Posted on 29-8-2003

The View From Nowhere
by Alan Marston

Oil prices rose on Thursday amid traders' concerns over thin US stocks of
petrol and strong demand in the world's largest consumer. NYMEX October
crude rose 29 cents to US$31.50 per barrel, recovering some of Wednesday's
losses, when the US government showed a steep decline in petrol
inventories. In London, North Sea Brent crude settled up 26 cents at
US$29.44 a barrel. "Wednesday's profit-taking was a knee-jerk reaction, but
this is a more considered view of the data," said Steve Turner, oil analyst
at Commerzbank Securities. US petrol stocks fell to their lowest level in
nearly three years due to unprecedented petrol demand in the last part of
summer.

.... and that is today's (Friday 29 September 2003) oil report.

I'm about to make a conscious effort not to adopt an hysterical tone, not
whip up fear in order to exploit it for social influence and control. But
that's not easy, fear is so addictive, so available, so socially accepted
as a means to a selfish end. Not to mention the fact that the exploitation
of fear is never so alluring as when discussing blood, in this case the
life-blood of the `global economy', crude oil. Fear, there but for the
grace of God go I, and if I do, please forgive me for I have sinned (missed
the mark).

The global population of humans has been literally multiplying for
centuries, on a graph it looks like the take-off path of a panicking jet
plane, about now the plane is running out of fuel and if it doesn't start
to level out it will stall and fall. What has enabled human population
numbers to increase so? No question modern medicine has contributed
greatly, especially in the developed world. But like any aeroplane it's
fuel that counts, in this case food, food produced by industrial farming
techniques, industrial farming equipment and a massive amount of industrial
strength fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Industrial anything is
made possible by the abundance and low cost of production of fossil fuels.
In short what underpins the massiveness of industrial anything is the
massive amount of relatively cheap energy in the form of crude oil. A
simple equation applies: lots of energy = lots of food = lots of people.
The supply of crude oil has enabled people to reproduce their numbers to
plague proportions.

Needless to say plagues, like planes going straight up, don't last and the
human plague is showing signs of an impending fall to earth. Per capita
food production is down in almost every area of the world, sure there are
several reasons for this, drought and floods brought on by changing weather
patterns, soil exhaustion, falling water tables, soil hyper-salination due
to irrigation, and that is the physical reasons, the `market' has a huge
effect too which is aggravating the trend to falling food stocks and
quality. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, actual
worldwide food production has fallen now for five years in a row. So even
with fossil fuel use continuing to rise, globally human fuel supplies, ie.
supplies of food, are falling.

Wishful thinking, ignorance and even industrial strength
propaganda/advertising/spin is no match for the rational karma that is
mathematics, and the mathematics of oil supply when plotted on a graph, is
a downhill slide. Looking and listening to the mathematics of oil a
rational person is impelled to ask the question `what will happen when the
flows of crude oil slow?' with a supplementary question which logic demands
`when will the oil flow start to decrease?' The answer to the when question
is disputable whatever answer is given because all predictions are, except
those that are based on the laws of nature. However the first question as
to what will happen stands solidly on an axiom of science which has never
been disproved and would therefore be unwise to ignore, ie. the first law
of thermodynamics; energy is conserved, it can't be made nor destroyed only
converted. Which means once all the oil energy has been converted to heat
and chemical byproducts like carbon dioxide, there's no more. The slowing
of the supply of crude-oil is inevitable, its only when the slowing begins
that is debatable.

Lets stick to the inevitable. What, waiting for me to say what
will `inevitably' happen to me, and by implication you and the rest of
humanity. I'll be honest, I've no idea, nobody has, or at least nobody has
a reliable idea. All we can do is see what is happening around us, apply
those laws of nature that we believe in, and `see what happens'. OK, that
conflicts with every instinct we have absorbed from the mass media since
birth, the primary instinct being hypersensitivity to fear and consequent
hyper-sensitivity to suggestion as to how to act. Nevertheless I say fear
not, act not! Not immediately anyway. Facts are stubborn things, accept
them, look around without fear, observe, reflect. Eventually your wonderful
mind-body complex will get its message through to self-consciousness, the
Right Thing is instantly known, at that point you can act with confidence,
I say you must act.

Well anyway, for what it's worth, that's what I'll be doing and not doing,
and why.