Ethical To Raise A Child Today?

[Singular Intellect]

You DID cite "responsibility" as one of your reasons not to have kids. So either you fear responsibility or you're IRresponsible. Mike was just choosing the more charitable option. Be grateful.

False dilemma situation there. My objection is to the conclusion there's only two possible reasons, irresponsibility or fear of it. Lack of interest wasn't accounted for. To use an analogy, it would be liked faced with the optional job of sorting papers stacked ceiling high in a twenty thousand square foot three story warehouse. You neither fear the job nor are irresponsible...you just don't want to do it, even if there's others willing to.

[Darth Servo]

You DID cite "responsibility" as one of your reasons not to have kids. So either you fear responsibility or you're IRresponsible. Mike was just choosing the more charitable option. Be grateful.

False dilemma situation there. My objection is to the conclusion there's only two possible reasons, irresponsibility or fear of it. Lack of interest wasn't accounted for. To use an analogy, it would be liked faced with the optional job of sorting papers stacked ceiling high in a twenty thousand square foot three story warehouse. You neither fear the job nor are irresponsible...you just don't want to do it, even if there's others willing to.

Lack of interest in having responsibility IS irresponsibility. Having kids is more like if sorting those papers were a big community project and you refused to even participate in sorting them.

[Darth Wong]

Gotta love that kind of reasoning: "I'm not irresponsible, I just don't feel like being responsible!"

[Admiral Valdemar]

People that shun responsibility are the last kind you want to survive to rebuild anything of importance in society. I'm not near child rearing time myself, but I'm only interested in how people view raising children in harsh times. If I was married and with a kid now, I'd not throw my hands up in the air and drink myself into a stupor. I'd still like to know what parents thought during the Cold War about their child's future, since reading accounts of families struggling during the Great Depression was fascinating, if chilling in areas.

As Mike has said in the past, a great parent is a commodity we need more of in society, even if it means the losing of hicks who just act as baby making machines, to borrow a Japanese politician's terminology. It's a true test of your ability to be a rational, upstanding human being if you can raise a child well yourself.

[The Yosemite Bear]

mind you we have a pretty hard wired biological need to have children, just that we've been doinging it too much, and by the wrong peoople for too long, that we really need a good predator to "thin the human herd". (I am getting more misenthropic as time goes by aren't I?)

[Darth Servo]

mind you we have a pretty hard wired biological need to have children, just that we've been doinging it too much, and by the wrong peoople for too long, that we really need a good predator to "thin the human herd". (I am getting more misenthropic as time goes by aren't I?)

Interesting idea. But what kind of predator would feed on the stupid? Sounds like the alien of the week in Star Trek TOS.

[The Yosemite Bear]

So far all we've been able to do is have some microbes that go after the sick, and poor; as well as periodic but increasing bouts of self predation....

[TithonusSyndrome]

A rational and bright person isn't nessicarily obligated to have children if they can adopt or better still, serve as a mentor for a larger group of youngsters whose parents lack the time or initiative to help them. And having children would cut into the time and resources you'd have to carry out the latter option, in addition to creating another mouth to feed.

[aerius]

I mean, as oil dries up (not "disappears suddenly") wouldn't we naturally be shifting away from such energy sources?

Didn't America run out of it's primary energy source(wood) during the late 19th century, and yet managed to smoothly transition to fossil fuels without any economic impact?

The difference now is that we don't have a new energy source on the horizon waiting to take over from oil. In the past we had coal to take over from wood, and then oil from coal. There was a fair bit of overlap and we just had to wait for the prices to equalize. Now, we don't have a new energy source waiting to take over from oil, that is outside of delusional renewable energy greenie or nuclear proponent's wet dreams.

[His Divine Shadow]

It won't hurt then to make sure your house can be warmed by wood. Like ours can, it's an old fucking furnace but it has always run on both wood and oil. We've been thinking about replacing it with a pellet-burner though since it would be far more efficient.

Some of our friends replaced their wood-burning stove with a pellet-burning one, every once in a while it would pop in a few pellets and burn them and keep the temperature steady. It was quite a change from the old one which they would light manually when the house got cold and then it would be very warm for a while.

This I figure will lead to massive demand for wood, which hopefully will lead to mucho new forrests being planted.

Also try and find a WW2 era car thats converted to run on what swedes call "gengas" or generator gas or wood gas. Those cars with the funny things on the back. I mean we ran cars on charcoal in WW2 and that worked!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas

Maybe it's time for a renewal?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The difference now is that we don't have a new energy source on the horizon waiting to take over from oil. In the past we had coal to take over from wood, and then oil from coal. There was a fair bit of overlap and we just had to wait for the prices to equalize. Now, we don't have a new energy source waiting to take over from oil, that is outside of delusional renewable energy greenie or nuclear proponent's wet dreams.

The problem is mainly down to scalability and economics. The alternatives exist, such as coal-to-liquid via the aforementioned Fischer-Tropsch process, but that process requires oil or natural gas to produce such products from waste coal. This may have just about worked for Nazi Germany and been used in S. Africa, but it will simply not be able to accomodate present demand, nevermind future demand increases which are always forecast in economic policy (the key problem leading to stock market panic is the loss of growth, not the shrinking supply of ever more expensive oil and later gas and coal). To use this process or even bio-fuels and hydrogen, you need the infrastructure and that does not exist. What's more, the will to make it exist isn't there either, since PO is a truth known in Big Oil circles, even if the timing of the event is debated, but not acknowledged. No incentive means no infrastructure means no replacements.

And even then, that doesn't solve the problem anyway, since you're now shifting to just another, less clean, less useful fossil fuel that is already looking to have little more lifetime than natural gas (new evidence is shaping a 15 year period until Peak Coal).

As the Hirsch Report stipulates, such enormous energy demands today in the US alone would need at least decades of new, alternative infrastructure to be built up. If Peak Oil is now, and it may very well be that way, then the idea that the US will not only avoid an unprecedented depression, but then be able to grow afterwards with alternatives is laughably optimistic even for the people who deny an immediate threat of crisis.

There is far more stopping us than science and engineering. It is will and mindset. The US could cut 5 million barrels a day from their imports in the Gulf if they had cars with an average mileage just a couple of miles per gallon better than today. They haven't. The US is going to fall hard, and they've brought it on themselves.

The rest of the world is just going to have to deal with it too.

[Singular Intellect]

Lack of interest in having responsibility IS irresponsibility. Having kids is more like if sorting those papers were a big community project and you refused to even participate in sorting them.

Frankly, I don't see the validity of the notion that having kids is in any form or manner is a obligation as a human being. It's an optional aspect of life.

Gotta love that kind of reasoning: "I'm not irresponsible, I just don't feel like being responsible!"

Perhaps I misunderstood what you said. I thought you were saying that a person who isn't interested in having kids isn't a responsible individual altogether rather than just on that particular subject. If that's the case, I apologize for my error.

[TheLemur]

requires oil or natural gas to produce such products from waste coal.

The Nazis beg to disagree; Fischer-Tropsch oil from coal was a hugely important industry in wartime Germany, and it obviously couldn't have gotten very far if the Germans needed oil or natural gas to use it since they didn't have any. Look at the actual equations; where exactly is input of oil or natural gas required?

No incentive means no infrastructure means no replacements.

Incentives will become very large very quickly under most Peak Oil scenarios, especially in heavily oil-dependent countries like the US. Did it not occur to you that oil demand is very inelastic, and so prices will skyrocket even when supply is at %90 of demand? I cite the aforementioned example of Nazi Germany for evidence that infrastructure can be built up very rapidly (yes, I know it was done using slave labor, but there's nothing a whip can accomplish that a large pile of money can't).

little more lifetime than natural gas (new evidence is shaping a 15 year period until Peak Coal).

No citation? Not even a quick Wikipedia check?

The energy value of all the world's coal is 290 zettajoules.<ref>Sustainable Energy" 2005 page 303 The MIT Press by Jefferson W. Tester et al. ISBN 0-262-20153-4</ref> At the current global consumption of 15 terawatt,<ref>BP2006 energy report, and US EIA 2006 overview</ref> there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 600 years.

would need at least decades of new, alternative infrastructure to be built up.

After all, that's what happened with the Internet, which requires a great deal of infrastructure in the form of huge computer arrays, worldwide network links, giant fab plants and the like. Except that the Internet went from almost complete obscurity to being a trillion-dollar Wall Street bubble in only six years. The original introduction of the gas-powered car happened almost as rapidly, with car production increasing by two full orders of magnitude from 1912-1922. I'm sure you could find many other examples.

The US could cut 5 million barrels a day from their imports in the Gulf if they had cars with an average mileage just a couple of miles per gallon better than today.

The US doesn't even import 5 million barrels a day from the Gulf, period, in any form. Oops.[/url]

[Dennis Toy]

There is far more stopping us than science and engineering. It is will and mindset. The US could cut 5 million barrels a day from their imports in the Gulf if they had cars with an average mileage just a couple of miles per gallon better than today. They haven't. The US is going to fall hard, and they've brought it on themselves.

And lets not forget that we build sprawled out, badly designed suburban developments that depend on vehicles to get around. We build oversized cars and super-sized department stores to get our goods. If we had developed cities that had commerce in downtown areas and suburbs that hugged the city while being connected by transit, we would have this eminent problem.

[Darth Servo]

Frankly, I don't see the validity of the notion that having kids is in any form or manner is a obligation as a human being. It's an optional aspect of life.

Which is presicely why you're irresposible. You can't just restate your conclusions as fact around here you know.

Survival of the human species is only an "option" according to bubble boy. I guess we know where he gets his screen name. He's been one most of his life.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you said. I thought you were saying that a person who isn't interested in having kids isn't a responsible individual altogether rather than just on that particular subject. If that's the case, I apologize for my error.

Doesn't matter. Someone can be a complete moron on one issue and OK n everything else. Said person is still going to get crap flamed out of him around here regardless of if they're selectively or universally retarded.

Irresponsibility on only one issue is still irresponsibility.

[Singular Intellect]

Frankly, I don't see the validity of the notion that having kids is in any form or manner is a obligation as a human being. It's an optional aspect of life.

Which is presicely why you're irresposible. You can't just restate your conclusions as fact around here you know.

So you're saying that having kids being a choice (ie: optional) isn't a fact?

Survival of the human species is only an "option" according to bubble boy.

I'm talking on the individual basis. I'm assuming you're being delibrately obtuse on this aspect.

Doesn't matter. Someone can be a complete moron on one issue and OK n everything else. Said person is still going to get crap flamed out of him around here regardless of if they're selectively or universally retarded.

Irresponsibility on only one issue is still irresponsibility.

Irresponsibility as I typically employ the term says that an individual is shirking a job or duty that they are obligated to do.

Are you asserting that having children is a obligation from every human being and that there shouldn't be a choice in the matter?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Nazis beg to disagree; Fischer-Tropsch oil from coal was a hugely important industry in wartime Germany, and it obviously couldn't have gotten very far if the Germans needed oil or natural gas to use it since they didn't have any. Look at the actual equations; where exactly is input of oil or natural gas required?

If you actually read your own link, you'd know that. If just using coal and gas is too expensive, you now need a lot of very pure water. But I have other issues with coal.

Incentives will become very large very quickly under most Peak Oil scenarios, especially in heavily oil-dependent countries like the US. Did it not occur to you that oil demand is very inelastic, and so prices will skyrocket even when supply is at %90 of demand? I cite the aforementioned example of Nazi Germany for evidence that infrastructure can be built up very rapidly (yes, I know it was done using slave labor, but there's nothing a whip can accomplish that a large pile of money can't).

It's too bad history says otherwise, then. Not that it matters, because the Hirsch report states it'd take decades with trillions in investment and billions of stored reserves of crude to implement such a plan for the US alone. But hey, I don't see the problems with comparing Nazi Germany to modern day USA. You're forgetting, China is building a whole coal fired powerplant every two weeks just to meet growing demand, not cover existing demand from other sources. The US and India are no different in energy growth.

Incidentally, the same report doesn't even mention alternatives as a mitigation factor. Tells you something about how useful wind would be in replacing oil.

No citation? Not even a quick Wikipedia check?

You really should try and use Wikipedia less.

Citation based on German energy watchdog report.

And if you find them to be a bit iffy, which is the general consensus on many boards given they're apparent greenies, then there is the Carnegie Mellon report on Peak Coal being around twenty years, so moving to that achieves what, exactly? You delay the energy crisis, maybe, by a decade or two, assuming no unforeseen global events or higher than expected population growth/energy usage. Anyway, this ignores:

• -The long build times for such facilities.
  -The highly polluting nature of coal impacting on AGW.
  -The toxicity of handling such a substance en masse, especially when the cleaner coal is used up sooner.
  -The cost involved in producing such an infrastructure.

Did I mention the EIA have dubious track history of energy reporting such as inflating oil reserves by saying "this is what we want to be there, so it's there!"? I do believe I mentioned it earlier. I do believe I trust them as much as the USGS and their "we won't peak US oil by the 22nd century" claims.

After all, that's what happened with the Internet, which requires a great deal of infrastructure in the form of huge computer arrays, worldwide network links, giant fab plants and the like. Except that the Internet went from almost complete obscurity to being a trillion-dollar Wall Street bubble in only six years. The original introduction of the gas-powered car happened almost as rapidly, with car production increasing by two full orders of magnitude from 1912-1922. I'm sure you could find many other examples.

You're comparing the Internet to the world's energy supply? Dear Zeus...

The comparison of turn of the century era vehicles to modern day ones is also hilarious. It's not like there's more vehicles today or that they're far more resource intensive to make or that US vehicle efficiency has been going down in recent years. Oh, wait...

The US doesn't even import 5 million barrels a day from the Gulf, period, in any form. Oops.[/url]

My bad, I meant to say Middle-East, the Energy In Focus: BP Statisical Review Of World Energy was the source, I recall.

[tim31]

I have a 2.5 year old daughter and a son on the way. Emily and I have a twenty-year plan to bust our balls and make sure they get the start in life we did. Just because we had children young, doesn't mean we have to be trash.

My older sister and her husband are going to be attempting to start a family in within the next year as a planned event. They lived several hundred kilometres inland, she is a school principal(small bush school) and he has a large farm. The drought has been pretty tough the last few years, and if the Murrary-Darling river system isn't managed better, it's going to get tougher.

My point? You can look at life as being something to be suffered or something to be enjoyed. This can and does change on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. We'll all be okay- we just have to be prepared to adapt. That's how anything stays viable in an ever-changing environment.

[aerius]

The Nazis beg to disagree; Fischer-Tropsch oil from coal was a hugely important industry in wartime Germany, and it obviously couldn't have gotten very far if the Germans needed oil or natural gas to use it since they didn't have any. Look at the actual equations; where exactly is input of oil or natural gas required?

Scale. The US currently uses nearly as much oil in two days, that's right, 2 days as Nazi Germany did in an entire fucking year. Here's another fun fact for you. Even assuming all the infrastructure could be built, the US would run out of coal in about 40-50 years at most. Not peak and enter decline, completely run out.

Incentives will become very large very quickly under most Peak Oil scenarios, especially in heavily oil-dependent countries like the US. Did it not occur to you that oil demand is very inelastic, and so prices will skyrocket even when supply is at %90 of demand? I cite the aforementioned example of Nazi Germany for evidence that infrastructure can be built up very rapidly (yes, I know it was done using slave labor, but there's nothing a whip can accomplish that a large pile of money can't).

Scale. You're looking at an infrastructure project which is well over 100 times larger than the one Nazi Germany undertook. Coal mines, stripper shovels, railways, boxcars, liquifaction plants, pipelines, and all that other infrastructure takes time to build, a lot of time. For one thing, where's all that steel going to come from considering that US steel production capacity has been declining for quite some time now.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Thank you, aerius. That's what a lot of people seem to miss: the scale and economics. Sure, you can point to Nazi Germany or contemporary Brazil and go "There! PO is bullshit, you're just doomsaying when there is evidence of self-sufficiency without oil from the Gulf or elsewhere". But none of those examples, even combined, rivals the sheer industrial might of the US, to say nothing of the EU or China and India.

By the way, in other news, China has just found another two billion barrels worth of oil! That's enough oil to last them... a year. Just another 28 billion needed to meet current annual demand then. I'm sure ANWR and Jack-2 will supply that...

This industry should be in place now to even off-set demand increases thanks to lowering efficiency in the US and global population growth. To go "well, we'll convert to alternatives once oil hits $100 a barrel" is ridiculous. You won't have time, nor the resources to do that. To build nuclear, coal or ramp up bio-fuel production takes decades, which we may not have even with optimistic outlooks (even Prof. Odell and OPEC say 2040 at the latest now for the peak). Is the industry going to invest trillions now to stop this crisis? Fuck no. Investors want their windfalls today, not put into technologies that could stem a collapse of the economy in years to come. If oil is cheap, why bother with anything else? When it gets expensive, it's too late to turnaround and look at alternatives. Growth stops. The economy stagnates and likely goes into free-fall as supplies drop and people vie for the last drops, likely using the US' only trump card now, their massive military, and even that needs huge amounts of oil to do anything.

If you want an example of human stupidity and short-sightedness along with sticking-fingers-in-ears mentality, then this energy situation is it.

[TheLemur]

If you actually read your own link, you'd know that.

What the fuck kind of a response is that? To explicitly list the chemical equations, first coal is is reacted with water:

3C + 3H2O --> 3H2 + 3CO

More water is then added to establish a favorable H2/CO ratio:

CO + H2O --> CO2 + H2

The CO and H2 are then reacted to produce long-chain hydrocarbons:

n(4H2 + 2CO) --> 2nH2O + C2nH4n

The only required input products are coal and water (and possibly oxygen to provide heat for the first reaction, which is endothermic).

If just using coal and gas is too expensive, you now need a lot of very pure water.

Source? Nope? Come on- the products of reaction #1 are GASES. Any impurities in the water are SOLIDS. Obviously it requires a huge industrial capability to separate gases and solids .

Not that it matters, because the Hirsch report states it'd take decades with trillions in investment and billions of stored reserves of crude to implement such a plan for the US alone.

The Hirsch report concludes (correctly) that a substantial fuel shortage will occur even if efforts to mitigate are started a decade before peak. It does NOT conclude that such efforts will be impossible or ineffective; it just says that they will not prevent the immediate impact on society of high oil prices. Which is probably a good thing, because without the shock and enormous incentive of sky-high prices the effort required would never materialize.

You're forgetting, China is building a whole coal fired powerplant every two weeks just to meet growing demand, not cover existing demand from other sources.

Again, you provide no reference so I don't know how big these power plants are or how credible this is. And you're ignoring the fact that this constitutes proof that a modern society can ramp up industrial production very quickly.

Citation based on German energy watchdog report.

The report hasn't even been released yet! Drawing conclusions from a third-hand source is dubious at best.

-The long build times for such facilities.

-The cost involved in producing such an infrastructure.

I refer you to your earlier quote on how China is building 25 coal power plants a year.

-The highly polluting nature of coal impacting on AGW.

It is much easier to control pollution in a GTL facility than in a coal-burning power plant, because the gas has to be processed anyway, no air is added and temperatures are kept fairly low. For instance, CO2 is pretty much the only gas produced after the GTL process has been finished, so it's easy to sequester. And volatiles in the coal can be pre-expunged by the Karrick process, which produces even more oil.

far more resource intensive to make

The energy costs of producing a vehicle are next to nil compared to the cost of running it. The primary drivers of cost in a vehicle are A), steel, and B), labor and manufacturing. Steel's price is primarily determined by the cost of iron ore and not of energy (a full ton of steel can be created with only ~$100 or so of coal). Manufacturing facilities are already in place, and the cost of labor is driven by the C.O.L. of the workers, which is in turn driven primarily by fixed expenses such as taxes, Social Security, mortgage payments, etc.

It's not like there's more vehicles today

The US population in the 1920s was much smaller, and the people who were around were much less affluent; thus, there was much less capital to start manufacturing cars with and much less demand to sell cars.

US vehicle efficiency has been going down in recent years.

What does that have to do with anything? I cited early vehicles as an example of rapid, pervasive infrastructure development.

My bad, I meant to say Middle-East,

I knew you meant Middle East. Just look at who we import oil from. Notice that out of the top 15 oil-sending nations, only three are Middle Eastern, and they only add up to 2.25 million barrels a day, nowhere near 5.

[TheLemur]

Scale. You're looking at an infrastructure project which is well over 100 times larger than the one Nazi Germany undertook.

Okay, I can grant that, but that is a long-term goal. Oil production will not magically hit a wall and drop to zero like it did in Nazi Germany; it will decline over a period of 30-40 years, which is plenty of time to build a nuclear power infrastructure even if coal does peak in 40-odd years.

and all that other infrastructure takes time to build,

Every single piece of the infrastructure save for the liquefaction plants is already in place, remember? The US is already the #1 coal producer in the world, and once the oil is produced it can simply be shunted into existing distribution channels.

[Admiral Valdemar]

What the fuck kind of a response is that? To explicitly list the chemical equations, first coal is is reacted with water:

3C + 3H2O --> 3H2 + 3CO

More water is then added to establish a favorable H2/CO ratio:

CO + H2O --> CO2 + H2

The CO and H2 are then reacted to produce long-chain hydrocarbons:

n(4H2 + 2CO) --> 2nH2O + C2nH4n

The only required input products are coal and water (and possibly oxygen to provide heat for the first reaction, which is endothermic).

Yeah, so it needs fossil fuels and water, lots of it, both of which are dwindling resources. Your point?

Source? Nope? Come on- the products of reaction #1 are GASES. Any impurities in the water are SOLIDS. Obviously it requires a huge industrial capability to separate gases and solids .

Because using impure water leads to chemical alterations within the actual process such as hydrochloric acid. Again, this doesn't answer the fact that the infrastructure is not in place and wastes as solids or not, you still need to deal with them.

The Hirsch report concludes (correctly) that a substantial fuel shortage will occur even if efforts to mitigate are started a decade before peak. It does NOT conclude that such efforts will be impossible or ineffective; it just says that they will not prevent the immediate impact on society of high oil prices. Which is probably a good thing, because without the shock and enormous incentive of sky-high prices the effort required would never materialize.

Alternatively, the shock may destroy any economy there is to build such alternatives. This is the risk I'm highlighting here, and the chances of pulling through increase if you have this already on-stream before the event.

Again, you provide no reference so I don't know how big these power plants are or how credible this is. And you're ignoring the fact that this constitutes proof that a modern society can ramp up industrial production very quickly.

It's been in every news outlet for several months now. I'm sure you can peruse Google for it, but it doesn't really matter, the point is the Chinese machine has been doing this for decades, not right now. They're far more dependant on coal because of the lack of oil there which they have to import. The US is not this way, and to rival the Chinese model would require significant investment and time.

The report hasn't even been released yet! Drawing conclusions from a third-hand source is dubious at best.

So then look at less recent sources. I say again, coal does not answer the problem, it simply passes the buck and is not a particularly pleasant nor as efficient source like light, sweet crude is. In anycase, others have their doubts and coal is far harder to get at and transport than oil, which means you have to take those extra costs into consideration, just as one would the costs of the various stages of bio-fuels from crop to the petrol station forecourt. You can't just go "Look, the coal is producing this much oil" when you have used energy to simply get that coal there and then refined it to become a liquid or gas.

I refer you to your earlier quote on how China is building 25 coal power plants a year.

To which I refer you to my above points.

It is much easier to control pollution in a GTL facility than in a coal-burning power plant, because the gas has to be processed anyway, no air is added and temperatures are kept fairly low. For instance, CO2 is pretty much the only gas produced after the GTL process has been finished, so it's easy to sequester. And volatiles in the coal can be pre-expunged by the Karrick process, which produces even more oil.

The problem is China, for instance, is not building CCS plants, and bar China, no one is ramping up coal powerplants unless they already have to. Why would they? Oil is a far superior product and is why the US and UK do not even bother with coal relatively.

The energy costs of producing a vehicle are next to nil compared to the cost of running it. The primary drivers of cost in a vehicle are A), steel, and B), labor and manufacturing. Steel's price is primarily determined by the cost of iron ore and not of energy (a full ton of steel can be created with only ~$100 or so of coal). Manufacturing facilities are already in place, and the cost of labor is driven by the C.O.L. of the workers, which is in turn driven primarily by fixed expenses such as taxes, Social Security, mortgage payments, etc.

Next to nil is not nil, though. It is still a lot of oil going into the process. You're really relying heavily on oil CTL processes saving us, as if the whole thing is set up now to take-over from oil when it breaks the $100 a barrel barrier. Can you show me why the Hirsch report is wrong when it states this is simple folly?

The US population in the 1920s was much smaller, and the people who were around were much less affluent; thus, there was much less capital to start manufacturing cars with and much less demand to sell cars.

And? This doesn't change the fact that cars are bigger, more energy intensive machines today, the population is growing at a rate that is increasing energy usage and the suburban lifestyles are sucking down a good chunk of everything wastefully, which they certainly didn't have in the '20s.

What does that have to do with anything? I cited early vehicles as an example of rapid, pervasive infrastructure development.

You don't see how mileage impacts oil consumption?!

I knew you meant Middle East. Just look at who we import oil from. Notice that out of the top 15 oil-sending nations, only three are Middle Eastern, and they only add up to 2.25 million barrels a day, nowhere near 5.

No, but it's getting that way. The figure, IIRC, was an estimate on imports within the next couple of years. Anyway, those numbers aren't my point. My point was that the US is importing more and more oil, not doing anything about getting off the addiction.

[TheLemur]

Yeah, so it needs fossil fuels and water, lots of it, both of which are dwindling resources. Your point?

Oh come on, be a man and concede. You explicitly stated:

The alternatives exist, such as coal-to-liquid via the aforementioned Fischer-Tropsch process, but that process requires oil or natural gas to produce such products from waste coal.

which I have shown to be completely false. And it isn't as if we're going to run out of seawater anytime soon.

Because using impure water leads to chemical alterations within the actual process such as hydrochloric acid.

Okay; I concede that some HCl could be generated. Except that HCl can be easily neutralized by something as common and dirt-cheap as limestone.

that the infrastructure is not in place and wastes as solids or not, you still need to deal with them.

The infrastructure to deal with solid wastes is not in place? So what do we do with the millions of tons of coal ash we already produce? Does it just vanish courtesy of the Magical Garbage Fairy?

Alternatively, the shock may destroy any economy there is to build such alternatives.

*Destroy* the economy? Obviously it would badly damage the economy, but to suggest that it would be destroyed to the point where building simple, low-tech infrastructure on a large scale is impossible is simply crazy. Nazi Germany succeeded in doubling its production of tanks from 1941-1944, while under heavy Allied bombardment and a critical fuel shortage. Even the Great Depression doesn't compare to having thousands of tons of high explosives dropped on you every night for years on end.

the point is the Chinese machine has been doing this for decades, not right now.

The Chinese demand for huge quantities of resources is fairly recent, as these things go; Chinese oil imports have come close to doubling in only eight-nine odd years.

when you have used energy to simply get that coal there and then refined it to become a liquid or gas.

EROEI for coal is quite high; we know this because coal is currently going for [url=http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/ ... almar.html]around half a barrel of oil per ton. So even if every single cent of coal's price were going towards paying for oil, it would still only require 3 GJ of oil to get 24 GJ of coal.

Why would they?

Because converting it is very profitable with oil at $60 a barrel, but $60 a barrel still isn't high enough to break the huge momentum behind current industry (notice how the oil sands project has been growing very rapidly because that project was already started at the time).

You're really relying heavily on oil CTL processes saving us, as if the whole thing is set up now to take-over from oil when it breaks the $100 a barrel barrier.

It certainly won't save us from high oil prices in the interim, but the Hirsch report showed that it can still fulfill the demands of industrial civilization, even if it does take a while to build all the infrastructure.

Next to nil is not nil, though. It is still a lot of oil going into the process.

So what? In any peak oil scenario demand for cars will crash because they will be so expensive to operate, and your own chart shows that only %10 of the energy a car uses is manufacturing (the portion of hydrocarbon liquids is even less).

which they certainly didn't have in the '20s.

And that has.... what relevance? I was trying to show the feasibility of a rapid growth in the manufacturing base of a product. The qualities of the product then compared to today are totally irrelevant.

You don't see how mileage impacts oil consumption?!

Okay, in nice big letters so you can understand:

I was not trying to say anything about the oil consumption of 1920 compared to today. I was trying to make a point about the AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY and how millions of cars were rapidly produced over a short period of time. I only chose cars because it came to mind and was easy to look up; it could just as easily have been bananas.

[Vyraeth]

You know I see discussions like these on an internet board, and I wonder what if anything, the fucking people in my government are doing about it?

Surely, it's not only AV who realizes how serious a situation like Peak Oil is, Bush may be a moron, but the government employs a broad spectrum of scientists, who had to have pointed something akin to this out.

I mean, government officials have whole advising staffs, is the US government too caught up in trivial politics to realize how much relying on oil could end up costing us?

Where are the campaigns promoting mass transit, where are the laws banning SUV and making fuel efficient cars mandatory? Where are the efforts at developing alternative sources of fuel and energy?

Surely civilization will not eventually be killed off by bureaucratic ineffectiveness.

I mean, I looked briefly over google to find public interest groups promoting greener campaigns and I've found nothing.

Global warming is indeed a serious issue, but I think Peak Oil tops it quite considerably; and hell, if we focused on strategies for dealing with this oil crisis, we would help stem off some of the causes of global warming.
I'm curious AV, and others, what do you think should be done?

And should any stock be taken of hardcore survival groups like these: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/