Link Dump: Ideas, hopeful and scary

[forsyth]

"Libro al viento" (Book on the Wind) and other mobile books An article about mini-libraries and book dispensers in public transit stations. A really neat and simple idea.

Collapse Roger Ebert's review of a movie interview with Michael Ruppert and unrelated to Jared Diamond's book Collapse. In it, he spells out a lot of the worst case scenario results of Peak Oil, when demand for oil outstrips the speed we can dig up oil, because the easy oil's gone. Chances are, we're there, or will be there soon, and are headed down the far side of the Hubbert curve. It's not a pretty picture, and check out the wikipedia article for more about Peak Oil. A lot of it's scary, because we've built our civilization on oil, both for energy and for lots of our stuff.

And Peak Oil's just one of the many problems we are headed into. We should have been using the easy oil to set ourselves up for when it wasn't easy any more, sort of like investing lottery winnings in stuff that'll work when the lottery money is gone. I think we still can, but it's a lot harder now than it would have been if we'd started forty years ago.

Comments

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

We can still do it though. Already we're looking at alternative energy sources, thanks to the Green Movement spurred by the threat of global warming (ironic if you think of it. We hit peak oil just when we need to cut back on our use to save the environment) A lot of the stuff we're coming up with isn't strong enough to support civilization on its own, but with all of them working together I think we can manage. Necessity is the mother of invention and it's only a matter of time before viable oil alternatives are created and put to use.

I don't really think I believe those investors who are saying our civilization will end in 50 years.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

I think we can, too. And I hope I'm right, what with deciding to make that my career, and the whole civilization thing, too. I kinda like it. Oil isn't going to go away instantly, it's not like running out of gas in a car. It's going to get more and more expensive, as the easy fields get tapped out, and only the expensive oil is left, and the newer fields are going to be harder and more expensive to tap.

Maybe then the price effects will kick in, but it's going to be late enough things probably won't be a smooth transition. And there's LOTS of possibility for real nasty stuff, like wars.

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

Over the past 30 years or so, pretty much everyone has been predicting that World War 3 would start over oil. But you know, if some nations (I'm talking mainly the major ones like the US. Smaller, poorer nations would probably war anyways) can increase technologies to the point where they are less dependent on oil to run, then we won't have to be as worried about it when we get to that point.

It's not going to be an easy transition though. The Big Oil guys are so entrenched, that I predict they'll be running the country by the time it gets that bad. I can see the government giving them more and more freedoms in an attempt to keep prices down. And just like they're doing today, they're going to fight to block "energy reform" aka alternative fuels.