This Guy's on the Wrong Side of History

He makes some interesting points but a lot of it seems like a rant to me, i remember at one point him totally losing direction in what he was saying and the director having to remind him what he was talking about/being questioned about. While that could be mistaken for passion an impartial viewer of this will more than likely come to the conclusion that he has his certain trains of thought and takes a stance much more akin to, whatever anybody else has to say on a topic is redundant.

Happy to see someone not just giving this mans opinions blind praise, although it was interesting to watch.

Basically you and many of the "haters" are right. The movie is just the ramblings of this one man. But... believe it or not there's actual substance, and by that I mean scientists and serious people who've been studying this for years.

The Oil Drum is probably (IMO) the best site in this aspect: http://www.theoildrum.com

Then you have this site which provides a basic introduction to the problem: http://www.postpeakliving.com/preparing-post-peak-life

In regards to Cuba, North Korea and the Amish... of course everyone lived without oil 200 years ago... but that's the thing you see, there was also looots less people. More people means more food produced, mobilized, etc., and that extra energy required for growing food and moving it around comes mainly from...

oil.

Will technology come to the rescue? I guess that's the big question. In the Back to the Future movies cars had portable fusion generators. Are we anything close to that? If such marvelous tech had been developed, wouldn't it be in the market already?

There's also a bigger issue, even if such technology COULD be developed at a feasable rate it's probably too late... When world oil production begins to decline, the resultant financial mess won't leave anyone with enough capital to produce it.

While I agree with you about the potential advances in technology that can help mitigate this situation (and I do believe that especially as oil and other fossil fuels get more difficult and expensive to acquire, the chances are good for finding breakthrough tech), Ruppert is 100% accurate about the problem.

Regardless of whether peak oil was in 2006 or will be in 2026, this appears to be a real problem even if the earth is producing abiotic oil (a subject also up to some debate) - if our demand is greater than our supply, a hell of a lot is going to have to change. Personally, I am all for moving away from plastics when plausible, if it will help us be less dependent on oil, and certainly looking into alternative sources of energy is a fine idea.

The Amish/Mennonites/other similar cultures are in a lot of ways top-notch examples of where we need to head in a lot of ways. Even if technology somehow ensures cheap reliable energy in the future, it is still vitally important to promote local production of food and other items when possible. Just because we don't live in repressive communist nations (I am assuming that most here do not as the vast majority of users AFAIK are from Western and/or relatively free democraticish nations) does NOT mean that we will always be able to rely on cheap durable goods from China, produce from South America, Seafood from Southeast Asia, etc. Making production more locally and regionally based can keep us from wasted energy, food shortages and product supply difficulties that are pretty much inevitable with the current system of production and distribution in this global economy.

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back and to the left

If you paid attention when watching this, you would know that they discussed this subject too.

Alternative energy... what? where? how? And why is there a connection between technology and energy? Our technology is getting more and more advanced, but what about the energy? It is all still OIL.

The only thing that is useable for a long duration is the natural elements that run this planet. Nothing else.

Yeah sure it´s a good thing for us... you know you can´t even use the PC that made this topic do you?

If we weren´t so concerned about greed, power and money, we would be able to invest more into space travel and maybe get resources from other planets. And if one planet is empty, we could go to another etc. But this didn´t happen. We don´t even got enough of resources to ever get off this planet anymore.

We are *beep* The human race isn´t that intelligent to solve this problem with unknown future solutions... 99,9% of the population is just sheeps waiting to die. It´s probably comforting to have faith in the human race, but its merely arrogance and weakness, not being able to face the problem.

Technology, Jesus.

Before you evaluate the guy, you need to do some learning.

Point #1: there is no magical technology that can replace fossil fuels. Remember oil and natural gas aren't just energy sources, they're also industrial feedstock for plastics, fertilizer, most chemicals, many drugs.

Point #2: substitutes take enormous amounts of time -- and oil -- to implement. Even if we built wind turbines at WWII level dedication (the way we built tanks) it would take decades to replace even 60% of current electrical generation. And then... we'd have some local electricity, not an industrial society.

Point #3: building replacements can't happen after peak. It may be too late for point #2. If (say) oil production declines 5% a year, for that year the society has to save 5% (right?). But if you also want to build wind turbines in that year, you've got to save a lot more because building wind turbines takes enormous amounts of oil (to mine for metal, to build them, to transport them, to maintain them). That would mean saving 10% for that first year. But what about the second year? and the third? You *can't* save 30% within three years without industrial society collapsing (food supply, electricity supply, highway maintenance, repairing dams for water and so on).

Point #4: does Ruppert come across as a little paranoid and grandiose? No kidding. But he is far from alone. Check out Matthew Simmons, Richard Heinberg, and especially check out the technocrats and the granddaddy of peak oil M. King Hubbert.

Fantasizing some nameless technology will save you -- now at the 11th hour when peak is already upon us -- is ignorant; it's sticking your head up the consensus trance; it's saying the Titanic can't sink because it had "technology."

The Titanic went down.

Do the math.

Then buy a bicycle. You're going to need it.

CK

The main point I think is that no matter what we end up substituting for oil, there's almost no chance it will be able to sustain the same population that oil blew us up to. That means we WILL have to down size in the future... Don't know about you guys but I don't particularly like the concept of being layed off from life.

You are a fool. Go bury your head in the sand.

Every time this subject comes up, there's always some guy that thinks some Deus Ex Machina out of left field is going to save us from the hole we've collectively dug for ourselves.

It's not going to happen that way. The future is like the present - the only thing that has really changed are consumer electronics. Street level pictures of suburbia look the same in 2010 as they did in 1990 as they did in 1980. The only thing that has really changed is the car in the driveway, and even that still runs on fossil fuels. Remember when we were supposed to have flying cars and sky cities by the year 2000?

Most of the promises of the future have largely been products of hype and fertile imaginations. The truth is this - in another 10 years we'll still be riding in cars that operate on internal combustion of petroleum distillates and the overwhelming vast majority of energy will still be supplied by fossil fuels. To replace something as vast and all-encompassing as the world energy infrastructure will take generations. And the way things are looking now, the wolf will be at the door long before then. Well within the life expectancy of people reading this today.

Even if we had the solution in a lab right now this very minute, it would still be so long before it actually gained implementation that social breakdown could occur before it could even be implemented in a sufficient enough capacity to prevent it.