Energy, why can't we just ask Saudi Arabia & the US to open the taps more?

[lll3333]

I appreciate there's transport costs but SA is full of oil, what's stopping them upping their supply?

Parsley1234

I'm always put in mind of that film Wall-E where humans are so obese and incapacitated that they float around in sort of mobile carts 🙄

@Theendofnature i suspect that most have no awareness of such and expect to be sorted out ie the vaccine with covid dr giving you a pill no responsibility for anything it’s quite bizarre. I hope my son has a good life he is off to uni he’s so excited it’s the beginning of his life I hope it works out for him ♥️

@Theendofnature praise be I haven’t seen that thankfully 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

People will fight it, but in the end they will inevitably have to deal with it (or not, if they want an out to this life). There is no human bad guy to attack or bomb here. The collective nature of us all is the antagonist here, and while it may suit some to throw yet more valuable energy at finding a human scapegoat to Other, that will only accelerate the final outcome.

Parsley1234

I have twins starting out in life, I do really worry about how the next few decades are going to pan out, pretty they are not going to be although they do come up with some optimistic suggestions that maybe my years of fear won't accept.

Liebig

Have you read Station Eleven?

@Liebig but the reality is most people don’t want to change and won’t change which has a detrimental effect on society as a whole. We saw that in covid how it was so divisive - I know friends who have large estates who just have the temperature at 26/28 all the time when hot they just open a window. They won’t change they can afford the increases so it has a detrimental effect on society as a whole no answers really I don’t see. Those who can’t afford it will be forced to change their ways their lives getting bleaker and more stretched the others just carrying on as you were

@Theendofnature we just want our kids to be ok that is to be a parent. I told my son to look at leaving this country I think there are better places for sure

Very interesting to see this thread. Was reading this article recently and have followed the blog it came from for a while. Would urge people to read the subheadings in bold if short of time.

Very sobering indeed, especially the limitations of so-called renewable energy.
The writer suggests that world leaders and militaries are well aware of this problem. I first became aware of thus issue after reading "Twilight in the Desert" about 15 years ago.

ourfiniteworld.com/2022/08/23/why-no-politician-is-willing-to-tell-us-the-real-energy-story/

@Theendofnature I have not. Added to my list, for when I eventually get through my current pile.

Reading The Water Knife at the same time the drought got into full swing was… unnerving.

@Parsley1234 Check out the “If you were PM” thread. Everyone is looking at how to carry on Business As Usual. No one is looking at the situation and questioning the system.

We’re the yeast in a Petri dish and we’re one doubling from filling the dish and using all the sugar up. And we’re all squabbling on how to get more sugar.

@Waterwitch1 Ah, Gail. Yes, I had just read that piece a couple hours ago. If you want another, check out:

Dr. Tim Watson.

And:

Dr. Tim Morgan.

Hell, check out Dr. Tom Murphy too. These pretty much cover all you need.

@Beancounter1 yes all good points. We already grow a lot of food on an allotment, we have a relatively big solar array so almost no expenditure on energy, but long train commute and substantial mortgage. I don’t particularly worry about a collapse in house prices in SE England maybe only because it’s been a while since that has happened, and I can’t see the demand for housing diminishing even if interest rates were very high, but yes I’ve had the same thoughts about university education (I work in one) and the value of the DC working for good GCSE grades etc.

@BaileysBreakfast i understand about reservations about uni it just seems so crap I went to art college had a great time all paid for it was so much less serious you just went had fun learnt something stuff or not it’s just awful now too serious

Rome was a special case. Tainter’s work on the subject is well worth reading, but their collapse did take a good few centuries. They didn’t one day wake to find the barbarians at the gates and their money and crops useless. They saw things progressively get worse over lifetimes.

I think it's only "special" inasmuch as it's all beautifully documented in modern language that can still be read today - no hieroglyphs or funny alphabets. It still follows the course of all Empires. And it still took centuries to even begin to recover. Hysteresis - being an inconvenient scientific fact - can't be gamed.

Liebig

The articles linked are really good. Dr Tom Murphy is a man after my own heart! I thought the waterfall analogy was all my own haha! I often liken our current situation to being in a barrel floating down the Zambezi with Victoria Falls roaring in the distance (although I believe tragically that it is reduced to barely a trickle these days). We're all partying in the barrel, some of us have know all along where it will end and actually by now, this year I'd say, pretty much everyone on board realises that the party's over... Hey though, what to do?? We're busy slugging back the Daquiris and looking uneasily at each other, no one wants the party to end but we all know in our hearts that it has been called. Do we just say, wtf and pour ourselves another drink or do we make concerted efforts to somehow prevent ourselves from going over the edge into the abyss. Only time will tell but I suspect the drinks will keep on flowing for the time being with no one looking too hard as to what happens when they finally run out and we are left gasping in the cold light of day.

Economists and politicians sure seem to think they can game it. How much money will it cost the treasury to get Mother Nature to put more fossil fuels in the ground for us? Name your price, I'll cut a cheque.

@Theendofnature I'm on my second screwdriver tonight. I think the waterfall analogy is really just another iteration of the Seneca cliff, which as Dr. Ugo Bardi writes about, is where the coyote finally looks down and sees there's no ground beneath him. Although it stems from an observation by the Roman philosopher Seneca and him seeing the road up being less steep than the road down in peoples fortunes.

How much money will it cost the treasury to get Mother Nature to put more fossil fuels in the ground for us?

More than it costs to tell us they have done that and most to believe. And if it turns out they are wrong, then it'll be an opportunity to blame another faction of society.

Remember, when the rapture failed to materialise, it didn't prove there was no God. It proved we hadn't prayed hard enough. The equivalent des nos jours is to see Toryism is failing, and to conclude it's because we aren't doing it hard enough. Hence the rush for peak Truss.

I can't believe we're going to have Truss as we enter this shitstorm. Truly the darkest of timelines.

Maybe if we just believe extra hard, we can will ourselves out of this. To Truss, the phrase "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was an educational doctrine by which to frame our economy.

Boris Johnson into today's Telegraph talking about his departure and about Green Energy has produced some interesting early responses in the comments section.

This series of remarks caught my attention:

F F LePlank
8 MIN AGO
Don't let the door hit you, or your lunatic wife, in the a ş ş on the way out. Good riddance you WEF stooge and filthy grifting freeloader.

Annie Burns
1 MIN AGO
My thoughts exactly.
Well said.,

Rick Wall
JUST NOW
And mine.
‐-‐-----
Dear oh dear.

@Liebig I’ve been reading your links. Thanks for posting them. I’m someone who has expected and even prepared as much as I could for all this but I thought it would be caused by climate change and maybe also war. I didn’t know fossil fuels supply issues would get there first. Obviously the above issues are all related. This is an unusual mumsnet thread! Let’s keep the discussion going.

I get a lot of climate anxiety, and this Noam Chomsky quote is what I cling to when I'm most worried. Maybe it might help people here too?

"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours."

Here's some hopeful things:

• we have been decarbonising our electricity a lot - check out the middle chart dashboard.nationalgrideso.com/
• our carbon footprint has been reducing since 2007 while GDP has increased www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/compendium/economicreview/october2019/thedecouplingofeconomicgrowthfromcarbonemissionsukevidence
• renewables are often cheaper than fossil fuels www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-23/building-new-renewables-cheaper-than-running-fossil-fuel-plants#xj4y7vzkg
• electric cars do save carbon over ICE cars, and this will increase as renewables do: www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change/
• it's possible to make fertilizers using renewable energy www.pv-magazine.com/2022/04/21/green-ammonia-low-hanging-fruit-for-indias-hydrogen-economy/
• floating off-shore wind is cool!
• we've only just scratched the surface for tide power, a renewable that is entirely predictable
• next gen battery tech is coming on a pace. In fact Tesla have already been selling cobalt free batteries electrek.co/2022/04/22/tesla-using-cobalt-free-lfp-batteries-in-half-new-cars-produced/
• JCB are figuring out hydrogen combustion engines for heavy machines www.jcb.com/en-gb/campaigns/hydrogen
• there's a fossil fuel free steel factory in Sweden www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/swedens-hybrit-delivers-worlds-first-fossil-free-steel-2021-08-18/
• farmers are innovating with min-till, agrovoltaics and agroforestry
• scientists are figuring out how we can use precision fermentation to make proteins and fats we can eat without the need for animals and all the land/inputs they need perfectday.com/ - this is how we make insulin and rennet
• there's a facility in Iceland that is pulling carbon from the atmosphere, and the company responsible has funding to scale up climeworks.com/news/climeworks-extends-collaboration-with-microsoft
• subjective one: I have an air source heat pump and a bog-standard 1930s home (EHCP rating D). The heat pump works as well as the gas boiler used to - it's fine.

It is terrifying but also totally unsurprising that we are reaching the period when fossil fuels dwindle and it affects society. I think our dc will mostly be ok but I won’t be encouraging my dc to reproduce any time soon.

@BaileysBreakfast yes it’s a great thread for sure. I think it’s going to be a rocky road for sure and in real life most are not contemplating this outcome I can’t see. The destruction of our beautiful planet it could of been amazing

We are just complete puppets being played for some political advantage god it makes me so cross it’s such bullshit. There is no collective thinking just tinkering around the edges - interesting the article in the Telegraph saying how tories will have buyers remorse with Johnson leaving which with Truss in charge is a given. How has it come to this such a bloody shambles

"Choice" is one of the lies sold to us by consumer society. It makes us buy more stuff.
If you pay attention you will realise that your life is full of choice - every hour of every day you have so many choices - whether to do this or that, say this or that or say nothing, eat this or eat that for lunch, drive this route or that route, wear the red t-shirt or the yellow.
Why not enjoy the choices you do have?

What you don't have is the choice to be more wealthy than you actually are, and to have a future where you and your family will continue to get more wealthy.

From where we are now, it looks like being poor.

From a couple of centuries in the future, it will look like being very very rich.