David
Came here via the New York Times Dot Earth blog mention of this site today, great work you are doing.

Wonder if you have ever considered or heard about "polar cities" to house survivors of global warming in year 2500 or so? See my blog here:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

WOnder what you think of polar cities as a concept for adaptation, if worst comes to worst, from your POV, and will Australians want to get in them too? My guess is that Australians and New Zealanders will travel south to Antarctica to live in polar cities there for about 1000 years.... any reaction?

I didn't mind digesting such long sentences because I’m hungry for the complex concepts and meaty descriptive adjectives.Reading this
I felt like I was being carried a long on an intellectual tidal wave …sometimes stranded up a tree, ….sometimes drowning in despair… but mostly floating over mudflats looking for somewhere to settle, … in the end finding myself stepping on fertile new silt planning the garden of the future, with seeds of inspiration and food for thought!
Apologies if I don't make any sense, in short I'm saying thanks for this new web site.

Thanks for all the comments,

I think the perspective and questioning that Bob raised are very important issues so I will respond at length. Beach Boy also contributed links to climate skeptic science sources.

I have always said that the predicting the global climate system is much more complex than the geology and logistics of oil supply. Consequently I believe Peak Oil is more certain than human induced Global Warming.

Further I have personally investigated the limits of resources issue more deeply than the climate question (although I have followed the issue from way back in the 1970's). Therefore I am more confident about the coming reduction in net energy than climate change.

But the evidence for climate change (not necessarily global warming and not necessarily human induced) comes from more sources than the climate science establishment. The evidence for seasonal and weather event instability is everywhere in the world, most credibly from traditional farmers with long personal and cultural memory of patterns that have been critical to survival. Even if these new changes are within the range of variation experienced over the 10,000 years of the current interglacial, these fluctuations have much greater potential to disrupt fragile human systems for the following reasons.

The total size of current world population, the extent to which agriculture is using most of the available and suitable land, and the density of population clustered in settlements dependent engineered infrastructure that is very vulnerable to seasonal and weather events outside the design parameters of the last hundred or so years.

In broad terms the Brown Tech and Lifeboat scenarios are driven by a changing and therefore unfavourable climate that disrupts the capacity of agriculture.

This likelihood of significant climatic variation doesn't not even take into account the fact that the last 10 interglacials have been mostly around 10,000 yrs duration, so we are due for an ice age that would be climate change of a very severe nature (to put it mildly). In expectation of an ice age, a mature global civilisation would prepare by a long and staged powerdown in consumption and population to ensure survival through the typically much longer glacial era.

It is true that some of the impacts that are included in scenarios such as sea level rise would not be an issue if global warming is not happening, but increased storms affecting densely settled low lying coastal areas such as we have seen recently could all increase due to other forms of climatic instability. The more general problems of drought and climatic instability affecting agriculture and infrastructure could be similar to that predicted from human induced global warming.

Most of the focus of my scenarios is painting the picture of what might happen and how we might adapt rather than imagined top down actions that might prevent peak oil and climate change.

The risk of our rapidly diminishing resources being spent on the wrong things is likely in any case. I think major reductions in carbon emission are likely in any case other than those due to constraints from supply and logistics and financial issues. I agree that large scale geosequestration retrofit to coal would be a particularly bad one waste of money and that belief in human induced global warming is driving that possibility. On the other hand the idea that we should expand the use of coal because it will give us some breathing space to adapt to progressive energy descent is, I believe just as problematic. The logistical, net energy and resource availabilities for coal suggest that it would barely give us a generation before rapid depletion cuts in. Nuclear has similar problems and both leave legacies that are problematic for future generations.

Wind power on the other hand has similar or better net energy returns than coal and can be added progressively to improve electric capacity so I think the current expansion, until materials cost limit further expansion is not unreasonable. Large scale biofuels from agricultural crops are clearly a dead end even accepting the climate change orthodoxy.

An interesting example of carbon sequestration that I do support is reafforestation and biological agriculture that increases soil carbon because both these processes, if done using a wholistic (permaculture) design process which create assets that are primarily beneficial to the local environments and communities where these processes occur. The carbon sequestration is a byproduct of one of the best strategies for ensuring the survival and heath of future generations.

I agree that accepting some lack of certainty behind whether or not human induced global warming is happening does make portraying the scenarios more complex but I don't think it undermines their basic shape and our possible responses.

It is important to accept that we (individually and collectively) will be making decisions in a context of rapid and uncertain change. As energy descent progresses the uncertainty is only going to increase.

Sorry this is so long!

Firstly let me frame this - I am huge respecter of BOSA, and of ODAC. I have been a "Peak oiler" for a long time, and no believer is the "continual economic growth" mantra of our politicians. But I have a problem. I have repeatedly asked the British Met. Office (the lead supplier of data to the IPCC), and the IPCC itself, by how much the globe has warmed (and which parts of it) in each of the last ten years.

They have both declined to answer this simple question. Under the freedom of information act, others recently forced them to admit the degree of global COOLING last year (-0.6 to -0.7C)

31,000 scientists (including 9,000 PhDs) whose research projects are not individually financed by governments or the international political organisation, the IPCC, have signed a petition saying that IF any global warming, other than cyclical variations, is
occurring, which is doubted, then there is absolutely NO scientific proof that this is
anthropogenic.

Since the greenhouse effect of, for example, CO2 would in any case be geometrically related to temperature, CO2 would be irrelevant.

I am not writing this to you, to undermine your work - I agree totally with your oil premise, and applaud your scenario developments. But the following worries me greatly - it would appear that just about ALL governments, and so far as I can ascertain all Peak Oil organisations do believe in anthropogenic global warming.

What if they are wrong? IF they are, then our rapidly diminishing key resources are being wasted on the wrong policies. There is in truth NO scientific consensus about GW - not that science is about consensus. It is likely that we will have the luxury of only one shot at this, we would be advised to wait until we see the whites of its eyes rather than to be blindly driven by the imperatives of career politicians into faulty decisions.

If the supposed Global Warming (GW) is driven by other than man made influences, which seems highly likely, then pouring our resources into wind turbines; driving down blind alleys in bio-diesel powered cars; starving the poor to invest in ethanol; refusing to build coal fired power stations, will be shown to be part of the most stupid, the most short sighted and the most crassly misguided political idiocy for a very long time. We will rue the day, if this underlying and very doubtful thesis is later shown to be the nonsense and non-science, that it well might be.

Where does BOSA and "futurescenarios" stand with respect to this argument?
Apart from anything else, I, for one, am getting heartily sick of hearing politians (it's always the politicians!) talking about "fighting" GW; or "tackling GW"; or
"countering" GW.

There are numerous, unproven assumptive theses behind all this; firstly that PRIMARILY CO2 is the cause of the PUTATIVE GW; secondly that the cause is man-made CO2; thirdly that man is actually powerful enough on his own both to CAUSE and then to the (I'm sorry, I have to repeat, POLITICAL) organisation, the IPCC, to any other factor.
To me, it just isn't good enough, it has become a new religion; we shouldn't ask for solid proof, we should just do as we are told and believe. That is not science.
Further suspicions are aroused when one investigates the various political fixes surrounding the proposed 'solutions'. Note carefully who wins and who loses under these scenarios.

Take for example where I live, central Wales. Because it is a long way between handshakes here (not as far as it is in OZ, admittedly), the politicians can largely ignore any vote losing. So we are to be suffused with wind turbines. The reason trotted-out to the largely ignorant general public is, as ever - "CO2 is destroying the world; we're all going to fry; wind turbines will make a difference."

To reach their arbitrary targets we would need 6,760 of them, covering 600 square miles. Then it might make a reduction difference of 0.004% of CO2. We won't get all these turbines because we can't afford them, so we will not even hit this target.

That means the exercise is even more pointless than when originally conceived, and it will disrupt an already very fragile national electricity grid. So what is it really about? Well, as a journalist friend of mine always says - "When in doubt, follow the money".

If the rich were not going to get richer from these proposals, and if what dwindling resources we now have were not be shifted from the poorer to the richer, I might be less cynical.

To conclude:

· There is no scientific consensus about anthropogenic GW. Science is about proven fact, not consensus.

· The arguments are being pushed by politicians not scientists, other than scientists who's projects are having funding directed to them, by the politicians, and away from any counter projects.

· We are asked to believe that climate scientists and meteorologists who cannot predict the weather or the climate next week, can predict both for eighty years hence. What happened to common sense?

· The likelihood of only CO2 being the cause of any GW is vanishingly small.

· The chance of mankind being either the sole cause or the arriving white knight,
similarly so.

· More importantly, if the (in my view unsustainable) belief in anthropogenic GW is leading to very poor allocation of reducing resources - and it is - then that belief needs a lot more questioning than it is getting.

With respect and kindest regards
Bob Valentine Trueman.
www.blogstoday.co.uk - (look for Limits to Growth, or Bob Valentine Trueman)

David you are my theoretical hero. With your insight I am able to put into context and understand the things that are happening in the world right now.

Frankly, I am glad that this civilization is coming undone. Oil has given an ugly, ignorant, arrogant group of people jet fuel to rape, pillage and slaughter the earth and her inhabitants.

I hope the architects of this disgusting period of history all die of toxic poisoning in their drinking water.

Lovingly,
Dave

This is the most thorough and easily digested explanation of a world with declining energy production I've ever seen and is a good outreach tool. Tell everyone you know.

'Imagine that our decendants and ancestors are watching us'- In a society seemingly devoid of wisdom, where knowledge is reduced to the expediency of the present moment, a reconnection to continuity, custodianship and our own transience- If only!

I love your website, keep up the good work.

Somehow I got started on these in the piece about Cuba (and thorny legume trees)

Last year we saw the documentary on Cuba during the oil shortage. Two things impressed me: One, the guy who said "Americans just think "I can pay for this, why should I go without" or something like that. And Cubans thought, "We can do this."

The other was how much plowing and lettuce growing were shown. I keep hearing from people who think that plowing/tilling are not good things. At least after you've gotten your gardens started.

David,

The format of this website is both concise and easy-to-understand. Keep up the inspirational, much needed work that continues to inspire and awaken more people with each passing day.

Peace and carrots!

I'm privileged to have just completed the two-year Permaculture course in Kinsale, Ireland, and am involved in the Transition Initiative there. Your website is another excellent and inspiring resource in this field and I just hope enough people read it and start putting it into practice sooner rather than later. Many thanks.

Great site, I wish you the best of luck in getting your message out.