On Wednesday 23 March 2005 12:26, Mike Carrell wrote: > Stephen wrote: > > Terry Blanton wrote: > > > This article says that the Canadian Sands won't save us because you > > > can't squeeze it out fast enough: > > > > > > http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ > > > > Fascinating. > > > > Does anyone here know what the effect of peak oil is likely to be on > > global warming? Lack of oil will ruin the economy and lead to WWIII -- > > but will it also save the polar bears? Or have CO2 levels already gone > > so high that a methane burp followed by a total meltdown is inevitable? > > Take note of the cover story of the last Scientific American. The author > uses deep ice core data to measure the cyclic methane and carbon dioxide > content of the atmosphere over may millenia. It is cyclic, the cycles > synchronous with variations in the solar illumination due to interactions > of the eccentriciey of the the Eartth's orbit and its precession of the > rotation axis -- both "cosmic" effect, beyond control of man. Following > those cycles, Earth should have entered a cooling phase some 5-8000 years > ago, headed for an ice age. That trend has been counterbalanced by the rise > of agriculure, producing mathane from rotting crops and increasing carbon > dioxide through deforestation. > > Thus we have ha a nice climate, due the presence of Man. We overdid it with > the industrial age and massive use of fossil fuel, and may now face > consequences. However, if the "peak oil" scenario is as bas as advertised, > then the use of fossil fuels will decline, and we may continue down the > cosmic cooling cycle toward another ice age. > > Thus even though there may be a near term victory for LENR and BLP to > arrest the peak in global warming, the ride can still be bumpy. > > And to think there is a comepetition as to who can build the scariest > roller coaster rides :-). > > Mike Carrell
When the oil runs out, we will go nuclear. There will be some civil problems as folks for and against the nuclear option 'interact', but the nuclear option will be excersized. Yes there probably will be terrorists, but that is what National Guard troops are for. By then, the political climate of starving and cold masses huddling in the dark (while not fleeing south and becoming the new breed of John Steinbeck's 'Okies') will have profoundly changed; and the changes will be ominous for a previousely democratic society. "In tough times they send for the sons of bitches!" will be the operation phrase. If you think the 1930's were bad....wait. The Romans had laws to deal with the lawless, just like we Americans dealt with looters in the 1940's and 1950's. We called them outlaws and shot them on sight! That is what will happen to anti nuclear hooligans in the future. Stalin did not put up with economic saboteurs, and in the dark world of the near future neither will we. Come soon or come late. The only choice that we have is how destitute and cold and hungry and how willing to accept foreign domination will we be before we either build the plants ourselves or allow our conquerors to do it to us. For an energy poor country is a weak country. Every day we let the Chinese and Japanese proceed apace with their programs without strongly pursuing our own is one more day behind we get in the economy of the future. The French are will ahead of all of us on this. The Armenians know what happens when winter comes and there is no energy except nuclear available. Several years ago they almost froze until they restarted their Tchernobl type reactor and pulled themselves by their bootstraps out of trouble with no help from a world that criticized them from their comfortable armchairs of energy affluence. All the while there were no shortage of these comfortable critics telling the Armenians that they should just lay down and die before they started their 'unsafe' reactor.....the reactor that saved their lives! Standing Bear
