Sergey Borovik wrote:

Welcome to my website.

This site is about the impending collapse of industrial
civilisation. But don't let that put you off.

http://www.bigwig.net/sergey/


Hubbert's Peak Resources
A brief introduction to world oil depletion

http://www.bigwig.net/sergey/hubbert.htm

[SNIP]

So, what exactly will happen? Here is a rough guide:

Oil is not the only resource facing depletion. Soil and water are also taking
heavy hits at the hands of Man, as the present population of 6.3bn continues
to grow at 1.7% per year. The coming years will see more frequent civil war
and general instability globally. This background to world energy shortage
will not help matters.

At first, the price of oil and oil-derived fuels will rise. As always, the
rise will be global. At this point, few will understand what is happening. It
will look like yet another annoying price spike, like the one in 2000 (more
recent ones will doubtless be higher in the public's mind). But it will not go
away. Supply has finally dropped below demand. This will occur by 2010.

Then, periods of fuel shortage will become increasingly common. Different
countries may experience them at different times, according to local
infrastructure. Wherever normal supply is restored, a round of rapid buying
will upset it.

The Middle East Gulf's oil market share will reach 50% around 2010 as every
other country each slides further down its particular depletion curve.
Regional trade by means of pipeline will obviously decline; there will be an
increasing emphasis on importing oil from the Gulf by sea. A number of
countries will be well-placed to import their ever-increasing needs, but the
tanker market, already tight since 2002, is unlikely to cope. There are not
enough tankers, and exisiting orders cannot be built any faster.

Lots of conservation measures will make a late appearance, but will fail, as
the production ceiling keeps falling regardless. The cost of living will
increase as everything becomes more expensive. By now, there will be no
shortage of previously obscure analysts to tell the public what is really
happening, and that it had been forseen a long, long, time ago. Any rapid
shift in public sentiment will necessarily lead to a stock market collapse and
a crisis in the global banking system. This will probably occur by 2015, as
world oil supply falls 20% in little more than 5 years, and natural gas
springs a nasty surprise.

At around the same time, North America will run out of natural gas, and
discover that the world's fleet of LNG tankers is a fraction of the size
needed to supply everyone. Around 25% of installed electrical generating
capacity will gradually go offline, with no coal or nuclear plants to replace
it. California-style blackouts will become a regular event on both coasts,
eventually ending in grid collapse. This may well be what precipitates the
market collapse outlined above. (For those puzzled by how natural gas can
suddenly run out, an explanation is given further down).

Country after country will cease to function as a coherent whole.

The organisational structure of industrial civilisation cannot survive such an
upheaval, and without sufficient oil and gas to provide heat and light,
transport goods or produce fertiliser, there will be an inevitable downward
adjustment in the number of people the Earth will support. The consensus of
people who are interested in such things seems to be no more than 2 billion.
At that point the world population will be 7.5 billion.

Just how unpleasant the world will become is a subject in itself. One school
of thought suggests a violent half-century long unwinding of industrial
civilisation, the world population eventually stabilising at a couple of
billion people leading a largely
agrarian lifestyle. Another school of thought suggests we will quickly be back
to the dawn of the Iron Age, after a sudden Nightfall-style burst of social
annihilation. My instincts say that the former is more realistic, but it will
still be painful. One year or 50? Either way, it is the end of modern
civilisation. Perhaps such discussions are outside the scope of this page.
What I can say is that I saw what Autumn 2000 looked like in the UK, and the
abyss is there. I would not want to be living in a city in 2015.

Some suggested solutions which will not help

Firstly, there is no point in indulging in energy fantasies. Oil is a finite
resource formed in special conditions over many millions of years during the
Mesozoic Era (65-230 million years ago), and there is nothing about its size
which renders it immune to depletion within the lifetimes of most people alive
today. In addition, there is no way ethanol, tar sands, oil shale, arctic gas
condensate, portable cold fusion or anything else is going to come along to
replace 40% of the world's energy needs over the next few decades in a form
which directly replaces oil.

[SNIP]

Some suggested solutions which could (have) help(ed)

Notice how this list is short. People say "the scientists will think of
something..." No. Look at the list above. Everything has been tried. We blew
it.

In the medium term, limiting personal motoring through heavy road or fuel
taxes targeted at specific classes of vehicle is the easiest and most
effective measure that can be implemented. The same could also be done with
aviation fuel. The reasoning would of course have to be properly explained.
But conservation is impossible to organise on a national scale, and it would
not delay the inevitable for long.

In the long term, a return to the cargo-carrying sailing ships of the pre-WW1
era would not only reduce oil use, but would put regional trade back on its
feet. Imagine 10,000 tonne steel-hulled clipper ships... Sadly, if it ever
happens, it is at least 20 years away, and the demise of the "just in time
delivery" principle which has governed world markets for the last 50 years
would have to be accepted sooner rather than later. Also, it would take a lot
of 10,000 tonne sail-powered ships to replace the 50,000-100,000 tonne ones
which handle the bulk of world trade, and once one begins to contemplate the
necessary shipyard and training facilities, it becomes obvious that the
introduction of such vessels will be very slow.

Encouraging agricultural self-sufficiency among the world's nations would
reduce our dependency on international shipping and road haulage, both being
significant users of oil. The regionalisation of the world economy could prove
to be an even more interesting issue than globalisation. This is likely to
happen by default, and prove even more troublesome given the foreign policy
adventures which will inevitably result. Nature is not pretty when it comes to
these things.

A less appealing way of dealing with oil depletion is to hit the problem head
on when it materialises and then muddle through, one year at a time, each
individual looking out for his/her own interests. It seems likely that
humanity will end up adopting this approach, as anything else is
counterintuitive. It looks like we are making this choice anyway. There are
probably 6 years left, and we are getting more oil-dependent each year.

Look at the world around you

If you are starting to get the idea, next time you are in the centre of a
city, just walk around for half an hour, looking. Visualise the flow of energy
needed to make it all happen...and imagine it being gradually removed. It is
an interesting perspective. Suddenly, everyone else becomes lesser, for lack
of a better word. Limited. Ignorant. . . . . .

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Sergey!! Thank you for a most EXCELLENT SITE!!

With respect to "taxes": I suggest that those who
were and remain determined to support societies that
participate in plans and preparations that are predicated
on a sure andcertain will and capacity to commit mass murder
should now DOUBLE the amount the amount of taxes they pay in
order that their society have enough soldiers and police (Well fed
ones at that!) to help their political masters establish the sort
of world they would have everyone else endure. Otherwise (And they
will ignore the fact that those armed and willing to kill 'public
servants' will always be thinking of their own families and personal
welfare as the s**t hits the fan . . ), those 'taxpayers' will be
quite concerned that their wilful refusal to think about the costs
and consequences of their support of the insupportable will soon
exact a special and truly painful price as society breaks down,
worldwide.

BTW, while I appreciate your views, it is my belief that you have
been too conservative in your time frame estimates. I suggest that
we will suffer a worldwide state of economic and societal collapse
at some point in the 2012 to 2015 time frame. Hopefully, my
prediction will fail to materialize, and the collapse will
not start until the year 2020 or soon after.

Once again, "Thank You!!".

Daniel J. Lavigne
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