Petroleum and the future of civilization

[Al_Masetti]

Anyone wana bet Al will not open a pdf report by Citi Group?

peakoil.solarhorizons.com/reports/Citi-Oil-Report.pdf

Now … just how credible is THAT?

Citigroup gets needed cash from Abu Dhabi
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, November 28, 2007
By Will McSheehy and Bradley Keoun

Bloomberg News

The New York-based Citigroup said in a statement yesterday that Abu Dhabi will have “no role in the management or governance of Citi, including no right to designate a [board] member.”

AP / MARK LENNIHAN

Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, said yesterday it will receive a $7.5-billion cash infusion from Abu Dhabi to replenish capital after record mortgage losses.

The state-owned Abu Dhabi Investment Authority will buy securities that convert to stock and yield 11 percent a year, almost double the interest Citigroup offers bond investors, underscoring the New York-based company’s need for cash as losses from subprime mortgages wiped out almost half its market value. Fourth-quarter profit will be reduced by as much as $7 billion, which led to the departure of chief executive officer Charles O. “Chuck” Prince III and a 46-percent slump in its stock this year.

“Clearly, Citi has a problem with capital adequacy after the subprime crisis,” said Giyas Gokkent, head of research at National Bank of Abu Dhabi PJSC, Abu Dhabi’s biggest bank by market value. “ADIA has seen an opportunity to get cheaply into a blue-chip stock.”

Citigroup has sold a 4.9% stake in itself to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority for $7.5 billion, making the fund the company’s single largest shareholder. The fund will serve as a purely passive investor and will not have any role in the management or governance of the company.

The move raises serious questions about the company’s balance sheet, corporate governance and strategic direction. Citigroup has reiterated its commitment to maintaining its dividend repeatedly, and Wall Street seems to like that.

But think about it: Citigroup is currently trading at close to half its 52-week high, an astounding dubious accomplishment for a company of its size and status. With the stock having tanked, the company is diluting shareholders by selling off the company at its current valuation.

If Citigroup management believes in the company’s strength, here’s what they should do: Put out a press release announcing the temporary suspension of the dividend and explain that Citigroup has been faced with a choice of selling a stake in the company or cutting the dividend. Given the paltry valuation the stock currently trades at, management could convince shareholders it believes this would be a terrible time to sell off the company at firesale prices. For this reason, management could say they are suspending the dividend and will be buying back stock on the open market as liquidity allows.

Selling off the company at a bargain basement (relative to a few months ago, at least) price while returning cash to shareholders with a hefty tax doesn’t speak well for the future of Citigroup. It’s actually a strategy that only makes sense if the stock is destined to continue its downward spiral.

 

[Doug50]

Oh boy – the cheese has slid off the cracker now! You’re not even in touch with reality as most people know it. You might recommend 1 Kings 17 to Exxon or BP as a long-term solution…

Was that even biblical literalism? I wonder if Al takes Genesis word for word literally?

Besides Al it has rained sense then in Zarephath

 

[Swan]

I’m new but have been a lurker for some time. I hesitate to jump in here but I’m from the South and have heard funamentalist arguments all my life. My best response is the following:

A flood has forced Joe to climb up on the roof of his house. After a little while a boat comes by and offers to take Joe to safety but Joe declines saying, “That’s okay, but I have faith. I know that the Lord won’t let me drown.” The boat goes on its way, time passes and water gets higher. When the water reaches Joe’s knees another boat come by with the same offer. Again, Joe refuses help saying, “If I were to take a ride from you it would show God that I didn’t have faith. But I trust Him and He won’t let me down.” Time passes, the water rises. Finally, when the water reaches Joe’s shoulders, a rescue helicopter appears overhead. Joe, however, still refuses to go. “God will save me, I trust in Him only.” The chopper leaves and the water rises, and Joe is washed off of the roof and drowns. When he gets to heaven and sees God he says, “Lord, I trusted you to save me! I believed! Why, Lord, why did you let me drown?” God said, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more do you want?”


Translation: God gave us a brain, reason and common sense. He gave the tools we need to solve our problems. He expects us to use them If we refust to take advantage of these gifts, we have only ourselves to blame.

 

[Doug50]

I’ve heard that same one too, Swan.

 

[drpmjhess]

Was that even biblical literalism? I wonder if Al takes Genesis word for word literally? Besides Al it has rained sense then in Zarephath

Doug, my colleague and co-editor of a book on ethical issues at the end of oil correctly predicted last year that oil would hit $100 per barrel by December, and he was spot on. His research now leads him to believe it will hit $200 per barrel some time in 2009.

(1) Do you believe he is correct in his petroleum economic fundamentals?

(2) What do you envision the economic impact will be of $200 per barrel oil? $7.00 gasoline? Or is the price of gasoline not a simple function of the barrel price of oil?

(3) How long will people continue building and buying houses in far-flung subdivisions when gasoline does hit $7 or $10?

 

[Al_Masetti]

When New York’s Citicorp center was designed, the architects wanted to use its sloping south face as a solar collector to generate cheap energy for the 59-story building. When they looked into it, however, they discovered the process was anything but cheap. That was five years ago. Last week, Citicorp said it was going to install a solar electric system on its 45-degree roof to help light part of the atrium below. The decision highlights the fact that the cost of sun power has fallen dramatic…
[taken from the New York Times of September 20, 1981]

No wait … Citicorp’s idea “didn’t work out”…

… so Citicorp, which is a bank and a financial giant, a veritable cornucopia of financial acumen and wisdom, a colossus of capitalism … gets an “F” in … ummm … banking.

AND, they get another “F” for their knowledge and experience … * … in solar-generated electricity.

And, NOW, having flunked finance and solar, they are being held up as experts in petroleum.

Well … there is hope. Maybe someday they will find their niche.*

 

[Al_Masetti]

Doug, my colleague and co-editor of a book on ethical issues at the end of oil correctly predicted last year that oil would hit $100 per barrel by December, and he was spot on. His research now leads him to believe it will hit $200 per barrel some time in 2009.

(1) Do you believe he is correct in his petroleum economic fundamentals?

(2) What do you envision the economic impact will be of $200 per barrel oil? $7.00 gasoline? Or is the price of gasoline not a simple function of the barrel price of oil?

(3) How long will people continue building and buying houses in far-flung subdivisions when gasoline does hit $7 or $10?

Guys … GUYS!!! … Saudi Arabia … I mean, OPEC, … has suggested that in March they will cut oil production. And so, oil prices will shoot up. How difficult is that … to force up prices by imposing monopoly control over the supply of oil??? Isn’t that illegal??? The WTO outlaws conspiracies to fix markets and permits member nations to prosecute all parties to such conspiracies. So the U.S. Justice Department would thus be entirely within its rights to initiate prosecutions against OPEC principals with interests in the United States (for example, Saudi royals), as well as against corporations found to be acting in concert with OPEC … Any of you other posters working for any of these co-conspirators??? Hmmmm???

And we just stand there like deer in headlights … we have options … more drilling for oil and gas … more nuke … and METHANOL and “flex fuel” … www.energyvictory.net Reactivating our nuclear fusion research program …

But all we do is paint a bigger, nicer target on our backs instead of taking action.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Was that even biblical literalism? I wonder if Al takes Genesis word for word literally?

Besides Al it has rained sense then in Zarephath

Remember: the Ten Commandments??? [Hint: They’re in the Bible.] They are still THE Ten Commandments [thou shalt not steal, bear false witness, covet, one God … who said that He will wait until the end to assign folks to their rightful places … and all that] … and have not been repealed nor have they been retitled as “the ten really groovy suggestions”.

If folks have trouble with the Bible … I would make two suggestions:

1. Spend some time perusing the Catholic Answers Web site … www.catholic.com or even browsing among the various threads on CAF. I have noticed that some posters seem to have restricted their posts to just one thread … ALMOST AS THOUGH THEY HAD AN AGENDA … but that’s just me talking.

Get to know the Catholic Church. It’s an amazing Creation by God Himself … made for us to help us gain Heaven … and it has a long 2,000 year history … read the Church Fathers, for example. You could even listen to Catholic Answers Radio.

1. Buy a book: “The Spiritual Combat: and a Treatise on Peace of Soul” by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli published by Tan Books … www.tanbooks.com of Rockford, Illinois [You could also look up Rockford ] .

tanbooks.com/index.php/page/shop:flypage_gr/product_id/313/

The Spiritual Combat is interesting because it offers wisdom in reconciling our humanity with all its frailties and intellectual vulnerabilities … with our encounter with the Transcendental … i.e., God. I was reading “Spiritual Combat” just this morning … it’s one of those books, where you read a page or two and your mind expands … tremendous food for thought. The blurb says it was the favorite book of St. Francis de Sales (1567 - 1623 ) a Doctor of the Church … so if it was good enough for St. Francis de Sales, it is good enough for me.

IF, for some reason, a book published in 1589 is not “new” enough for you, try “Weeds Among the Wheat” by Fr. Thomas Green … published by Ave Maria Press. Discernment. That’s what it’s about.

These books are helpful when confronted with the dilemma of choosing between good and evil … when being fed “bologna” from OPEC and having to decide whether to accept it or to reject it. You might have to pay a price to tell the truth.

It takes courage to go against a rich and powerful employer. To confront evil. To tell the truth. To stop using bogus math and bogus data.

I’ll post a link.

avemariapress.com/itemdetail.cfm?nItemid=437

 

[Doug50]

Doug, my colleague and co-editor of a book on ethical issues at the end of oil correctly predicted last year that oil would hit $100 per barrel by December, and he was spot on. His research now leads him to believe it will hit $200 per barrel some time in 2009.

(1) Do you believe he is correct in his petroleum economic fundamentals?

(2) What do you envision the economic impact will be of $200 per barrel oil? $7.00 gasoline? Or is the price of gasoline not a simple function of the barrel price of oil?

(3) How long will people continue building and buying houses in far-flung subdivisions when gasoline does hit $7 or $10?

I worried that he is correct. I know there are running wagers by energy analysists like Simmons that oil will hit $200/bbl by the end of the decade.

With having the benifit of 20/20 history here’s what leeb capital said in 2004 and then again revised it in 2006. In 2004 while oil was only $35/bbl Leeb pridicted oil above $100 before the end of the decade in his book “The Oil Factor”. In 2006 Leeb revised that prediction upwards to $200 by the end of the decade in his book "The Coming Economic Collapse

Here’s the interviews on those two predictions
netcastdaily.com/1experts/2004/exp050804.ram
financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Leeb.html

netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2006-0311-2.ram
financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Leeb.html

Part of the price affecting gasoline is crack spread from the refineries but I’m not too familiar with downstream refining. I suspect Dee Dee could answer that.

On housing I’m thinking were in the begin.
redwoodage.com/content/view/129224/45
**Some Homeless Squat in Foreclosed Houses **
"The nation’s foreclosure crisis has led to a painful irony for homeless people: On any given night they are outnumbered in some cities by vacant houses. Some street people are taking advantage of the opportunity by becoming squatters.

Foreclosed homes often have an advantage over boarded-up and dilapidated houses abandoned because of rundown conditions: Sometimes the heat, lights and water are still working.

“That’s what you call convenient,” said James Bertan, 41, an ex-convict and self-described “bando,” or someone who lives in abandoned houses…"

 

[Doug50]

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.htm
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH
Pontifical Biblical Commission
Presented on March 18, 1994

"F. Fundamentalist Interpretation

Fundamentalist interpretation starts from the principle that the Bible, being the word of God, inspired and free from error, should be read and interpreted literally in all its details. But by “literal interpretation” it understands a naively literalist interpretation, one, that is to say, which excludes every effort at understanding the Bible that takes account of its historical origins and development. It is opposed, therefore, to the use of the historical-critical method, as indeed to the use of any other scientific method for the interpretation of Scripture…Fundamentalism is right to insist on the divine inspiration of the Bible, the inerrancy of the word of God and other biblical truths included in its five fundamental points. But its way of presenting these truths is rooted in an ideology which is not biblical, whatever the proponents of this approach might say. For it demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research.

The basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation of this kind is that, refusing to take into account the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the full truth of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human. It refuses to admit that the inspired word of God has been expressed in human language and that this word has been expressed, under divine inspiration, by human authors possessed of limited capacities and resources. For this reason, it tends to treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit…The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people, offering them interpretations that are pious but illusory, instead of telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem. Without saying as much in so many words, fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.

 

[drpmjhess]

On housing I’m thinking were in the begin.
redwoodage.com/content/view/129224/45
**Some Homeless Squat in Foreclosed Houses **
"The nation’s foreclosure crisis has led to a painful irony for homeless people: On any given night they are outnumbered in some cities by vacant houses. Some street people are taking advantage of the opportunity by becoming squatters.

Foreclosed homes often have an advantage over boarded-up and dilapidated houses abandoned because of rundown conditions: Sometimes the heat, lights and water are still working.
"

Doug, I still have to look at Leeb’s The Coming Economic Collapse. My group are working on the problem of how to engineeer a soft landing – it’s of course an enormous, multi-cultural and multi-dimensional global project. (I’m working on the small theological angle of how to wake parts of my Catholic Church up to the fact that at some point we will reach zero population growth, whether we want to accept it or not.)

Your point about the occupation of abandoned houses by the homeless reveals another aspect of the post-oil world: we are likely to see mass migrations even within the US as huge swaths of the Upper Midwest become uninhabitable in winter when heating oil costs half or three-quarters of a family’s annual income. Likewise, life in huge swaths of the desert Southwest will become increasingly parlous as the electrical grid becomes unstable – imagine living all summer in 120 degree heat with no air conditioning. With a smaller population we might return to pre-Columbian migrations following the seasons!

These internal refugees will migrate to more temperate parts of the US – the South, the Pacific Northwest – which they will find already thoroughly occupied. The consequences will be interesting, to say the least, and as Catholics our group is seeking to ensure that confrontations that take place will be managed with an eye to equity, justice, property rights, compassion and charity.

Petrus

 

[Doug50]

I’ve tried to imagine how things could play out, Petrus. I can see couples, small families, moving in together to save costs as energy expenses become more and more a larger % of those costs. We saw migrations during the dust bowl and depression into labor camps. World wide, a lot of how things play out will depend on how fast the decline will be. Unconventionals will mitigate (how much who knows?) the steepness of the decline. Then there’s the problem of expoting countries’ export quantities declining faster then their fields’ depletions due to those countries’ own growing demands from within for their petroleum.

I can forsee regional shortages with gas lines coming in the US/Europe. The IEA, Petroleum Review, others, and now Citi Group forsee an oil crunch 2012-13. Is that our time frame or will we out big other world consumers for the fungible supply and push the gas lines further into the future? Problem is, unless you live in Venezuela, and Arab counties, thrid world consumers are being bid out by the prices right now. With 6.5 billion of us, energy is a moral issue. Your group has its work cut out for itself. I guess were doing what we can here.

Kunstler see the South as not doing well and prefers to the North East’s less populated areas such as upstate NY. The South West deserts? That could be a very tough place to live.

I wonder how many currently abandon homes these squaters are using are also being strip of copper right now? In the future I wonder how many whole suburas, or cities like Las Vegas will be strip for their materials?

 

[Doug50]

Oil Price Closed Above $100 a Barrel; World Leaders Ignore this Signal of Impending Shortages, According to TheOilDrum.com
prweb.com/releases/peak/oil/prweb711394.htm

 

[drpmjhess]

I’ve tried to imagine how things could play out, Petrus. I can see couples, small families, moving in together to save costs as energy expenses become more and more a larger % of those costs. We saw migrations during the dust bowl and depression into labor camps. World wide, a lot of how things play out will depend on how fast the decline will be. Unconventionals will mitigate (how much who knows?) the steepness of the decline. Then there’s the problem of expoting countries’ export quantities declining faster then their fields’ depletions due to those countries’ own growing demands from within for their petroleum.

I can forsee regional shortages with gas lines coming in the US/Europe. The IEA, Petroleum Review, others, and now Citi Group forsee an oil crunch 2012-13. Is that our time frame or will we out big other world consumers for the fungible supply and push the gas lines further into the future? Problem is, unless you live in Venezuela, and Arab counties, thrid world consumers are being bid out by the prices right now. With 6.5 billion of us, energy is a moral issue. Your group has its work cut out for itself. I guess were doing what we can here.

Kunstler see the South as not doing well and prefers to the North East’s less populated areas such as upstate NY. The South West deserts? That could be a very tough place to live.

I wonder how many currently abandon homes these squaters are using are also being strip of copper right now? In the future I wonder how many whole suburas, or cities like Las Vegas will be strip for their materials?

I agree that there are many mitigations that could be made to improve our chances of a soft landing, but there will be bumpy patches. I suspect that when oil producing nations being scaling back exports to service their own needs, the long gas lines (1974 style) will form rather quickly, and there will be many left high and dry with Hummers, Denalis, Excursions that are no longer cost-effective to drive, and will have no resale value.

How close are we to the Hubbert’s peak of copper? Fiber optics might offset some need for copper in communication, but we’ll need a substitue for water pipes.

Petrus

 

[ribozyme]

I’ve tried to imagine how things could play out, Petrus. I can see couples, small families, moving in together to save costs as energy expenses become more and more a larger % of those costs. We saw migrations during the dust bowl and depression into labor camps. World wide, a lot of how things play out will depend on how fast the decline will be. Unconventionals will mitigate (how much who knows?) the steepness of the decline. Then there’s the problem of expoting countries’ export quantities declining faster then their fields’ depletions due to those countries’ own growing demands from within for their petroleum.

If that happens, I would see no purpose to life… humanity would never acquire the means to overcome worldwide poverty if we reverted to the Olduvai epoch. Technological progress will stop and humanity will now engage in a fixed-sum competition for natural resources. The pursuit of social justice will now end.

Worrying about global warming is a luxury… something that we might not have. Instead we will worry about sustaining civilization. If this happens, no Kardashev I Civilization for Earth.

 

[Doug50]

If that happens, I would see no purpose to life… humanity would never acquire the means to overcome worldwide poverty is we reverted to the Olduvai epoch. Technological progress will stop and humanity will now engage in a fix sum competition for natural resources. The pursuit of social justice will now end.

It happend during the Great Depression and life went on. It happend in Cuba when the soviet block fell, it happend during the black plague, and it’s happening today in most of North Korea. Life will go on. Of the 6.5 billion 1 billion today live without modern technology. Heck the Amish aren’t far from it now by choice but in everyone of those examples people/cultures responded to the situation differently. Some better some worst. That part is the free choice you/others get to make.

visiontv.ca/Programs/documentaries_endsuburbia.htmlAli Samsam Bakhtiari, a corporate planner for the National Iranian Oil Company: “God does set his own limits. I believe that He likes to test humankind from time to time. And I think that test is going to come very, very soon.”

 

[ribozyme]

It happend during the Great Depression and life went on. It happend in Cuba when the soviet block fell, it happend during the black plague, and it’s happening today in most of North Korea. Life will go on. Of the 6.5 billion 1 billion today live without modern technology. Heck the Amish aren’t far from it now by choice but in everyone of those examples people/cultures responded to the situation differently. Some better some worst. That part is the free choice you/others get to make.

visiontv.ca/Programs/documentaries_endsuburbia.htmlAli Samsam Bakhtiari, a corporate planner for the National Iranian Oil Company: “God does set his own limits. I believe that He likes to test humankind from time to time. And I think that test is going to come very, very soon.”

I said life would be pointless because we would not have the means to fulfill a Kurzweilian fantasy of a techno-utopia. If we reverted to the Olduvai era would we have the means to create AIs? Would we have the means to correct world poverty? It seems the idea of progress will come to an end.

 

[drpmjhess]

If that happens, I would see no purpose to life… humanity would never acquire the means to overcome worldwide poverty is we reverted to the Olduvai epoch. Technological progress will stop and humanity will now engage in a fix sum competition for natural resources. The pursuit of social justice will now end.

Ribozyme, I don’t doubt there will be a great shakeout, even a tragic “great pruning” involving the death of tens or hundreds of millions. But I don’t accept the pessimistic “back to Olduvai” argument. Humans have thrived in a multitude of diverse living arrangements between Olduvai and the Hummer-driving McMansion-inhabiting commuting culture of today.

James Kunstler, Richard Heinberg, and a host of other writers have suggested many avenues toward a truly sustainable society. I don’t even think that the population will collapse back to the solar carrying capacity of 1850 (before oil was discovered) because our technologies allow far more efficient use of energy than we had then.

The real question is, can we wake the majority of people up in time to begin engineering a soft landing before we have passed the point of no return? France seems better prepared than other areas, deriving 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, and enjoying an extensive rail network for the transportation of humans, food, and supplies.

Petrus

 

[Doug50]

I said life would be pointless because we would not have the means to fulfill a Kurzweilian fantasy of a techno-utopia. If we reverted to the Olduvai era would we have the means to create AIs? Would we have the means to correct world poverty? It seems the idea of progress will come to an end.

If doesn’t have to be Olduvai
oilcrashmovie.com/media/Twilight%20of%20Modern%20World.pdf

with all the moden techonlogy today the gap between proverty has gotten wider video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4626573768558163231 The 21st century has a huge problem to face but no goverment leader is willing to confront it, only pro-active individuals are doing so. The Rainwater Prophecy money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/12/26/8364646/
"Rainwater is no crackpot. But you don’t get to be a multibillionaire investor–one who’s more than doubled his net worth in a decade–through incremental gains on little stock trades. You have to push way past conventional thinking, test the boundaries of chaos, see events in a bigger context. You have to look at all the scenarios, from “A to friggin’ Z,” as he says, and not be afraid to focus on Z. Only when you’ve vacuumed up as much information as possible and you know the world is at a major inflection point do you put a hell of a lot of money behind your conviction…The next blowup, however, looms so large that it scares and confuses him. For the past few months he’s been holed up in hard-core research mode–reading books, academic studies, and, yes, blogs…“This is a nonrecurring event,” he says. “The 100-year flood in Houston real estate was one, the ability to buy oil and gas really cheap was another, and now there’s the opportunity to do something based on a shortage of natural resources. Can you make money? Well, yeah. One way is to just stay long domestic oil. But there may be something more important than making money. This is the first scenario I’ve seen where I question the survivability of mankind. I don’t want the world to wake up one day and say, ‘How come some doofus billionaire in Texas made all this money by being aware of this, and why didn’t someone tell us?’”

 

[Al_Masetti]

As a country, France is pretty tiny in size … about the same size as New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois combined. So their rail network has to cover a much smaller country. In addition, the eastern part of the United States is mountainous and has a lot of rivers … and getting around, over and through those make rail transportation much more difficult than in the relatively flat France.

Before oil, the United States used coal, of which we have deposits that can last hundreds of years.

I advise interested folks to get a copy of “Energy Victory” by Robert Zubrin. Visit www.energyvictory,net Zubrin has an amazing amount of very good information in that book, along with extensive detailed notes and an excellent bibliography.

Actions have consequences. In this case, the actions that have caused the United States to be less well equipped to cope with energy issues than some other countries is that environmental and other litigation has tied the energy industry up in knots … so the consequence is less energy … less nuclear, less drilling for oil, less drilling for gas, and etc.

Ribozyme, I don’t doubt there will be a great shakeout, even a tragic “great pruning” involving the death of tens or hundreds of millions. But I don’t accept the pessimistic “back to Olduvai” argument. Humans have thrived in a multitude of diverse living arrangements between Olduvai and the Hummer-driving McMansion-inhabiting commuting culture of today.

James Kunstler, Richard Heinberg, and a host of other writers have suggested many avenues toward a truly sustainable society. I don’t even think that the population will collapse back to the solar carrying capacity of 1850 (before oil was discovered) because our technologies allow far more efficient use of energy than we had then.

The real question is, can we wake the majority of people up in time to begin engineering a soft landing before we have passed the point of no return? France seems better prepared than other areas, deriving 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, and enjoying an extensive rail network for the transportation of humans, food, and supplies.

Petrus