"1 - What I quoted and called nonsense was that the US was becoming something like the Roman empire."
Of course not........that will happen when the oil gets short. For now, we're still looking good. That's why we need to start moving our butts now.
So you think the US will become an imperial monarchy when the oil starts running low??
Don't be so literal......its an indication that things will get bad if the oil runs out and we don't have replacement. I've said previously........we are like a druggie......that's how dependent we are on oil.
2 - Oil won't disappear quickly. If you ignore the up and down volatility its likely to gradually go up in price (in inflation adjusted dollars). As it goes up people make adjustments to consume less oil.
Yeah, really? What are they going to do if there is no alternative.
If the price goes up their will be an alternative. The reason why there are a lot of good alternatives now is all of the alternatives are more expensive, often much more.
You just said that solar, wind and hydro are "marginal energy producers". Those are the only active alternatives that we have right now. Are you hoping someone will pull a rabbit out of their hat?
Over time, the problem will move with increasing speed. Before we have a shortage of oil, there will be a huge run up in prices and economic dislocation. If we don't start moving away from oil now, we risk a world wide depression.
Pushign the move away from oil now will cause the same economic dislocation, and pushing it by government regulations will probably cause more disruption then letting it happens in response to market forces.
That's BS......the same kind of BS we were fed wrt WMD in Iraq. Its not worth discussing any further.
What do you think brought down other civilizations?
"All sorts of different things."
Really? Like what?
What you want the whole list? If you have even a basic knowledge of world history you should already have it, if you don't I don't see the point in providing it.
There are two or three basic reasons for civilizations falling. I wanted to see if you know what they are.
Other civilizations have been brought down by invasion (even if invasion was only the final straw and they had been declineing for a long time), they also have been wiped out by things like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes ect. Or a civilization may be wiped out by slowly getting non-violently assimlated in to another civilization ("non-violently" is relative, usually there is some violence). I'm sure you can think of these methods and probably others. Why did you want me to list them?
There are two or three major reasons that cause a civilization to die........one of the basic causes is a change in climate, resulting in food shortages. Another is invasion like you suggested. Still one more is the depletion of essential natural resources. When the latter happens, its usually because the civilization had become corrupt and was 'fiddling while Rome burned', or because it was too near sighted and did not plan adequately for the future.
There is one similarity.......we need oil like the druggie needs ecstasy or heroin.
No.
You're in daNile.
Trust me, oil is harming us......its screwing up everyone's lungs including your own
If we didn't have oil changes are our lungs would be a lot worse off. We would have used a lot more coal, and also we would be a lot poorer which would mean we would have less money to put towards things like health care and environmental protection.
None of the above changes the fact that the consumption of oil is hurting our lungs and bodies.
"Start to make sense" is too late to prevent an economic disaster.
Its not as if no one has any idea how to produce energy without oil. We wouldn't have to research alternative methods from scratch. Most of the methods we would use are already developed but using them on a large scale now would just be causing the economic pain to happen earlier (and in the case of many of the alternatives causing more environmnetal damage)
Its going to take a lot more research to come up with viable, economical alternatives. That's why I want to start now while implementing a plan for conservation.
I think the best and most efficient way to adjust to changes in supply and demand of fuels and energy sources is to let the market sort it out. Its likely to do a better job then the government.
Yeah, that's what conservatives said before the stock market crash of 1929.
They where right then as well.
Yeah, right.........after a huge econ. dislocation requiring the huge intervention of gov't.
You're really funny!
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