http://www.energybulletin.net/7388.html

http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

http://www.chevron.com/

Vote on the Poll - it is multiple choice so tick as many options as you like!

heh

hmm, mine form a pretty good sentence, really...


This is actually what the Iraq war is about ...

Who Cares?....

I am moving to the country using solar power and growing my own vegatables.

I suggest the documentary "The End of Suburbia", it is a excellent summation of this problem.

i saw a commercial on TV for one of the oil companies.
a lady was being asked if we she would rather have her car or a clean environment, her response was that "i would love to have a clean environment but to ask someone to give up their car is like asking someone to give up chocolate, it's just not going to happen."

that statement is unintelligent, naive and irresponsible to SEVERAL decimal points.

allow me to expand on this fine lady's statement:

we've spent most of our evolutionary time on this planet, you intelligent design people can argue this on another thread, trying to find ways to stop mother nature from kicking our collective behind.

now we have plenty of technology available to us and mother earth can't so easily make mince meat out of us.
warm in winter, cool in summer. most bacteria that would have easily wiped us out is somewhat under control.
cozy, safe and clean in our homes without having to scavenge, hunt and gather anymore.

give that up? you crazy?
what's the point of having opposing thumbs a reasoning brain and the ability to create fire at will then?

my very humble opinion:

to use such a lame comparison in order to justify human nature is just plain dumb.
of course us humans do not want to give up our creature comforts.
i don't oppose technology but we need to re-evalute its uses and the kind of access that we have to it as a whole.

are we doomed?
maybe, maybe not.

i put all my hopes in children. we need to be able to say the buck stops here!
teach them respect for themselves, others and their home, if they don't learn it from us then where?

rant over.

FM

Can I say all of the above ?

Whenever I see that commercial I imagine her saying-"I would love to have a clean environment but to ask someone to give up their car is like asking (a big, disgusting fat lady like me) to give up chocolate, it's just not going to happen."

Because if you want to equate energy usage to chocolate consumption, America IS a big, disgusting fat lady.....

I always find the "I Can't give up my car attitude" so bizarre. I'd give up my car in a second if we just had a decent public transport system here in L.A. And I have a nice car !!!!! Man just get the subway happening and I'm there. Are we doomed ? YES. I wish we could go back to hunting and gathering, I'd be fine and there'd be a lot less fat people.

So, six people so far have voted that they think it's a scam. I'm curious as to what information you may know that I don't.

The earth has been scavanged for oil. We are not finding enough new oil to keep up with the exponential demands we are requiring. Obviously, oil fields don't last forever as seen by the dying fields before our eyes.

I have heard theories of abiotic oil, but until someone proves it by finding the motherload, it's just that - a theory.

I'd love to be wrong about it, but...

Mr. Dick Cheney has been aware of peak oil for some time. It was a part of his secretive Energy Task Force, as was plans for the invasion of Iraq (at a time when Sadaam was threatening trading oil in Euros), as was opening up GWAR in Alaska to exploration and drilling.

China seems to be aware of it also. They are jockeying for position in the oil food chain.

So, what am I missing?


BTW: Great topic. I was considering starting something of it yesterday.

So true.

Actually, America is a big fat overweight country period. Everything we have is used in excess...

I think the reality of the Iraq war is that it wasn't about Oil or Terrorism. It was our president's needy ego that made it happen. Now it's about cleaning up the mess we created.

If it IS about oil, how much would 250 Billion to subsidize mass transit nationwide have gone to reduce oil consumption. That and a $2/gal gas tax would go a long way to reducing traffic, traffic-related pollution, promoting fuel efficient vehicles, yada yada yada ...

Mass transit would be exempt from fuel taxes, of course.

ditto.
thumbsup thumbsup thumbsup

FM

I think you forgot who is running thins country: OIL, OIL, OIL & OIL.

for now ...

Ah, but you forget how this works: we pay for the war (in dollars, blood, and the last vestiges of our honor) then the oil companies take the profits. It makes for a very nice P&L statement for them.

I couldn't agree more on the gas tax - gas prices are kept artificially low in America right now, which is the only reason so many people drive such wasteful vehicles.

On the public transit front, I too would happily switch if given a choice. It's really interesting to look at the history of mass transit in the US and see what happened to our old systems - many trolley/electric public transit systems were bought up by oil companies and replaced by expensive and inefficient diesel buses - so much for letting the market decide!

Want to do something depressing? Sit around waiting for the bus sometime and watch all the SUVs drive by with only 1 person in them. ARRRRGGGHHH!

TEXAS = OIL


next time you watch an oil commercial
see if its one of those cute enviromental ones
you know fish and clean pristene landscapes
there are lot of those

or towards education
or towards further development of alternate fuels
or towards medicaid
or towards more rigirous investigation into
the root causes of terrorism with some
bifurcated focus on real progress in that area

or at the very least securing the future of the veterans themselves.............

if there was a way that you could nationalize the defense industry, cut
some of the fat out, give individual people lots of money if they're particularly
crafty at either thinking up ways of killing or defending people .............

you could create enormous revenues for public works..........

people would be shot before any idea close to this would be implemented.............

in a way i think mccain's crusade for real campaign finance reform was the
only ray of light i've seen in that area - its such a shame he went onboard with
our president last summer ...........him and outkast.............

be well
maybe the aliens are coming

- jack

Its just part of a strategy called "starve the beast"... Read about it here- http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/TaxCutCon.html

Nah, I have a thing about not passing quick judgement on people's choices. For all we know they're a contractor and just dropped off a load of wood and are headed back to Home Depot for paint. Or maybe the guy actually lives in a solar powered house, recycles everything and the SUV happens to be his only vice. That 3 second snapshot as someone passes by isn't enough to pass judgement or get pissed . . . . . Personally, I think one of the quickest ways to hit big oil is the immediate conversion to electric or hyrid of all public transportation and school busses with a 5 year plan to convert all private busses and taxis as well. Let government andd big business foot the bill.

thanks for the link...........i have a favorite old story about guns and oil.......

when i was first in new york , i worked for a leftie pr firm on and off.........
we represented the angolan government - during the reagan years covert
wars were fought againt the leftist angolan government - we gave upwards
of $100 million a year to jonas savimbi and his group unita - much like the contras -
during this time, angola had a shortage of hard currency and leased the
country's great asset - its oil fields - to exxon - during a certain period
of the struggle unita was fighting close enough to the oil fields that fidel's
assistance with cuban troops was required - so the sum total of this
brilliance was a period of time - i don't recall how long, at least a year -
when exxon oil fields were being protected from american artillary by
cuban troops .............unita used many strange weapons - at one point
there was a tangible percentage of the young population that were
missing legs............i tried to imagine a sea of crutches on pennslyvania avenue
honoring the late mr. reagan............

my deisel hummer runs on weed man.

OK, yeah. Maybe here in Salmon Arm. There are a lot of people who drive diesel pickups because they're hauling a lot of crap around. But in Vancouver, you see a massive volume of traffic go by and they all seem to be single people in cars. I guess I'm a bit more sensitive to it because Vancouver's transit system is so crappy. (I spent the last year living there)
They have overleaded buses (like sardines, I kid you not), they're always late, they have no dedicated bus lane, and no night buses.
I spent a bit of time in Holland and I have to say...those people really have it together. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of transit you take - it's always on time. They have dedicated bike lanes all over the place that are sometimes shaded by trees and have enough space for a moped to pass you. There is no parking in downtown Amsterdam - it's all foot traffic. They're really organized in terms of recycling as well.
Why oh why can't Canada be like Holland?!?! I can't even count the number of times I almost got creamed in the combination bus lane/taxi lane/bike lane in Ottawa. It sucks. North America's infrastructure is all wrong. I think that's one of the biggest problems we face in restructuring the organization of our transit systems.
BTW, Vancouver has electric buses (mostly), but as they don't have a dedicated lane it's a horribly inefficient way to travel.

I guess you don't live in Southern California...here, people buy SUV's as symbols of middle class family values (or buy Hummers, for bling) and drive them to work and to the grocery store. Alone.

I can barely see the road ahead, there are so many of them...
And their gas-guzzing cars are driving up demand for gas. Mabye
THEY can afford it, but I can't. Their taste in vehicles is an indirect tax
on me and my economy car. And to think that Hummer buyers get a
federal tax break

----------

Unfortunately, all major U.S. cities have gigantic rings of suburbs, which require cars to navigate effectively. All built for cars, and hard to retrofit for public transportation because of the low population density and peculiar zoning (e.g. the services are clustered next to highways outside of comfortable walking distance).

That may be the case but i think thats a bit of a cop out when you consider that London was built centuries beforehand and the concept of cars was not even on the horizon. Its a city (love it or hate it) that has adapted relatively well in terms of providing realtively efficient public transport systems for the masses. Like many Europeans cities the US would be well served to take those models and apply them to thier own.

However therein lies the empirical problem that Oil not only fuels and lubricates modern society, but also politcal motivations. You really dont have scratch the surface too deeply at any strata of political structure to see where motivations and loyalties lie in relation to specific oil based interests. This is esspecially apparent in the USA where its a no brainer that oil funds both parties to differing extents.

The key problem IMHO opinion is the ability of the western world to adapt to the changing circumstances and related politcal power structure shifts that will be created when the oil finally runs outs. How will OPEC continue to have a strangle hold over production of a non existant commodity? How will politicians from oil rich states and countries be able to extert influence on something that no longer exists.? What will happen then.... will the green power hippies living in the catskills on methane generator, solar cells and recycled peanuts oil from fast food outlets be weilding the same type of power? What are CEO's of oil companies goign to be doing when the music stops.... stack shelves @ walmart?

But like it or not its going to run out in at least 25 years and by that time no one in thier right mind will be albe to afford it. It will be more expensive that your favourite recreational drug and you may as well be fueling your car with cocaine!!!

There will be solutions and they are in the works.... but how equitable they will be in relation to the price performance factor will be another question. I mean there will prolly be a time when people say... "i remember going down to the local service station and filling up with gas for $1.20 a litre" heh heh But most of all i think western society will have to get used to the fact that they themselves are fueling the growth of the biggest economy in the world... China. Within 50 years it will be bigger than the US. Whilst some industry pundits are suggesting that they could be that way in more like 25 years if they continue on such rampant growth like they are experienceing now, those at the wheel in China have an inkling of how they are going to get there and it will be in the long term rather than the short term. I mean there is a reason that they have not pegged the YUAN to the US$ which immediately would open a lot of opportunities for them economically and socially but the reality is in the interim if they did that it could actually implode thier economy as 'bouyant' as it is, it hangs in the precarious grey area of being dangerously overstretched and a sudden fiscal policy shift like that could actually cause the economy to implode as they wouldnt be able to cope with all the changes on such a global level.

In the mean time they are more than happy to provide us cheap goods from an overabundant supply of labour, use the West's oil to povide fuel to the growth that will take them well into the middle of the 21st century. Perhaps this was Deng's last wish to create the final 50 yr plan???

Hope i aint bored you yet
Wiggy

man that has to be the toughest city in the world to drive in... navigating your way around seems like such an absolute nightmare.

us manhattaners are lucky ...streets numbered up and down, parallel... very easy to find your way around. the DRIVERS are a different story NY cabbies could probably get jobs as Hollywood stunt drivers

the commercial about not giving up cars hides another facility that no one will give up:

low population density, with family houses, green areas and gardens, and young people cruising from house to house, and in the night visiting downtown.

this is experienced as a real quality of life.

every concept to organize the transport after peak oil must serve these people also, to be sustainable.
I see no good to eradicate this life form, with an electric transport (or horses like the amish have) it can be very healthy for another 1000 years. I think, the population density of the metropoles is everything but healthy to mind and body.

We humans are lazy, habitual beings. So we'll do nothing as long as possible, with the left crying HERE COMES TROUBLE! .. and the Right quoting 'science' figures that say there's plenty of oil for 150 years or more.

As it becomes clear that oil is really, really, really running out we'll panic, then be in denial as a whole ...


And at the last minute we'll engage in an amazing burst of creativity, science will find solutions to energy that are impossible now.

Human need a real shock to wake up, and when that day comes, late as it will be, we will.



At the same time, we'll have a new society emerging for many people outside of major cities. But it wont be bad, just different. Energy will be a local phenom, with the home staying the center of our world, and the car being rationed.

Groceries, clothing, and far more than now will be internet purchased in 50 and 100 years, with FedEx, UPS and local delivery companies having access to gas for deliveries to our doors.

Internet businesses, Refuse collection, FedEx/UPS. Service providers. The suburban landscape will become wild, as lawn is excessive for this world.



In an extreme view of say 150 years, live music may become acoustic again. Home recording may need to happen on 12VDC if at all.