PowerSwitch

........... panic?

Ok.. maybe not panic.. but start to think PO has tipped over?


In 2008 we saw oil priced at 138 ish a barrell. but that was a bit of a blip. Would a price of $150 for months see you start to prepare more than you have?

Would it be something else?

Do you watch the little widget at the bottom of this site to see how things are going?

Just wondering.

To abide by Dambuster's Law. ...where i must answer my own question when posing a question on a forum:

i think $200 a barrel in the near future would be a tipping point.... not for any real reasons, but it's double, nearly, what it is now.. meaning that things would cost double in the long term, before prices or wages could catch up. .. if ti went above $200, then we're in trouble and I'd start to wonder how long things can survive.

postie wrote:
Ok.. maybe not panic.. but start to think PO has tipped over?

In 2008 we saw oil priced at 138 ish a barrell. but that was a bit of a blip.

That was the shit being extruded (September 2008.) It nearly expoded. It was contained, and drifted gracefully towards the fan it has rather more recently hit.

We have already past the tipping point, which was exagerrated/accelerated by the actions of the *ankers.

You mean what sign will you have before a collapse, I'm not sure your going to see anything you haven't seen .

It seems that when oil prices go up you get a recession or depression that lowers demand which causes oil prices to fall.

But underlying all of this the whole system seems to be built of belief, when the belief goes I think then you will have the crash

Read tipping point, also read what Jarad diamond said about the collapse of easter island about people throwing away their tools and going into a spiral of violence barbarism and collapse, they may not have realized they were collapsing .

I think it will be like a spiral, with one thing reinforcing another, a bit like going down a plug hole, down some pipes, faster faster then your in a sewer

Saturday, October 23, 2010
How not to organize a community quite interesting with a element of truth,

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html

jonny2mad wrote:You mean what sign will you have before a collapse, I'm not sure your going to see anything you haven't seen .

Saturday, October 23, 2010
How not to organize a community quite interesting with a element of truth,

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html

Dear old Uncle Dmitry does rather go on and on but I certainly do recognise the two realities he is talking about. What he has left out is the codependance between the two and how certain current activites are only highly profitable because they are illegal.

I think some of the responses to the blog were more interesting as they were much less cerebral and impersonal.

I wonder if Dmitry would pass the replicant empathy test?

postie wrote:........... panic?

Ok.. maybe not panic.. but start to think PO has tipped over?

It has. 2005 is generally held to be the year; the IEA says 2006. Actual peak is not important in itself, it's the subsequent decline in quality and quantity.

postie wrote:Would a price of $150 for months see you start to prepare more than you have?

People were getting very uppity about their petrol prices but otherwise, did it change attitudes? I would say no, except among a few. People believe it's up to the government to 'do something' when fuel prices rise.

Almost everyone just wants to get back to the growth party; there is a massive, widespread disconnect. Cause and effect are not in peoples' minds.

postie wrote:Do you watch the little widget at the bottom of this site to see how things are going?

Yes but it's not necessary.

postie wrote:i think $200 a barrel in the near future would be a tipping point.... not for any real reasons, but it's double, nearly, what it is now.. meaning that things would cost double in the long term, before prices or wages could catch up. .. if ti went above $200, then we're in trouble and I'd start to wonder how long things can survive.

It might, might not. Remember, when the price rises, people cut back on use and projects become too expensive to start or maintain. Everything comes back to the price of energy.

So, once demand drops because of price rises, the price drops again, so in effect becomes more available and affordable. So once we have a few of these blips, people might start 'getting it', though most likely not.

What I'm saying is, the price of oil might never rise very high for long.

For drastic action, I think the "point when you panic" would more likely be a personal one, for example being given notice of losing one's job.

emordnilap wrote:
People were getting very uppity about their petrol prices but otherwise, did it change attitudes? I would say no, except among a few. People believe it's up to the government to 'do something' when fuel prices rise.

Weirdly I did see a bit of a change in attitudes at the high point of the petrol price increases in 2008.

I was a long distance driver spending Monday through Friday tramping up and down the motorways. Having been doing that job for a while, you got used to where the bottlenecks and peak flow was on any given day, and especially at certain times of the day.

For a couple of weeks, every long distance driver I met and talked to had noticed how quiet the motorways were. You could, sometimes, look in your mirrors and not see anything but other commercial vehicles behind you.

I'm not saying there wasn't a single car on the motorways, but the reduction was noticeable. There were a lot less hold ups too. Us drivers could only attribute it to the increase in fuel prices... there wasn't any other reason we could fathom.

it only lasted a few weeks at most, and then there seemed to be a return to normal levels... and i don't know if that was a reduction in the cost of fuel, or if people got used to the price.

It's not scientific and certainly not measurable, it's just what I noticed at the time.

I would consider any of the following events to be cause for panic.

Oil reaching a sustained $250, not a momentary speculative bubble.
War, civil war, revolution, coup or similar in a major oil exporting nation.
A terrorist attack on the UK with WMD.
Large scale civil disorder in the UK, (not the odd riot, but large scale say 1000+ lives lost)
Martial law declared in the UK.
Large scale utility failure leading to the loss of thousands of lives.

I would also consider the occurence of SEVERAL of the following list to be cause for panic, but would not panic for just one or two.

Oil reaching a sustained $150
Repeated terrorist attacks on the UK with conventional weapons only
Declaration of a state of emergency
Widespread internet failure for more than 24 hours.
Substantial and prolonged rota power cuts.
Industrial disputes leading to shortages of food or fuel.
Very extreme weather resulting in substantial loss of life.
Serious accident at a nuclear power station.
Pandemic disease killing a few % of the population.
Prolonged rioting.
An overnight doubling of retail gas prices.

Many of the events in the second list have already occured, and life carried on. But if several events occured together then that could be cause for panic.

Agreed Adam, it will take a few of those for a potential hard crash 'Panic!' moment.

Of course, if the government comes out and says DON'T PANIC - than it might be time to panic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC8nyBr9_-8

I would also consider the occurence of SEVERAL of the following list to be cause for panic, but would not panic for just one or two.

Pandemic disease killing a few % of the population.

P'raps this should be in your first list, Adam?
1% = 650,000 people.

Postie that's very interesting. I wonder how many journey-miles businesses (as opposed to individuals) would be able to avoid?

RenewableCandy wrote:Postie that's very interesting. I wonder how many journey-miles businesses (as opposed to individuals) would be able to avoid?

One of the reasons the UK might be slightly better off - there's a LOT of demand destruction that can happen before oil prices really start to bite.

featherstick wrote:

RenewableCandy wrote:Postie that's very interesting. I wonder how many journey-miles businesses (as opposed to individuals) would be able to avoid?

One of the reasons the UK might be slightly better off - there's a LOT of demand destruction that can happen before oil prices really start to bite.

There is a massive difference here between the UK and the US. Here in the UK we still have a network of market towns and outlying areas which existed long before the age of industrialisation and can be re-utilised afterwards. In the US the main cities are seperated by hundreds of miles of desert or grassland. Those cities were originally connected by railway lines, most of which no longer exist, so the US is now critically dependent on cheap gasoline and cheap aviation in a way that almost nowhere else on the planet is. If the worst comes to the worst, we can even re-use our canal network for what it was originally built for. A narrowboat goes a long way on a full tank of diesel.

UndercoverElephant wrote:

featherstick wrote:

RenewableCandy wrote:Postie that's very interesting. I wonder how many journey-miles businesses (as opposed to individuals) would be able to avoid?

One of the reasons the UK might be slightly better off - there's a LOT of demand destruction that can happen before oil prices really start to bite.

There is a massive difference here between the UK and the US. Here in the UK we still have a network of market towns and outlying areas which existed long before the age of industrialisation and can be re-utilised afterwards. In the US the main cities are seperated by hundreds of miles of desert or grassland. Those cities were originally connected by railway lines, most of which no longer exist, so the US is now critically dependent on cheap gasoline and cheap aviation in a way that almost nowhere else on the planet is. If the worst comes to the worst, we can even re-use our canal network for what it was originally built for. A narrowboat goes a long way on a full tank of diesel.

Great post UE, my thoughts exactly.

Too late!

And the results are disastrous.

(Sorry, couldn't resist).