Peak Oil Barrel

“Industrialism: Our Commitment to Impermanence” or “Blip: Humanity’s 300 Year Self Terminating Experiment With Industrialism”, both by Christopher O. Clugston are excellent.

Nick G

Well, thanks for the info!

I think it’s not quite what I was looking for. The interesting thing about SGP99’s comment was that it’s about psychology, not collapse. I think that the US’s dominance is coming to an end, with it’s decline being sharply accelerated by the current Occupant. That doesn’t mean collapse, just a change in relative position, with China already having passed the US in terms of GDP.

It appears, from the descriptions of Clugston’s books on Amazon (not available in Kindle!), that his argument is based on the scarcity of fossil fuels, and metals and non-metal minerals.

That’s a very familiar argument here on POB, and I have to say that I find it unconvincing. It’s worth noting that his books are self-published, and his professional background is finance. I was hoping for something a bit more…mainstream. Consider that climate science is very, very mainstream in the science, tech & engineering world.

I did find an article he wrote at https://secularhumanism.org/2015/05/cont-humanity-vs-naturewinner-take-all/
which expands on his thesis. It seems clear that it’s primarily based on FF, and he doesn’t even recognize the existence of solar and wind etc as renewable sources of energy. He also argues that iron, aluminum and magnesium are scarce! This is not thorough stuff.

Also, the argument that “All human systems follow the same pattern, with almost no exceptions.” requires some kind of commonality between agricultural societies and industrial ones, and reliance on FF and “non-renewables” doesn’t seem to meet that requirement.

T HILL

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD

Hey Nick,

World Bank data shows US GDP at $29T with China far behind at $19T. What is your source for suggesting otherwise?

Thanks for looking into the Clugston reference and reporting back. “iron is scarce” is good warning indicator.

I too found SGP99s comments interesting. I don’t have a directly pertinent reference to inform his observations. However, as you seem interested in well supported work I will offer one that is somewhat related.

A. Duncan Brown (2003) Feed or Feedback, Agriculture, Population Dynamics and the State of the Planet.

Not available on kindle, so you’ll have to take the old fashioned approach. I’ll share one quote of interest:

“A large uniformly distributed agrarian population can farm ‘forever’ (climate permitting) if it farms well.”

Mr Duncan has a negative view on the sustainability of modern cities.

Nick G

T,

The common GDP comparison simply uses exchange rates. That can be very misleading. Instead we probably should mostly use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

This compares actual output, rather than nominal value.

By the PPP standard China’s economy is substantially larger than the US. This should not be surprising: their production of basic things like vehicles, steel and electricity are substantially larger.

Nick G

07/14/2025

T,

I managed to find an online review of the book which provided some detail.

The primary problem seemed to be return of nutrients from cities to farms, especially phosphorus. I would think that it could be recovered and recycled. Thoughts?

T HILL

Nick,
Here’s an excerpt from a section titled ‘Some Responses – In a Theoretical World’

“I have listed below three primary conditions that I consider must be met if we are serious about ‘sustainability’ and wish to avoid major ecological collapse…..
….
1. End the positive feedback interaction between the human population and the food supply.
2. Change the structure and dynamics of agriculture to ensure that the flow of nutrients between the soil and the human population is wholly reversible
3. Manage the global ecosystem to ensure that there is no further reduction in the genetic heterogeneity of terrestrial or aquatic ecosystems….”

He adds a fourth for semi-arid regions:

“4. Withdraw from commercial production all land where the growth of crops depends absolutely on irrigation, and all grazing land in regions of less than 300 mm annual rainfall.”

He reviews thousands of years of history as well as the underlying, fundamental science in his book and also takes a long view going forward. Yes, phosphorous depletion is one thing he points to. Not as a sole constraint though, and not necessarily as the most immediate. Phosphorous is part of his item #2 above, and a main reason he points to the fact that cities are unsustainable.

If I had one criticism to offer, it would be that in the 22 years since publication it has become more clear that population is increasingly likely to see a dramatic decline this century for reasons that go beyond a break in the positive feedback link of his concern.

Nick G

Phosphorous is part of his item #2 above, and a main reason he points to the fact that cities are unsustainable.

Again, I would think that it could be recovered and recycled. Seems like he thinks the only way to do that is to move people back to farms. Wouldn’t it be enormously easier to recover nutrients from human waste and transport them back to farms??

T Hill

Nick

Yes, on the surface it would be logical to assume that waste transport back to the farm from the city would make sense.

Reality is more complicated. I will offer two examples. Some research estimates on the order of 70 M acres of US farmland have been contaminated by municipal biosolids containing PFAS. Second, many US cities have Combined Sewer Overflows that discharge untreated wastewater thousands of times a year totalling hundreds of billion gallons.

Nick G

T,

That says that we’re not doing enough to properly handle human, commercial and industrial waste.

So, we could double what we spend. Or multiply it by 10x, and it would still be 1% of the cost of moving 99%of the population to farms. Imagine the cost of completely replacing the nation’s residential building stock. Abandoning urban commercial real estate. That’s only a part of the many enormous costs of such a move.

Completely redesigning our waste management to safely and effectively recycle nutrients would be trivial in comparison.

T HILL

Nick,

Again, I believe that your perspective is too simplistic and your conclusion is not clearly supported. I can indeed imagine the costs of housing stock replacement. I’ve physically built several residential buildings and provided engineering for many other vertical and horizontal civil infrastructure elements. Have you ever built a wastewater treatment facility or distribution system in an urban setting? A few more things to consider:

– Timeline for comparison. I’m talking at least centuries.
-Cities generally have an ecological footprint larger than rural areas. They are not the most sustainable choice.
-Does your conclusion change based on which city is in question? Think about how many cities along coasts will face dramatically increased costs as sea level rises or require involuntary retreat.
-Population is most likely to see significant declines this century. How will that impact revenues and city viability?
-Which portion of the housing stock makes the most sense to accommodate this reduced population?
-After all that we can get into the issues of EROI and finite resources.

I remain skeptical about city sustainability in the long run.

Nick G

” I can indeed imagine the costs of housing stock replacement. I’ve physically built…”

Well, if you feel you’re an authority in this area, could you take a try at quantifying the costs of a return-to-the-farm policy vs the cost of recycling waste directly from where people live now?

Hideaway

Nick G, define “Industrial civilizations”..

From my perspective, ever since humans lived in any type of society where some people relied upon others to provide their food, and were just involved in ‘making stuff’ or ‘organising stuff’, we were in a civilization.

Just because it’s made a lot more complex by adding a lot more people, materials and energy does not change anything..

Plenty of evidence of civilizations lifecycle, just study Tainter et al..

Civilization is just a form of entropy as we degrade higher grades of energy and resources into lower more scattered arrangements. Civilization is a physical process just like an animal, an ecosystem, storms or stars, which have a beginning, middle and end when the energy is dissipated..

Nick G

“Just because it’s made a lot more complex by adding a lot more people, materials and energy does not change anything..”

Of course it does. Pre-industrial agricultural societies had an annual growth rate of about .001 percent. That makes an enormous difference: growth only came from empires which exploited their neighbors. These were Ponzi schemes which had to periodically collapse. Today empires like the British and Japanese empires ended with the core society much more affluent than they were when they were exploiting their neighbors.

“just study Tainter et al.”

Tainter studied agricultural societies. See above.

“Civilization is just a form of entropy”

That makes no sense. The earth (and human society) is supplied with a continuous 130,000 terawatt input. It’s not going to “run down” for hundreds of millions of years.

Sheesh. We’re really beating this dead horse. I just asked because I thought SGP99 might be drawing from a source that was new and interesting.

Hideaway

https://substack.com/home/post/p-168256540

From Professor Bill Rees …..
“People naturally prefer a fanciful tale held aloft by pixie dust than a restrictive (and now much grimmer) narrative firmly rooted in biophysical reality.”

All about entropy that you have no understanding of from you reply above..

If you could name a single person that is able to survive and grow, off the sunshine they ingest without ingesting anything else I’m all ears…

Last I looked, the natural world required photosynthesis to make use of sunshine effectively, while humans required machines to use sunshine if not using the products of photosynthesis.

The amount of sunshine hitting planet Earth has nothing to do with the problem, it’s the materials and energy to make the machines that is relevant.

D C

Hideaway,

Entropy arguments depend on the system being isolated with no material or energy flows across the boundary of the system, a condition not met by the Earth System.

Nick G

Survivalist,

We see in Rees’ discussion a common problem: a confusion between essential waste as we see in biological systems; and unnecessary pollution. In particular, greenhouse gases, especially CO2.

It seems to be common for ecological economists to make this mistake, I suppose because they think in terms of biology, and they aren’t energy experts, or climatologists.

FFs are NOT essential. They have been useful, but that time is passing very quickly.

——————

By the way, here’s where his logic breaks down:

“ the human enterprise can grow and maintain itself only by feeding on low entropy resources extracted from the ecosphere (including fossil fuels, the product of ancient photosynthesis) and ejecting its entropic wastes back into the ecosphere.”

In other words, he thinks that humanity’s only energy sources are biomass and FF!!

Hideaway

DC, perhaps you should also go and read Bill Rees article………..

Hickory

“FFs are NOT essential. They have been useful, but that time is passing very quickly.”

And along with the passing of mass fossil fuel combustion will be the downdraft in human population. The lag in peak between the two measures will be roughly one generation, it seems to me….running on fumes for a while.
True fossil fuels are not essential for human life, but they are essential for human life at the mass scale and style that we have in the reality of the current era.

Peak Global Combustion Day in just 7 years.
Will you have a ceremonial BBQ?

On your land how many bushels of bean can you grow, how many goats or chickens? Better buy any metal tools (shovels, guns, food processing, saws and mauls) that you’ll need before the scramble of the 2040’s. Will property rights be enforced in a world in scramble mode? I expect major! reshuffling.

This is not all a theoretical exercise, as some would to approach it.

Nick G

“ True fossil fuels are not essential for human life, but they are essential for human life at the mass scale and style that we have in the reality of the current era.”

China is paving the way: they’re tired of paying for FF imports, tired of FF pollution. They’re electrifying transportation – both light vehicles and heavy. Transportation is 70% of oil consumption.

They’ll replace coal and gas with wind and solar as fast as they can. The first 80% will be cheaper, the last 20% will have higher out-of-pocket costs but the pollution reductions will mean that it’s still cheaper than FF.

The last things will be niche applications: 10% of liquid fuel, smelting, cement. They will also be somewhat more expensive without FF (at least for a while, before the tech improves), but cheaper when accounting for pollution. Plastic and petrochemicals can be kept as long as they’re competitive, as they don’t have to produce GHGs (of course,we may decide that post-use plastic waste is too much of a problem – micro-plastics may even be a bigger problem).

The transition will probably be driven by climate change and pollution, not peak FF, as in China. Near-term PO would be in our best interest in the long-term, but we probably won’t be that lucky.

Iron Mike

https://www.iea.org/countries/china/coal

Nick G,

These metrics from China totally contradict your assertions.

& here is their energy mix dominated by FF.

https://www.iea.org/countries/china

Nick G

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-puts-coal-on-back-burner-as-renewables-soar/

Iron Mike,

Sure, China uses a lot coal currently. But remember the power of the exponential function: solar and wind are growing fast, while coal has plateaued.

“ Installed solar and wind power capacity climbed 45.2% and 18%, respectively, in 2024, the National Energy Administration said on Tuesday.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-solar-wind-power-installed-capacity-soars-2024-2025-01-21/

Coal consumption has plateaued, though some capacity is still being built, mostly because of the power of the companies that profit from the construction of unnecessary capacity. Similarly, these companies are still promoting coal plants in developing countries even though they generally are a very bad idea for those countries.

“ With new renewable energy installations now capable of meeting all incremental power demand in China, the need for new coal is waning, and there are signs the central government may be embracing this change.

In the first half of 2024, China reduced coal power permits by 83% compared to H1 2023, permitting only 9 gigawatts (GW) in H1 2024”

T HILL

Hickory

“On your land how many bushels of bean can you grow, how many goats or chickens?”

This is a good question, with many others stacked up behind it. First of these follow ups beyond the theoretical capacity of your land is whether or not you have actually succeeded in growing those beans? Real world implementation can be challenging and humbling.

Iron Mike

Sure, China uses a lot coal currently…. while coal has plateaued.

No it hasn’t plateaued. The two links you sent, couldn’t care less. None of them are international organisations that look at energy & emissions. You just want to fit the world into your ideology, and anything that contradicts that is immediately rejected. I sourced you IEA and you source Reuters and some other “independent” organisation which no one has heard of.

But remember the power of the exponential function: solar and wind are growing fast

Ohh okay, just because something is growing exponentially “currently” I should assume it will continue to grow exponentially well into the future. Got it. You are lucky you aren’t a trader of commodities or stocks.

Bottom line, lets look at current facts before we get ahead of ourselves. As of 2023 according to the IEA Chinas energy supply mix is over 87% from FF. Until that figure drops to 50% within a small time-frame you shouldn’t really talk.

Should we look at India next ?

Hickory

True T Hill. That is the primary reason I brought up something as basic as growing beans or raising goats- to serve as an example of just how real the challenge is/will be to live without the help of all the mass energy inputs we all have become dependent on. And perhaps people will also understand just how critical it is to have good soil/water. Everyone used to know that as the most basic of knowledge.
Some would like to make this whole thing into an accounting exercise. Thats what accountants do. I wonder if they also do anything real.

Nick G

Well, let’s see. Here’s the IEA data on emissions. Sadly, it’s out of date, ending in 2022. The 2021-2022 growth rate was only .6%:

Nick G

“Ohh okay, just because something is growing exponentially “currently” I should assume it will continue to grow exponentially well into the future”

Well, past performance isn’t a guarantee of future performance, but it’s your BEST guide. Here’s Chinese solar – judge for yourself:

Survivalist

Not sure what OP means by ‘human systems’. Not circulatory system or nervous system. Maybe means complex society as opposed to human systems. Complex society can collapse or transform in diverse ways, making a universal pattern unlikely.

Nick G

I agree.

I’ve been curious if the US would decline gracefully (relative to China), or would shoot itself in the foot when it became clear that it was no longer the biggest and best economy. With the Current Occupant, we seem to be going for the foot-shooting…

It’s interesting to look at British TV – it seems to be full of nostalgia. On the whole, though, they seem to be managing their post-empire stage ok. Japan is doing pretty well once you adjust for their decline in working-age people – https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/birth-rate-population-decline/683333/

Survivalist

UK managed the contraction of its empire rather well compared to those that did so before. Many Kenyans might beg to differ. Also helped that the American empire that succeeded it was an ally who found great utility in UK. History of Collapses is what we might call a SocioEcogical Phenomenon. What we have in store is a mass die off due to famine. It’s kinda different.

Nick G

07/14/2025

Survivalist,

My point is that empires are obsolete: Britain and Japan are far better off than when they had colonies.

Will we move away from FF fast enough to prevent major harm to our supporting environment? The tech is there, but will the forces of FF and autocracy slow down the transition too much?

Time to be be politically active…

Han Neumann

Iron Mike wrote:
“You just want to fit the world into your ideology, and anything that contradicts that is immediately rejected. ”

Not much has changed since Nick posted on ‘theoildrum’

Nick G

Except, of course, that what I was saying then has been proved true.

Every year it becomes more and more obvious that FF should and is being replaced.

FF advocates will have to learn to live with that. People with current careers that depend on FF will likely be ok, but they might want to encourage their children to do something else.

sgp99

Dude, it’s just something I’m posting on the internet. It’s my own original thought.

If you are constantly asking for a source, you are just asking for somebody else’s analysis or opinion.

It’s my own opinion! Get over it. Not everything is verified 1000 times over.

Survivalist

So, you’re just making shit up? lol thanks for coming out.

Han Neumann

“Every year it becomes more and more obvious that FF should and is being replaced.”

Nick: Right, if only that’s the case because of the disasters caused by climate change.
Still countries are waiting for the North Pole to become icefree in the summer months.
Countries that claim their territory by planting flags and with militarisation.
A lot of countries are developing relatively small oilfields, just because the demand is there or will be there (and to compensate for declining production from giant oilfields). It is very difficult to offset the rising energy demand, because of the booming middle class in China, India, Brazil and some African countries, with electrification. Not impossible, but very difficult in practice

Nick G

“ Not impossible, but very difficult in practice”

Well, it’s a choice. EVs are cheaper, cleaner, better. To the extent that a transition depends on national policies, it’s a political choice. It’s hard mostly because of the power of legacy industries. They are focused on protecting themselves,while those pushing in the other direction are diffuse.

Time to be politically active.

JJHMAN

Florida Concentration Camp: Alligator Auschwitz
The mentality behind the two is identical; a place to store the Untermensch.

Han Neumann