I also enjoyed the ‘shape of time’ stuff, though a better name would be shape of history. The shape of time per se has been forward linear or tight helices. I haven’t even seen Terry Pratchett’s troll’s backward linear in real societies.

It seems to me — on a still far from complete trawl back through the archives — that his most recent few months of posting have been by far the best yet. When I finally get around to discussing his work, they’ll most likely be the center of gravity. His ‘Shape of Time’ analyses are especially excellent (although still questionable, in productive and interesting ways).

I understand that ‘truly huge’ is indeed the size of untapped deposits. Additional oil discovery has outpaced consumption since forever. (Sadly, I don’t think I saved the source on that.)

In any case, what is the EROEI on methane hydrates…after equilibrium innovation has been reached? Only way to know is to innovate and find out.

The energy density of fuel oil kind of matters, but ethanol proves that we can use energy to make the required substances, and anyway society would be better off with far lower car usage. (I see no reason that more-local communities can’t scale, they’re not parasitical.)

–

Somebody mentioned that the political barriers to coal and nuclear are entirely signalling and rhetoric, right? As soon as someone’s lattes are threatened, one or both will become just as righteous and inevitable as gay marriage.

–

Greer’s philosophy and psychology are excellent, as one might expect from his line of work.

His political science is bad (OWS is oppressed? Excuse me, dying of laughter) and his economics frankly seem nonexistent. His complaints about nuclear waste are cringeworthy, and don’t seem to understand how big Earth really is. I just realized, we have to dig up all that uranium; we could simply put it back when we’re done and defile exactly 0% more land in the process.

I should stress that his philosophy and psychology are so good as to render my complains merely cautions; thanks Mr. Land for the tip in Greer’s direction.

–

The simple fact is that yeah, Peak OIl has to be true, analytically. Nobody knows when it will hit, or what the consequences will be, though. Accept your ignorance, or reality will laugh at you. Again.

–

That said I wholeheartedly jump into the simplistic thinking Greer wants to oppose. Obviously, we are in decline. The problem is government. I ran the numbers for Handle in some Foseti thread, and easily got up to 60% of GDP. May I suggest that having a working population that’s 60% parasite and 40% host is not likely to end well, especially when the parasite class is actively recruiting. This is also how Rome made itself vulnerable to immigration/etc in the first place. (PDF)

In the long run, it’s just a matter of how many magic rabbits that can be pulled out of the collective rectum of the industry. But many of these magic rabbits are not cheap — shale oil is certainly no where near as cheap as the mega-fields of the Middle East. It requires sustained high prices and price volatility to coax out new solutions. Shale gas is relatively cheap — but if all the US does with it is replace coal plants with gas plants and distill more corn into ethanol, it’s not really being used very effectively. There will always be hydrocarbons; it’s how expensive they are that is the question.