[ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:26 PM, The Avantguardian
<avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The price of oil need not skyrocket.

I used that as a dramatic example.  If even this extreme case
can be beaten, then slower versions can too.

> The point is how fast can the oil companies come up with an affordable synfuel that can work in the cars that are on the road RIGHT NOW? If their answer is greater than a week, then we are fucked.

If the price of oil jumped 1000-fold in a day, the synfuels that
exist today would suddenly be "affordable" at their current prices.
The National Petroleum Reserve would almost certainly be
dumped on the market entirely; that and similar measures would
buy time to scale up synfuel production.

> You say the skyrocketing oil prices wouldn't cause a holocaust? Are you factoring in civil unrest?

Massive riots alone do not a holocaust make.  Yes, there would
be bloodshed - but far more than 10% of the populace would
survive.  It might well be over 50%.

A holocaust, on the other hand, where there simply are no
resources to survive on without going back to pre-industrial
methods, no matter what anyone does?  That's a fall back to
pre-industrial population: less than 10% of current total.

> If the oil companys' ace-in-the-hole isn't already online or deployable in a week or less, then it is time to get a shotgun.

If that is your answer, go ahead and shoot them - and starve.

We transhumanists, on the other hand, prefer instead to fix
the problem.  Get those aces online or rapidly deployable.
Shooting people who - whatever their motivations - can be
coopted into helping make this happen, rarely helps and
often hurts this objective.

You appear to be engaged in disasterbation: believing that
the world is so terrible and doomed and there's nothing
you can do about it.  That can be a powerful emotional
release, because it absolves you of all responsibility and
culpability if bad things happen.

Unfortunately, it is also fallacious.  While it is true that no
one of us can solve the entire energy crisis on our own, it
is also the case that, if enough of us work to solve it, it
will get solved.  What you can do, and should do, is help
make the better future happen.  On the other hand, getting
mad and preaching about inevitable doomsday just makes
people give up - starting with yourself.

Yes, that *does* mean you're partially responsible if the
worst happens, if you've spent most of your energy on
this convincing yourself otherwise.