Peak Oil Chat: Policies, Politics, and Pathways to Sustainability w/ Simon Michaux & Steve SRSrocco

[@sparksmacoy]

There is more intelligence in this chat than in all the governments in the world.

[@AndriiZ]

Thank you.

[@jesse8025]

I feel it's a perfect quote for the byline of Michaux's new book. "all those people who've dismissed my work and been quite rude about it can Fuck right off!" Made me laugh. Look forward to reading the book. 41:12 Love your work Simon.

[@davidbarry6900]

43:00 the sad fact is that it is MUCH easier for people to stick to their beliefs than to acknowledge any facts which contradict those beliefs. We see this aspect of human nature in many different fields: medicine and religion are some of the more obvious.

[@leonsappl]

at 16:00 i like and agree with Fellow Jitster's comments. Andrii's work is really well put together and researched, however, I have criticisms of his "confederation" beliefs and extrapolating meaning from what i would consider fantasy. over extrapolating meaning and causality to historical figures is always fraught with danger as fellow jitster points out. otherwise andrii's work is excellent.

[@AndriiZ]

Well a lot of the historical figures were stated by the confederation. Really the ones that are arguable are the current ones, which I explained. The Confederation of Planets has been in consistent communication via L/L Research channeling group among others for over 50 years now. Llresearch.org The fellow Jitster was using fairly classic reform Judaism talking points, basically of the flavour that we can never be certain of anything, which the confederation also confirms to be the case.

[@leonsappl]

@@AndriiZ I recognise that the confederation of planets ideas are such a deeply held belief that any criticism would obviously trigger a response. I've realised long ago that it's pretty much pointless arguing to the contrary against any deeply rooted beliefs, whatever they may be. We all hold certain beliefs that go to the core of our identities and very rarely give them up. My not believing, in many respects, is no different as a belief structure. That's not to say wisdom and knowledge isn't contained within such writings but rather how to interpret. I tend to relate more to the work of David r Hawkins and states of consciousness but also recognise it as a pseudo/quazi scientific approach yet still has relevance as a guide to understanding human ability. I look at all these individuals alongside many other mystics in history and see it as an expression of humankind's variation of personality traits. Modern day individuals like Eckhart Tolle has his own interpretation of similar things at its core. I too have had my own epiphanies and "spiritual" experiences that I have interpreted through an understanding that makes sense to my lived experience.

[@Seawithinyou]

Bugger slept through my Alarm but Watching your podcast now Andrii 🤓😇

[@squeaker19694]

Very interesting chat as always. Something else that may put a spanner in the works for deep sea mining for battery minerals: scientists have recently discovered that the nodules they want to mine are producing oxygen. They always assumed that plants have produced the majority of the oxygen for earth, but it turns out that these ocean nodules are producing oxygen in the oceans. Of course the mining industry is trying to downplay this research, just like the fossil fuel industry and tobacco industry have done.

[@AndriiZ]

well so far only Japan is doing any deep sea mining. all the other companies that have tried went bankrupt.

[@squeaker19694]

@@AndriiZ that's good to know. Hopefully the risk of bankruptcy will deter them because I don't think they really care about long term environmental consequences.

[@davidbarry6900]

"Producing oxygen" doesn't mean much until we find out just how MUCH they are producing. My personal guess is that it's likely less than 0.1% of what plants (mostly ocean algae) produce. In which case the nodule O2 is largely irrelevant. I don't have any data though.

[@karinascharenberg3367]

Fantastic show. Thx

[@AndriiZ]

Remember to like, subscribe and share! Thanks.

[@mr.makeit4037]

I live 30 miles from a huge solar generation farm in Kaufman County in ne Texas. I believe the name is the Able Springs Facility. Are you guys telling me that this could be part of an indirect effort that this Facility is being funded to power bitcoin mining?

[@AndriiZ]

Quite possibly. At the very least some of the energy is going towards bitcoin mining rather than anything actually productive.

[@effexon]

Ive some time wondered this technoreligion.... and people have pointed out flavors of science religion and other flavors exist. Atheism simply dont work in society, even if some individuals want to live like that. Bitcoin, AI, whatever comes next are incarnations of that technoreligion in material form. All of them use energy in some form.

[@AndriiZ]

Yes, this was covered in depth by John Michael Greer he calls it the "religion of progress".

[@katiegreene3960]

Great chat . The comment about co2 in atmosphere staying forever is however false. There is a lot of nuance on this topic since the system is complex but the half life can be 20-1000 years . But the average seems to be in the sun 120 years since majority is reabsorbed by oceans

[@AndriiZ]

Yeah not sure I caught the forever comment, but yeah it can be pretty variable depending on how much biomass is available to absorb it. If we plant trees it will go down faster than otherwise.

[@katiegreene3960]

@AndriiZ co2 in general is an interesting topic ... but I won't go there

[@PaulHigginbothamSr]

With proper husbanding nuclear power will be good for more than 10,000 years, and that is just thorium. Using it for everything oil related that is. Not including uranium which dissolved in seawater and fully used, not just the 5% u235 now used but all would power humanity for 20,000years if used 100% in molten salt reactors. If used in high pressure water reactors then 4 or 500 years.

[@AndriiZ]

except we need a longer timeline there. Nuclear reserves are finite, and can not be regenerated, since they were created by supernovae explosions, so they have to be managed very well. It is estimated that 4th density will be 30 million years, so ideally nuclear reserves should last at least that long. We have 5.5 million metric tonnes of uranium reserves, and thorium is about 3 times more abundant, so estimated reserves are 16.5 million tonnes, or 22 million tonnes in total. Which means we can use about 730kg per year globally. World Nuclear says 1kg produces about 82TJ of heat energy1 . So 1g producing 82GJ, and modern heat to electricity conversion is 33%, so would produce about 27GJ or 7.5MWh. So 730kg produces about 60PJ heat or 20PJ electricity, or 5.5TWh, over the course of a year that’s a global electricity production of 15GWh per day. Each city can specialize in a different item that they produce, or in a more general purpose way produce several kinds of things. lyis.ca/pfet/transition_plan.html

[@effexon]

@@AndriiZ 15GWh sounds like humans go back to some 100mn population, near nomadic hunter gatherer tribe life. we use 1000x or way more now per year. Although could be argued just because it is business to produces and thus someone must consume it, energy is used extremely wastefully and societies favor wasteful devices vs passive devices(eg lot of cooling solutions are passive, but AC is still used for these reasons, it was even fashionable in 60s.... Technology connections made interesting video of awnings).

[@generic_youtube_comment]

@PaulHigginbothamSr You said using it for everything Oil related. Approx 70% of a barrel of Oil is used for transportation. There are approx 7 gallons of Oil that go into the construction of every car tyre. More for larger vehicles. Rubber extraction from trees for this purpose has as good as stopped. How would you meet the needs of this sector when the resource draw is nuclear ?

[@effexon]

@@generic_youtube_comment Id guess refine varieties of rubber trees then. Free trade price dictates what solution will be, priorities that it is needed at any price at first.

[@life42theuniverse]

16:00 Ghandi certainly tried to keep the people together. The best of intentions wasn’t enough to dissuade the people from the socioeconomic pressures to separate.

[@life42theuniverse]

How do you communicate with and persuade 8 billion people to live within planetary limits? My hypothesis is you need the whole to have the conversation with itself.

[@life42theuniverse]

The global conversation: kzbin.info/aero/PLhH8w0wcKSeDpkunKyRWBkPCcjiEk6AL7

[@AndriiZ]

well it is highly unlikely we will be able to persuade them in the very limited time we have. The focus is on creating sustainable pockets that will get through the population bottleneck of the collapse of this society.

[@AegonCallery-ty6vy]

I came here to learn something but heared a lot of convoluted assumptions going nowhere. I admit i didnt watch all of it but just went through the timestamps hoping something really interesting was going to pop up. But no..

[@davidbarry6900]

I have a hard time trying to associate China's Xijing Ping with "unconditional love", given China's treatment of the Uighur population. Xi and the CCP have only three overriding principles: 1) maintain absolute power, Xi over the party, and the party over China; 2) primacy of the Han ethnicity, and eradication of all other minorities within China; and 3) maintain stability, order, and control within China, to prevent any revolution, disorder, or dissent within China that might threaten the Party.

[@AndriiZ]

Yes I have updated the graphics next time will be in the service to self category with Netenyahu and Putin. Basically their motto is "order out of chaos" controlling that which they deem as unacceptable. Wheras the service to others would be forgive, love and accept all beings as they are.

[@effexon]

I saw today newstitle that scientists are surprised trees have grown recent years more than previous decades. Fits well to increased CO2 amount in air. Is that good or bad for humanity, well w e should still worry based on this presentation, mostly what convictions current world order is built upon and convictions are religious fervour, people bleed before they often surrender to change those big way. Circling back to deforestation theme there incase other sources dry out. Thinking mining, blowing up rocks or oldschool gulag way just hammer and hitting rocks, that requires either tons of food or people die there to starvation as caloric use is lot. But before that comes lot of fighting who gets those diminishing production supplies of all these materials. Was Rome decline partly due to diminishing wood stocks? ie they had to conquer new territories further from capital and thus logistics risks and costs increased.... though population was some 100s millions, way smaller than nowadays, so their decline still took hundreds of years. I mean advanced civilization uses more energy or something to enable more specialized jobs and trade but once decline happens, it is matter of time usually less energy, resource using tribes, groups of people get close enough to take over these empire from edges. Farming is base stone but everyone does farming to get food. Romans had metal and pottery products which need fire so likeliest wood was used at the time, few places coal perhaps if locals knew use of that. So question arising from this, is there correlation with population size and how sharp shocks in economy those crisis moments are? Eg stock crashes, wars (by casualties)... it would seem logical as bigger population is more vulnerable to this needing constant supply of products. Gold dust talk reminds of how all ancient books talk succesful empires, kings had golden this and that as status measure, which was taken from enemies... as stealing loot becomes lowest bar when energy becomes more luxury.

[@AndriiZ]

Yes, the bigger they get the harder they fall. The more complex the system the bigger the overhead. In terms of trees they grow where they are planted, like in China and India. Not where they are cut like most of the rest of the world. And yeah it was direct correlation as Steve explained of trees to Rome's viability. And indeed of all bronze age civilizations.

[@garrenosborne9623]

At second round of "Oh $hit" were fcukd conventional dosent work any more [not even just in next quater ], then I fear random individual nations &/or corporations unilateral mad scientist weather mods

[@robinlevick7246]

Dear god, mute the rooster

[@alan2102X]

13:00: "Mao did torture and famine and etc." lol. Sounds like the CIA and U.S. State Dept version of things, aka the prevailing Western propaganda version of things.

[@AndriiZ]

I am going based on this biography: www.goodreads.com/book/show/9746.Mao?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=dsjVx8jAQY&rank=3 it seems pretty legitimate, don't know if you have other biographies of him you have read.

[@alan2102X]

​@@AndriiZ For the record, Mao was the greatest benefactor the Chinese people ever had, and it is not even close. Enormous industrial and GDP growth, bringing improved nutrition and medicine and education to hundreds of millions of formerly impoverished people, DOUBLING the life expectancy (within one generation of the revolution!), and much more. Other Chinese leaders since then have also done a good job, for example completely abolishing poverty, but the foundation laid by Mao was pivotal. Funny that you mention "famine", since China had a 2000-year record of nearly-annual famines -- a record which abruptly stopped after the revolution, with a single exception (1959-60). Mao and the Chinese Communist Party ABOLISHED famine in China. Only one famine from the revolution (1949) to today, and none for 65 years now. An amazing accomplishment. This is the kind of stuff that you never read about in Western propaganda about China, which always portrays Mao and the communists and violent beasts, etc.; i.e. the opposite of the truth.

[@sunroad7228]

“No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores. Energy, like time, flows from past to future” (2017).

[@AndriiZ]

Sure, let's break this down in a simple way: This quote means that whenever we store energy, we can never get back all the energy we put in because some of it is always lost. Also, energy moves in one direction, from being highly concentrated (useful) to less concentrated (less useful), similar to how time moves forward. ### Energy Storage (Batteries): - **Batteries**: Think of a battery like a piggy bank for energy. You put energy in (charge it) and later take energy out (use it). - When you charge a battery, some energy is lost as heat, so you don't get back exactly what you put in. - For example, if you put 100 units of energy into charging a battery, you might only get 90 units out because 10 units were lost as heat. ### Energy Sources (Oil and Trees): - **Oil**: Oil is like a treasure chest of energy hidden underground. We dig it up and burn it to get energy. - Burning oil releases energy that was stored over millions of years from ancient plants and animals. - This energy is very concentrated, which means it's very useful for powering cars, machines, etc. - **Trees (Bioenergy)**: Trees get energy from the sun through a process called photosynthesis. - When we burn wood from trees, we release the energy that the tree stored while it was growing. - This is also a form of stored energy, but it's renewable because trees can grow back. ### Difference Between Storage and Sources: - **Energy Storage (Batteries)**: - We put energy in and take it out. - Not 100% efficient (some energy is lost). - Good for storing energy to use later. - **Energy Sources (Oil and Trees)**: - We extract energy directly from these materials. - Oil: Comes from ancient biological material, non-renewable. - Trees: Renewable because we can grow more trees. ### Simple Analogy: - **Battery**: Imagine filling a cup with water (charging a battery). Some water spills out (energy loss). When you pour it back into the bucket, you don't get all the water back. - **Oil and Trees**: Imagine finding a full bottle of water (oil) or growing a new plant that gives you water (trees). You use this water directly without having to store it first. In summary, batteries are like containers where we store energy with some losses, while oil and trees are direct sources of energy that we can use, with oil being non-renewable and trees being renewable.

[@sunroad7228]

@@AndriiZ When you say "we" - game over. The "we" means - fossil fuels. Energy transition from fossil fuels cannot be done powered by fossil fuels. The world couldn't transition from biomass to coal and from coal to oil for the last 300 years, yet alone transitioning now from fossil fuels to batteries. It is well understood now that the dream to Globalise the world in one set of dynamics proves unachievable for humans. Vast geography quickly turns the dynamics a struggle over energy resources - tooth and nail (Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and before that Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and last night the UK, Bangladesh, etc). The Struggle burns fossil fuels to secure fossil fuels - and this is circular. China cannot extract 6 billion tonne of coal annually importing and burning oil from war-torn Middle East, and oil from the Middle East cannot be extracted without Chinese coal - circular. From now on, drop the "we" from your narrative - as it means more and more fossil fuels. Hopefully you ask your panel to drop "we" from their mind set and works, too. “In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.” (2017).