Catweazle wrote:
RGR and his ilk present the case that everybody wants to hear, that everything's going to be fine, don't worry, technology will save us. I believe that this message is wrong, more than that I believe it is criminally negligent.
Say that about "the ilk" if you will, but don't assign that to me. I don't say everything is going to be fine, I think people should think carefully about their energy usage when buying cars, choosing the location for a home, etc etc. And some are going to be unhappy with the choices they will be forced to make. The ability to do work through clever energy utilization is a prime reason why humankind isn't swinging from trees like our close genetic relatives.
People unhappy at the choices they are forced to make is about as good a definition of "a problem" as I can think of, so now that we agree oil supply is going to cause a problem perhaps we can move forward and discuss how we are going to mitigate it.
If we can't find a substitute then we need to learn how to survive it. I have my own ideas on that, and would be very interested to hear yours.
RGR wrote:Look Cat, oil production has been basically flat for more than half a decade now, right? Maybe we see another peak, maybe we don't, yet even without more oil the world has kept going over that half decade, people still drive ICE powered cars, we are still finding more oil on an ongoing basis, all the things which were happening even before oil production went flat.
In that half decade oil prices spiked and the world economy crashed, hardly BAU is it ?
RGR wrote:Look Cat, oil production has been basically flat for more than half a decade now, right? Maybe we see another peak, maybe we don't, yet even without more oil the world has kept going over that half decade, people still drive ICE powered cars, we are still finding more oil on an ongoing basis, all the things which were happening even before oil production went flat.
In that half decade oil prices spiked and the world economy crashed, hardly BAU is it ?
The world economy didn't crash....perhaps you confuse "crash" with "recession"? Perhaps you aren't aware of this, but recessions are part of a normal economic cycle, and we had them before, and certainly those weren't caused by peak oil either.
I think the definition of "crash" is a separate debate, however there are many experts who believe that were it not for the emergency resusitation measures of printing trillions of dollars the economy would have died screaming, and many believe that the inevitable has only been delayed for a while.
Either way, it certainly wasn't a BAU half-decade was it ?
Like you, I'm making my own preparations to deal with future "problems".
Can you tell me more about the problems you foresee ? Even if they are tightly focused they can be woven with other peoples ideas to give a bigger picture.
Here's some interesting science - relevant to this thread.
After much research and hard work, Hardaker came up with a working definition. A troll is someone "who constructs the identity of sincerely wishing to be part of the group in question, including professing or conveying pseudo-sincere intentions, but whose real intention(s) is/are to cause disruption and/or to trigger or exacerbate conflict for the purposes of their own amusement".
RGR is a troll pure and simple. Just look at his recent contributions - all they have done is belittle other people's posts and ridicule what people on here say. Goodness knows what new members/lurkers think.
Why he is allowed to continue to ridicule folks on this site is well beyond my understanding.
I have made my views known to the owners of the site - it is up to them if they feel he is of any benefit to PowerSwitch.
