PowerSwitch :: View topic - The case for a slow transformation rather than a fast crash

Persuasive post on an excellent forum:

"Future historians might indeed call the coming transformations of our societies a "crash", but it is not unthinkable that it will be a slow and gradual process, and that the generations who live trough it dont percieve it as a crash at all. We have a tremendous way to go before we actually start to die off on a grand scale. Our material standard of living could propably be reduced to less than 5% of what it is today before we get to starvation. "

PowerSwitch :: View topic - The case for a slow transformation rather than a fast crash

Ed Balls: Labour minister fears rise of fascism amid economic gloom

Well, I'm glad people in government have started talking about this terrifying prospect at least - if no-one with any say talks about it, it's bound to happen:
Ed Balls: minister fears rise of fascism amid economic gloom - Telegraph

Peak Oil Game

This game is kind of old already (last summer) but I just came across it. Scary:
Frontlines: Fuel of War Trailer

Interview with Mike Klare, contributor to TomDispatch

Bit of an abrupt interviewer but this guy makes a good summary of the basics of the short-term geopolitical situation:

Mike Klare discusses his latest article, "The Problem with Cheap Oil."

Play:
For cable:
For dial-up:

Download: MP3 File Interview with Mike Klare, contributor to TomDispatch

Short Term Invstment - Long Term Security

This website blew my mind - they are marketing this warplane like it's some kind of charity mission...

"That's right brothers and sisters - old, fat, black, or female - you too can find a GREEAT job making hi-tech death for Infidels.... and America NEEDS these jobs - reach out in your heart, and just pray, children - repeat after me -

'Verily, we will have this Rrraptor .... and yay, it will preserve the right to buy twinkies on credit for Americans everywhere, and yay, it will deliver high yield explosives unto the heads of non-believers, it will produce 10000's of USEFUL JOBS for TRUE BELIEVERS.... Nations of Evil-Doers will quake in FEAR before our might, but yay, they will love us, for we are The Land of The Free, and the Home of DISNEYLAND - SAY AMEN!"

An advocacy page? Unbelievable... Thankfully preserveraptorjobs.com doesn't work - let's hope their jumble sale to raise the funds was a flop.

F-22 Raptor

Link from here: Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Economic Death Spiral at the Pentagon

UK Companies Sort it All Out

Panic's off - Richard Branson's on the case. No worries, nothing to see here, get back in your car and drive to Virgin Megastore, er I mean Zavvi - no, didn't they shut already?:

Nice Maps

Oh man, here we go again - time to invent your enemy folks, know him well: The new boogy man



Here's one we took control of earlier:



Meanwhile in Africa... The oil protection agencies (sorry, I mean U.S. military) work continues...

Click this for an interactive version:Africom on Google Maps

I wish I was making this up.

Slo-mo Splat | Post Carbon Institute

Heinberg laying it down like he does:

"Remember the wall that environmentalists (like the 1972 "Limits to Growth" authors) have long been saying that industrial society would eventually hit?

Permit me to make the formal introduction: Industrial society, meet wall; wall, meet industrial society."

Slo-mo Splat | Post Carbon Institute

Also good:
The shape of the recovery | Post Carbon Institute

Alternative Fuels

You never know, renewable resources just might save the day:

"Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital reportedly has signed a deal to supply Norwegian entrepreneur Lauri Venoy with 3,000 gallons-per-week of liposuction leftovers harvested by its clinics. This bio-fat could produce 2,600 gallons of biodiesel, sufficient to fuel a Hummer for a year."

Is this really how desperate things are getting!?

On America's New Energy Future / Tapping the fat of the land

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age - environment - 30 November 2005 - New Scientist

This was a while ago but made interesting reading this morning - horizontal snowfall outside! Anyone heard of an update? Couldn't find any..

"The last shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5°C to 10°C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London."

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age - environment - 30 November 2005 - New Scientist: "... prompted a temperature drop of 5�C to 10�C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London."

Comic Relief

This guy's band parody shots are pretty funny:
Andersen Ben-Hilliens Rock Paparazzi: The Pixies


"My Flashgun GOOONE to HEAVENS
he he
$5318008"

Wisdom of the Elders

This guy is heavy.

Some great quotes in here: “Fate is what happens when innumerable people make innumerable small decisions about other matters that have a collective cumulative effect that nobody intended.”
C. Wright Mills

Content is pretty terrifying, but I like his attitude, and the way he points out that feeling guilty about the situation we are in as a species is not a very useful way to go... he makes the analogy of a friend's dying mother who got involved in a religion that taught her she had contracted her disease due to lack of faith - and spent her final weeks in guilt-ridden misery.

He suggests that there's not much point in humanity doing the same - we children of the fossil-fuel age were pretty innocent in our decisions. Obviously we still need to do anything we can to mitigate the crash we are now facing, but we might as well do it with a smile on our faces!

He's definitely not an 'entertainer' but I recommend you put this on while you're doing the washing up or something.

Interview with William R. Catton, Jr.

YouTube - Peak Oil & The Four Futures - Tim Hudson

Interesting summary of future scenarios at the "Michigan's Future
Energy, Economy & Environment Conference" in Nov 2007:

YouTube - Peak Oil & The Four Futures - Tim Hudson - Parts 1 and 2

Beards get radical

Don't let appearances put you off, this man talks an amazing amount of sense:

YouTube - The Twilight of an Age

YouTube - AMERICANS ARE NOT DUMB

Lulz. Please prove this video wrong, yanks:

Temporary School of Thought Forever!

Thanks to everyone who came down, had a real blast and it was great to meet so many interesting folk.

For anyone who missed it - I wasn't able to tape the seminar, but you can enjoy the Powerpoint presentation below! No notes - I did the talk off the top of my head, but hopefully this will still be entertaining:

The Fun Side of Petrocollapse

Hey, doing another talk this Saturday at the excellent Temporary School of Thought - http://temporaryschool.org/
in Mayfair. It's a heavy subject but hey, you gotta laugh eh?

The Fun Side of Petrocollapse
A light-hearted take on the end of the world as we know it

Why did the economy just start falling apart? Where are we headed and what can we do about it? While the media blather on about the latest bailouts, the real story continues to unfold. Amazingly, there is a connection between the Mayan empire, cheez doodles and the Energy/Economic/Climate Crises!
Featuring clip from 'Crude Awakening' (Switzerland, 2006)

5pm Sat 24th Jan
39A Clarges Mews, Mayfair (right near Green Park tube)

Hope to see you there!

Cheers, Bill.

http://realfeal.blogspot.com

--------------

PS.
An amusing video of the Temporary School below:
http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/personal/a-quick-look-around-the-temporary-school-of-thought-1149
Not a bad article from the Londonist too:
http://londonist.com/2009/01/temporary_school_of_thought.php

End of Empire seminar

I'm doing a talk, 3pm this Sat (10th) here: http://temporaryschool.org/

My flyer / info below in case you missed it.

Also - Yeah we're in the paper!! (pretty much all the papers, today in London anyway ;)
Artists evicted from Mayfair squat move to �22.5m property round the corner | Society | The Guardian

---------------------------------
I'm gonna be giving a talk on the economic/energy crisis at The Temporary School of Thought. It's a week of free workshops/lectures/film screenings/life drawing classes etc. being put on by a bunch of young people in an unused building in Mayfair, from 5th-11th of Jan. Link below for listings + photos:
http://temporaryschool.org/

End of Empire Seminar - Bill Trible
3pm, Sat 10th Jan
39A Clarges Mews, Mayfair (right near Green Park tube)

I'll be screening a bit of this film as part of it: http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/ It's a barrel of laughs so come along!

They're looking for more folks to get involved so if you wanna do a talk, screen a film or run a workshop get in touch!

The Last Road Trip / Freakishly cheap gas? Nation broke? Just hit the road

Funny -

The Last Road Trip / Freakishly cheap gas? Nation broke? Just hit the road

Nice Pie

This one's been doing the rounds a bit lately - and in fact is out of date already - the bailout fee has doubled to roughly $8.5 trillion since it was made - so much that you could easily include the whole of WW2 in the pie-chart on the right (WW2 cost less than half what has been spent on the bailout so far at about $3.6 trillion.) That's right, I'll repeat it - THE BAILOUT COST MORE THAN TWICE WW2 FOR THE U.S. ... and they're still spending! In fact, it's cost more than every U.S. Government project of the past 200 years or so - combined. Hehe:


My conclusion is - the U.S.' economy is totally fucked. You can't just invent money equivalent to a couple of centuries of major government project spending in a few months and expect to get away with it. I think it's pretty likely the UK and most the rest of the world will follow suit, be interesting to see how that pans out. It takes 6 months or so for the effects to filter through to the real economy- we've just seen the beginnings of that now with Woolies going down in the UK etc., the first of many.

On a positive note, I joined my local LETS scheme, pretty excited about that! - Not expecting it to be able to feed me if the supermarket supply chain falters though :/