The world once oil starts drying up.

[da3monh0st3d]

We'd be a lot further if the 60s hadn't poisoned so many people against the idea of nuclear power

Click to shrink...

A whole lot of that unpopularity is thanks to astroturfing (by the petrol companies, incidentally), it wasn't any accident.

 

[NuclearBird]

Suburbs though -- no reason.

Click to shrink...

You'd be surprised. The original impetus for suburbs in the USA was the same specter that is hanging over the world today:

Nuclear war.

Dispersing the middle class, the core of technical skills that an advanced society would need to survive, across as much area as an urban development could get away with was the best choice out of a bag of much less practical proposals, so that's what they ran with.
Because if all your engineers, logisticians, administrators and master technicians are concentrated into a few housing complexes, then all you would need to erase them from a major metropolitan is to land ONE bomb. Meanwhile a suburb is going to need more for sure...

 

[da3monh0st3d]

You'd be surprised. The original impetus for suburbs in the USA was the same specter that is hanging over the world today:

Nuclear war.

Dispersing the middle class, the core of technical skills that an advanced society would need to survive, across as much area as an urban development could get away with was the best choice out of a bag of much less practical proposals, so that's what they ran with.
Because if all your engineers, logisticians, administrators and master technicians are concentrated into a few housing complexes, then all you would need to erase them from a major metropolitan is to land ONE bomb. Meanwhile a suburb is going to need more for sure...

Click to shrink...

Car-dependent suburbs are trivial to induce starvation and mass death in. Just destroy the roads, basically every thing else is too far to walk to reasonably. You don't even need nukes, a lot of them were literally built in deserts (and all of them are food deserts anyway) and the vast majority of the residents aren't equipped to survive a trek to the nearest source of food on foot.

There'd be no such survival and flight to the suburb had some much nastier sociopolitical roots. Yes this related to redlining.

but ultimately they'll be switching off of gas engines for the same reason we switched off of steam engines in generations past. Not because of government mandates, but because the technology became obsolete.

Click to shrink...

Coal-fired steam engines never became obsolete, they're still superior to trucks and cars in people/mass moved for any given amount of energy.

In other words, they're both more efficient and less polluting. It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

You can probably hazard a guess as to the actual causes of their decline.

 

[NuclearBird]

lol I live in Iowa

Every town out here is a decaying ghost of its former self and all the young people are moving away to pack themselves into cities.

I'm sure some people will still live out in the middle of nowhere, but the vast majority are going to be forced to move by the changing economic conditions - economic conditions that are just as much tyrannical as any government forcing them to do the same thing.

I'd just rather it be done in a controlled and organized fashion instead of at the chaotic whims of the market.

Click to shrink...

Okay listen here, Commie.
If you love your socialist tyranny so much then why don't you move to a country more aligned with your views, where people won't shoot you for even proposing your bloodthirsty power-hungry schemes?
Like North Korea.
Recall the flag with the snake and leave the rest of us alone.

A whole lot of that unpopularity is thanks to astroturfing (by the petrol companies, incidentally), it wasn't any accident.

Click to shrink...

Considering those exact petrol companies also happen to be big investors in both renewables and nuclear (both fission and fusion ventures), and have been for a while now, I'll place an (X) on that.

You can probably hazard a guess as to the actual causes of their decline.

Click to shrink...

Because they're fucking dirty and produce some of the most unholy and persistent soot a machine could produce?

 

[da3monh0st3d]

Because they're fucking dirty and produce some of the most unholy and persistent soot a machine could produce?

Click to shrink...

Nope, because then we'd just be using diesel (same thing as heavy trucks use) locomotives instead if that was actually the reason.

Car industry lobbying has a lot more to do with it.

Considering those exact petrol companies also happen to be big investors in both renewables and nuclear (both fission and fusion ventures), and have been for a while now, I'll place an (X) on that.

Click to shrink...

Not exactly, no.

Power/energy operators did, because they largely don't give a shit about it so long as it's lucrative, and wind is now a better ROI than coal thermal plants.

The car industry also no longer gives a shit because it's now possible to greenwash the problem away with electric cars (which have literally all the other problems of cars including the absurdly polluting & destructive infrastructure required for the car-dependent paradigm).

The petrol industry never stopped trying to either lie about the actual damages it induces or just making use of any and all corruption it possibly can as a stalling tactic.

 

[TanaNari]

My money's still on synthetic hydrocarbons

Click to shrink...

Plausible, especially with nuclear power that can power the infrastructure.

nd that's what all of this boils down to: No-one is allowed to escape utopia

Click to shrink...

There really does seem to be a lot of "I don't know how to be happy so the best I can do is make everyone else equally miserable" in these things, doesn't there?

Rural regions have a reason to exist, and I support their productivity.

Suburbs though -- no reason.

Plow them under and pack the sardines.

Click to shrink...

Depends on circumstance. A lot of suburbs are a sort of transitional state, either as a small city that exists to provide centralized options for nearby rural regions, or are in the process of going from rural to urban as population grows.

Others? Yeah, a lot of them were planned projects rather than any sort of natural development. And utter shit for that very reason.

Speaking of:

I'd just rather it be done in a controlled and organized fashion instead of at the chaotic whims of the market.

Click to shrink...

At least the whims can adapt. I'd rather a building be light and flexible so that it can shift without breaking, rather than some soulless concrete monolith that's going to shatter the moment the earth shifts a tiny bit.

I live in Iowa

Every town out here is a decaying ghost of its former self and all the young people are moving away to pack themselves into cities.

Click to shrink...

I'd offer my condolences, but I actually live somewhere worse. Illinois. And I can tell you the cities here aren't in any way better than the small towns. Worse, by most metrics.

Chicago is where everything that can bring any sort of human happiness goes to bleed out in the streets.

People are fleeing from this shithole state to go to your shithole state. Or any other neighboring state. Including Alabama.

You know you're fucked when Alabama is a step up from what you're currently living with.

California? Being abandoned in droves. Mostly in favor of Texas and Florida, but also any of the other states.

I'm sure some people will still live out in the middle of nowhere, but the vast majority are going to be forced to move by the changing economic conditions - economic conditions that are just as much tyrannical as any government forcing them to do the same thing.

Click to shrink...

Oh, yes, very young adults move into the cities looking for work. Sometimes. Depends on their work.

Most of the ones with any wherewithal move back out again in, maybe, ten years. Taking whatever experience and technical skills with them as they return to more rural areas for the purposes of actually living their lives rather than existing only to work and die.

Maybe they don't move back to Iowa so much- but any of the states that have more tourism than just the adrenaline junkies chasing tornadoes.


Cities are, for anyone who has a choice in the matter, a place to go temporarily to get your 'starter job' before leaving the moment it becomes an option.

Not a permanent place of residence.

For, again, anyone with a choice in the matter.

 

[da3monh0st3d]

A lot of suburbs are a sort of transitional state, either as a small city that exists to provide centralized options for nearby rural regions, or are in the process of going from rural to urban as population grows

Click to shrink...

That's exclusively true for the ones that aren't car-dependent, which are a minority of the recently-built (think last 70 years) ones in America.

And I can tell you the cities aren't any better than the small towns. Worse, really.

Click to shrink...

How high of a proportion of their land is literally just parking or SFH-only zoning?

American cities aren't built for actually living-in, that's a large part of the problem. They're built to accommodate suburbanites.

 

[NuclearBird]

Nope, because then we'd just be using diesel (same thing as heavy trucks use) locomotives instead if that was actually the reason.

Click to shrink...

Have you... Have you ACTUALLY, and I mean IN REALITY, seen a coal fired steam train in your propagandized life?
Honest question.
Or do you actually believe that a coal power plant in all its efficiency-at-scale Rankine cycle glory and extensive filtration, can be scaled down to the size of a train car?

Car industry lobbying has a lot more to do with it.

Click to shrink...

Okay. Take this from the guy whose extended family has an equal number of bloodthirsty anti-Communists and hidebound old-guard loyalists who yearn for the return of the Cold War days despite having experienced it first-hand:

NOT EVERY DECLINE IN A COMMIE'S PET COMPLAINT TOPIC IS A CONSPIRACY BY ANY INDUSTRIAL CARTEL

The obsolescence of steam trains in favor of Diesel-Electric and Diesel came as a consequence of technological advancement making the latter two infinitely more practial for all logistical and maintenance reasons you can list, and not because executives skeeved and rubbed their hands in a board meeting one day and decided that your precious steam engines had to go.
The prevalence of opposition to nuclear power was a consequence of Cold War paranoia over nuclear fallout and the media exaggerating the miniscule effects of Three Mile Island into a mass panic solely for the sake of selling copies of newpapers, and not because petroleum companies somehow managed to get enough pull in the Department of Energy at the height of the Cold War to the degree that they could dictate nuclear policy in the domestic sphere.
And no, packing the overwhelming majority of the population into commie blocks like sardines is not going to solve anything other than ensuring that the existing social tensions blow over overnight into an all-out RACE WAR thanks to people now being made, by force, completely aware that they can't run to anywhere anymore, and their next target after taking care of the local ethnic rivals will be the ones who forced them into their glorified prison blocks to begin with.

Plausible, especially with nuclear power that can power the infrastructure.

Click to shrink...

That is PRECISELY why I make these arguments at all: We know the separate components work, that they work extremely well and that the groundwork to support them is already there, albeit in need of maintenance and repair.

American cities aren't built for actually living-in, that's a large part of the problem.

Click to shrink...

So? Even cities supposedly built to be lived in are shitholes.
It's been one of the big constants of human history that urban living is fucking miserable and that your chances of prematurely dying to disease and violence, as well as overall worsened health, will be increased across the board compared to living elsewhere.

Stop fucking romanticizing the housing blocks and urban sprawl; I don't give a shit how Stockholm'd you are with it.

 

[queermunist]

I'd offer my condolences, but I actually live somewhere worse. Illinois. And I can tell you the cities here aren't in any way better than the small towns. Worse, by most metrics.


Chicago is where everything that can bring any sort of human happiness goes to bleed out in the streets.


People are fleeing from this shithole state to go to your shithole state. Or any other neighboring state. Including Alabama.


You know you're fucked when Alabama is a step up from what you're currently living with.


California? Being abandoned in droves. Mostly in favor of Texas and Florida, but also any of the other states.

Click to shrink...

I don't think, statistically, that has much weight. People flock to cities. They move out when they get priced out by other people flocking to cities. Otherwise, cities wouldn't even exist lol

If you love your socialist tyranny so much then why don't you move to a country more aligned with your views, where people won't shoot you for even proposing your bloodthirsty power-hungry schemes?

Click to shrink...

Chill lol I'm not even talking about communism. Just government regulation and investment. Perfectly safe liberal democratic things.

your propagandized life?

Click to shrink...

Do you... actually think we're being brainwashed? By who?

 

[NuclearBird]

Perfectly safe liberal democratic things.

Click to shrink...

Ah, yes, forcing inhuman conditions onto millions of people in the name of social wellbeing and some abstract concept of saving something and depriving them of their dignity by forcing them to eat horrific concoctions of industrial processing while having them live like pigs on a factory farm.

SO FUCKING DEMOCRATIC AND LIBERAL GUIZ!

Do you... actually think we're being brainwashed?

Click to shrink...

Yes.

 

[queermunist]

Ah, yes, forcing inhuman conditions onto millions of people in the name of social wellbeing and some abstract concept of saving something and depriving them of their dignity by forcing them to eat horrific concoctions of industrial processing while having them live like pigs on a factory farm.

SO FUCKING DEMOCRATIC AND LIBERAL GUIZ![/QUOTE

Click to shrink...

Uh. Okay.

So this thread is about oil, not whatever the hell you're talking about. Can we stay on topic?

I just want the world to stop relying on oil so we don't all fucking die. Is that too much to ask?

 

[NuclearBird]

So this thread is about oil, not whatever the hell you're talking about. Can we stay on topic?

Click to shrink...

Funny. I distinctly remember you being quite active in this thread going off topic from oil into other areas where you could mentally masturbate yourself to your dystopian fantasies...

I just want the world to stop relying on oil so we don't all fucking die. Is that too much to ask?

Click to shrink...

After all the miserable tyrannical wankery you have shared in full detail in this thread? Fat chance. I know your true face.

Also, "so we all don't fucking die"? Really? Fuck offfff. Go lay down on a patch of grass instead of plugging your head with whatever doomsaying you're being fed with.

 

[da3monh0st3d]

Have you... Have you ACTUALLY, and I mean IN REALITY, seen a coal fired steam train in your propagandized life?
Honest question.
Or do you actually believe that a coal power plant in all its efficiency-at-scale Rankine cycle glory and extensive filtration, can be scaled down to the size of a train car?

Click to shrink...

I have, but the point of whether said filtration can be scaled down to improve their emissions further is moot anyway, we do have diesel now which doesn't cause the sooth problem and has even better emission characteristics vs cars & trucks on highways/roads. And they're still barely used.

Better yet, we have electricity now. There's no need to use diesel at all unless there's some temporary fault in the electrical infrastructure (equipment breaks and fails once in a while) or some stretch of rail yet to be electrified (now why is the majority of it not electrified in some countries? Infrastructure neglect mostly).

The obsolescence of steam trains in favor of Diesel-Electric and Diesel came as a consequence of technological advancement making the latter two infinitely more practial for all logistical and maintenance reasons you can list, and not because executives skeeved and rubbed their hands in a board meeting one day and decided that your precious steam engines had to go.

Click to shrink...

I think you (potentially intentionally) misread what I was saying.

If car-centric roads are worse in aggregate, and yet they're used, then the obsolescence of the technology is necessarily not the reason for its lack of use.

That isn't exclusive to the notion that even better locomotives can be used instead.

The prevalence of opposition to nuclear power was a consequence of Cold War paranoia over nuclear fallout and the media exaggerating the miniscule effects of Three Mile Island into a mass panic solely for the sake of selling copies of newpapers, and not because petroleum companies somehow managed to get enough pull in the Department of Energy at the height of the Cold War to the degree that they could dictate nuclear policy in the domestic sphere.

Click to shrink...

So how do you explain that practically every single anti-nuclear environmentalist group of note pulled a significant amount of its funding from the oil industry?

Also, the oil industry and the American military complex are very tightly intertwined (and foreign policy reflects this). The civilian arm of it isn't the full extent of it.

And no, packing the overwhelming majority of the population into commie blocks like sardines is not going to solve anything other than ensuring that the existing social tensions blow over overnight into an all-out RACE WAR thanks to people now being made, by force, completely aware that they can't run to anywhere anymore, and their next target after taking care of the local ethnic rivals will be the ones who forced them into their glorified prison blocks to begin with.

Click to shrink...

You know, even just allowing three-story apartment buildings without the ridiculous parking minimums (which make it so you can't even build anything reasonably-sized and affordable since the parking requirement & so required additional land otherwise bankrupts the project) would greatly alleviate the housing crisis? There's no need for allowing the 9 & 10-story versions (or even bigger).

You have a strangely dramatic view of apartment buildings that seems to preclude all but the extremes.

 

[TanaNari]

I just want the world to stop relying on oil so we don't all fucking die. Is that too much to ask?

Click to shrink...

First: relying on oil isn't going to kill us. We've been over that, like, twenty times in this thread already.

Second: We're already moving off of oil, what reliance still remains, without any need to employ draconian tyranny to force it to happen.

Third: You're the one bringing up all these unnecessary plans that can only be achieved by draconian tyranny (or a particularly successful religious movement brainwashing everyone into a drone).


All you have to do to ensure we won't die of overreliance on oil is... nothing. Absolutely nothing. War, such as it is, already won before you got here. Grab a bagel and find something better to do with your life.

 

[TheMidnightRook]

The obsolescence of steam trains in favor of Diesel-Electric and Diesel came as a consequence of technological advancement

Click to shrink...

The shift to diesel/other oil products and away from coal was also partly motivated/accelerated by the fact that repeated strikes by mine workers lead to interruptions in coal supplies and rising prices.

They call John L. Lewis the greatest oil salesman in history for a reason.

 

[queermunist]

Funny. I distinctly remember you being quite active in this thread going off topic from oil into other areas where you could mentally masturbate yourself to your dystopian fantasies...

Click to shrink...

What??? I've only posted about oil and the oil-based society we live in, what the hell. I'm talking about infrastructure, population density, transportation, etc. That's all pretty directly related to oil. Am I being gaslit lol

First: relying on oil isn't going to kill us. We've been over that, like, twenty times in this thread already.

Click to shrink...

I guess technically climate change is off topic from peak oil discussion (kind of), so I shouldn't have brought that up.

And without talking about climate change, yeah, everything will be fine. We'll switch to electric cars and lab grown meat or whatever.

EDIT Oh rereading we did have a climate change discussion and that was shut down by a mod. Oops! I totally forgot, it's been a while! Sorry y'all, ignore my doom posting. Yeah this thread basically doesn't matter because it doesn't cover the most important part of this topic lol

 

[TanaNari]

We'll switch to electric cars and lab grown meat or whatever.

Click to shrink...

Why lab grown meat?

You do realize that most of the meat we use come from cows, chickens, and pigs, right? Two of those three are omnivorous tropics-adapted animals that can survive while literally eating nothing but human feces.

The third turns grass into beef. And grazes happily upon stuff that grows in soil where it would be impossible to grow potatoes. And potatoes are famous for being able to grow in some trash tier soil.

Lab meat is a marketing stunt directed at vegans, not a solution to any real existential problem. A matter of conscience, not survival.


Also: with the way this site keeps coming in or out of connectivity lately, I'm going to go focus on getting my chapter written rather than chatting with you guys. I'll be back to play some more later.