four years to import zero

FOUR YEARS TO IMPORT ZERO

Sometimes the most earth shattering breakthroughs aren’t new information but merely finding a new lens to look at things through. For me it is simple Peak Oil. But I’m a pretty simple guy. Chris Martenson, with his “Crash Course”, dresses it up much better, and makes it much easier to see the consequences with the simple lens of Exponential Growth. Linear growth is an addition of the same base amount every year, whereas nonlinear growth is the same percentage every year. That percent starts out small but then over time as each years growth creates a bigger total number the same small percent gets larger and larger until it suddenly starts curving up and then shoots nearly straight upwards. The hokey stick graph of Al “I invented everything” Gore. When the population is one million and adds one percent, ten thousand ain’t much. But year after year it adds up until you have a billion and then that next years one percent growth is an additional ten million. Chris’ main point of all his course is that when this exponential population growth added to an exponential growth in money and credit and especially debt meet the exponential decline in oil supplies, coal and plutonium, something has got to give such as our entire way of life. Of course I’m being vulgar and course and making it way too simple. If you haven’t seen his slide show, which is available for a free download you cheap bastard, you are really truly missing out on life saving information ( and believe me, I do heartily thank the two minions who pointed out his site to me a couple of years back ). Literally. This lens looking at our economy will allow you to see how utterly screwed you are and why you must start planning yesterday. Of course, Chris is a classy guy and never panics. That is my job.

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His catch phrase is, the next twenty years won’t be like the last twenty years. My catch phrase is the last one in the stewpot wins. But if I had to add another, or mix it up to keep it fresh since you are all easily amused but quickly bored, it would be, you simple moronic twat it can’t stay business as usual very much longer. Why Chris doesn’t panic, given the information he himself assembled, is beyond my comprehension. How can optimism survive this kind of cold water? As a very quick aside, I wanted to point out a very dull and boring read, The Fall Of The Roman Empire by Michael Grant, if you can slog through it, wonderfully points out all the many and different ways that the Romans kept business as usual going, even accelerating, and helped the decline and fall. Anyway, back to scratching my ass in befuddlement over how an intelligent and rational individual can highlight the cause of an impending crash and then quickly jump back into the mewing herd of Pollyanna’s. Like Greer, who helpfully pointed out what I just might consider THE bible of doom and gloom, “Overshoot” by Catton. Greer then uses the yeast in a vat example to think we won’t crash? Did I read a different edition of the same book? Blind optimism, along with ex wife number two and pedophiles, are among three of the worlds worst evils. Anyway, I’ll stop for now. Share Martenson’s data, just don’t share his conclusions.

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If you download the free Internet Crash Course, you’ll see why I’m making all this fuss. Do a brother a solid and then throw a few bucks Chris’ way. He really deserves your support for this work. I bought the DVD slide show as my online time is limited. Wonderful stuff. I just now bought the book. Not as great as the slide show, at twice the price, but it is easier for me to research the fine points on paper rather than on the DVD player. One thing I THINK ( it’s been at least a year since I watched the course ) that is new is the figures on imported oil. This got me so riled up last night ( Saturday ) that I waited until dusk and went out and finally started digging wheat bucket holes. It took about thirty minutes for a hole for three, which might have been about ten minutes longer than necessary as I was furiously swatting at mosquito’s ( speaking of which, remember that forgotten doomer classic “Mosquito Coast” by Theroux? The great thing about it being printed thirty years ago is that they are cheap in the used book store [ half retail price ]- I got mine on Friday for two bucks ). I didn’t like the depth, only an inch below ground level, but I could only dig down so far before I hit dirtcrete. Do you see how I’ve blathered on and given you all this unneeded background to pad out my writing? I can get away with it because I’m cute, charming and entertaining. I didn’t think it worked for Chris’ book. It might just be my imagination but I swear the slide show was more to the point.

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But, to the imported oil. He bases this on Brown’s Export Land Model ( you can Wiki it ). It is so simple and shocking that you will walk away from your screen to grab a bottle of Refreshing Adult Beverage. If an exporting nation starts to see a decline in its production of a mere five percent, while at the same time seeing internal demand for its own oil increase at only two and a half percent, in under seven years it will be importing zero oil. Please go back and reread that, seriously. By 2015 the US will have a hell of a lot less oil being imported to our shores. A 2008 report showed that the average decline rate globally of oil production is nearly seven percent. And that was BEFORE Saudi Arabia has its recent “production cutbacks due to lack of demand”. So essentially that decline rate has been going on since perhaps as early as 2007. Some countries are sinking at double digits, others steady. The average is seven percent decline. BEFORE Saudi Arabia. So calling for a FIVE percent decline is optimistic. I’m doing that so you can’t complain I’m screaming about the sky falling ( well, okay, also because that was the figure in Chris‘ book ).

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The growing internal demand merely reflects population growth. And probably realistically accounts for the need for some kind of internal agricultural needs since we turn our former grain surplus that had been feeding the worlds oil importing poor into out own auto fuel now. I think these two figures are realistic and even understated. The countdown began in 2008. If not sooner. I know Mexico has been in serious decline for some time, with double digit yearly decreases so bad it could be as soon as this year that they go from our #3 supplier ( in 2009 ) to a zero importer. But let’s take 2008 as our base when the 7% decline was noted. Which means at the very latest, in four more years most of our importers send over absolutely nothing. We pump three million barrels a day from the lower 48, with two added from Alaska and the Gulf ( all three in continuous decline by the way ). We used to burn twenty a day, so we imported three quarters of our oil. Over the last five years we’ve lost twenty percent of our imports. Over the next four years we could lose the rest.

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Do you honest injun think we can survive economically or militarily on just five million barrels a day? When we were using twenty? If all other activity stopped except moving troops and feeding everyone, we could. No one would have jobs, or be able to heat their homes in winter ( huddle around that oven while your Soylent Green is bubbling away ). And the entire banking and credit system would be wiped out. Perhaps that wouldn’t matter, as a cold house in winter ain’t worth two hundred grand. Four years to go till martial law, the Reconquista, civil war, famine, plague. You can’t factor in the future without recognizing our financial system, the one that pays oil workers to pump the petroleum and pays the cops to keep order and pays for hospitals to stay open, if it blows the collapse happens that much faster. Is four years fast enough for us to ramp up our military and start occupying other countries? It took two years just to attack Iraq, and that was to stop the Euro threat. We were just halting oil production, not trying to divert it to our use. But the only way to halt this timeline is to use other countries oil for ourselves.

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I don’t know if we have the capacity to occupy more countries. Was our half assed effort in Libya a result of our diminished capacity or was it simply because we wanted to halt but not destroy the European threat? Or, are we allowing them to bleed themselves faster by forcing them to fight for their own oil? Since I don’t know, it is hard to say about further occupations. Personally, I can’t see how we’ve managed to keep over ten percent of our military in Iraq while still keeping all our other commitments ( yes, I realize by factoring in Reserves the equation is changed. But this is a combat operation and not just garrisoning, so the best troops are needed ). I think the military has done a great job with limited resources ( quality is great, but we’re asking them to also accomplish quantity work ). I just don’t know how much more they can do. Remember, sterilizing the indigs with nuclear dust is one thing ( I blame the depleted uranium mess on the politicians, such as that Nobel Peace prize mother humper. Our troops are sucking in the same crap ). Keeping them from attacking an operating oil source is quite another. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but it could, saving us for another few years.

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I was aware of the import model. I thought that is simply meant that the imports would stop sooner rather than later. I never really thought it would be a mere four years from now. But population growth, production declines from almost every country ( and the numbers are showing that very few are declining as slow as the US did after 1970 ) and an economy that must grow to survive ( but is now surviving off printed money rather than energy ) all converge for a perfect storm. Forget Peak Oil. The end of most oil being pumped could stretch as far as twenty years from now. Peak Imports started five years ago when it reached its high mark. Since then we have been in a gentle decline. A few more years, then off the cliff in exponential, hockey stick pattern crash. In an exponential model, the increase or decrease is ALWAYS suddenly spiking. Our waterfall collapse is here. You have, baring military action ( successful action, need it be said ), at most four years before our entire system takes a big squishy steaming dump.

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You probably won’t listen. It is too much to process and you refuse to think worse case. Hey, I tried. Nice to know you.

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Almost twice as long of an article today. The sun was out in a rare treat so I didn’t sweat the battery use to run the computer. And I think this subject merits your full attention. Please, at think about it a bit. Longer than your usual inattention as you go off shopping for porno featuring donkeys and surprisingly limber human females.

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