Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong

In the search for the culmination of events that might produce the "perfect storm" to bring collapse, I came across this article;

Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong

What is correct way to model the future course of energy and the economy? There are clearly huge amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground. With different approaches, researchers can obtain vastly different indications. I will show that the real issue is most researchers are modeling the wrong limit.

Most researchers assume that the limit that they should be concerned with is the amount of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground. This is the wrong limit. While in theory we will eventually hit this limit, because of the way fossil fuels are integrated into the rest of the economy, we hit financial limits much earlier. These financial limits include lack of investment capital, inability of governments to collect enough taxes to fund their programs, and widespread debt defaults.

One of the things I show in this post is that Economic Growth is a positive feedback loop that is enabled by cheap energy sources. (Economists have postulated that Economic Growth is permanent, and has no connection to energy sources.) Economic Growth turns to economic contraction as the cost of energy extraction (broadly defined) rises. It is the change in this feedback loop that leads to the financial problems mentioned above. These effects tend to lead to collapse over a period of years (perhaps 10 or 20, we really don’t know), rather than a slow decline which is easily mitigated.

The article follows along the lines of my own thinking, that peak-oil or the availability of cheap energy (a thing of the past now) will not necessarily be the defining factor stirring collapse. That it will more than likely be the effects caused by other systems within our economy that require the availability of cheap energy to maintain a positive growth cycle. Personally, I believe we have entered the contraction phase and the only issues I have in relation to the article is that I believe we are closer to the end of the cycle than the article suggests. Instead of 10 or 20 years, I see more like 2 or 3 years.

My reasoning for this is that it would appear the very expensive effects of climate change have not been factored or the manner in which excessive debt will accumulate in governments due to an extremely one-sided debt-production model implemented by the banking cartel.

This is an excellent read and makes a lot of sense but please keep in mind that it does not factor in all of the problems we shall be seeing in the near future.

Cheers - Dave