Crash Watcher: Major chance Europeans will starve after 2030

[kenneal - lagger]

I would have thought that most houses get through 250 to 500 gallons per winter. A small tank is 1000 ltr, just under 250 gallons, and many people have 6000 ltr tanks which are filled at least once a year. So, with two people in occupation you would be using 125 gallons per year, at least, and probably two or three times that.

That gives the "wrong" slant to the discussion, I know, but there are also the additional costs of supplying food to the Canaries or where ever, the house at home will, or should, have a frost stat which will turn on the heating regardless of occupancy during cols spells. As someone else said, there are the transfer fuel costs to add in. There will be fuel use in the winter accommodation as well such a refrigeration and lighting, lift usage and probably some heating so the equation is not as simple as you would think.

[Catweazle]

I am currently ( still ) in a rented modern (3-4 years old ) bungalow, with oil fired boiler, balanced flue.

I had 500 litres delivered some months ago, of which 2/3 is still in the tank ( according to the untrasonic level meter ). Mrs C has a steaming hot bath almost every night ( which I jump into afterwards and it's still damned hot ). We let the water out the next morning, when it's cold. The house has double glazing throughout, timber framed construction, and is pretty warm.

I think that for heating only, and for a period covering the coldest weather, the guesstimate I posted is reasonable. If you live in a 4 bedroom stone farmhouse you can expect to burn more. Conversley, if you have super insulation you might need a fair bit less.

I've never heard of anyone burning through two 6000 litre tanks per year, that a very expensive house.

[vtsnowedin]

Mrs C has a steaming hot bath almost every night ( which I jump into afterwards and it's still damned hot ).
.

Why wait for her to get out??

[PS_RalphW]

If Catweazle's icon is at all representative, I'm sure Mrs C. wouldn't hang around if he got in

[Catweazle]

Mrs C has a steaming hot bath almost every night ( which I jump into afterwards and it's still damned hot ).
.

Why wait for her to get out??

It's a very small bath, the silly standalone type with the taps in the middle.

[Catweazle]

If Catweazle's icon is at all representative, I'm sure Mrs C. wouldn't hang around if he got in

That's nothing like me. I'm much fatter.

[RenewableCandy]

I'm pained to have to remind everyone that typical people of the USA burn through a lot more fuel, of all types and in all activities, than typical Brits.

Going back to Stumuzz's post, I don't think bailing out to an island (hence, flying) will do, but it's possible that driving from North to South Europe, to a house that's already occupied but has some spare capacity, will work.

[vtsnowedin]

Mrs C has a steaming hot bath almost every night ( which I jump into afterwards and it's still damned hot ).
.

Why wait for her to get out??

It's a very small bath, the silly standalone type with the taps in the middle.

I'd be changing that out while your both still young enough to enjoy it.

[RenewableCandy]

[Lord Beria3]

http://crash-watcher.blogspot.com/2013/ ... oo%21+Mail

Good analysis.

I suspect that his thinking of export mitigation is partially correct which is likely to lead to a more general population crash circa 2040sh - in line with the standard model Limits of Growth modelling.

[Lord Beria3]

http://crash-watcher.blogspot.com/2013/ ... oo%21+Mail

Final and fascinating post on the future petroleum (and implications for population) flows in the coming decades.

EU is relatively unaffected by AF’s mitigation, but as its own predicted domestic production declines and imports from the ME eventually go away, export mitigation by FS and rAP is big enough to drive EU’s per capita consumption rate below the 1 b/py level by 2039. This in turn results in a prediction of a population crash in the 2040s. Like JP, EU’s population may come back, if NA is able to maintain its long slow increase in exports to these regions into 2060s.

Some readers might view the late-stage global export mitigation strategy featured here as being way too pessimistic—surely these regions would wake up and start mitigating way before being on the brink of starvation, one might optimistically say.

For reasons presented in Part 4, I don’t see late-stage global export mitigation as pessimistic; rather, I see it as realistic.

Like the author Crash-Watcher, I agree that oil rich countries will want to continue exporting oil until they have little choice but to stop (to prevent their own people starving and revolting). Therefore, his analysis seems broadly correct.

I also think that Europe will ignite a kind of pan-European civil war/cum state-on-state war by the 2040's - roughly a century after the ending of WW2.

[UndercoverElephant]

I also think that Europe will ignite a kind of pan-European civil war/cum state-on-state war by the 2040's - roughly a century after the ending of WW2.

You can't make precise predictions like that, 30 years ahead of the current chaotic mess. Well, you can, but you might just as well pull predictions randomly out of a hat.

You're well into Nostradamus territory there.

[Lord Beria3]

I also think that Europe will ignite a kind of pan-European civil war/cum state-on-state war by the 2040's - roughly a century after the ending of WW2.

You can't make precise predictions like that, 30 years ahead of the current chaotic mess. Well, you can, but you might just as well pull predictions randomly out of a hat.

You're well into Nostradamus territory there.

Disagree. Having read the standard Limits of Growth model - which predicts a massive population crunch starting 2040 then I do think that the conditions will be ready for an eruption of explosive violence and anarchy across Europe.

This goes with my reading of history and how it goes in cycles. You can disagree with me of course, but the rise of the far-right, the decline in living standards in Europe in the coming decades, the strains of the euro in its incompatibility with national demoracy will lead to an eventual explosion of the European order.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2KX1zp8xG

The consequences of climate change are a science fiction nightmare. The writer of Dr Who, Russell T. Davies, once told me the only plot he would avoid was the environment because he could not give audiences a happy ending.

Yet Lovelock contemplates catastrophe almost with excitement. I ask why is he not terrified.

He answers that he has never lost a single night's sleep over the future. Scientific interest overcomes self-interest. He has a humility about the place of humans in the 3.5 billion year lifespan of the Earth. He talks not of people but of "our species".

He passionately wants "the best of our species" to survive, and is philosophical about the majority who won't.

"It will be a challenging and difficult life ahead but it will bring out the best in us. It will bring the most awful problem for our people and our Government.

"At some point, we are going to have to say Britain is a lifeboat. If any more people come on board then we will sink.

"If we get it wrong, you will have ghastly encampments like Darfur. People will be smuggling their way in and setting up camps. Ethnic communities will want to help them and civil war will start."

Lovelock agrees with me - from a CC point of view though.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 138-2.html

■ Crisis of political legitimacy: The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could perceive the upheaval triggered by peak oil "as a general systemic crisis." This would create "room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government." Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could "in extreme cases lead to open conflict."

And the timeline of this from the German military?

According to the German report, there is "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later

That goes along with my own thesis of the total disintergration of Europe being postponed to the 2040's.

[Lord Beria3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years

Friedman, the geopolitical analyst and owner of Stratfor (intelligence website with close links with US intelligence) predicts in his book of a limited but global war around 2050, roughly in line with my own prediction.

His views of how that global war will occur are radically different to mine but yet are similar in our timeline.

http://www.DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.co.uk/Why-West-Rules- ... 1846682088

Ian Morris in his book above, is a tech-optimist but he is open to the idea that we may face a global collapse and he predicts that this will happen by the 2040s under current trends. If it does happen it will be a globalised 'falling of a cliff'.

http://akarlin.com/2009/10/23/europe-black-continent/

Europe’s Geopolitics

Having outlined the general trends and regional idiosyncrasies of the European continent, I am now going to try to bring it all together and paint a picture of how European geopolitics and metapolitics are going to develop in the decades ahead.

First, a word about the European Union. It is the quintessential “end of history” project – as Fukuyama himself noted, its “attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a “post-historical” world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military”. This utopian pursuit is, however, dependent on social stability, which is what underpins Europe’s historically recent embrace of liberal democracy and rules-based mechanism for resolving disputes.

But considering the interlinked and growing economic, energetic, demographic, and climatic challenges to this social stability covered above – and bearing in mind that for all its pomp and splendor, the EU remains weak and peripheral relative to the twenty-seven European nation-states that will collectively decide its destiny – the EU’s disintegration, “withering away”, or “expansion into irrelevancy”, is almost inevitable. Powerful Eurosceptic elements in Britain, Poland and the small European states do not want to give away their national sovereignty and are suspicious of European federalism, which they perceive to be nothing more than a new, covert hegemonic project. Nor is it likely that it will be replaced by a “Europe of two speeds” based on accelerated Franco-German integration; the interests of these nation-states are simply too divergent for that to happen.

As for NATO, if it can be undermines by an issue as small as Afghanistan now – it has no chance of surviving the coming earthquakes in any meaningful form. Britain, France, and Poland will likely remain closely allied with the US, but beyond that the dominant paradigm will be a return to 19th century-like Great Power politics. Facing a subpar energy future, the loss of export markets in a more protectionist world, a rapid demographic decline, and an unprecedented fiscal crisis, Berlin will again look east, as it usually does in times of national stress. It is in its strategic interests to draw closer to Moscow, given the mutual desirability of setting up a bilateral relationship based on trading Russian commodities (natural gas) for German machine tools and technology, as occurred so often in the past. (For instance, in the Treaty of Rappallo (1922), the two international pariahs signed a peace agreement, forgave each other’s debts and signed a free trade accord. Russia also helped Germany circumvent the Treaty of Versailles by allowing Germany to use its territory to continue military-related R&D and weapons testing, far from the prying eyes of Western observers). Furthermore, Russia could make use of a neutral-to-friendly Germany as a shield to consolidate its power over the post-Soviet space.

Once again, Poland will stand in the way of this Russo-German relationship. Russia is interested in pushing American influence out of East-Central Europe, converting the region into a neutral buffer for its empire. Germany will be interested in 1) furthering its economic penetration of the region, given the losses of many of its other export markets, and 2) in preventively blocking Russia’s further expansion into Europe proper, which in the end would seriously endanger German national security. In addition, there’s also its traditional craving for Lebensraum.

The region of Visegrad will therefore become a vortex of geopolitical competition between Germania, Eurasia, Scandinavia, and the Atlanticists. Poland will be supported directly by France, which has a direct interest in guaranteeing Polish sovereignty in order to prevent the rise of a German-dominated Europe (or of a contiguous Russo-German bloc, which would amount to the same thing). Despite its likely retreat from active Eurasian power politics in the face of mounting domestic crises, the US too will likely contribute to Polish security, since preventing the rise of a Eurasian hegemon will still figure amongst Washington’s priorities. Interestingly, a weakened Britain (or England) will probably try to maintain neutrality and good relations with all sides: its desire to support France and Poland in order to preempt the rise of a united European hegemon will be partially counterbalanced by its growing energy dependence on Russia.

However, the alliance between Germany and Russia will be far from rock-solid, considering that it is based exclusively on shared interests. Germany does not want a Russia that is too strong, and as such will try to maintain a modicum of good relations with the Atlantic powers as a hedge, as well as making geopolitical inroads and alliances beyond Europe proper. Boxed in by seas to the north, a powerful France to the west, the Alps to the south, and an Atlanticist-supported Poland to the east, Germany will push its influence into the Balkans in conjunction with Turkey, a country with which it will resurrect its traditional alliance, and more importantly, a country that will be able to keep Russia’s attention diverted to its unstable south (the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Balkans – areas where Turkey already has substantial cultural and economic influence). Furthermore, Turkey would provide Germany with an additional supply of gas independent of Russian control sourced from Azerbaijan, Central Asia (if they remain outside Russia’s overt control) and possibly even Iran (if it reconciles with the West), and assuming that the necessary pipelines get built. In exchange, Germany will transfer the technologies Turkey needs to build a self-sufficient military-industrial complex that will complement its already formidable military power.

France will seek a close alliance with the Visegrad nations and Sweden to keep Germany and Russia occupied, while focusing most of its energies on securing its regional dominance. Flooded with younger immigrants from Spain and Italy – and perhaps the Maghreb, should it agree on the energy-for-immigration deal mooted above – its population will grow even more rapidly than projected, perhaps reaching 80-90mn souls by the 2030′s. This will result in the division of its electorate into three major groupings – the French conservatives and nationalists; the internationalist moderates; and the hard left, which will include the Islamist groups.

These internal divisions will be the cracks through which its weaker neighbors, especially Germany, will try to undermine it; however, ironically, those same divisions may lead to the long-term survival of multiculturalism and liberal democracy on French soil, even as Germany returns to the Reich, Italy reverts to its regionalistic capo governing traditions, Turkey revives its Ottoman imperial legacy, and Russia reacquires its Eurasian empire. Along with the British isles and various enclaves (Sweden, Switzerland, Czechia, Ireland, Poland?, etc), France will remain a light in a continent rapidly turning black with fascism, militarism, collapse – and perhaps war. War? Yes, I’m serious. Once effective ABM shields are developed and proliferate – and that’s not especially far off – the deterrence power of nuclear weapons will fall dramatically.

As mentioned above, both of the major Mediterranean powers will be too absorbed by domestic affairs to give serious heed to geopolitical jockeying. Though they might try to revive their colonial-era relations with North Africa – Spain in Morocco, Italy in Libya – they do no have the carrots to enjoy sustained success, and will be outmanoeuvred by France. Though Poland holds some promise, it is locked into a geopolitical vice and will remain too weak to play a truly independent role in Europe. And though Sweden is a formidable and growing Baltic power, its population and industrial base is simply too small to play a true Great Power role.

http://akarlin.com/2010/01/31/ecotechnic-dictatorship/

The end result will be similar to the same Malthusian-era collapses analyzed by the cliodynamicians. An era in which surplus per capita draws to the level necessary for mere subsistence, characterized by dearth and famine in the bad years, and limited recoveries in the good years; a plateau that increasingly slopes down, until a series of severe perturbations (climatic disasters, resource wars, etc) so disturbs the world system that negative feedback loops take over and the entire system collapses into a prolonged Dark Age.

In conclusion, drawing on the theoretical works of systems modelers (Limits to Growth), energy modelers, collapse theorists (Tainter), and modern cliodynamicians (Korotayev, Turchin, Nefedov, Khaltourina, etc), we can paint a general outline of the next 50 years. Ever more human effort will be mobilized or requisitioned by ever more coercive “hypertrophied states” to compensate for the effects of declining emergy availability (peak oil, exploitation of lower-EROEI energy sources, diminishing returns to energy efficiency, and the effects of credit collapse, resource nationalism, and geopolitics), falling agricultural productivity (fertilizer shortages, heatwaves, rivers and fossil aquifers running dry, rising sea levels inundating coastal farmlands, etc), and other costs accruing from exponentially rising climate chaos.

Those regions which collapse first, nowadays called “failed states”, will be taken over by neo-colonial industrial powers to contain the chaos and acquire resources to buy just a little more time for their industrial civilization. Physical output will plateau and stagnate, while real living standards begin to degrade at an accelerating rate. Eventually, a series of shocks – climate catastrophes like the conflagration of the DODGY TAX AVOIDERS or a “hydroxyl collapse”, poor harvests resulting in global famine and pestilence, perhaps even a final, total war of late global industrialism – will finally make the Machine give up the ghost. The collapse of fossil fuel availability will render usless most modern technology, everything from microchips to electric cars and photovoltaic panels. This will result in a political-demographic collapse of unparalleled severity that reduces the human population to below one billion souls within a few decades, ushering in a post-industrial “Rust Age” on a polluted, desertifying, and drowning planet.