My Peak Oil Prognostications

If you don't know what 'peak oil' is, I'd suggest you start researching it right away. I've been talking about peak oil for about a decade now; when I first started sharing this information most 'ordinary' Americans brushed me off, dismissed my researches out of hand. Even now there is tremendous allegiance to some notion that Americans have a right to unlimited cheap oil to fuel their vast appetite for driving.

However, this post is about my peak oil predictions for the next couple of years. (All prices are given in 2008 dollars; inflation is going to get spectacularly tough if I'm correct about these gas prices, & thus the nominal prices in 2009, 2010, 2011, & 2012 dollars may be even higher.)

I foresee $4.00 a gallon gasoline (nationwide average) by the time the election rolls around in November 2008.

My conservative estimate for 2009 average national gas price is a mere $5.00 per gallon; but my more realistic expectation is that gasoline will have a nationwide price of $7.00 per gallon by the end of 2009.

By the end of 2010, I fully expect to see at least $10 per gallon gasoline across the country.

By the end of 2012 I'm betting that America (& virtually every other country on the planet) will be dealing with $20.00 per gallon gasoline, possibly even $30 or more per gallon.

There it is. I'm on the record.

Embracing The Future

The following rant was provoked by someone somewhere blaming the fashion industry for the 'end of fat-as-beautiful', which gets the causality arrow all tangled up. (But that's another post for another time.)

I know it's oh-so-fashionable to be doom-and-gloom about modernity and industrialization and all that, but frankly it's boring, totally old-skool (in a not good way), and it makes people sound like their parents, grandparents (again, not in a good way), or religious whackos.

I'm all for preserving traditions that work in modern contexts, but knee-jerk allegiance to nostalgia can leave the knee-jerker looking out of touch and, honestly? -- hostile, desperate, and somewhat pathetic.

I usually keep this opinion to myself, but I'm getting so tired of hearing people's inner fears about the future projected out as 'objective factual info'.

I like modernity; I like progress; I like electricity and computers and space travel and technology and modern notions of human rights (and clothing) and most especially I like public sanitation and modern plumbing.

I know too much history to ever want to go back.

And don't even get me started on how lacking it is in personal responsibility to blame things on the fashion industry. (Or the media, or government, or whatever . . . . . . Enough with the blame games.)

Data Analysis & Zero Data

The absence of data is frequently mistaken for data of absence . . . .. . .

This is one of the most crucial argumentative errors around . . . . . . .

We see it in criminological discussions all the time; for all intents & purposes there is no data about criminology prior to about 1950-1975 . . . . . Which is then mistaken for being data showing that crime was not really an issue prior to the modern collection of high-quality data about criminal activities . . . . .. .

The lack of information does not prove something does not exist, just that there is no data . . . . . . . .

Let's Talk About Abortion, Contraception, & Population Control

First let me share with you this bit of happy news, with which you may not be familiar: industrialization, & especially the resultant urbanization, is the best population control humans have come up with yet. Fully industrialized & heavily urbanized countries are not replacing themselves, despite most having laws & customs that are generally pro-natalist. (Pronatalism is the promotion of child-bearing.)

There's a myth out there that humans will breed like rabbits, or bacteria, under most any circumstances, & that they must be stopped from this by specific actions to enable zero population growth, or even depopulation. This myth ignores the underlying realities of economics & demographics: agriculture-based societies reward high rates of childbearing, & industrial societies penalize high rates of childbearing. The whole of the planet is in demographic transition from being primarily agricultural to being primarily industrial, with the result being that we will face an issue of depopulation. (Most likely sometime around 2050.)

Another myth relating to this 'breeding like bacteria' trope is that humans have not controlled their population except for inefficiently thru primitive contraception & abortion, ignoring the reality that evidence shows humans have controlled population thru infanticide back into the far reaches of pre-history. Unsavory, but there it is. Given that, abortion is a vast improvement over the infanticide it replaces.

I'm looking forward to the future when we finally realize we must realistically control population & accelerate the depopulation curve, primarily thru beginning comprehensive sex education in grade school (a la Sweden), & making contraception an ubiquitous part of ordinary lives. This will eventually include 'handing out contraception on street corners', & pornographers eroticizing the use of contraceptives, particularly condoms & other barrier devices.

& this will be a good thing. If we want everyone on the planet to live lifestyles even approximately as luxurious as early 21st century American ones, there will have to be a lot fewer people, & the only morally acceptable way to get there is thru contraceptive-enabled attrition . . . . . .. .

Ordinary Miracles, Playing God, & the New Jesuses

Some years ago I was having one of those annoyingly frustrating conversations with someone about cultural evolution. The other's pessimistic argument was of the we're-evil-&-doomed-to-hell-in-a-handbasket variety.

I think I started it with commentary about my belief that Jesus & Buddha were probably the result of more advanced child-rearing, resulting in greater levels of empathy, & a clearer ability to see the 'true nature of reality' about them, rather than the prevalent hallucinatory projectiveness typical of those coming from the severely abusive childhoods 'normal' to those times. (Please see http://www.psychohistory.com/ for additional information about these theories about childhood & cultural evolution.)

The response of the other was to say, 'So where are all the Jesuses now? Why aren't there thousands of Jesuses running around performing miracles?' At that moment I was stumped. I can be very slow, & frequently think of the best rejoinders much later.

Some months pass & it came to me: we are surrounded by ordinary miracles, so ubiquitous that we don't even notice their specialness. Indeed, we expect miracles, & denigrate them for not being perfect. The examples that specifically came to my mind were the ordinary (& daily) miracles of modern medicine, particularly the surgeon's ability to 'kill' their patients in pursuit of healing.

Any time a patient undergoes major surgery they are, in effect, 'killed' on the operating table. Wounds so grievous that they would surely die if it were not for the miracles of modern medicine. & then they are brought back to life. Resurrected. Mostly better than they'd been before.

Ordinary miracles so often unappreciated are all around us, if we allow ourselves the optimism to see them.

Death, Jealousy, & the Future

It is completely normal, even expected, for any given mortal to be jealous of those who come after given the reality that things are getting better all the time. Just as it's an ordinary part of human experience for parents to be jealous of the better lives they've worked so hard to give their children. Hard, but true.

I've recognized for some time that a fundamental truth of life is that we get to have sex until we die, & then the future happens. (All too often the sex was the best part.) & I recognize my own jealousy at all the good stuff that will happen after I die. I was hoping for a lunar colony in my lifetime; at 43 this is not looking like it's gonna be.

So. The point of this is that this systemic jealousy, however unconscious, can result in a cynicism about the future which is unjustified by the evidence. In combination with the saturation of depressive suicidal ideation found in the extremist apocalypsism so prevalent in all manner of folk, optimism can feel like an uphill slog in high gravity. But if we can get past our excessive & unfounded sadness & pessimism, the future's so bright I gotta wear shades.

Finite Mineral Fuels

I'd like to offer some reframing on the issues of global energy production. This blog will simply define & offer some small discussion of the concept of 'finite mineral fuels'.

I tend to think it's more useful to think of petroleum, coal, uranium, & even natural gas as finite mineral fuels. (While realizing that natural gas is not technically a mineral.)

These finite mineral fuels are just that -- finite. Limited. Non-renewable. Once dug out of the ground & burned, they are gone. & those that are biogenically sourced (coal, petroleum, & natural gas) are never to be replaced in our lifetimes.

But even uranium is a finite mineral fuel. While we can, theoretically, continue to mine uranium from other parts of our solar system, we are many decades from that being a practical solution to our appetite for energy.

Many people (& more every day) are familiarizing themselves with the concept of peak oil, the idea that petroleum products are a finite resource with a rather predictable pattern of extraction. We might want to start thinking of 'peak natural gas', 'peak uranium', yes, even 'peak coal'. Or we might want to think of them all as simply finite mineral fuels.