[ExI] How to make progress (was Re: Why do political and economic leaders deny Peak Oil and Climate Change?)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Sep 07, 2013 at 09:52:24PM -0600, Brent Allsop wrote:
> Oh thanks spike!  That is great!

I never find Onion funny. Satire shouldn't be too close to reality. 
 
> And it so funny to see the naive, twisted, mistaken
> arguments/assumptions like cutting the people by 1/3 will triple the
> amount of oil each one of us has.  I'd believe that it was more

The fundamental logic that surplus energy is adaptively negated
by increases in fertility does hold.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-population-problem/#more-1414

> accurate that cutting humanity, at all, would decrease the amount of
> oil the rest of us have.  In other words, the more people there are,
> the more you can mass produce oil wells and the more people there

You don't understand. The return of effort is going down.
If you're losing on every sale, you can't make up for it in volume.

> are to search for them, the more you can discover things like
> fraking, and the more it makes energy cheaper for everyone.  Kill

Fracking is 40 years old. It is very expensive, you have to
be really desperate to do it, especially on a large scale.
You might have missed that very recently tight oil and gas
is showing a diminishing return not just on net energy, but
on volume, per unit of effort. This is sooner than antipated,
and implies the end game is upon us.

> any one of us, and it makes oil that much more expensive, making

You seem to be confusing quality with quantity. Few people
are actually in the solution set. Most are in the precipitate. 

> ever more of our loved ones fail to make it to eternal heaven,
> thereby suffering eternal damnation.  Now that is by far more

There is no heaven -- yet. We're currently jeopardizing our
ability to build it. (It wouldn't be eternal, and it would
be actually heaven, but let's not engage in angelic dance
metrology).

> significant than any other "it's the end of the world", rant, if you

The human history is full of cultures that crashed.
We're currently repeating many of the patterns, but on a global
scale. Many of you don't see a personal impact, since you're
in privileged locations, and do not spend much time looking
elsewhere. You should. Things are rotten in state of Denmark.

> ask me.
> 
> But, I could be wrong, so if any kind of true consensus could be
> really shown to exist [hint: I don't believe the global warmers
> claiming there is a 'consensus' that global warming is a problem - I

Having trouble with the scientic process? It happens to the best of us.

> want real quantitative numbers about concise things, otherwise it's
> all just fear mongering, and no better than this one girl I met last
> month that claims the Gods drew pictures of themselves on Mars

If you need numbers, hit the primary peer-reviewed literature.

> (which you can see in Nasa photographs, at least if you really
> squint, and have here help you see them), and if we don't listen to
> her and them, they're going to destroy us all!!  dun dun dun..!!
> And all the other people that have been predicting the end of the
> world for centuries.

Thank you for your opinions. If you want us to actually listen,
author publications that make it past peer review. That's the bar now.
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