On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 10:31:45 -0600, George Cleveland
wrote:

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 10:23:32 -0600, wrote:

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 08:28:48 -0600, George Cleveland
wrote:

This was posted this morning over on talk.origins. Pretty well done
and thought provoking.


http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...6c2cd556e07ff1


g.c.

Yep, thought-provoking...it provoked me to think that dorks who call
themselves "darksyde" are probably not very good prophets or
prognosticators. Let me whip you up a coupla-more scenarios:

1. The Asians (and Europeans), with a much older "civilisations" than
"American" "civilisation," hit their peaks long ago, and are now
desperately trying to gasp their last. Their populations are exploding
beyond their capacity to support themselves and they will soon burn
themselves out. A last-ditch effort to take over the Americas will
result in their final and total destruction, and soon, American-style
civilisation will be the only survivor, or,

2. The Asians, having had "civilisation" for thousands of years longer
than the west, will use up all the petroleum currently under their
control and realize they never really needed it, and go back to what
supported them for those 1000s of years prior to "modern" technology.
They'll succeed because they'll be the only "civilisation" who still has
the capacity to cope without Starbucks, Mickey D's, Wal-Mart, Marks and
Sparks, Carrefour, Dalhaize, etc.

3. Little green men from Mars (or Venus, if you prefer) land in world
capitals and either vaporize all of mankind or bring a method to power
all of the earth using 2 boxes of corn puffs and a six-pack of ginger
ale, and, as a bonus, world peace. As a weird side effect, Ken adopts a
kitten he calls "my sweet little Ancil" and Louie marries Al Franken in
Gadsden, Alabama in a Moslem-pagan-civil ceremony before renouncing his
American citizenship and moving to the Rive Gauche to run a trendy
boutique hotel...

HTH,
R


Sounds like you basically agree with him Richard.

Nope, sorry, no dark, doom-n-gloom syde for me. While an immediate end
to the availability of "oil" would be a mess, that's not what's
happening or going to happen. The gradual, anticipated decline won't be
any more than a transition as new technologies in recovery (do a lookup
on "Barnett shale") will simply replace the old ones, extending the
availability, along with concurrent phase-in of new fuel and power
technologies. People looking in from the (complete) outside put WAY too
much importance on "oil" (and granted, some on the inside do, too). As
I've mentioned here before, IMO, fuel cells and similar, along with
surface-produceables (ethanol, etc.), will be the next phase. Look at
coal, whale oil, wood, peat, etc. as similar models of replaced (or
substantially-replaced) fuel sources.

TC,
R