Complacency and the Last Days of Oil Suburbia
 

A conversion could not be done over night. A conversion from running vehicles on water opposed to fossil fuels, or other alternative energy sources. To date the technology exists to drive 100 miles on 4 ounces of water.

The ever so sour subject of Iraq and it WMD take a clearer turn when the fact the Saddam had switched to from dollars to Euros with its oil transactions 6 months prior to being taken down. Now we are going after Iran’s nuclear development. Its ironic Iran is in the process of doing the very same conversion. Or maybe not so ironic.

The world’s peak oil situation seems to have started frenzy. The question I have is why. Yes it is tied in to global economy, but the bottom line is civilization could survive. Infact there will be a day it will have to. The rest of Earth aside why is there not preparations happening now. Instead the preparations seem to be to grasp as much of the bottom peak reserve as possible. Are suburbia and its dwindling days enough for the complacency that is present to allow barons to continue control?

I do not accept your assumptions and therefore can not answer your question.

Which assumptions?


About the baron conspiracy? Reasons for current and future engagements? Or that one day oil is going to be gone. Or humanity would survive without it.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UarzT2Qs3FY :lol: :lol:

#1
#2
#3

#1 WMD vs declaring economic warfare= lets call it Iraqi FREEDOM.

#2 Its all about nuclear bombs? Or their policy will have no detrimental effect on the growing US economy

#3 would generation have been a better term?

As I said I do not accept your basic assumptions as true. I've long not worried about the peak oil scare mongering but under a different set of assumptions.

Ill just assume then that you follow the philosophy that the end of the oil era may not happen in your lifetime so why be concerned about it. Let the next generation problem solve this issue.

If it feels good; do it.

The other half of my assumption is the technology is here to run vehicles on WATER. The fact the there doesnt appear to be any developent conversion started leads me to believe it is being blocked.

I cant see the US crumbling without having to depend on foreign resources.

Nothing is being done because it is not economically benefitial to do so. Big Oil, and most petroliferous companies tend to shoot down alternative energies with zeal.

Oddly enough, Ustwo has given you the perfect answer to your question in a roundabout way.

Dollar to Euro: Assumption or fact?
Iraq DID change it's oil transactions from dolalrs to euros 6 months prior to invasion. No assumptions there at all. Just cold, hard, backable facts.
Iran and nuclear power: Asumption or fact?
According to the IAEA, Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, or even weapons-grade uranium. On March 6, 2006, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the IAEA, reported that "the Agency has not seen indications of diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices".
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/State...n003.html#iran
So Iran has nuclear reactor grade nuclear material, and the IAEA says they aren't making bombs. Since March, the US and the UK have, without a shread of proof, accoused Iran of developing nuclear weapons. They replied that they were developing nuclear power, something backable by evidence, and perfectly legal. No assumptions there at all, either. Just cold, hard, backable facts.
Suburbia finished: assumption or fact?
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/21/comm...umn_hays/hays/
http://www.financialsense.com/series3/intro.htm
http://www.energybulletin.net/997.html
http://www.energybulletin.net/5944.html
http://www.peakoil.net/Publications/...eakOil_FCD.pdf
People who know a lot more than you or I about oil are saying that peak oil is a reality, no matter when it comes it will end our current way of life, including life in suburbia!! No assumptions. Just cold, hard, backable facts.

It is the implications of the assumptions will.

Dollar/Euro, its not why Iraq was invaded.

Iran is not developing nuclear power for peacefull purposes.

Suburbia is going no where, its demise is predicted on an assumption that I feel is false.

Are you saying you don't believe we will ever run out of oil? Being well versed in ecology, I would expect you to be the last person to make such an assumption. Hopefully this is not the case.

Of course we will run out of oil (later not sooner but we will) but I don't view this as a death of the subburb. If it were to happen suddenly sure, but this isn't the road warrior here.

You mean the implications of the facts. You gather evidence, and based on that evidence you make a determination that allows for all the evidence. That's where conclusions come from. That's how I determine if my tea is hot. I see steam coming from the cup, I see the kettle was just used, and I make the determination based on those pieces of evidence that the tea is hot. Likewise, I see that the effect on the US dollar resulting from Iraq and Iran changing to the euro would be devistating, and 6 months later we invade their country. It's obviously not the only reason we invaded, but to ignore it as a piece of the puzzle is naïve.

You are not a person to lecture on 'facts'.

The second you disprove those facts, not only will I give you a cookie, I'll believe you.
That's the point of this thread; I sincerely doubt anyone will notice a shortage until the last drop of oil is expended. Even if the decline in oil supply is gradual, the lack of interest will make it an abrupt circumstance that will catch the complacent completely off guard. Your point may be valid now, but that same argument will be used again, and again. Eventually we'll reach into the bag of chips to see that we've already eaten them all.

*yawn* that again, eh? So because of an argument I make in Paranoia that is completly unrealted to the topic at hand, everything I say isn't worth thinking about? Does that make sense to even you? I think one argument you make is wrong, therefore all of your arguments are wrong. Do you know what that's called? Take your pick. Personal attack, ad hominem, poisoning the well, red herring, and I'll come up with a brand new one for you: Ad Hominum Ratio Fallacy*.

I sympathize with ignorance, but I pity willful ignorance. If you have an argument to make in this thread, about this topic, make it.



* Ad Hominum Ratio Fallacy (Against the Person's Reason)
1. Person A makes claim X, which is an unpolular claim considered by some to be unprovable
2. Therefore any argument made by A is false to the point of not even being considered

<h1>Enough from you......</h1>
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=54
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...4&postcount=27
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...an#post2133019
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=41
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=308
<h5>....and that is just the tip of the iceberg....No point to make? No problem, just resort, over and over, ad naseum, to personal attacks aimed at discrediting either host, or willravel, or, in one included example, both in the same post. Nothing to lose....it either sabotages the discussion....formerly a free exchange of on topic ideas, opinions and information, or....if the sabotage is truly "masterful" enough, it actually gets the thread closed......POINTING out examples of it does no good....I've tried that several times, lately....but here it is....again, tonight.</h5>
<b>What will it take to persuade him to stop interfering with (or ending) discussions via disruptive, intentional personal attacks?</b>

The conversion to alternate fuels is probably not going to happen on a large scale while oil is so cheap. I believe that when supplies dwindle and/or when the prices rise to the level where alternate technologies are profitable that innovative alternatives will be developed. Oil producers are wise to set the price low enough to keep this from happening as long as possible.

First about the OP.

When you look at what governments have invested in oil, you realize they aren't going to look for something cheaper. Not necessarily because the leaders are oil people but the taxes, the commodity itself.

As for Iraq, we went in there for numerous reasons only known to W and his people. There was no immediate or future threat from him and we dropped the ball on the 2 countries that are truly more able to hurt us.... Iran and N. Korea. So obviously there is a hidden agenda there.

My opinion is that perhaps, if that area blows up and we go into a major war, we control Iraq's oil and set up a nice wall between Syria and Iran. Where we could handle Iran and Isreal could take out Syria without Iran or Syria able to help one another.

The war also works in keeping the nationm divided and thus have "bigger issues" to deal with than oil and energy.


Now as an aside:


Sooooo you had to type that you are not accepting his assumptions and refuse to answer, why?????

Are you the fucking king of posting and therefore have to pass judgement on all posts.

Simply moving on and not posting would be the more considerate thing. Especially since your next post contained nothing but quotes:


How deliciously simple minded, egotistical and flatly self superior. I do question though that if you are so superior, why you have to even tell people that a certain thread isn't worth your time......

Ahhhh Us2 you are truly nothing but a load of hot air who claims superiority yet shows nothing.

Me, see I dislike egotists and people who act like they are better.... Right now I am no better than what I accuse you of but..... you know, I like to point these things out..... makes me feel better and shows me at least why you aren't really worth debating. You're great at the hit and run and trying to get into people's minds and push buttons.... back to ignore with you.....

:thumbsup:

Yes we have a winner.

Its market forces, not vast conspiracies that will drive this. Maybe its because I've seen enough of this type of dire prediction turn to naught, only to be replaced by another dire prediction that I'm not willing to swallow everything that is put before me. You want to talk about investment and money, urban sprawl is in the trillions in terms of investment, millions of homes and businesses, its not going to just dry up once gas prices reach a certain point. Part of me looks forward to this change, its going to be exciting to see what comes of it. Right now we are locked into a pattern based around the automobile, its not only cheap but its accepted and expected. You couldn't build a subburb based around public transportation if you wanted to right now, people wouldn't accept it. Now perhaps we will just find alternative fuels and the trend won't change, in fact thats the most likely scenario, but perhaps the whole transportation system will change.

the us could change its transportation paradigm if there was adequate pressure to do so--for example, the present car-oriented model was not the result of "market forces" but rather was a function of explicit policy choices made in order to promote a variety of goals---the financial interests of automobile industries, petroleum industries (which in general represented a different faction of the financial elite than those who had benefitted from railroads across the last half of the 19th century)---and an internal politics rooted in property ownership---suburbanisation presupposed modular house construction cheap and available credit--this model was a significant driver in the rationalization of fordist-style mass production, with its standardized products, etc.--it was also fundamental in transforming class conflict in america--think about the differences in class conflict from, say, the middle 1930s when compared with the late 1950s or across the 1960s--fundamentally different social groups mobilized in fundamentally different ways---remember that the movement against the war in vietnam was opposed by lots of working-class people, and this is as good an index of the magnitude of the effects of the politics of property ownership as any i can think of.

the suburban model is wholly tied to the logic of fordism, which was the kind of capitalism you see fully operational in the states by the middle 1950s--it did pretty well for a fairly long period--by the 1970s, it was coming unravelled and now we are in the middle of the transformation of the capitalist landscape into something else. we call it globalization, but that is in the main simply a word--the us has not adapted, not caught up with the reality its own organizational mutations have been fashioning.

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

there are many features of the politics of folk like ustwo that will become funny again once they return to a richly deserved cultural oblivion. like the inability to think about infrastructure---in no. 20 you see it again--the suburbs were made possible by a massive transformation of infrastructure and the new deal was the primary instrument of that transformation. that means that the burbs would not exist as they do in the us without the sustained, concerted action of the state---once that infrastructure is in place, then it becomes possible for shallow arguments that take infrastructure as given like mountains and rocks and oceans--and from there, notions of market forces uber alles begin to make at least some sense.

on the other hand, if the present economic reconfiguration moves to the point where you get significant legitimacy trouble for the state following on its inability to play a coherent role in making system adjustments to new forms of capitalist organization, the revamping of transportation infrastructure==and remodelling of the politics of space in the states--is a vast public works project that could be used for all kinds of ends.

it seems to me that the situation referenced in the op is a signal of transition.

-----------------------
the suburban model is curious. to my mind, it is outmoded--its reliance on automobiles and by extension of petroleum is just one of the model's vulnerabilities, but in the end that will probably the the driver of its mutation. the entire model seems bizarre though: the rejection of public space, the confinement of people to dysfunctional nuclear families each in its individual box which is the same as every other individual box--the cultural vacuum that is most suburbs---no papers, no public life, no bookstores etc.---the centrality of television as mode of socialibility and communication--the centrality of church and school-based organizations in stabilizing social life practically---the deep and pervasive boredom of these places---you have seen a real demographic shift over the past 20 years of younger people away from these voids and back into the cities--and while in the cities, you see diverse transportation modes--cars, publc transit, bikes, etc.

what i do not know about really is what happens when this cadre has kids, and the extent to which they head back into the suburban vacuum because--well---if another way of seeing the burbs is as a mechanism for class segregation (and so as an expression of a particular type of class conflict)---then the explicit driver would be the school system--but behind that, who knows what motivates folk to opt back into the vacuum.

i tend to see the suv phenomenon as an expression of a sense of bourgeois anxiety---worried about the model and its functionality?--surround yourself with a few tons of metal, insulate yourself from the world, turn up the sound system and you get to sit in your own stasis module and drive through spaces that look like pictures. can't think about the future without getting nervous? your huge stasis module comes complete with satellite radio that offers you a legion of channels full of "classic rock" that functions as a kind of reassuring soundtrack--everything really is the same as the 1970s, not to worry.

it'll be interesting to see what happens when the us begins to hit the wall, when its 1950s-based mode of residential organization starts to become even more obviously dysfunctional.
the bush administration will look like a huge failed attempt to ward off change through military means.
the right will perhaps have scuttled back under the cultural rock whence it came.
and perhaps the states will begin to fashion other ways of living and moving about.

meanwhile, i imagine ustwo in a pink polo shirt, khakis and topsiders locking himself in his vast (lime green) suv, shutting the windows, turning up the 70s easy listening channel on the satellite receiver (perhaps listening to the collected oeuvre of bread) and just sitting there, kinda chanting to himself--NOTHING REAL IS HAPPENING IT IS ALL BASICALLY THE SAME NO NEED TO THINK TOO MUCH IT IS ALL BASICALLY THE SAME MARKET FORCES WILL LET ME UNLOCK MY DOOR SOME DAY---while "guitar man" breaks into is tepid "emotional" section...
and that will be even more ludicrous then than it is now.

bread "live" Guitar Man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l7Z8oqCZvE
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI7-aTt462M">"Tax the rich, feed the poor, till there are no rich no more."</a>

I don't know, roachboy, you paint a pretty negative picture of the suburbs.

Besides, it's a nice day for a mow, and get off my lawn.:)

fistf: i lived in the burbs for longer than i care to think about.
i hated everything about it--but that's just me.
this xtc song was my anthem during that sad period:

which is on black sea, the last really great xtc record.
i liked it for the riff and bile.


host: i am not sure i am fully prepared for a clip of bread "live."
it may take a bit of meditation before i approach it.
good god....

No doubt he does, but then again he probably lives in a city with a trendy coffee house just down the corner, right next to the trendy book store, right across the filthy city street from some trendy restaurant that serves you 1 shrimp and 3 green beans and calls it novelle cuisine, then charges you a hundred dollars no less.

The suburbs are fine, if I want to go to the circus that is NYC I can jump on a train that is 5 minutes from house and be there in a half hour, hell on a clear day in the city (very rare mind you) I can see Manhattan from the roof of my 100 year old house that looks nothing like any of my neighbors 100 year old houses.

many people i knew in the jerseyburb i lived in were afraid of the city.

i suspect that, having read about nouvelle cuisine in a decade-old magazine, they were concerned about the nouvelle cuisine pushers that you find on every filthy city street corner, just waiting for the suburban innocent to happen by---o sure at first, the nouvelle cuisine is cheap and easy--but that's just a trick the pushers use to get you hooked--next thing you know, you are stripping all the copper out of your own house to sell to scrap dealers in order to pay for these tiny, carefully arranged carrot constructions with big swirls of brown sauce and meticiulously arranged parsley sprigs--soon you don't care about anything else but the next meticulous vegetable arrangement--but you're always just chasing the dragon, the buzz is never the same---before you know it, you need a single shrimp surrounded with curly shavings of lemon grass on a huge white plate just to feel normal---i know, your friends try to tell you, try to warn you, but once you have the jones......then comes the Intervention and the rehab and the detox--it is all terribly dangerous.

better to stay at home.

How rich this topic has become

I fled the suburbs to rural America
no taxi, bus or carpool lane to be found

I think I shall raise carrots
organically of course, and
I will be kind to slugs

My carrots will travel to the City,
transportation costs to be borne
by those who scorn less worthy
vegetables.

:lol:

I fled the suburbs and moved into the city, where I mostly ride the subway rather than drive and walk to the farmers market for my fresh meat and produce.

:)

Excellent.

If you're ever in Washington DC, stop by the Eastern Market for lunch:

http://www.easternmarket.net/index.php?id=farmersline

From the land of those who grow our own veggies and, in my brother in law's case, hunt some of our own meat, I respond.

I enjoy living here 30 miles outside the metropolis - less noise, dirt and crime - and when needs be I take the very convenient interstate to Music City. When last I was here, gas was $1.50 ish, and now that I've seen it go as far as it has, it makes me think that, first, we're finally getting close to what Europe pays, and second, we're getting to where it hurts enough that the creative minds amongst us will be aroused. (nope, no sexual stuff in that one, uh uh)

Have we forgotten that just 100 or so years ago, most folks were out in the streets of our towns, looking at a strange new conveyance saying, "Dang, Herbert, that horseless carriage won't amount to nothin."? Yet, here we are again, at the dawn of a new creative age, thinking that same thing.

Soon, very soon, some enterprising young folks (or old, to give my own generation a chance) will come out and say, "Hey, look at what I made!". And we will all look at the new engine that is fueled by a combination of rotten eggs and horse crap and think, dang, I wish I'd invested in chickens.

But the oil barons, smart as they are, will have already invested in both chickens and horses because they are smart like that, and we'll then begin calling them, what........ big Chicken? Big Horse?

It's all about the market, folks, here in this country. We have successfully invented when inventions were needed, and we will do so again. We're entrepreneurs (sp?) here, and that is in our blood. Oil is going to run out, and when it does, then chickens and horses (or something or another) will rule the day. And we'll be on top of it.

Europe pays the same amount per barrel that we do pre-taxes. They pay more because it pays for their socialist policies. So we are getting closer to what Europe used to pay. Until our taxes raise to their levels they'll always pay higher.

Yes, for sure, and they also drive fewer miles than we do, for the most part. I've heard my European friends bitch for years about the price of gas in America, how it wasn't what they paid. But when you look at Sweden's housing policies (basically free, for most anyone) and virtually free health care in the UK, then it seems to even out. At least, in my perspective.

Free is a relative term.

True enough, since free in this instance means a 40 or so percent tax rate on everyone. Wow, such freedom....

intense1: you cannot be serious.

so in your world, one day an automobile magically appears in some imaginary town. the residents of this imaginary town see the car and say "dang now there' a fine machine" which alerts the Bureau of Market Forces--presumably a wholly owned subsidiary of the Invisible Hand LLC--and then the Bureau of Market Forces gets its special daimon agents to work and then POOF the suburbs simply happen. And then folk in the present look around them and say MY MY WHAT A FINE INTERESTING AND NECESSARILY RATIONAL DEVELOPMENT for which of course endless gratitude is the only possible response.

you cannot seriously believe that your little parable about market forces explains anything in actual historical terms about the rise, consolidation and problems of the suburban model.

i mean you can always make anything into a little reassuring fable about capitalism and it beneficence if you leave out enough information, i guess.
but if the point of the thread is to prompt a discussion about the relationship between the suburban model and problems with petroleum, the such little fables really are not terribly interesting: they describe nothing, they analyze nothing, they point to nothing (except articles of the capitalist faith), they diagnose nothing, they consider nothing.

the suburbs as they current exist are the direct result of a particular phase of capitalist development--they are in many ways the perfected expression of the form of capitalist organization fully in effect in the united states from the end of Wolr dWar II into the early 1970s--the phase that over the past 40 years has been gradually giving way to globalization. being tied to an older form of capitalist organization, the suburban model is based on a series of assumptions about infrastructure conditions--that they are adequate, that they are renewable, that they will always be available---these preconditions have been altered or eroded by mutations in the form of economic organization they are a function of.

in other words, the american suburban model is the result of choices made by human beings based on assumptions concerning resources and infrastructure and finance and on and on. they do not follow naturally from any fiction called "market forces"---capitalism is a historical phenomenon, one made by human beings functioning within a history that they may or may not fully understand. there is no capitalist god that uses human beings as meat puppets to implement phases of reality that are always necessarily rational.

capitalism changes in its overall mode of organization.
if that overall mode of organization is the framework within which particular phenomena are decided upon (the burbs and the infrastructure they presuppose to function--highways, roads, etc.) then it follows that changes in the overall organization of capitalism will change the meaning--and raise questions about the functionality--of phenomena rooted in previous forms of organization.

I don't see what is going to stop the continued growth of the suburbs at least for the forseeable future. Gasoline prices have not risen much higher than other goods over the last 30 or 40 years.

People are still going to want detachable houses with yards and some space as well as to get out of the city because of the crime and better schools, etc... Even if gasoline gets very expensive, alternatives will be developed.

Of all the assumptions one could attack in the OP, no one bothered with this one? Are you fuckin' kidding me? This is absolutely, verifiably, patently, completely, utterly, entirely, enormously, FALSE

YOU CANT FUCKING RUN A CAR ON WATER WITHOUT EXPENDING MORE FOSSIL FUELS IN CHARGING THE BATTERY.

It's thermo-fucking-dynamics for crissake and I'm tired of hearing this "we can run everything on water" GARBAGE.

To create one joule of energy stored as H2 and O2 requires more than 1 joule of electricity. It doesn't matter where you get that 1 joule of electricity (solar cells, gasoline, hydroelectric...) you still loose some energy in the process. AND YOU'RE STILL DEPENDENT ON THE OTHER FUEL SOURCE.

Dude, too much caffine. Take a deep breath...
...in their lifetimes, solar pannels give off thousands to hundreds of thousands of times the energy units it took to creat them in the first place, right? Electricity is all it takes to turn water into hydrogen, right? (Electrolysis). So the only fossuil fuels needed to make a car run on water could be those used to creat solar panels and batteries, both of which could be created with solar power. The whole process could exist without the need for fossil fuels.

Solar panel takes in sunlight, converts to electricity, stores in battery, electricity from battery is run through water until the H20 molecules break apart and create hydrogen and oxygen, both of which are highly combustable and more efficient than gasoline or diesel.

Conclusion: you're wrong, and not only that, you're wrong and your shouting, and not only that but you're wrong and you contracidt yourself:
What gives?

My Tahoe runs on solar energy.