Although I don't fear That Day I do fear another.
The current world consumption of oil is something like 25 to 30 Billion
barrels per year. If the current expansion rates of world population and
economic development continues, the world's projected oil needs before the
end of the current century will be something like 225 Billion barrels if the
world expects to sustain its current standard of living. Energy experts are
well aware, even if the general populace isn't, that it is not only impossible
to produce 225 Billion barrels per year right now; but will be utterly
unrealistic in the future.
2012's graduate students might legitimately ask: Will my grandchildren ever
be able to ride in an airplane? The answer may very well be NO. That's just
one of the grim realities of the inevitability of oil's decline. Quantities of oil
that remain by the time of their grandchildren, will be so expensive, so
difficult to extract, and so limited, that only the very rich will be able to
afford to travel by air. Gasoline for cars? Tightly rationed of course; that is,
if internal combustion engines of any kind, either conventional or hybrid, are
even legal by then.
The world is moving towards a drastic transition from the industrial age to
an age I can't even begin to imagine without oil; and the transition is really
not all that many years away from now. Will the world decline into a Mad
Max society? I don't know; but of one thing I'm pretty sure. Nation will go to
war with nation to secure for themselves whatever oil reserves remain. How
do I know that? Because America is, and has been, already doing that very
thing.
Incidentally, there are no mechanized conveyances mentioned anywhere in
the book of Revelation. What might that suggest? Well, it suggests to me
that factories as we know them today will not exist down towards the end;
and it's not all that difficult to figure out why. Fossil fuels-- coal, oil, and
natural gas --will be so depleted by then that current manufacturing-- its
products and its methods --will be a thing of the past. You know who I think
might do very well in the future? People who know how to garden, and those
who know how to make and maintain things by hand.
I hate sounding like another crazy alarmist like that old guy who was in the
news October of 2011 because that is so negative; but I'm pretty sure in my
own mind that the grandchildren of 2012's grads won't be looking at just
another spurious Y2K meltdown that got all the survivalists excited at the
turn of the last century; no, they'll be looking at the irreversible collapse of
their parents' way of life, wherein their biggest worry won't be paying back
student loans and maxed out credit cards: no, their biggest worry will be
finding enough to eat because not only will industrial farming methods grind
to a halt; but also food imports will stop as every nation on earth circles the
wagons and tightens up both its belt and its defenses against foreign
invasion. And that's just hazards associated with declining oil supplies. I
haven't even mentioned the storms brewing on the horizon associated with
shrinking aquifers and declining access to sanitary water.
Cont.
/
The current world consumption of oil is something like 25 to 30 Billion
barrels per year. If the current expansion rates of world population and
economic development continues, the world's projected oil needs before the
end of the current century will be something like 225 Billion barrels if the
world expects to sustain its current standard of living. Energy experts are
well aware, even if the general populace isn't, that it is not only impossible
to produce 225 Billion barrels per year right now; but will be utterly
unrealistic in the future.
2012's graduate students might legitimately ask: Will my grandchildren ever
be able to ride in an airplane? The answer may very well be NO. That's just
one of the grim realities of the inevitability of oil's decline. Quantities of oil
that remain by the time of their grandchildren, will be so expensive, so
difficult to extract, and so limited, that only the very rich will be able to
afford to travel by air. Gasoline for cars? Tightly rationed of course; that is,
if internal combustion engines of any kind, either conventional or hybrid, are
even legal by then.
The world is moving towards a drastic transition from the industrial age to
an age I can't even begin to imagine without oil; and the transition is really
not all that many years away from now. Will the world decline into a Mad
Max society? I don't know; but of one thing I'm pretty sure. Nation will go to
war with nation to secure for themselves whatever oil reserves remain. How
do I know that? Because America is, and has been, already doing that very
thing.
Incidentally, there are no mechanized conveyances mentioned anywhere in
the book of Revelation. What might that suggest? Well, it suggests to me
that factories as we know them today will not exist down towards the end;
and it's not all that difficult to figure out why. Fossil fuels-- coal, oil, and
natural gas --will be so depleted by then that current manufacturing-- its
products and its methods --will be a thing of the past. You know who I think
might do very well in the future? People who know how to garden, and those
who know how to make and maintain things by hand.
I hate sounding like another crazy alarmist like that old guy who was in the
news October of 2011 because that is so negative; but I'm pretty sure in my
own mind that the grandchildren of 2012's grads won't be looking at just
another spurious Y2K meltdown that got all the survivalists excited at the
turn of the last century; no, they'll be looking at the irreversible collapse of
their parents' way of life, wherein their biggest worry won't be paying back
student loans and maxed out credit cards: no, their biggest worry will be
finding enough to eat because not only will industrial farming methods grind
to a halt; but also food imports will stop as every nation on earth circles the
wagons and tightens up both its belt and its defenses against foreign
invasion. And that's just hazards associated with declining oil supplies. I
haven't even mentioned the storms brewing on the horizon associated with
shrinking aquifers and declining access to sanitary water.
Cont.
/
