A doomer quant produces a plausible economic model for why the axe begins to fall in 2015 and the available solutions won't help. You scared yet? Don't mind me, I'm just indulging my usual pessimism.
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/01/29/a-forecast-of-our-energy-future-why-common-solutions-dont-work/
The comment below caught my eye, especially in the light of the Cameron-Osbourne view of the world; that combination of austerity and fracking. I've been wondering what they know that we don't because their policies look so brutal and self(elite) serving. Perhaps they aren't showing any long term views on planning because they've been advised that there is no long term for business as usual. But there is short term mitigation that allows a select few to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle and use it to build a defensible position.
I am also wondering if this unusually coherent, world-wide motivation to forestall collapse implies a sort of stair-step phenomenon rather than a fast, continuous dropoff. Say, on a roughly 6-10 year cycle, we have a financial crisis and sharp economic dropoff, followed by a series of “extraordinary measures” to cloak the reality of the situation, ala 2008-2009, a few years of steady-ish state, then another crisis. Human misery spreads, but propaganda, financial market manipulation, and increasingly oppressive governments keep things from spiraling out quite as fast as you predict. Given the unusual shared-motivation of world powers to figure out creative new ways to coordinate on mitigating the crisis, perhaps this cycle might repeat itself 2-3 times before the stresses finally start toppling major governments.
I'll also have to look more closely at living without electricity. I know of ways to heat and refrigerate without electricity, but had previously rejected them as too extreme.
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/02/06/limits-to-growth-at-our-doorstep-but-not-recognized/
The question is: when do we reach the point that oil supply is growing too slowly to produce the level of economic growth needed to keep our current debt system from crashing? The implication being that the Limits to Growth models need to include some reference to the effects of resource limits affecting the financial system, making debt harder to come by, resulting in an inability to exploit the remaining resource. Which then implies a harder crash because the current system is built on borrowing from a future created by constant growth.
http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1x8ngj/gail_tverberg_limits_to_growthat_our_doorstep_but/