[JonD]

Have about 90 minutes free time, and interested in energy/food issues? Check out this documentary:



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Please comment below.

[blueback]

It's not a documentary, it's an interview.

My first thought is that it's kind of hard to believe he literally figured out how all of human civilization works but he lives alone and can't make his rent. If he's some sort of idiot-savant he should be able to provide a medical diagnosis. If he's not, what explanation can he offer for understanding the entire world but not being able to keep a job or make any kind of investment.

For example, if he saw the financial collapse coming, and was only off by a year or so, why didn't he make a fortune shorting everything he could get his hands on? He claims empirical support for his position, but what better empirical support can one offer than dramaticially good investments?

Anywho, maybe the FBI has a special task force dedicated to keeping him in poverty. I dunno.

Something he mentioned: he complained about how people who rebutt his conclusions oversimplify into "plenty of oil or no oil at all" but then when confronted with the "human injenuity" question his rebuttal was "we are powerless animals or we are all powerful Gods." So, on the one hand he thinks it's intellectually dishonest of people to misrepresent the structure of his argument as all or nothing, but then he specifically misrepresents the structure of someone else's argument as all or nothing. It's easy to dismiss the idea that we can innovate our way out of the worst of Peak Oil by scoffing at our hubris in attempting to alter the laws of physics...because that's in no way what the argument is. It's a lot harder to dismiss, out of hand, the idea that we can invent new technologies that dramatically increase the efficiency with which we utilize our resources...by better manipulating the laws of physics, not by changing them.

It seemed to me that 50% of the running time of the movie could have been shrunk into, like, 5 minutes. This wasn't a documentary. It was a monologue. He just explained whatever he wanted to explain in whatever amount of time he wanted to explain it. He wasn't "featured" in the movie he WAS the movie.

The topic deserves more than one voice.

[JonD]

It can be argued to be a documentary, and also an interview.

It's a good point that had he used his predictions to make money it would bolster his arguments, but it doesn't lessen the fact that he predicted a crash. He wasn't the only one to foresee a crash, either. It also doesn't sound like his goal is to make money. He's dedicated his life to exposing what he sees as the truth. Learning how to invest to make money off of his predictions would take time away from that, and he obviously has a strong ethical responsibility to expose these things.

His response to the question of "human ingenuity fixing a lack of fossil fuels" was not what you noted. He responded that we just don't have anything to replace fossil fuels.

And yes, we can increase the efficiency of things that require resources, but that is still a limited endeavor. I don't think it would offset our growing need for fossil fuels.

[RBM]

Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

It's not a documentary, it's an interview. My first thought is that it's kind of hard to believe he literally figured out how all of human civilization works but he lives alone and can't make his rent. If he's some sort of idiot-savant he should be able to provide a medical diagnosis. If he's not, what explanation can he offer for understanding the entire world but not being able to keep a job or make any kind of investment. For example, if he saw the financial collapse coming, and was only off by a year or so, why didn't he make a fortune shorting everything he could get his hands on? He claims empirical support for his position, but what better empirical support can one offer than dramaticially good investments? Anywho, maybe the FBI has a special task force dedicated to keeping him in poverty. I dunno. Something he mentioned: he complained about how people who rebutt his conclusions oversimplify into "plenty of oil or no oil at all" but then when confronted with the "human injenuity" question his rebuttal was "we are powerless animals or we are all powerful Gods." So, on the one hand he thinks it's intellectually dishonest of people to misrepresent the structure of his argument as all or nothing, but then he specifically misrepresents the structure of someone else's argument as all or nothing. It's easy to dismiss the idea that we can innovate our way out of the worst of Peak Oil by scoffing at our hubris in attempting to alter the laws of physics...because that's in no way what the argument is. It's a lot harder to dismiss, out of hand, the idea that we can invent new technologies that dramatically increase the efficiency with which we utilize our resources...by better manipulating the laws of physics, not by changing them. It seemed to me that 50% of the running time of the movie could have been shrunk into, like, 5 minutes. This wasn't a documentary. It was a monologue. He just explained whatever he wanted to explain in whatever amount of time he wanted to explain it. He wasn't "featured" in the movie he WAS the movie. The topic deserves more than one voice.

What is THE topic as you see it, Ruppert ?

[blueback]

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It can be argued to be a documentary, and also an interview.

Or it could just be an interview with public domain stock footage tossed in.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It's a good point that had he used his predictions to make money it would bolster his arguments, but it doesn't lessen the fact that he predicted a crash. He wasn't the only one to foresee a crash, either.

It's not hard, after a disaster, to find SOMEONE who predicted a disaster. What is hard is being so confident of your predictions that you actually put your money where your mouth is. In hindsight, sure, he's 100% certain. But he obviously wasn't certain enough, back then, to actually bet on the future he predicted.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It also doesn't sound like his goal is to make money. He's dedicated his life to exposing what he sees as the truth. Learning how to invest to make money off of his predictions would take time away from that, and he obviously has a strong ethical responsibility to expose these things.

BS.
He said himself that money's not complicated, and he strongly implied that he understands how investments work. Remaining in poverty is a stupid way to get the truth out, since having no resources means you have no voice.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	His response to the question of "human ingenuity fixing a lack of fossil fuels" was not what you noted. He responded that we just don't have anything to replace fossil fuels.

That was earlier. And that is a gross oversimplification.
What he said, directly in response to the ingenuity question, was that it's silly of us to think we could become Gods who would be immune from entropy. And that's all he said about it. At least, that's all that was included in the movie.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	And yes, we can increase the efficiency of things that require resources, but that is still a limited endeavor. I don't think it would offset our growing need for fossil fuels.

Based on what?

	Originally Posted by RBM To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What is THE topic as you see it, Ruppert ?

The topic is a whole slew of institutions based on an assumption of infinite growth running up against the constraints of their environment. And the inevitable contraction.

That contraction can be more or less harsh depending on what steps we take to mitigate the underlying problem. He's quite right about that. He wasn't exactly wrong about anything so much as he treated incredibly complicated topics lightly and then moved into conspiracies. If it was a real documentary they would have moved on to discuss the issues in more depth, and skipped the cloak and dagger stuff.

The surface treatment of important topics (like what energy source could repace oil) and the unnecessary inclusion of "the FBI is out to get me" stuff just makes my mind start wandering. I end up thinking about how funny it is that he started crying when he said that people like him are so glad someone's listening to them now, but in the opening text the film makers explain that they only wanted to ask him about the old CIA drug dealing stuff, and he wanted to talk about the collapse of civilization.

Or, at least, of Western civilization. It sounds like he's not at all worried about the parts of the world that already live sustainably...except for that part where he warned about the extinction of the human race.

[RBM]

	Originally Posted by blueback
	The topic is a whole slew of institutions based on an assumption of infinite growth running up against the constraints of their environment. And the inevitable contraction.

Yeah, this is a popular topic of the 'doomer' mindset of energy use in modern life. I saw the video's shortly after they came out as a result of someone with the aforementioned mindset pointing it out.

	If it was a real documentary they would have moved on to discuss the issues in more depth, and skipped the cloak and dagger stuff.

I won't address the issue of 'what defines a documentary' but will point out that your definition would require MUCH more time and resources put into a project to create a product you personally would be comfortable calling a documentary. I think for many reasons this is not going to happen in the form of a single project, as it used to (think investigative reporting). Instead the actual info will flow through different sources (think Wikileaks, or The Oil Drum) directly to those interested in the information.

	The surface treatment of important topics (like what energy source could repace oil) and the unnecessary inclusion of "the FBI is out to get me" stuff just makes my mind start wandering.

Given your admission of a wandering mind, let me blindly attempt to focus it ...

First here is one reason that what you call 'cloak and dagger stuff, is totally necessary to discuss,
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. I've backtracked this topic to what is probably one of the originators of coverage,
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:

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. were 5,135 inventions that were under secrecy orders at the end of Fiscal Year 2010, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told Secrecy News last week. It’s a 1% rise over the year before, and the highest total in more than a decade. Under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, patent applications on new inventions can be subject to secrecy orders restricting their publication if government agencies believe that disclosure would be “detrimental to the national security.” The current list of technology areas that is used to screen patent applications for possible restriction under the Invention Secrecy Act is not publicly available and has been denied under the Freedom of Information Act. (An appeal is pending.) But a previous list dated 1971 and obtained by researcher Michael Ravnitzky is available here (pdf).

...

	One may fairly ask if disclosure of such technologies could really have been “detrimental to the national security,” or whether the opposite would be closer to the truth. One may further ask what comparable advances in technology may be subject to restriction and non-disclosure today. But no answers are forthcoming, and the invention secrecy system persists with no discernible external review.

Here's FAS's page on
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for the actual language.

I don't consider this example as 'cloak and dagger', do you ?

[Traverser]

Okay, here's my review of the documentary, which was more like an interview than a documentary but nevermind. :

1) Peak Oil- Makes an okay explanation of a lack of economic sustainability of oil production. Seems to not be aware of how oil prices encourage recycling oil products (converting plastics into oil for instance) and in the development of alternative fuel sources or more efficient extraction of oil. Makes some dubious claims of total land-oil being close to being dry.

2) I liked very much his connection of the Iraq War with Big Oil interests. I especially appreciated his take on the incredible Embassy being constructed there.

3) The talk about derivatives was okay, although it didn't get into too much detail.

4) Fractional Reserve Banking, the Federal Reserve and the Dollar as the World's Reserve Currency- This is where the video really shined. I wish he had devoted his documentarily entirely on this subject, since it relates to the sustainability all of these economic processes he speaks of. Banking is really at the heart of Economics.

5) His prediction of the total population of humans going down to pre-industrial levels is very doubtful, and he gives very little evidence to support this. It seems he gives very little credit to the innovation of markets. In fact, he outright ignores it when asked about human ingenuity by the interviewer.

6) Some odd predictions of a future sustainable civilization are thrown in here without any explanation.

7) Concerning hyperinflation. The host seems unaware that the market can quickly correct for this through the use of alternative monies due to warehousing and transportation measures already in place in the U.S. It won't be pretty anyway, but it would had been nice if he got off his doomday-chair and pointed out this light at the end of the tunnel. Zimbabwe, for instance, is now recovering out of the currency collapse. Such was the case for Germany, which once fell victim to a currency collapse almost 100 years ago.

8) Toward the end of the film, Michael seems to think that the total economic usefulness of the world is finite. This seems to make sense at first, but he is confusing Physics with Economics here; new uses for existing resources are discovered every day, apart from the discovery of raw resources themselves.

9) No debates? Really? This does not bode well for his expertise in the subject he's talking about.

10) Concerning sustainability of economies, once again toward the end of the video Michael does not acknowledge the importance of prices in regulating sustainability. He points to a price-chart to show how demand ebbs and falls, but fails to seperate price-fixing from free-floating price mechanisms. This is extremely important; free-floating prices reflect supply and demand forces far more honestly than those set by fraudulant banking entities and their government elites.

11) Lastly, Michael seems to be confusing Capitalism with Fascism.

Verdict: Overall, not a bad video for the first half. It begins to deteriorate in the latter part after so much overt loathing though, which makes it a mediocre video at best.

Anyone wanting to read videos about the impending collapse ought to read and see Robert Higgs at the Independent Institute. He's far more complete in his explanations and is not so willing to call doom to all of humanity as this guy seems to be.

[RBM]

	Originally Posted by Traverser
	1) Peak Oil- Makes an okay explanation of a lack of economic sustainability of oil production. Seems to not be aware of how oil prices encourage recycling oil products (converting plastics into oil for instance) and in the development of alternative fuel sources or more efficient extraction of oil. Makes some dubious claims of total land-oil being close to being dry.

There are several threads on INTJ about Peak Oil, or related posts you may or may not have read.

I suspect he is more aware than you give him credit for. I've seen numbers crunched on the 'recycle' dynamics and the dynamic doesn't offer a viable solution given '05 world demand was just under 85 MMb/d with
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since exceeding that figure.

Economists generally take the view of that specific state of affairs that the oil will be brought to market by the 'magic hand' of Adam Smith. Others, such as oil field professionals (not CEO's of oil companies) dispute that belief. By the way, such professionals use the term 'resource replacement problem', generally not Peak Oil, and has been an acknowledged issue since the '70's.

It may be a moot point today and maybe tomorrow only cause the global recession has dropped production down to low 70's MMb/d. That's a silver lining in an extremely stormy cloud. We are on a bumpy plateau of production today and that has it's own consequences, such as redefining economic terms like '
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.

At the practical level, the plateau means we have a VERY high probability of never seeing growth based on oil, the way the oil era has allowed for the last 100 years. Particularly the spurt last 50 years, allowing for someone to go
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While Ruppert adheres to the doomer view, I don't. I do though, recognize challenges and economic platitudes such as the quote at the start of this post.

The next 5 years should be very, very interesting regarding energy, even for those that think the world runs on money, not natural resources such as oil.

[JonD]

	Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It's not hard, after a disaster, to find SOMEONE who predicted a disaster. What is hard is being so confident of your predictions that you actually put your money where your mouth is. In hindsight, sure, he's 100% certain. But he obviously wasn't certain enough, back then, to actually bet on the future he predicted.

He's not "sure in hindsight", as he said, his newsletter posted warnings about a collapse of the market.

Probably the stupidest thing you could do before a crash is yank all your money out. The market runs on greed and confidence. If investors sold because they saw a crash coming it would be a self fulfilling prophecy. Usually they'd just move things into more stable investments, like GIC's, and out of more volatile investments. Even doing that wouldn't make you profit from a crash. Some profited during the crash, but that's different than profiting from the crash. You need to know very much about the ongoings of businesses and markets to make money by investing, and that requires a fair bit of knowledge.

	Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	BS. He said himself that money's not complicated, and he strongly implied that he understands how investments work. Remaining in poverty is a stupid way to get the truth out, since having no resources means you have no voice.

Money and investments are two very different things. They are related, but that's all. You might as well expect a cook to be a fantastic farmer.

	Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	That was earlier. And that is a gross oversimplification. What he said, directly in response to the ingenuity question, was that it's silly of us to think we could become Gods who would be immune from entropy. And that's all he said about it. At least, that's all that was included in the movie.

So we can change the laws of entropy? I know you mentioned manipulating physical laws, earlier. Perhaps you could elaborate on how we've manipulated physical laws in the past.

	Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Based on what?

Consider an internal combustion engine. A large portion of the energy given off by the explosion is given off as heat. That heat is not used to power your car. It is used to heat the interior of the car, but in the summertime, that's useless. That is just one example of how things can only be optimized to a point. You may want to reference a graph of the mileage of vehicles over time, and notice that the graph resembles 1-e^x over time, that is, a sharp rise, followed by a plateau. You could compare it to a human running the 100m dash. There comes a point that despite the right physical attributes, it can only be done in a certain amount of time.

Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

The topic is a whole slew of institutions based on an assumption of infinite growth running up against the constraints of their environment. And the inevitable contraction. That contraction can be more or less harsh depending on what steps we take to mitigate the underlying problem. He's quite right about that. He wasn't exactly wrong about anything so much as he treated incredibly complicated topics lightly and then moved into conspiracies. If it was a real documentary they would have moved on to discuss the issues in more depth, and skipped the cloak and dagger stuff.

I agree he spoke too lightly about certain things. I get the impression that he's so jaded from focusing on this stuff for so long, that the finer points of his arguments now see like unimportant details to him.

	Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Or, at least, of Western civilization. It sounds like he's not at all worried about the parts of the world that already live sustainably...except for that part where he warned about the extinction of the human race.

So who's living sustainably? I can only think of tribal communities. Every other group of people I can think of requires the importing of, or importing something that used non-renewable resources to be created.

[blueback]

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	He's not "sure in hindsight", as he said, his newsletter posted warnings about a collapse of the market.

Being sure enough to make a prediction in your newsletter, and being sure enough to actually bet money on the future, are two very different levels of sure-ity.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Probably the stupidest thing you could do before a crash is yank all your money out.

Ummm...that's the second BEST thing you could do.

The first best, of course, is to SHORT the market so that you make money when the market crashes. Google it. It's a real thing.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You need to know very much about the ongoings of businesses and markets to make money by investing, and that requires a fair bit of knowledge.

Which he claimed, over and over again, to have.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	So we can change the laws of entropy? I know you mentioned manipulating physical laws, earlier. Perhaps you could elaborate on how we've manipulated physical laws in the past.

You have a reading comprehension problem.

I pointed out that no one is seriously claiming we can challenge the law of entropy. That was a straw man invented so that he didn't have to actually address the possibility of new inventions mitigating the worst of the Peak.

Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Consider an internal combustion engine. A large portion of the energy given off by the explosion is given off as heat. That heat is not used to power your car. It is used to heat the interior of the car, but in the summertime, that's useless. That is just one example of how things can only be optimized to a point. You may want to reference a graph of the mileage of vehicles over time, and notice that the graph resembles 1-e^x over time, that is, a sharp rise, followed by a plateau. You could compare it to a human running the 100m dash. There comes a point that despite the right physical attributes, it can only be done in a certain amount of time.

Right. The ingenuity argument is that you go from gears, to vacuum tubes, to transistors, to molecular valves or whatever. When an old technology has been optimized it provides a nice incentive for a new technology to come along and continue the ongoing trend of overall progress.

For example, replacing ICEs with motors and gasoline with batteries or ultracapacitors. The combination can be dramatically more efficient in more ways than one.

	Originally Posted by JonD To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	So who's living sustainably? I can only think of tribal communities. Every other group of people I can think of requires the importing of, or importing something that used non-renewable resources to be created.

Well, he did seem to have a hard-on for Cuba.

The point is that his argument doesn't apply quite as dramatically to places where they already don't particularly depend on fossil fuels to the point the first world does. So, at a minimum, the human race is not going extinct. And, even if there is a dramatic population contraction, it will not really change life in the third world. Sure, there will be less life there, but they'll just be fewer people doing the same things.

[Ray9]

All I saw was a chain-smoking ranter. He didn't divulge anything that has not already been divulged by many others. His predictions, like those of so many others, are more likely postdictions.


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[blueback]

Well, yeah. The film makers pretty much pointed that out at the very beginning of the film. They clearly stated that they had wanted to interview him about the CIA drug dealing stuff, but that he wanted to talk about something else.

That's probably why the film is only an interview. They probably had to let him get all that collapse stuff out so that he'd settle down and talk about the CIA a little bit. Then, they probably figured that since they'd filmed all that stuff they could just toss in some free public domain footage, a couple title cards, and BOOM, they'd have a second film.

[zibber]

All of these ridiculous semantic quibbles and content-free ad hominems are kind of motivating me to have a look at this.

[Moniker9]

Collapse is essentially about Ruppert's life and struggle and less about peak oil but peak oil deserves to be looked at more closely I think. It is in a nutshell:

1) Modern society relies entirely on fossil fuels.

2) There is a finite amount of fossil fuel.

3) There is nothing currently available that can replace fossil fuels.

The only one of these facts that is disputable is the third one. There are technologies that can do some of the same things but not as cheaply or efficiently. Even if said technologies can be put into widespread use only the first world nations will have the material wealth to make the change, leaving third world and developing nations to essentially starve.

[RBM]

If by 'currently available' you mean 'on the shelf' you are absolutely correct.

It won't happen if the law of the invention Secrecy Act of 1951(post 6 in this thread) is upheld either, due in part to the high bar fossil fuels sets as a result of it's energy density.

[Ray9]

I saw Michael Ruppert on a History Channel documentary, I think it was called "voices of doom". He seemed much more poised and in control and he made a lot of good points. I think he said we would be paying $7.00 a gallon for gas in less than three years. If that happens this country faces a major crisis.

[RBM]

A
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I have been reading for over 4 years on transportation fuels has this to say:

... To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. always, we need to try to understand the long-term risks/consequences of either approach. In any case, in a market abundant with oil, the impact on price would be minimal. Yet I believe we have very little spare global capacity, and therefore any shortfalls like this are going to continue to contribute to volatility in the oil market. What this means is that that you should get ready for $4/gallon gasoline again by summer.

---------- Post added 01-07-2011 at 03:18 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by Ray9 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I saw Michael Ruppert on a History Channel documentary, I think it was called "voices of doom". He seemed much more poised and in control and he made a lot of good points. I think he said we would be paying $7.00 a gallon for gas in less than three years. If that happens this country faces a major crisis.

Do you mean
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?

The first speaker is Nate Hagens editor of The Oil Drum. Here's what he said today at TOD:

I thought it was much better than I feared but not nearly as good as I hoped. My capuchin self-confidence algorithm of course thinks the whole show would have been better had they spliced more of my 10+ hours of footage on biophysical economics, human behavior, debt vs natural resource disconnects etc but what they showed was ok - they cut almost all of the more advanced stuff out. There were some really extreme things said during the 'meeting' footage which Im glad they took out.   I thought Mr. Hagens' concerns were unfounded, or at least he was careful enough not to say something he didn't want to say. Thats an accurate observation. The more I understood where the show was heading the more I clammed up. Giving too many details on exactly how our monetary system works and how disconnected our perceived claims are versus reality struck me as counterproductive on national TV. Years ago I came to the conclusion that 'education of the masses' won't create change in itself, however, shows like this one, (and websites like this one for that matter) allow for an awareness to percolate that once/if Obama or some future leader gets on TV and says we need to all tighten our belts/sacrifice because we have fewer options than we once did, it helps diffuse the default reaction to such a path. The more people understand that what is happening is really no ones fault, the more options we have after the currency bottleneck.

Regarding crisis and corporate media - sales drives the message, NOT quality of analysis.