Gaston,

I want to take a step back from the details from the switch to nuclear because it seems to me that there is a more fundamental difference of opinion which undergirds each of our outlooks. You are concerned about what I think can fairly be called "undue alarmism." In contrast, I am more concerned with what I see as "undue ease" in the presence of a real threat. Both alarmism and undue ease are often emotional reactions to situations and, depending upon the individual and event, will be rooted in fact to one degree or another. I would like to make my case on why I think we are closer to peak and the need to begin mitigation efforts are, at least, more immediate or way past due.

Before I do that, however, I would just like to quote Matt Simmons on the issue of when we KNOW that decline is a fact,

"peaking is one of these fuzzy events that you only know clearly when you see it through a rear view mirror, and by then an alternate resolution...

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I will call him "Gaston." We have been discussiong energy issues and politics via facebook and that venue has some limitations so I would like to respond to him here. It would be unfair for me to post his comments out of context but we are discussing how transitioning to electic power (nuclear specifically) could help us become less dependent upon fossil fuels. He has graciously given me his plan. Below is my response.

Gaston,

I can not claim to be from Missouri but I have always had a good time when visiting and have adopted a “Show Me” attitude to our political parties. I do not trust either of them.

As far as who is willing to actually do what, we need to look at what state governments are doing. I have been following developments of offshore wind in Maine (Dem government and help from a very Republican private citizen Matt Simmons).

Maine Win...

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Enron was the financial scandal that kicked off the decade: a giant energy trading company that appeared to be doing brilliantly—until we finally noticed that it wasn’t. It’s largely been forgotten given the wreckage that followed, and that’s too bad: we may be repeating those mistakes, on a far larger scale.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-01/worse-than-enron/?cid=tag:all1

Nomi Prins dissects the opaque origins of the record profits that have been recorded by the big banks recently, delving in to the accounting of Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. My favorite quote comes in relation to Wells Fargo and sent me into a giggling fit:

Separately, Wells states in its filing that its management accounting process is “dynamic” and, not “necessarily comparable with similar information for other financial services companies.” This statement should give lawmakers pause...

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we will all, after a fashion, be worse off.

It has long been my contention that homo sapien will respond to a return to the steel grip of scarcity by turning on one another: nation against nation, tribe against tribe, a father against his son, daughters against their mothers. This may be unavoidable but we each have an individual interest in seeing this manifestation of scarcity postponed as long as possible.

While there are thing that an individual or family can do to insulate themselves from the social cannibalism to come, no one is truly safe. The greater the distance between the breakdown in civility and the new equilibrium which will emerge the greater our exposure to risk. We will be thrust into a game of Russian Roulette. We are fools if we think we want to play any longer than forced to.

If anthropological global warming turns out to be a fatally flawed premise we can expect the forces of anti-intellectualism to strengthen their hand and it will...

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Bring up the idea that the century will end with 5-6 billion fewer people on the planet in polite company and you will hear a quiet before a storm of personal attack. The average person seems incapable of distinguishing between an evaluation of what you think will happen from what you want to happen. I have a theory about this is a result of catagory mixing which has taken place in our culture over the last century. We have, for so long, enveloped ourself in the notion that if you want something to happen you have to believe it will happen that we automatically assume that if someone believes something will happen they want it to happen. I remember getting the same flak when I openly discussed the possibility of a mass casuality terrorist attack with family in the 1990's and complained of the dangerous state of New Orleans' levees three years before Katrina.

If you want to escape a life of responding with the herd it is important to develop your own worldview, your own perception...

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