new math attitude 1 of 3

NEW MATH ATTITUDE

I imagine you are weary of hearing about energy, oil, Peak Oil, Net Energy and all the rest, but you are the ones that signed up for the difficult course work here at Bison University.  If you wanted community college, go to Rawles.  If you wanted an elementary school, go to The Economic Collapse Blog.  I am SOOOOO sorry that empires run on surplus energy and we are almost out of not only the surplus but most energy period.  What, you sputter and spit and vomit blood, America has the Fracking Miracle of 100 years of energy independence.

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( Glen Beck said so!  By the way, if you want a correspondence course through the radio, on par with that creepy Neo-Nazi guy who sends Xerox newsletters proving the earth is flat and Mud People are involved in a conspiracy to eradicate the Whites [ who were innocent of the America’s continents genocide since that was the Spanish and everyone knows they aren’t REALLY white but more of a mongrel mix after being invaded by Mohammedans ] then by all means listen to Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh.  After Glen got religion and became a Frack Fag he downgraded food storage to a mere Rich Persons Benevolent Food Welfare For Flood Victims so as one, not to lose any advertisers who started with him when he was Chicken Little and two, to join the 10%’ers of the elite’s cheerleaders.  Just as Rush did decades ago.  Once Democrats are purged we immediately revert back to Beaver Cleaver Land.  Just ask him and he’ll tell you.  How does that make him a Systems Handler/Propagandist?  It doesn‘t matter which Party you cheer for, as long as you endorse the current one.  Keep pretending The Vote matters.  You‘ll get some ad dollars as long as you pull in the listeners ).

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I do apologize for being a bit slow on the uptake.  I’ve been studying systems collapse since pre-Y2K and Peak Oil right after that non-event.  I really should have caught on earlier.  Alas, I didn’t.  It wasn’t at all about running out of oil.  That was what I fixated on and that is what colored by meek analytical efforts.  When you concentrate on volume, you miss so many subtleties you can’t but help draw the wrong conclusions.  Volume doesn’t mean dingus.  It is all about Net Energy, or EROI.  Once you accept that, it is easy to see why the ’60’s social disruptions took place and why a mere 5% decrease in total oil withheld from exportation from OPEC crashed our economy. 

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I was always confused as to what caused the ’60’s riots and revolutions and upheavals.  It wasn’t JUST the Vietnam War.  Why would kids go to Korea but refuse to go to Vietnam?  Neither was a just or necessary war.  Both were sacrificing poor children at the alter of Military/Industrial Complex profits.  Nixon had not yet screwed up the general publics trust in the government.  But I think if you look at the 1971 US Peak of Oil and see a huge lose of EROI as compared to the 1920’s/1930’s, you can catch a glimpse of the rot in our society long before that date.  We had been losing net energy the whole time.  Even as the number of barrels pumped increased, we got ever less BTU’s delivered total.  If we had pumped 5 million barrels a day ( mbpd ) at 100 to 1 net, that surely beats today’s 20 mbpd at a max of 10 or 15 to 1 ( a bit of light sweet crude jacking up the net energy a bit on all that tar sands and deep sea oil and fracking and ethanol which is at most 5 to 1 net )( 100 to 1= one hundred barrels delivered at the cost of one barrel of oil to pump/extract/process ).

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Oil is no different than grades of coal.  We’ve been out of the good stuff-high BTU’s-for decades.  Moved down to the next lower BTU grade, used most of THAT up and are now down to the crap stuff, mostly pollution with a lot less energy delivered upon burning.  We are mining more coal than ever before!  We must be Energy Independent!  Right, Spanky!  And if I gave you one glass of pure water a day, would it be an improvement if I doubled that to two glasses a day if the second glass had sewage in it?  But just Parts Per Million!  No big deal, right?

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So, here we are in an economy that ran on Unlimited Energy Every Day.  The rich get that way by taking most of those free resources ( or Near Free, anyway ).  The government gets to continue Empire Building, which gives the rich more free stuff , by taxing the lower and middle class.  It is a neat system.  Until the free stuff starts costing more.  And that is exactly what lower net energy is, LESS free energy.  Our system needs constant growth.  More rich kids are born and must stay rich.  Growth is what keeps more riches directed at the already rich and their offspring, plus the systematic cost of keeping that wealth plus more coming in ( the 10% that are the Keepers Of Their Masters Wealth who get most of the leftover crumbs by guarding the system.  They are the Flag Officers and Judges and Police Commissioners and Wardens and Pravda Media and Right Wing Political Radio Commentators etc. ).  If your energy surplus decreases, that is the same as a drop in wealth.  Stable energy is NOT what our system needs to function, INCREASED energy is.  If the net energy is decreasing, so is the wealth.  And not just the wealth but the energy needed to maintain the complete infrastructure of our country and society.

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Real wealth ( as defined by surplus energy ) has been on the decline not for fifty years, but much longer.  Perhaps as long as eighty years.  It only became noticeable in the 1970’s, when our net VOLUME oil decreased, but the NET energy had been declining prior to that.  So, yes, I have been guilty on focusing on the 45 year long decline when I should have been aware of the previous one in net energy.  It makes a big difference, because it considerably shrinks the time we have left for our entire systems survival.  If net energy wasn’t important, we would imagine we have until 2030 to 2050 before Peak Oil kicked our ass.  That assumes we could suck out the remaining half before it all went to crap.  But if our system is already at the point we are near a negative return on pumped hydrocarbons in terms of Net Energy ( which looks likely ), we are looking at Very Near Collapse.  Stick with me here, I haven’t even gotten to the social aspects of diminishing energy which is where this article is headed.  More Tomorrow.

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