tree. Bio-diesel refiners are currently made on the Gold Coast and are available from around$15,000 per basic unit. Wave power has already been trialled here and the lower level compression chamber and the automatically reversing fan blades have proven that this endlessly sustainable energy solution is going to be cheaper than coal-fired power, as will tidal hydro solutions that utilise our northern tides, which occur twice every 24 hours and regularly exceed 40 foot/10 metres. A locally developed battery system incorporates capacitors, which enables recharging in just minutes, while you take a comfort break or quick cup of coffee.
We have a veritable plethora of locally available solutions/innovation, some of which like commercial algae production, will save our coal-fired power stations/coal exports/steel production; and the very cheap energy that gave us our most viable manufacturing industries; and international competitive edge.
All that appears to be missing is the pro Australia leaders, who understand this and indeed, the fact that we do not need to sell our souls to the devil or international cartels, with their great big bags of debt funded capital; to decarb the economy, when we can more readily access the very same sources of capital more cheaply; through the long overdue introduction of thirty year bonds and comprehensive tax reform and vast simplification, which I've exhaustively outlined elsewhere. Rhrosty.

Humanity’s faith in what I call the Pollyanna Principle - everything will work out right in the end - is eternal. After all, it is what gets us through the day.

Unfortunately, the same principle applied in the early 1930s allowed Hitler to set the world on fire. A quick glance through any textbook on world history would show that the Pollyanna Principle does not apply to the many civilizations that lie buried beneath the mud.
Writers on these issues are so fastidious about statistics and probabilities, admirably, because of such is the nature of science, yet they usually fail to pay attention to detail when writing the last chapter of a book, the unit on "what must be done."

In the first place, how likely is it that such massive change in human behaviour will ever take place? It would be necessary for a large percentage of the human race to become literate, to read books, and to understand difficult scientific abstractions, scholarly entanglements which are neither comic nor tragic but simply unpropitious. Yet that is precisely the opposite of how most people behave.

Secondly, the entire political structure of every country would have to be changed almost instantly. The system would have to be utterly transformed so that political representatives were chosen, not from among those who have learned the art of buying votes, but from a group of philosopher-kings like those of Plato’s Republic and I’m not sure I would want to trust even those people.

Thirdly, the head of each country would have to go on television, disrupt the leading prime-time program, and announce that the driving of automobiles was henceforth largely banned. It would have to be explained that tax incentives would be provided to people who have few or no children. All of that is certainly unlikely, one of the worst at devouring and polluting, and that consistently boycotts all serious international efforts at solving global problems.

Since all of that is highly improbable, it might make more sense to say, "A catastrophe is inevitable. What do we do next?"

Daffy Duck/Taswegian

Taswegion - I'm well aware that petrol prices are high, the question is why are they high? The peak oil scenario that the world is running out of oil died some time back. The article's author is one of the few die hards left in the area. The actual reason has to do with OPEC not investing in production facilities, while unconventional oil expands to make up the shortfall. If the world economy had not be subdued of late, incidentally, prices would be higher.

Daffy Duck - I think you're talking about lack of potable water in lessor developed countries etc which has been the case for many years. But if you want to talk about drought in Aus, you're too late by a couple of years..

Great article thanks Michael. It would be nice to think that techno-optimists like Rhostry are right because they are the only reason I get up in the morning. I need to believe that something will save us or at least give us a softer landing than we might otherwise have. It's going to be very disruptive economically when we come off the "rough plateau" that oil production has been on since 2005. Curmudgeon, you claim that oil companies are not investing enough. Come on. They have $100 a barrel or more to play around with and the reality is that the only stuff left is very expensive to produce/extract with very low EROEI. Michael is right. The shale oil currently being mined in the US is only going to extend the plateau for a very little while. After that it is oil decline and we're going to have to deal with it, like it or not.

Curmudgeon, your continued denial/cognitive dissonance towards the very possibility that there are limits to economic growth always amuses me. The 'peak oil scenario' may have died in your mind, however three highly respected journals (Science, Nature and Energy - see: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-02-13/three-major-journals-publish-articles-limited-world-oil-supply) certainly don't seem to think so. You also consistenly seem to confuse the total reserves available with production rates, this of course being the whole crux of the peak oil issue.

And perhaps you should read the following article on US oil resources versus reserves. As always the devil is in the detail, whilst there might be vast resources, the reserves are far less promising.

(http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-04/does-us-really-have-more-oil-saudi-arabia)

And if you want to understand why OPEC might not be investing (what evidence is there to support this asertion?)enough perhaps read the late Matthew Simmons 'Twilight in the Desert.' Its a hefty tome but explains the challenges facing OPEC from a geologic and technical perspective.

Thanks for responding Cheryl. I’m glad I was sitting down when I noticed it!

You wrote:

<< that's because your posts ends up in self referentialism which posits that technology is bad, people are bad, the earth is doomed >>

Ooohhww!! Wow!! Gee!!

You know that when you assert things that you know are not true, you are lying!

<< …the article is a front for depopulating the earth. It's barking mad and so are you… >>

Now, that statement really IS barking mad! But funny! (:>)

Why do you make such enormously and blatantly absurd statements, Cheryl??

What IS your agenda?

There are two ways in which the Western Oligarchs keep their masses in constant slavery.One is the control of the money supply via the fractional reserve system of counterfeiting our productivity,the other is the ownership and control of energy.

The current wars in the Middle East and Africa is about the Western Military Industrial Complex starving China of energy like they did to Japan in 1942.

Peak Oil is just another lie,like Global Warming,y2K bugs,swine flu pigs flew,bird flu,Muslim Terrorism etc.Muslims seem to have too much oil on their territories,therefore they must be terrorists.

My interest is in the notion of the 'big lie'. If the author was talking of the USA, then I think he might have something, because (having lived and worked there) I would agree that the notion that anyone can get to be rich is alive and well there.

But here? In my large extended family and larger circle of friends and acquaintances I know no one past the age of about 16 who thinks like this. Yes, people want to have enough income to allow them to do some of the things they would like to do. But I've never heard anyone speak like this or act like this. Nor can I find it as a slogan or modus operandi in print. You can get a sense of it on television news and in reality shows, but that's about it.

So, on the evidence, if it is a lie, it's not a big one, for it doesn't seem to operate in our society.

As for peak oil, I am one who simply doesn't know. There are lots of arguments each way. Given the prevalence of gas, my guess is that if petrol becomes unreasonably expensive we will switch to gas, following the lead of buses and taxis.

There will never be a water shortage here because we have this huge river running all through Australia, called DE NIAL.
When the usual mob come out with their message of hope (that it is not happening) how can we be worried.
Then we have some input from the raging hormones department (you cannot stop us from having our babies) then we know that all is right with the world.
Spruiking the production of oil from Canada and the Bakken as a savior to our oil addiction is a bit over the top when you consider that it took the production from 6,617 wells to produce North Dakota's 546,000 b/d in January. Divide the daily production by the number of wells and you get an astoundingly low 82 b/d from each well. Astounding" because a good new offshore well can do 50,000 b/d.
This would not even keep the US air force in the air for a day let alone “The Amerikan way of life”.
Yes the article will be ignored except from the few who are following the development of the end of the world, as we know it.

Water supply problem?
Well yes you see the La Nina has been affecting the show for the last couple of years and when El Nino returns (as it surely will) it will be the mother of all el Ninos, which is when we start saying “ Do you remember when it rained?”

“Which posits that people are bad,”
It’s not that people are bad, it’s that too many people are bad. We still have a pair of political parties that embrace “big Australias” and are still paying woman to have babies, let alone paid maternity leave.
Also we are importing more and more “skilled” workers to man our vital industries that cannot be done by out large group of unemployed.
For imported skilled labour, read, willing to work for a lot less than an Australian in the same job.

leckos

it is you who are in denial. The Matthew Simmons book 'Twilight in the Desert' you quote has already been overtaken by events - as can be seen by a look at the copyright date and a check of the time lines set out in the book. The OPEC fields should have already dried up according to that book. But you did know that, right??

As for the rest of the stuff you quote, the key point to remember is that the main story is the decline in OPEC production and rise in unconventional/shale production. As OPEC has not been investing in production as it should you will get a plateau for some time.. So I don't necessarily disagree with at least two of the three articles you quote as far as they go.. Oil prices will also go up because unconventional stuff is more expensive than conventional.

As for the "assertion" about OPEC not investing enough on production one paper on this is in the September 2009 journal article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by James Smith an oil and gas economist. There are others to quote but that should give you enough to go on with.. I think its available online..

QUOTE
"It has been a while since we've had a 'we're all rooned' story from the anti-population lobby."
END QUOTE

Q. What is the difference between popoulation growth proponents and a computer?

A. You only have to punch the information into a computer once!

Curmudgeon, I don't own a copy of Twilight in the Desert and its been a year or more since I read it, but if memory serves me nowhere did Simmons suggest that Saudi Arabia's oil fields would have dried up by 2012. Rather he suggested that they would have significant trouble in maintaining let alone increasing production. Given that Saudi oil production has shown a slight decline, using production data to 2010, and oil prices have been stubbornly high, this suggests that either the Saudi's can't, or won't, raise production significantly. Whilst they claim significant excess capacity, most of this is suspected to be heavy sour crude that most refineries are not configured for. So whilst his thesis is yet to be proven, it is also yet to be disproven. Have you actually read the book, or just read a couple of internet reviews?

Overtaken by events! Since that books release we have had an unprecedented global economic crisis, oil prices reach $147 a barrel followed by a dramatic fall followed by sustained prices of around $100 a barrel, oil production continues its seven year plateau and the financial system is verging on imploding again thanks to confusion of money printing with wealth creation. Perhaps you might like to reword that statement. Maybe this is what being at the limits to growth looks like.

I am amazed that so many are so determined to poo poo the depletion
without even looking into it.
Curmudgeon, the Saudis have been pumping seawater into the fields that
they have kept their production almost constant. However they are in
most fields bring up around 50% water.
What is certain that having pumped in water, depletion will be faster.

Cheryl, Population plot ? You really are away with the fairies.
Never mind when depletion exceeds the shale oil production food will
be the concern not babies.

Rhrosty, all your suggestions are good and will have to be used on an
increasing scale. Which reminds me scale is the problem most do not understand.
Japan uses 8 million barrels a day. It has to have four super tankers
of 2 Million barrels arrive in its ports every day.
It takes about 100 day for a round trip to the Middle East.
So 400 2 million ton tankers are used just to supply Japan !
Now for the rest of us !

Geoff of Perth; well we all hope it will not be a catastrophe but
Hirsch said in his report that we had to start preparing to transition
to the new energy regime 20 years before peak.
When did the IEA say peak occurred ? 2006 !

Arjay; The Y2K bug was real ! The only reason it did not cause a
problem was because 100,000s of programmers worked overtime for a year
to fix the problem in millions of programs.

Don Aitkin; The US govt tried to hide the Hirsch report.
The Australian government tried to hide the BIRE report.
Oh yes we are being lied to by both sides.

Now that we are past peak oil there is not much hope for you all.

Welcome to the post peak oil world !

Judging by the burial sites, compassion and empathy is nearly as old as we are? As we've evolved, we encountered and overcome myriad problems.
What is that going to be like, when there are 9 billion of us living on a planet, which can only sustainably support around 1 billion?
Well we can be part of the solution or the problem.
Paddling a lifeboat has to be a cooperative enterprise, where everybody takes a turn at the oars; and, paddles in the same direction. Thinking within a very limited circle of ideas, limits the questions, and by implication the answers/choices?
[Wind, solar or anything else even more unreliable or expensive.]
Great, but only if you want to cruel the economy and dismantle our industrial base?
We pay $1.50 a litre for imported petrol and export our copious NG, which would, could and should power our traffic, for around 40 cents a cubic metre.
The fact that we still mine coal for coal-fired power stations and offshore steel makers; is, I believe, down to a handful of extremely recalcitrant politicians, who always seem to put personal ambition and power ahead of every other consideration, including the national interest?
Hardly a day goes by without some self appointed, self serving drop kick, telling us we NEED international investment. Well, that may be true in part; but, we don't need debt laden asset stripping economy destroying international speculators! [Ireland, Spain etc.] Just the money and from the same sources they access, minus the profit demanding speculator.
For far too long we have been enslaved by an economy that needs to be completely re-jigged, so that it finally works for us. Incidentally Cheryl, I played sport and was even selected for representative honours. Rhrosty.

The problem no one faces up to is the energy density of hydrocarbons.
No other energy source has the ability to provide energy in such
massive amounts from just a small container.
One diagram I remember is an image of 2000 men pulling a car.
This was calculated from knowing the energy that can be exerted by one man.
When you look at food production, and I cannot remember the accurate
figures but if one man on a tractor can plough 200 acres in one day
how many farmers are needed to plough 200 acres with a horse and single furrow plough ?
Answer about 100 days !
Therefore to eat will need 50 times the number of farmers we have now!

This is the reason why some people who have studied these problems
believe we must expect a significant population reduction over the
next 100 years.

We will not need so many marketing analysts but more agriculturists.
Bankers will be on the dole if it still exists.
Financial experts will be unwanted, but plant breeders will be in great demand.

Alan Joyce just said on TV that if Qantas cannot get an alternative
fuel it has no future.

Many who have studied this problem believe we cannot set aside enough
land to grow bio fuel crops for the aviation industry and other
transport uses and not cause great starvation.
The poor ERoEI of the biofuels means it will require very large amounts
of land and the cost will be high.
Forget running around and getting used oil from MacDonalds etc, there
are just nowhere near enough fryers in the world for an airline.

Remember what I said about Japan, the scale is the problem.

Just in case anyone still thinks this thread is a lot of waffle;

Australian oil production has sunk to a 41-year low and is set to continue falling because the energy sector's focus has switched to gas. Oil production last year fell by 18.9 per cent to 92 million barrels, the lowest level since 1970, the latest report by Adelaide-based energy sector advisory firm EnergyQuest showed on Monday. As a result, Australia's petroleum trade deficit widened to a record $11.8 billion.
>

Do you realise what an almost 20% annual fall in production means ?
It means that in about three years we will be importing ALL our oil.
Already we import all of our petrol.

Now you know why they are closing all the refineries.

Import all our petrol?

Silliness.

Well Cherly we do import all our petrol except I suspect in WA where
the BP refinery is still operating.
I suspect it is because of the small amount of petrol used in WA.

I think there are 5 still working Bazz.

High cost of fuel is what it will take to instigate change. Smaller cars, and push bikes.
Fuel from algae. Grows 24 hours a day. Can be grown on wasteland.
Nothing will ever happen unless we have consistent high fuel costs.
Working on a hot water space heater, for household use. [ solar heate
If you can halve your gas bill for a start ,that has got to be good.

Bazz,

"To meet Australian fuel demand, around 15-20% of petrol is imported (mainly from Singapore). Singapore is the regional refining and distribution centre and among the world’s largest."

http://www.aip.com.au/pricing/facts/Facts_about_Petrol_Prices_and_the_Australian_Fuel_Market.htm

I have been a fairly hard taskmaster on the anti-pops and doom and gloomers. This shooting from the lip only further debunks their arguments.

*I have been a fairly hard taskmaster on the anti-pops and doom and gloomers.*

Not really, Cheryl. All that you have shown so far, is your
complete lack of understanding of basic biology and how nature works.
You have shown no good reason as to why we should keep cramming
another billion humans onto the planet, roughly every 12 years now
and you apparently think that it can be done with impunity. So perhaps
its best that you and others who think like you, eventually learn the
hard way.

So just ignore things like the value of the species barrier. Ignore
the unsustainable plundering of the oceans of fish stocks. Cram
them in, cheek to cheek. What we are doing right now, is a bit like
feedlotting ever more people. It will only take one new virus, the
tighter those little human cheeks are packed together, the faster
it will spread. So be it. The human species has clearly evolved far
enough to invent interesting new things, but dumb enough for some
to think that they are above nature. So the species will evenually
learn the hard way.

Thanks Cheryl. That figure would be the current import content.
Maybe my figure was associated with the announcement that East Coast
refineries are to close. Once they close then all petrol will be imported.
Kurnell is to close fairly soon and Brisbane a bit later.
Originally they were intended to only produce diesel but that must have changed.

Yes just checked they are in the process of closing two units at Kurnell.

Also
http://www.smh.com.au/business/fuel-crisis-warning-over-refinery-closures-20120217-1tdep.html

It might take some time to get them closed.

Anyway Cheryl, with Australia declining at near 20% a year soon the
cost of continued production will be more than it is worth.

Before long all our oil products will be imported and with the
refineries closing we can expect to be at greater risk of disruption.

You may as well be talking to a brick wall Bazz.

You can't tell people what they clearly do not want to hear.

Rhrosty,

Your pollyannaesque alternative energy drone lacks maturity. Every modality you mention breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamics. For example wave power is obliterated by anchoring problems in mud and sand. Further storm conditions will ravage installations before they break even. The only reason such alternatives are scientifically tolerated is because they are part of the 'Big Lie' that keeps us all well behaved taxpaying fools when in reality we should be demanding much more from modern Governments and their US$Corporate masters.

Cheryl,

Hard taskmaster to anti-pops? Get real. Women lost the vote for most of human history. Only in the last 80 years or so have they had the vote and since then we have had two world wars as populations have overgrown.

Animal breeders will tell you that most species like dogs and cats are beautiful souls when in small numbers but when they overbreed they try to kill each other for primacy. Humans are no different. The fact that overpopulation negativities exist in Australia are hidden by media wrap ups and government promises as they externalise the costs of BIG AUSTRALIA onto poor communities while the rich Malcolm Frasers get awards for saving boat people when he would NEVER allow them in his backyard. The hypocracy is stunning.

The upshot is that women will again lose the vote possibly within our lifetimes. It is a hell of a lot better than protecting women's endless breeding-rights so men can go to War every 30 years and pay for it with their lives.

It won't take the world long to wake up to the evil of putting wolves in charge of sheep - of putting women who have a vested interest in overpopulation(nee war) vis-a-vis their breeding-rights, in charge of 1/2 of a political system that should be designed for sustainability and peaceful relations with the rest of the world.

To be equal to men and at the same time demand the right to have as many children as you need to make your way in life without using your Brain -IS NOT EQUALITY AT ALL. Its a scam!

Kaep; What ?

Boylsey;
Ahh yes I read an interesting article about the physcology of people
who when faced with something that is a total change to everything that
they have known or experienced in their past, will simply not want to
know anything about it.

Airline people apparently behave like this as it just seems impossible
to them that the airlines could just fade out and close.
Alan Joyce of QANTAS appears to understand what they are facing which
is why Qantas is involved in the biofuel experiment.
It is clutching at straws.

A truck driver I spoke to once about this, just dismissed the problem
with a wave of the hand and said, "Something will come along."

The silver bullet that everyone hopes will come along and save our
souls may just not be there.
Short of cold fusion, there just does not seem to be a solution to
the substitution of transport fuels. Some state that there are good
chemical and physical reasons for this, ie there can be nothing with
a greater energy density than hydrocarbons such as oil.

I guess a molecular scientist could explain that.

Boylsey,

What ??

Just because you THINK you've got a future, doesn't mean its so!

There are far too many 'big lies' you require to give you a finite pitiful future on a finite planet with essentially infinite humans with infinite aspirations all in the final analysis based on hidden nuclear weapons (think: How is big brother America our defence against an easy Asian Takeover). Only a woman could possibly believe her children are not contributing to that lunacy. And the 2LT is the only reliable guage to sustainability, NOT anti-democratic globalised economic theory.

What's more I know you know it. Ever see the movie Angel Heart!

What indeed!

Bazz....

Biofuels, solar voltaics, solar thermal, wind energy and geothermal energy could all potentially be viable energy sources for the future........the silver bullet........but absolutely not for all 7 billion of us currently alive on planet earth.

If our civilisation is to be fueled by these energy sources then it will have to be substantially smaller than it currently is along with our economy and all our individual aspirations.

I can't avoid the conclusion that, with our current global population, democracy (as currently practised in the west) is imcompatible with long term sustainability.

It seems that at every turn, the throngs of individual aspirations always seem to overwhelm collective common sense that our political systems should be pursuing.

And as a result our civilisation lurches ever closer to that cliff edge.

Some how we are going to have to modify our democracy so that mass individual aspirations cannot overwhelm collective common sense as it applies to the long term survival of our civilisation.

That will almost certainly mean far less individual freedom and say in the way our nations are governed. But then our individual freedoms are being gradually eroded as the population builds anyway - for example consider local government regulations about what you can do in your own backyard in the 60s compared to now.

So it must be a case of short term individual pain for long term collective gain.

Well Botsley no one will manage a decine in population. It will not matter anyway.

The world's population tracked first coal then oil production EXACTLY !
As world depletion sets in world depopulation will track coal & oil
production EXACTLY without anyone having to do anything.

However it won't be pretty because it will be driven by women's
malnutrition and perhaps some mass starvation.
So you won't have to press anyone to do anything.
Indeed in some poorer parts of the world they are already having
trouble being able to afford fertilisers or food itself and the UN is
experiencing the delivery failure of promised food aid.

Yes, all those alternative energy sources will be used but most are
not suitable for long distance transport of foodstuffs.
At least not in current quantities. Just like earlier last century
Britain imported some food but there is no way that the present UK
population could be fed by sailing ships.
A group in the UK has pointed this out to the British government but
as I said above, they didn't want to know.

The emphasis will be on 'unpleasant' in the unpleasant transition from abundant and cheap fossil fuel energy to far more expensive and scarce renewable energy.

I would personally prefer an authoritarian government than the anarchy that is likely to ensue as billions face the prospect of transitioning to poverty and starving to death.

The west will not be uneffected because even our population levels are far in excess of what can be sustained at current living standards without fossil fuels.

Boylesy, has it ever occurred to you that what you believe is "collective common sense" is actually the ranting of a ratbag fringe of catastrophe merchants? No one pays much attention, because it is not worth the effort.

There is much more fossil fuel than is needed to see you out china, & your kids kids as well. So please stop fretting, you'll end up costing the tax payers a fortune in medical bills.

Bazz, in the words of the song, "anything you can do, I can do better". Sailing ships can carry any amount of freight, you just need enough of them. In fact, wouldn't it be wonderful to actually usefully employ all those public servants, loading & unloading thousands of them, by hand. It would be a dream to see the old ports of London, Liverpool & all the rest back at work.

Unfortunately, it won't happen. The yanks have proven for many years just how successful small nuclear power plants are at powering ships. If oil becomes too expensive that is the next step, so don't hold your breath for the ships to stop, more's the pity.

Hasbeen has it ever occured to you that those who you perceive as ranting doomsday ratbags may actually be able to see further into the future than your limited intellect allows you to do?

Careful Boylesy, that greenie arrogance is showing, along with the claws

Yes, Hasbeen, nuclear powered ships are of cause a viable way to go.
I just wonder if they would be economical.
Certain cargoes perhaps.

You said;
There is much more fossil fuel than is needed to see you out china, &
your kids kids as well.
>

Unfortunately that is the wishful thinking syndrome that is prelevant
in the US this election year.
The latest rush of shale oil & gas will be short lived and expensive.
It has caused a blip upwards in production but it really is small in
comparison with the depletion rates that are becoming common.
The UK North Sea depletion rate is 22% per year and ours is close to
20%, but ours may be less than that.
These depletion rates are real and as further fields reach those
levels the shale production will never keep up.

It is a matter of scale, the oil industry is so large that all these
"solutions" are just "pi$%^ng" into the wind !

Hasbeen,
I think you might find this link will help you understand
the points I was trying to illustrate. It is from a real expert who
works in the field and gives some historical background.

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-16/commentary-world-finite-isnt-it

No doubt there numerous Roman citizens who refused to believe that their empire would ever collapse.....right up to the end when the Visigoths sacked Rome itself.

It is a classic frog in boiling water scenario where the decline is so gradual that few people notice until they are dead!

Hasbeen you are the frog that sits in the water slowly being brought to the boil all the while declaring that the water is not that much hotter than it was a minute ago! Until you inevitably cooked alive.

We 'doomsday nut jobs' would prefer to hop out of the water before it kills us.

I suggest Hasbeen and others watch this documentary: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/civilization-is-the-west-history

This documentary does not however suggest that western civilisation will decline catastrphically, merely that it will be overtaken by civilisations from the east such as China.

Just as the Chinese empire was over taken by the British Empire and went into a decades long period of stagnation until recently.

No civilisation or empire is invincible.

No civilisation or empire has lasted for more than a couple of thousand years throughout history and the current western empire is no difference.

Sooner or later and in one way or another it will decline and be replaced by another civilisation at some point.

Peak oil etc will complicate this however.

Oh I don't doubt the west is in decline, on it's way to history.

What I doubt is that this has anything to do with peak anything.

Peak anything other than the peak stupidity of greenies, bleeding hearts & all the other bludgers, including academia, who have sucked the life out of those who could have continued to make it great.

Too many have given up trying to build a better world for their kids. When they have to carry too many bludgers, they ease back & just enjoy what they have done.

So many of my friends are hard to see these days, they are driving around Oz, Europe, or sailing the world, so I suppose in a way you have won. You have turned many productive people into loafers, who will never again bust a gut, employ staff, or pay the taxes the bludgers thrive on.

Do enjoy the decline, your are on it

Hasbeen, to many old farts like you have lost the idealism and vision of your youth and have for to long focused on the enrichment of yourselves over your society so you can become one of the over weight endlessly holidaying bludgers like the younger ones you were whinging about in your previous post.

The young bludgers are simply emulating your poor example and are attempting to get their own snout in the trough along side yours!

It will be you over weight and lazy old farts that will be the downfall of the west, not the younger generations.

The reason why western society is losing its drive is because there are to many of you old farts focusing on accumulating wealth for your total retirement rather than investing and working for the betterment of your nation and civilisation.

You have had it to easy for to long and now regard total retirement to a holiday lifestyle as an entitlement!

But this is not enjoyed any where in the world, other than in the west, and was not indulged in at any other time in human history......at least for ordinary working folk.

Collectively, you are rapidly becoming a drag on western civilisation.

When the 'party' ends with cheap plentiful oil you will either go back to work commensurate with your abilities or else be cut loose to the societal scrap heap in old age.

Boylesy you sound like a public servant, [yes what a joke], to me. That's a worry, because it is your attitude that is the problem.

When you find that some of your hard working staff would be better off on the dole, even though you are paying well above any award, you start to wonder if it is worth while.

When you see that there is no way that you will be able to make enough profit to pay them more.

When you take home, each year, less than they do.

When you have to start to import the products you have been making in Oz for a decade, because it's that or go broke.

When you look at the stupidity of regulations pushed through by idiot greens & lefties, & compare Oz today to the UK before Thacher, you can see the place is stuffed, & decide it is not worth the candle.

From now on, I'll spend my time enjoying what I have earned, & watching my back to make sure I don't have too many of your type, trying to "HELP" me. Your help is something I & all my fellow citizens can well do without.

Every time I fire up that big V8, I'll think of you & smile.

"Boylesy you sound like a public servant, [yes what a joke], to me. That's a worry, because it is your attitude that is the problem."

Wrong, I run a small business.

"When you find that some of your hard working staff would be better off on the dole, ......."

What a load of bull$hit - those on the dole DO NOT get paid more than public servants!

I guess the reasoning of many dole bludgers is that they would rather get by of less and not have to put up with bigoted morons like you telling them how good you are and how hopeless they are!

"When you see that there is no way that you will be able to make enough profit to .......

May you/they are just poor businessmen unable to break out of habit of running their business in a manor that was appropriate 20 years ago.

Or perhaps you/they are simply to greedy and lazy and want maximum profit for minimum effort.

"When you have to start to import the products you have been making in Oz for a decade, because it's that or go broke............."

That is not the fault of greenies you imbecile, it is the fault of the major political parties who believe in free trade and the global economy at any cost!

Neither see any problem with the Australian economy losing all its manufacturing industries and importing everything from over seas.

The major parties lack the intellectual capacity to consider the long term impications of losing manufacturing in a post cheap oil world where it will not be so easy and inexpensive to run a global economy.

"From now on, I'll spend my time enjoying what I have earned, & watching my back to make sure I don't have too many of your type, trying to "HELP" me. Your help is something I & all my fellow citizens can well do without."

You do that and enjoy it while it lasts.

Because I suspect you will not be able to sustain your perpetual holiday lifestyle for that much longer.