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Just saw Collapse (28 posts)

  1. christs4sale
    Administrator

    I just saw Collapse. I missed the showing with Chris Smith doing Q&A and I am kind of glad that I did. After reading this interview with him and hearing the questions that he asked Ruppert during the film, I am not sure that Smith really understands Ruppert. He might just be an interesting subject to him.

    Do you think society is actually going to collapse?

    Not personally, partly because my brain can’t comprehend what that would be like, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come to pass. I want the audience to come away feeling more aware, open-minded and educated. We shouldn’t overlook what the “Peak Oil” people are saying: the potential positives of making some of the changes they suggest outweigh the negatives. In the worst case we will have cleaner air and will be more engaged with our communities. It’s human nature to procrastinate so we should make changes before it’s too late.

    Do you have any organic seeds you can sell me?

    I don’t have any seeds and I haven’t started peeing on my lawn yet.

    http://www.premiere.com/Feature/Interview-With-The...

    Here's Mike's response on Facebook:

    I'm being misunderstood here! This is important. I don't pee on the grass. I have absolutely horrible clay soil. I pee and spread ash and let vegetables rot on the barren hard clay soil. Then I turn it a little and mix it then water it. Coffee grounds help too. Earthworms love coffe grounds. -- The sign that you have soil that will grown something is when the earthworms come. Worms are a sure sign that you have fertile soil... No worms yet. -- I'm learning.

    Most the reviews that I have read really have taken the movie and the issues that it raises seriously. Apparently more seriously than the director. The Village Voice was the only negative review that I have come across:

    http://www.villagevoice.com/movies/collapse-142584...

    For most people on this forum who are long-time readers of Ruppert's work, like A Presidential Energy Policy, there is not much information-wise that we will find new in this film. That being said, I still think seeing the film was very worthwhile because of Ruppert's natural ability to make these topics both interesting and accessible. Unfortunately, very few people were on hand at the showing I was at. Probably less than 20.

    Posted 15 years ago #
  2. truthmod
    Administrator

    Thanks for the report. I've also been impressed that many of the reviews are actually treating the issues as legitimate. I never really knew where Chris Smith was coming from, but I assumed he must have some faith in Ruppert to do this film. Even if Smith completely agreed with Ruppert, I wouldn't be surprised if he tempered his attitude in interviews in order to be taken more seriously (and be able to secure funding for his next projects).

    That's sad that there were so few people in the theater. I'm sure the VV review didn't help. It probably won't last long in the theater.

    Does the film show some clips from Ruppert's previous lectures and videos?

    Posted 15 years ago #
  3. christs4sale
    Administrator

    Apparently the earlier show where Chris Smith was doing Q&A was full.

    The film shows a few quick clips from 2005 to show Ruppert predicting things to come, but nothing extended. There is basically nothing about 9/11 in the film as well. I do not blame him as it would only be a liability at this point and it could be used to discredit the other issues in the film.

    Posted 15 years ago #
  4. mark
    Member

    The "deep politics" are at the core of why the countless warnings about ecology / energy / economy were ignored for decades. I doubt that ignoring this underlying reality is going to help our society cope with the collapses. The "tipping point" for the societal decision not to address these crises was probably on November 22, 1963.

    And as for soil building, putting biomass on clay soil is OK, but composting is better. Soil needs much more than earthworms, it is a complex mix of nutrients, microbiology and even mycology. http://www.soilfoodweb.com and http://www.fungi.com are good places to start.


    Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations - President John F. Kennedy New York - September 20th 1963

    ''Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity--in the field of space--there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries--indeed of all the world--cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries. ....''

    "Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world--or to make it the last."

    -- John F. Kennedy, speech to the UN calling for an end to the Cold War and converting the Moon Race into an international cooperative effort, Sept 20, 1963, two months and two days before he was removed from office.

    Posted 15 years ago #
  5. christs4sale
    Administrator

    Mike Ruppert to take Q&A at LA and SF Collapse screenings

    Nov. 9, 2009 -- Mike will be making his first public appearance since June 2006 to do Q&A with the audience at the first evening screening of CoLLapse this Friday and Saturday. Director Chris Smith will not be in attendance. Show times for the screenings at Laemmle's Sunset 5 theaters have not been announced but should be up today or tomorrow at the Collapse web site.

    He will also take Q&As for the two evening screenings in San Francisco on December 4th.

    JO

    Posted 14 years ago #
  6. christs4sale
    Administrator

    Ruppert on KPFK on Tuesday

    He starts at about 37 min:

    http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/m3u.php?mp3fil=23...

    Posted 14 years ago #
  7. Victronix
    Member

    I thought it was interesting that the WSJ gave him positive coverage while Village Voice gave a bad review.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  8. mark
    Member

    The WSJ has mentioned Peak OIl more than the so-called alternative media.

    In 2004, the Village Voice had a respectful profile of Paul Thompson and his Complete 9/11 Timeline. But they don't seem to have made that mistake since.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  9. christs4sale
    Administrator

    Does not surpise me about the Village Voice or the "progressive" NYC media. Here are two links about the firing of one of their few good reporters, James Ridgeway, after they were bought out by New Times Media:

    http://www.democracynow.org/2006/4/13/village_voic... http://gawker.com/news/village-voice/vv-staff-prot...

    Here is a generally negative article (very negative about Ruppert) in the other NYC "progressive" free paper:

    http://www.nypress.com/article-12242-the-coming-pe...

    Mark, you have a lot about the Village Voice here, but it is mostly about 9/11 reporting:

    http://www.oilempire.us/village-voice.html

    Posted 14 years ago #
  10. mark
    Member

    Ridgeway now works for Mother Jones.

    http://www.oilempire.us/mother-jones.html

    Posted 14 years ago #
  11. Victronix
    Member

    Mostly what I've noticed about the WSJ is how they subtly deny anthropogenic global warming. Here's a typical article that cleverly misrepresents the science --

    The Earth Cools, and Fight Over Warming Heats Up Many Scientists Say Temperature Drop From Recent Record Highs Is a Blip, While a Few See a Trend; Inexact Climate Models http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125686509223717691...

    To get past the WSJ spin, this article puts the issue of the alleged cooling trend in context --

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009...

    Posted 14 years ago #
  12. christs4sale
    Administrator

    First I have seen of recent anti-NWO attacks on Ruppert and Collapse:

    http://911blogger.com/node/21861

    I love how these people "confuse" the idea of noticing and desiring a rational response to a situation such as overshoot of carrying capacity, something that is biologically demonstrable in small and large environments and not a question of if but when with humans, with Ruppert actually being a Malthusian that wants to delightfully exterminate most of the human population. He is simply saying that: IF impending overshoot is our reality as human beings, THEN we can pursue solutions that are as reasonable and humane to everyone as possible or we can face a scenario that is much worse.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  13. Victronix
    Member

    The LA Times review was sort of funny:

    Once you get past his brisk dismissals of every form of alternative energy ("Ethanol is an absolute joke -- it takes more energy to make ethanol than you can make burning it"), Ruppert's view of the future isn't so different from Beck's. Neither man is an optimist. If they were optimists, they'd be out of business. What fuels them is a chronic pessimism that is surely born out of years of personal anxieties and career setbacks. Beck is a recovering alcoholic with ADHD while Ruppert, even though Smith offers us little personal biographical information, is clearly a man without family ties who appears to live alone with his dog. Even though these guys aren't artists, they share something in common with people who make movies about doomsday events -- they are consummate storytellers. . . . When I was watching "Collapse," it struck me how reminiscent Ruppert's disaster scenario was of Orson Welles' 1938 radio production of "War of the Worlds," which briefly had the country persuaded that we'd somehow been invaded by Martians, eager to wipe us out. Like Welles' radio broadcast, "Collapse" reminds us that while the world is a scary place, what we find lurking in our imaginations is often even scarier still. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/20...

    Posted 14 years ago #
  14. truthmod
    Administrator

    I'm not a big fan of the LA Times. Remember this review of Russ Baker's book?

    http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-...

    I really wonder--who decided which reviewer got to write this. Ruppert's facts are a devastating indictment of the media itself. It's not surprising that they have to dismiss it. If he's right, they are complicit in the biggest, most evil mistake in history. These "journalists" really are laughable, except for the fact that they continue to sway public opinion and keep crucial information out of the minds of the population.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  15. Victronix
    Member

    Yes, the LA Times is as bad as the NYTimes, just that the write-up was funny, that they would pair him with Beck. Both now trash the 9/11 movement.

    Regarding 9/11, like we all said about Ron Paul, all Ruppert would have needed to do was say,

    "The families still have a lot of questions"

    . . . not so hard to do.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  16. truthmod
    Administrator

    Just caught the premiere out here. Ruppert was at the show for a Q&A afterward. The movie, I was not so hot on. In my opinion, his amateur-produced videos, "The Truth and Lies of 9/11" and "Denial Ends Here" are much more powerful than this documentary, which plays up his personality and opinions much more than it attempts to lay out the facts or either confirm or deny what he's saying with any real evidence. Unlike Ruppert's lectures and videos, this film is more about him as an interesting character than it is about the facts that he wants us to pay attention to. There isn't really any backup information on Peak Oil, just a few floating headlines, graphs, etc. Maybe more people will see this than any of his videos, but something about it didn't hit me in the gut like they did. It seemed like most of the people in the audience were those who had probably read his books or seen his videos. Mike mentioned that Roger Ebert said something like "If you see one movie this year, see this one," so I hope this does get a wide audience and have some effect.

    It was great to finally see Mike in person after all these years, and shake his hand. I told him that he changed my life, which is very true. It was also inspiring to see him mercilessly dismiss Carol Brouillet when she got up to ramble about deception dollars and complain that he avoided talking about 9/11. He gave her and the 9/11 truth movement a nice little lashing which I complemented him on afterward. He essentially said he's never said the building were blown up with bombs or that no plane hit the Pentagon (which most of the movement leaders have said) and that he is proud to have disowned the mess that is the 9/11 TM years ago.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  17. christs4sale
    Administrator

    Is the Q&A on video?

    Thanks for the report.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  18. truthmod
    Administrator

    I don't think anyone was taking video there.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  19. Victronix
    Member

    He gave her and the 9/11 truth movement a nice little lashing which I complemented him on afterward. He essentially said he's never said the building were blown up with bombs or that no plane hit the Pentagon (which most of the movement leaders have said) and that he is proud to have disowned the mess that is the 9/11 TM years ago.

    I'm not sure why you would compliment him. Unless of course he said something like how there are many unanswered questions that many are working to expose, but that any such effort is typically dogged by people making exaggerated claims, false claims, and outright concerted disinfo efforts like Morgan Reynolds. Average people understand disinfo and the understand the idea that those in power would work to discredit the movement.

    Broad trashing of "the movement" without any qualifications doesn't really help anything and probably turns more people off to considering actual facts about 9/11.

    He pairs the WTC and Pentagon, just as all the debunking efforts do, ignoring the fact that these are completely different both in the findings and in the efforts.

    Did he mention any of the papers published by science journals? None of which include anything on no-plane-at-the-Pentagon (a claim he himself published in Crossing the Rubicon)?

    Of course not.

    Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe Authors: Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, Vol 2, pp.7-31 http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCP...

    Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction Authors: Steven E. Jones, Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley The Open Civil Engineering Journal, 2008 Vol 2, pp.35-40 http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCI...

    Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials Authors: Kevin R. Ryan, James R. Gourley, and Steven E. Jones The Environmentalist, August, 2008 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10669-008-9182-4

    Discussion of “Mechanics of Progressive Collapse: Learning from World Trade Center and Building Demolitions” by Zdenek P. Bažant and Mathieu Verdure Author: James R. Gourley The Journal of Engineering Mechanics, October, 2008 http://ascelibrary.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=JENMDT&...

    Apparently the fact that 975 architects and engineers and 5470 supporters have signed the petition at AE911 is completely meaningless and nothing different than CIT and no-plane-at-the-Pentagon.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  20. mark
    Member

    I would love to know how many actual engineers of skyscrapers have signed the AE911 petition, especially when probably every engineering school and company on the planet has looked at the unprecedented WTC collapses.

    Ruppert was correct to point out the "deception dollar" campaign degenerated into nonsense claims, but wrong to state (immediately after Rubicon was published) that 9/11 shouldn't be focused on any more. There's obviously not going to be a real official investigation - nor a real investigation led by the grassroots - but it's still important to point out that this was the trigger, the excuse, for the wars for Iraq's oil and Afghanistan's opium and all the rest. The omission of 9/11 in the "Collapse" movie is odd for anyone who's followed Ruppert's writings. The film's claim that the White House was paying attention to his work only makes sense if one already knows that he was writing on this topic.

    It would be nice to see some of the demolition theorists mention that the firefighters watched all three buildings leaning before they fell down, that floors fell away from under people trapped in the WTC before the collapses, among a few of the many problems with the demolition claims.

    It's also sad to see the claim that thermite is used to knock down buildings (the current Project Censored annual publication states this) when there's no documentation that this has ever been done to any building because it doesn't have the precise timing that would be required for controlled demolition. Also there is the problem of the collapses of the towers starting at the point where the structures were shattered by the plane crashes - and the fact that steel loses a lot of heat at the temperatures of the fires (the reason the beams were wrapped with fireproofing that was dislodged during the crashes).

    Meanwhile, the early focus of the 9/11 truth movement on the NORAD standdown, foreknowledge, coincidental war games, the interesting business partners of the Florida flight school, the FBI agents who tracked the flight schools, Able Danger, means / motive / opportunity, relationships of 9/11 to the pre-existing war plans, peak oil, homeland security, etc. -- they seem like a distant memory only vaguely remembered. It must be a coincidence that the media ignored the truth movement when those (now passe) topics were the focus, but when no planes and demolition began to dominate, then the media was delighted to mention them.


    "One of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed and nothing can be known… nothing of significance, that is." -- E. Martin Schotz, "History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy"

    "Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity" -- Eric Hoffer


    Here is an extract from the testimony of Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, who had 33 years service in Division 1 to his credit:

    Firehouse: Other people tell me that there were a lot of firefighters in the street who were visible, and they put out traffic cones to mark them off? Hayden: Yeah. There was enough there and we were marking off. There were a lot of damaged apparatus there that were covered. We tried to get searches in those areas. By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse. Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away? Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety. www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayden...


    Captain Chris Boyle (Engine 94) with 18 years of service with the FDNY gave this interview:

    Firehouse: Did that chief give an assignment to go to building 7? Boyle: He gave out an assignment. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but he told the chief that we were heading down to the site. … We went one block north over to Greenwich and then headed south. There was an engine company there, right at the corner. It was right underneath building 7 and it was still burning at the time. They had a hose in operation, but you could tell there was no pressure. It was barely making it across the street. Building 6 was fully involved and it was hitting the sidewalk across the street. I told the guys to wait up. A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good. But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I'm standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we'll go in, we’ll see. So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody's going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned. Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side? Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it. Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many? Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day. www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/boyle....

    Posted 14 years ago #
  21. mark
    Member

    correction:

    steel loses a lot of STRENGTH at the temperatures of the fires

    Posted 14 years ago #
  22. truthmod
    Administrator

    In general, I support Mike Ruppert's take on the 9/11 TM. He has been disciplined from the beginning and has hardly ever promoted speculative evidence (except for that Woody Box crap in "Crossing the Rubicon"). He tried very hard to work for an effective, responsible movement, but he rightly realized that the majority of the movement was either irresponsible or under the influence of questionable forces.

    He also made the jump from 9/11 to the much more important area of radical environmental awareness/activism.

    Many in the 9/11 TM seem to be mesmerized the inside job reality and don't seem to be especially concerned with the fact that we live within an ecocidal, suicidal socioeconomic system. I think my first or second post on 911blogger (3 years ago?) was titled "9/11 Truth + Environmental Awareness = Revolution." Almost all the responses I got were negative--people clearly believed 9/11 was more important than the environment (in terms of activism).

    I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'd rather be friends with and I'd rather work with someone who gets the urgency of the environmental crisis and doesn't think 9/11 was an inside job than the other way around.

    Regarding Controlled Demoltion, I think a pretty compelling argument can be made that this hypothesis (the way it has been absorbed, argued, and promoted) has actually been damaging to the movement. There is a reason the corporate media love to talk about it.

    I can't get excited about groups like AE911Truth, which are solely focused on CD. I commend them if they are doing responsible work, but overall, I don't think CD is where we need to be focusing our resources.

    As Mike Ruppert said, the documentary evidence, "using their own words to show that they are lying," is the best path to any sort of justice. Controlled demolition is essentially speculative--even if there is hard evidence, there are very few activists who have the background to understand it in a rational way and there are many scientists on the other side who claim to be scientific in refuting it.

    There is something fundamentally different in arguing CD from telling people about PNAC, the failings of the 911 Commission, warnings, air defense irregularities, etc.--which can all be irrefutably established through the accepted historical record. Most average people don't utilize their rationality in evaluating this stuff any more than they do with CD--they mostly rely on bias and emotion. But we have a much better opportunity to appeal to people's rational critical thinking (and to convince people who matter) through the documentary evidence than through CD.

    Victronix--I commend all your work, as well as Jim Hoffman's, and I hope that some irrefutable, actionable evidence does come out of CD research, but from what I've seen so far, I'm not holding my breath.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  23. christs4sale
    Administrator

    Sorry to interrupt the debate, but Mike Ruppert will be appearing in the D.C. area this weekend for three Q&A sessions directly following screenings of CoLLapse.

    Q&A showtimes are:

    9:15pm on Friday, Dec. 11

    5:00pm and 9:15pm on Saturday, Dec. 12

    AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center
    8633 Colesville Road
    Silver Spring, MD 20910.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  24. christs4sale
    Administrator

    Roger Ebert gets it:

    He gave it four stars.

    If this man is correct, then you may be reading the most important story in today's paper.

    I have no way of assuring you that the bleak version of the future outlined by Michael Ruppert in Chris Smith's "Collapse" is accurate. I can only tell you I have a pretty good built-in B.S. detector, and its needle never bounced off zero while I watched this film. There is controversy over Ruppert, and he has many critics. But one simple fact at the center of his argument is obviously true, and it terrifies me.

    That fact: We have passed the peak of global oil resources. There are only so many known oil reserves. We have used up more than half of them. Remaining reserves are growing smaller, and the demand is growing larger. It took about a century to use up the first half. That usage was much accelerated in the most recent 50 years. Now the oil demands of giant economies like India and China are exploding. They represent more than half the global population, and until recent decades had small energy consumption.

    If the supply is finite, and usage is potentially doubling, you do the math. We will face a global oil crisis, not in the distant future, but within the lives of many now alive. They may well see a world without significant oil.

    Oh, I grow so impatient with those who prattle about our untapped resources in Alaska, yada yada yada. There seems to be only enough oil in Alaska to power the United States for a matter of months. The world's great oil reserves have been discovered.

    Saudi Arabia sits atop the largest oil reservoir ever found. For years, the Saudis have refused to disclose any figures at all about their reserves. If those reserves are vast and easy to tap by drilling straight down through the desert, then ask yourself this question: Why are the Saudis spending billions of dollars to develop offshore drilling platforms?

    Ruppert is a man ordinary in appearance, on the downhill slope of middle age, a chain smoker with a mustache. He is not all worked up. He speaks reasonably and very clearly. "Collapse" involves what he has to say, illustrated with news footage and a few charts, the most striking of which is a bell-shaped curve. It takes a lot of effort to climb a bell-shaped curve, but the descent is steep and dangerous.

    He recites facts I knew, vaguely. Many things are made from oil. Everything plastic. Paint. There are eight gallons of oil in every auto tire. Oil supplies the energy to convert itself into those byproducts. No oil, no plastic, no tires, no gas to run cars, no machines to build them. No coal mines, except those operated by men and horses.

    Alternative energies and conservation? The problem is the cost of obtaining and using it. Ethanol requires more energy than it produces. Hybrid and battery cars need engines, tires and batteries. Nuclear power plants need to be built with oil. Electricity from wind power is most useful near its source. It is transmitted by grids built and maintained by oil. Wave power is expensive to collect. Solar power is cheap and limitless, but we need a whole hell of a lot more solar panels and other collecting devices.

    Like I say, you do the math. Ruppert has done his math, and he concludes that our goose is cooked. He doesn't have any answers. We're passing the point of diminishing returns on the way to our rendezvous with the point of no return. It was nice while it lasted. People lived happily enough in the centuries before oil, electricity and steam, I guess. Of course, there were fewer than 6 billion of us. In this century, Ruppert says, there will be a lot fewer than 6 billion again. It won't be a pretty sight.

    I'm not going to mention his theories about global warming, because that's a subject that inflames too many zealots. About peak oil, his reasoning is clear, simple and hard to refute.

    So you can stop reading now. That's the heart of Ruppert's message, delivered by a calm guy who could be Wilford Brimley's kid brother, lives alone with his dog and is behind on his rent.

    I was fascinated by some of the directions peak oil takes him into. For him, he says, it was the key to understanding many seemingly unconnected geopolitical events. The facts he outlines are known to world leaders, who don't talk a lot about them in alarmist terms, but they explain why Bush/Cheney were happy to have an excuse to invade Iraq. And why our embassy compound in Baghdad is the largest we've ever built, larger than Vatican City. And why we're so much more worried by Iran than North Korea. They may also explain Obama's perplexing decision to increase troops in Afghanistan. An undeclared world war for oil is already under way.

    I don't know when I've seen a thriller more frightening. I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen. "Collapse" is even entertaining, in a macabre sense. I think you owe it to yourself to see it.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  25. Victronix
    Member

    Like I say, you do the math. Ruppert has done his math

    On oil, but not alternative energy. His numbers often are completely off base.

    Posted 14 years ago #

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