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I agree that Peak Oil if and when it happens will be a gradual process. In fact, I believe that is what the theory itself states. Have you actually read the the theory itself? It sounds a bit like you haven't. Because you seem to be missing the point. The biggest problem as I see it comes down to energy density. We don't consider it practical to run land vehicles with nuclear power. So that leaves us with our very limited battery and fuel cell technology, which will have to scale up to massive levels to be used worldwide in every vehicle.

When petroleum sources become too expensive to use there are going to be some very major problems we have to deal with. Plastic is made from oil. Imagine a world where plastic is 100 times more expensive than it is now. Or 1000 times more expensive. And all of our land vehicles will have to be battery (or fuel cell) powered. This means that the range of land vehicles will be very short. No doubt petrol stations will also have high amperage, high voltage, electrical pumps and/or hydrogen pumps, but shipping freight via trucking will become relatively impractical. We may be able to substitute nuclear powered trains to some extent, but we will still need trucks to transport the cargo from the trains. Traveling by air will again only be for the rich. The cost of many, many items, such as food, will raise by orders of magnitude. Needless to say the cost of living in a cold climate will rise astronomically. The price of heating oil and natural gas and coal and even wood will all rise to many, many times the current price. Probably everyone will be using electric heat powered by nuclear plants, which is not cheap. For the rich, it won't be too much of a problem. It is the poor that will suffer. The most serious problem even for the rich will be when we finally start running low on uranium fuel, which is also a finite resource. Peak oil, if and when it happens will massively change the way we live our lives. Whether there truly are massive die offs of the human population is uncertain, but it is within the realm of possibility if we can no longer produce food cheaply enough to feed the world.

How Much Energy is Used to Construct a Car?

The average car will consume during its construction 10% of the energy used during its lifetime.

How many barrels of oil does it take to equal the energy consumed during 10% of a car’s lifetime? Let's see:

In the US, the average car has a median lifetime of 17 years. (Source: Matt Creenson, Associated Press: "Is This the Beginning of the End?" )

On average, a car will consume 750 gallons of gas per year.

17 years x 750 gallons of gas per year = 12,750 gallons of gas consumed during the median lifetime of an American car;

1 gallon of gas = 125,000 BTUs;

12,750 gallons consumed x 125,000 BTUs per gallon = 1,593,750,000 BTU’s consumed during the median lifetime of an American car.

1,593,750,000 x 10% = 15,9375,000 BTUs consumed during the car’s construction;

159,375,000 BTUs consumed during construction divided by 5,800,000 BTU’s in one barrel of oil = slightly more than 27 barrels of oil. Twenty seven barrels of oil (42 gallons of oil per barrel) contain 1,142 gallon of oil.

Michael C. Ruppert, editor of From the Wilderness and author of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of The American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, has estimated the construction of the average car consumes 42 barrels of oil.

text shamelessly stolen from this source.

I still don't understand how all of these deniers get modded so high. They present all kinds of disinformation and logical fallacies. Aren't most slashdotters trained in the ways of logic? Don't most of our jobs depend upon using logic correctly? I love that you mentioned peak-oil, because the predictions made by that model are extremely dire, yet almost no one knows about it. Basically the model asserts that oil is a finite resource and thus the graph of oil production vs. time will be shaped like a bell curve. After the peak, oil demand out paces oil production, and the shit really hits the fan. Oil is so energy dense that it is basically miracle juice, and humans have grown addicted to the stuff. Our economy is almost completely oil dependent, our food (shipping, fertilizing, pesticides), our power (mining, shipping, maintenance), our toys (mining, shipping, plastics), and a lot of people have jobs that require driving to. At this point, our economy consumes 30 billion barrels of oil a year, but we discover less than 4 billion barrels a year. Basically, in the near future peak-oil will cause wall street to collapse (from skyrocketing oil prices) and the power grid will shut down forever. So, all I can suggest is you might want to learn to live without power now before it's too late because at this point there is no stopping the the oil crash. Source.

I like this video.

It basically says that most policy makers don't understand the implications of the exponential growth curve.

I figured out the same thing myself, because I studied maths & physics at uni, and I noticed the same misunderstanding. I remember a Telstra (an australian telco) executive saying that they weren't going to invest in international bandwidth because the "current levels were sufficient to meet demand at the current rate of growth", even though bandwidth demand was clearly following a steep exponential curve.

Australia is still bandwidth starved. 8(

I still don't understand how all of these deniers get modded so high. They present all kinds of disinformation and logical fallacies. Aren't most slashdotters trained in the ways of logic? Don't most of our jobs depend upon using logic correctly? I love that you mentioned peak-oil, because the predictions made by that model are extremely dire, yet almost no one knows about it. Basically the model asserts that oil is a finite resource and thus the graph of oil production vs. time will be shaped like a bell curve. After the peak, oil demand out paces oil production, and the shit really hits the fan. Oil is so energy dense that it is basically miracle juice, and humans have grown addicted to the stuff. Our economy is almost completely oil dependent, our food (shipping, fertilizing, pesticides), our power (mining, shipping, maintenance), our toys (mining, shipping, plastics), and a lot of people have jobs that require driving to. At this point, our economy consumes 30 billion barrels of oil a year, but we discover less than 4 billion barrels a year. Basically, in the near future peak-oil will cause wall street to collapse (from skyrocketing oil prices) and the power grid will shut down forever. So, all I can suggest is you might want to learn to live without power now before it's too late because at this point there is no stopping the the oil crash. Source.

There are other fusion projects available.

Several excellent GoogleTalks available.

The first which is Dr. Busserds Poleywell project:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606&ei=wxkgSqWnPIyEqQP9sZScAQ&q=googletalk+nuclear

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

The second and more exciting is the Focus Fusion project which is a Dense Plasma Focus machine:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&ei=UhogStX8GYuEqQO_tMGiAQ&q=googletalk+focus+fusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus

The second GoogleTalk is more interesting because it covers the other small fusion development areas.

Dense Plasma focus fusion allows you to build a table top machine from which the electricity is drawn off directly, rather than the fusion energy being used to heat water to run turbines as all the other fusion methods would require.

I do not hear about Fusion research in Obama's energy plan, despite his appointment of Dr. Steven Chu to the department of energy.

Small fusion projects have a handicap as expressed in by both proponents in their respective GoogleTalk videos.

These small projects can be run in parallel, and I feel that our time is running out for our civilization as a whole:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Ahimsa.

Nuclear isn't an option by itself.

Estimates for how much coal and uranium the planet would need to sustain itself do not successfully go passed the end of the century. The more conservative exercises place global uranium depletion between the years 2040 and 2050.

(Sources)
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/secondpage.html
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=340148&area=/insight/insight__economy__business/
http://www.amazon.com/End-Oil-Edge-Perilous-World/dp/0618562117/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1213899543&sr=11-1

In my opinion, nothing less than a major, unified effort between several historically autonomous government departments (Department of Energy, Department Of Interior, Department of Agriculture) would be successful in mitigating any damage inflicted by Peak Oil. In the US, we've grown to rely on cheap oil, and merely replacing/offsetting that dependence with another limited resource won't solve the problem.

Call me jaded, but when McCain says he wants to do this with public money, I just see another Neocon Republican initiative to pat themselves and their friends on the back of their bank accounts. I don't see in him the ability to help solve the problem, I just see another reactionary who will blame Iran or Saudi Arabia or whoever for increased oil prices and wield the increasingly imperialistic US Military against it.

-ds

Enough of this Mars Lander NASA JPL stuff. Our collective efforts (by both governments and science) should instead be devoted entirely to worrying about keeping the lights and heat on instead of this pointless intellectual drivel.
I mean, we need to make some leaps and bounds in terms of energy policy, transportation, and even materials engineering, and in *extremely* short order.
Otherwise, in a couple of billion years from now, some alien probe will be landing on earth, trying to figure out if there was every life over here!
But then again,it might be too late already. In which case, these little events serve as convenient distractions for the populace, benefiting only our present governments, so that we keep buying things like good consumers, as if nothing was wrong.

Peak Oil: Oil crash in the USA soon ?
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

will this invention avoid peak oil ?
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

or are we headed for a major energy crisis which will last for decades ?
what's the slashdotter opinion on the subject ?

Please read this:
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

the future does not look good if we don't act now the upcoming oil shortage, let's strive for engergy independence and responsible use of earth's resources:

My question is this: why are they still using gasoline? Even the most conservative estimates give us 50 years at most. A 100-MPG car will only be a stop-gap solution, and it will be years before production can ramp up and start cranking these vehicles out. We need to be investing in alternate forms of fuel, not a 100-MPG car!

President-VICE Richard B. Cheney always runs anti-virus software on his Mac.

You never know when those NSA intercepts of financial market orders in anticipation of the subprime mortgage collapse statements might occur.

Criminally Forever,
George W. Bush

A figure I read in Peak oil awareness claims that to effectively replace gasoline with solar panels, we need to replace the current 10 square kilometers of solar panels in the world today, with 300,000 square kilometers.

Sounds kind of impractical.

I do wonder about this. What is the threshold where people should start to take-up arms?

If the doors to WalMart were locked and there was no food or other goodies on the shelves.

Anything short of that, and the shit train keeps on running. No one cares. Of course, that day is rapidly approaching, so take heart ... sort of.

True, global warming is a myth, but Peak Oil isn't, and Peak Oil will affect us all within the next TEN years, BIG time.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

I'd suggest we all stop taking holidays abroad on aeroplanes, for a start, because when the oil even STARTS to run out, prices of everything will go up insanely in a VERY short time, and the whole world will have to change.

The good thing is that at least it means no more feckless third world parasites will be able to afford to board a plane and invade Europe, against the wishes of the majority of the indigenous population, and we'll happily use our last drops of oil to send their 'brothers' back to live with them.

When the oil runs out, there will be no room in any European country for feckless, criminal third world parasites, and they will ALL be run out, thank god.

I'm right with you on wanting higher oil prices sooner, but maybe for more fundamental reasons. Unless you believe the crazy claims that oil is somehow a renewable resource, then you have to accept that peak oil is coming and coming fast. This only means that oil prices, on the whole will continue to rise, forever, until it is just not affordable for anyone.

Now, here we are in the US with extremely artificially low prices. The cost for a gallon of gas at the station down the street is around $3.15USD right now. If this were to be put into man hours, it would be the equivalent of approximately 500 hours of man powered labor. Just imagine trying to pay a person $3.15 to go slave in a field for 500 hours! This gives some sense of how incredibly undervalued oil currently is. So that £3.72 you're currently paying for petrol is pretty damn ridiculous as well.

We are living in a buyer's market right now, folks, but it's not going to be that way too much longer. The question we have to face is how we're going to respond to it. By artificially keeping the oil prices low, we're just prolonging the inevitable decline, meaning it's going to come harder and faster when we do finally feel its effects.

Unfortunately, most people don't seem to realize how ridiculously dependent on oil our current civilization is. It isn't just transportation; all that cheap food you buy from WalMart? Grown to such excess using fertilizers and pesticides, made from petroleum. That cheap electricity that allows you to run three or four computers nonstop in your home? Depends on where you live, but almost certainly all that grid power comes from burning a fossil fuel. Enjoy plastics? Yep, oil there too.

The longer we keep our gas cheap, the quicker we run out of oil. Even though it's only a small portion of overall consumption, it's at least a good indicator. If we use up all our petroleum sources too quickly, before we have a chance to bootstrap our civilization to alternatives (read: solar power) on a broad enough scale to be self-sustaining, we may not have enough energy left to complete the conversion process. That would spell an almost certain return to agrarian society. In the best case, this would be a gradual slide, slowly decreasing our dependence on unsustainable technology over a generation or two; I don't really care to discuss the worst case. But let's just say, until gas prices start going up slowly and stably (and globally), we don't really have any idea what kind of shock we're going to be in for.

Aren't we supposed to reduce our CO2 releases, fosile fuel consumption and focus on the worlds health instead? I don't see how reducing the prices will help the environmental issues we have at our hands. Here in Norway we pay about $2 for 1 litre of gasoline, it's a high price but lowering wouldnt fix the world at all. You American's are using -TO MUCH- energy, and that is a major problem for USA. Read up on peak oil and environmental issues, gasoline-prices are no issue at all!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil/

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

'Peak Oil' is already upon us according to Big Oil.

Watch this interview with Greg Palast.

"A car that could save the planet--fast"

BAHAHAHAH...

"II. Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles are incapable of replacing more than a small fraction (5 or maybe 10%) of the 700 million internal combustion engine powered cars on the road due to the limits of battery technology. Dr. Walter Youngquist explains:

. . . a gallon of gasoline weighing about 8 pounds has the same energy as one ton of conventional lead-acid storage batteries. Fifteen gallons of gasoline in a car's tank are the energy equal of 15 tons of storage batteries. Even if much improved storage batteries were devised, they cannot compete with gasoline or diesel fuel in energy density. Also, storage batteries become almost useless in very cold weather, storage capacity is limited, and batteries need to be replaced after a few years use at large cost. There is no battery pack which can effectively move heavy farm machinery over miles of farm fields, and no electric battery system seems even remotely able to propel a Boeing 747 14 hours nonstop at 600 miles an hour . . .

Some promising research into new battery technlogies using lithium is being performed, but even the scientists at the forefront of this research admit, "We've got a long way to go."

Assumming these problems away, the construction of an average car also consumes 120,000 gallons of fresh water. Unfortunately, the world is in the midst of a severe water crisis that is only going to get worse in the years to come. Scientists are already warning us to get ready for massive "water wars."

Thus, the only way for us to replace our current fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs with fuel-efficient hybrids or electric vehicles is to seize control of the world's reserves of both oil and fresh water and then divert those resources away from the billions of people who already rely on them.

Even if were willing to undertake such an endeavor, the problem will still not be solved due to a phenomenon known as "Jevon's Paradox," whereby increases in energy efficiency are obliterated by corresponding increases in energy consumption.

The US economy is a good example of Jevon's Paradox in action. Since 1970, we have managed to cut in half the amount of oil necessary to generate a dollar of GDP. At the same time, however, our total level of oil consumption has risen by about fifty percent while our level of natural gas and coal consumption have risen by even more. Thus, despite massive increases in the energy efficiency over the last 35 years, we are more dependent on oil than ever. This trend is unlikely to be abated in a market economy, where the whole point is to make as much money (consume as much energy) as possible." - http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.htm l

He's referring to the fact that our little adventure in Iraq is all about oil, specifically the need to obtain absolute control over the largest supplies we can because of the approach of Peak Oil. Peak Oil just means that supply of oil will start declining (it's not the end of oil, it's the beginning of the end). That doesn't sound so bad until you realize that the supply of oil has been growing (along with demand) since the start of the industrial revolution. After Peak Oil demand will continue to rise...while supply drops. That could trigger resource wars (like Iraq) and chaos around the globe. Oil isn't just about keeping your car running; it's also the fuel of virtually every weapon in our military's arsenal, so getting cheap oil to run our war machines is a matter of national security.

You seem to think this is just a pissing contest among world powers... and maybe that's all Kyoto is, but there are far greater dangers lurking around the corner. It may be alarmist, but it's also realist.

I'm glad someone thought of Peak Oil It seems likely to me that by the time 2012 and 2015 roll around, the price of oil will make these carriers prohibitively expensive to run. Unless they're already nuclear-powered.

Most other ocean transport will either be drastically reduced, or changed over to a non-oil technology. Steamboats?

True. However, the USGS is notorious in peak oil circles for having continued to raise estimates of ultimate recoverables (IE, total production possible over human history) in the continental US, even after domestic production had reached and passed the predicted Hubbert Peak (IE, the halfway mark). The USGS 1972 predicted US-48-UR was a value between 2 and 10 times the value currently accepted. (Hubbard, by contrast, was about 10-30% low... from a range of 15 years pre-peak.) And, if you examine the weasel words in their footnotes, you'll see the USGS and similar agencies effectively admit to fixing their supply predictions to equal the value for predicted demand. We're at the absolute brink of Peak Oil. It would also provide a plausible secondary motivation for the Iranian nuclear program, and explain why they are so adamant about pursuing the atom despite having one of the world's largest oil reserves: they also think that Peak Oil is at hand.

If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world's oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056.

This, however, assumes that oil production can remain steady, and that those reseve estimates are accurate. The premise of the Hubbert peak is that production rates will begin dropping at increasing rates, due to increasing difficulty in extraction.

I don't have time to address the problems with each of your silver linings, but looking at a few Peak Oil sites and a quick search for "Energy Profit Ratio" should leave many people skeptical about them.

Which, in Realpolitik terms, might well justify the invasion of Iraq completely, aside from the stupidity how the invasion was executed (IE, without detailed post-invasion planning or comrehensive allied support). And, no, I am NOT a fan of Bush or the Iraq war... largely because of the aforementioned stupidity in execution.

Is there a reason this particular article made it into the news here? Because I see this kind of thing every day at http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html. In fact, this article: http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&st oryid=975 has a more conservative estimate of peak oil. I don't think anybody can successfully argue that peak oil isn't going to occur, and that it won't have major implications, it's just that Professor Deffeyes isn't the only or even the best source for such information.

One thing a lot of readers also seem to be forgetting is that oil is not just used for energy production. If we do happen to run out of oil, we will also run out of nearly all petroluem based products such as plastics and pesticides. Alternative sources of energy can be researched, and maybe we'll even find something that has an efficiency high enough that it doesn't take more energy to produce than the source gives. However, there is really no replacement for plastics or any of the other petroleum based products that we absolutely rely on.

And in case anyone has sigs turned off, go to this URL: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ Numbers might be slightly off, but the general idea is the same...

There are very pressing reasons why the White House are suppressing *informed* debate on this topic. It's not just about global warming though, it's about global peak oil, and the future of the US dollar. If you allow conversation about global warming, the subject will necessarily soon turn to peak oil - and once that enters the mainstream the dollar is in big trouble.

I have been waiting for a good Slashdot story on energy as I recently found a very interesting site http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ which talks about a subject called Peak Oil, our reliance on oil and how technologies like this will not easily remove our reliance on oil. I would love to hear other /. comments on this.

To me, something like this Fusion reactor sound promising, but there are still so many industries that are reliant on oil, it can be somewhat scary.

Sadly your overconfidence is due to your being completely misinformed on every single point. Sadly whistling in the dark isnt going to get you very far when things go pear shaped. You like many of your countrymen are in denial. A quick course in the relevant facts will cure this. The following will serve as an easy introduction.

Particularly comprehensive, contains many links to unimpeachable sources to corroborate the arguments made here:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

On the problems with the US dollar:

http://www.markswatson.com/Depression1.html

And here is a repudiation of the biodiesel argument from George Monbiot, a one-time proponent of that technology.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5349045-103 677,00.html

While you are briefly considering whether you can be bothered to put in the effort required to replace the opinions you've been fed by establishment sources with something based on genuine facts and figures, consider this: global resource acquisition is a zero sum game. But I am from the UK and in the long term, the worse it goes for the US, very likely the better it will go for us here in Europe. So why am I bothering to try and warn you? Good question. I don't really know - especially given the tendency of some you guys to shoot the messenger.

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/curves.htm

http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/global-effect s/data1.html

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Bah. What a load of self-indulgent shite. Two words, mate. Peak Oil.

Civilization is right now on the verge of falling apart permanently - and we are at the beginning of a century of global war for the very last of the planet's natural resources if the US gets its way - and here you are still drooling over the ultimate symbol of the very overconsumption that brought us to this point of no return. It's obscene.

Save your pennies and buy a good sleeping bag instead. You very soon won't be able to afford the 25 Watts or whatever your fancy keyboard needs to power itself up anyway. With or without an actual computer attached to it :o\

Bottom Line: I am not buying into the "Peak Oil Doomsday Scenario" http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html just yet.

Start drilling now, after the crash, nobody's going to pay $150 a barrel just so you can dig a few holes in your yard. People need that stuff to run their SUVs and yachts, not some stupid drill.

This may be slightly off-topic. but it seems to me that if we improve drilling technology enough to breach the Earth's Mantle, there lies an almost endless supply of heat energy. According to http://zebu.uoregon.edu/ph162/l18.html, the average thermal gradient is 30 degrees C per kilometer, so that at a depth of 20,000 feet, the temperature is 190 degrees C. The problem is that in solids the heat can only be replenished by diffusion, so that steam extraction of heat would occur faster than the heat can be replenished. However, if we could dig deep enough to where heat could be replenished by convection, then the concept of geothermal heat extraction could be feasible.

Another alternative that may currently be feasible is to detonate small H-bombs in deep cavities to replenish the heat. This, in fact, was already done in the PACER project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER. The major problem in the Pacer project was the reliance of plutonium fission bombs to initiate the fusion reaction, which created problems with radioactive waste. If a "Fusion Fuse" other than fission could be devised, we could dispense with esoteric, far-in-the-future methods of controlling fusion above ground, and simply use deep cavities in the Earth to release heat via uncontrolled fusion reactions, and extract the heat.

Bottom Line: I am not buying into the "Peak Oil Doomsday Scenario" http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html just yet.

Design a codec tailored to the VoIP codec used.

But if the codec for a given VoIP system is 2.4 kbps MELP, then you're not going to get much of a tunnel for anything more than text. Even 10 kbps ACELP will be tough.

At least some software is likely to have an API with a plugin. Exploit that.

And watch those plug-ins get severely bandwidth-capped by the TNC dialer.

Also do not forget that we talk about a Microsoft platform, and MSFT are those who are able to squeeze three bugs into 512 bytes of machine code.

That's why the TNC dialer makes sure that your patches are recent before giving you an IP.

Even mere 150 bps is enough for talk, and that is all you need to negotiate where the 400GB hard drive has to be fedexed overnight, where with 24 hours of transport time we approach 40 effective megabits per second. Do you need high bandwidth, or low latency?

What about low cost to participants? How expensive is it to buy hard drives and then mail them back and forth, even as peak oil approaches and shipping companies raise their rates to compensate for fuel costs? And could you manage forums such as Slashdot or your typical phpBB with 150 bps? (I can almost read faster than that, even if your system does get 3:1 gzip compression.) What about news gathering with pictures? That needs decent bandwidth and latency performance. And what about free software collaboration? Can CVS and its successors work well with 24 hour latency?

I agree. I've always felt that hydrogen is just too much of a pain in the ass to make it into wide scale commercial production. It might be useful in niche markets and for niche uses, but as something that's going to stave off Peak Oil I'd say forget it. Biofuels are a much better "drop in replacement".

Interested parties really ought to check out the LATOC primer. The guy's sources are not crackpots or psuedo-prophets predicting the end of the world here, they are investors, scientists, politicians, oil analysts, etc. He builds a strong case as to why hitting the peak of world oil production will return incredible economic and social changes if we aren't ready for it. One way or another, we have to do something--a concentrated effort nationally, even globally if we expect life to continue as we know (and enjoy) it.

It probably would not have a huge impact on folks who already live at the subsistance level (the utterly impoverished), but as oil energy drives everything in our modern economy, even a small drop in production over a sustained period would be highly problematic for industrialized economies--for us. I quote from my own write up on this scenario:

The issue is not one of "running out" [of oil] so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running... A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

The effects of even a small drop in production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%.

Fortunately, previous price shocks were only temporary.

Did that grab your attention? I know it caught mine when I read it. A 5% drop caused prices to go up 400%?! Incredible! And, that's not just gas prices we're talking about here, oil plays a role in virtually every aspect of our economy. Plastics; transportation; medicine; agriculture (think pesticides); you name it... Our economy isn't based on cash, that is only a convenient medium of exchange--our economy is based on energy. Energy that is almost exclusively derived from oil production. Once the global peak is passed and production starts falling off, there's no going back. Meanwhile, demand for oil here and abroad continues to increase at an amazing rate. Sounds like a bad situation no matter how you look at it.

I really don't know where the oil companies are on this. Obviously even an admission of the problem such as Chervon and others have made are at the least an acknowledgement that we're not going to get to continue the course we are on very much longer.

My real frustration in this is, how is it that I have only recently come to a knowledge of this issue when research shows it has been discussed and debated for a loooong time now. Where is the media? They are always so gloomy, you would think this would be something they would love to dwell on...

The answer by all accounts is no. For example:

Biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Biofuels are all grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs [energy returned on energy invested]. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit. In addition, there is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering. As journalist Lee Dye points out in a July 2004 article entitled "Old Policies Make Shift From Foreign Oil Tough:"

. . . relying on corn for our future energy needs would devastate the nation's food production. It takes 11 acres to grow enough corn to fuel one automobile with ethanol for 10,000 miles, or about a year's driving, Pimentel says. That's the amount of land needed to feed seven persons for the same period of time.

And if we decided to power all of our automobiles with ethanol, we would need to cover 97 percent of our land with corn, he adds.

Self replicators usually aren't designed to work completely from raw material feedstocks. Silicon wafer fabrication and etching is pretty specialized; it will be a long while before anything like this can make even a 486 computer. Add in that it's not expected for home use by 2025 and the energy crisis we'll need to face by then; it should be clear that the current music industry skirmish will be settled by other social technologies, one way or another.

I've never seen an analysis of the environmental impact of producing a hybrid vs. producing a non-hybrid, but I'd imagine that, given the higher cost, the production is less environmentally friendly.

I've never seen an analysis of the environmental impact of producing a hybrid vs. producing a non-hybrid, but I'd imagine that, given the higher cost, the production is less environmentally friendly.

Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net/

Well, some people have their own hydrogen-generating machines. Of course, these run on electricity; see, the generation of hydrogen costs more energy than the hydrogen contains - that is, it has an EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) less than one. Whatever you're processing to make hydrogen, you have to use up energy to get the reaction happening. Even if you wanted to do this, every home in the industrialised world would need a hydrogen-generating machine that ran on electricity - the manufacturing of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.

In some places, hydrogen is generated in big power plants and delivered "on tap" to your home or office. This might sound dangerous, but then again, people had gas stoves once, until natural gas production peaked and the price tripled overnight. Again, you'd need to retro-fit an enormous amount of infrastructure in which to deliver the hydrogen - the laying of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.

In any case, we need to do something. I mean, we've got all these gadgets - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials - and they're all powered by billions of hydrogen fuel cells - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials. Even though the average electronic device consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels during its manufacture, and even though the generation of hydrogen costs twice as much energy as the resulting hydrogen contains, people still bought into this sham in droves, believing that it's better for the environment.

In reality, it's made the problem more widespread because we demand more energy than ever before, and it hasn't solved anything because we haven't really found a new source of energy with which to replace fossil fuels. Made me think twice about buying that hybrid car, too.

You try telling people this was a bad idea, though. They'll look up from their plates of raw vegetables and mugs of rain water, and tell you to keep your big mouth shut.

And where did that come from? Who's talking about backyards?

In my part of the country we have a special term for that, "NIMBYism" -- Not In My Back Yard :)

Anyway, try reading this site below. It's ugly and doesn't work well on anything but IE, but it has lots and lots of links to supporting information, and has been quoted by a very conservative senator in his increasingly loud requests for people to consider the real problem:

Life After the Oil Crash

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just a liberal conspiracy. Uh huh. Whatever, read the two pages of the site and decide for yourself based on some real facts. The SUV drivers may or may not be fueling the middle east monetarily, but the collective lack of interest in the whole subject is fueling the downfall of civilization as we know it.

The fact of the matter is that big corps have been getting whatever the hell they want out of the current administration for 5 years now, and you'd think that if they wanted to build refineries they'd damned well find a way to do it. If increasing oil flow was as easy as working around some "environmentalist hippies", they'd have done it a long time ago. They haven't. What do they know that we don't?

'Course if you want to ignore it, go right ahead and carry on. It's likely there's nothing any of us can do to stop it now, especially with China jumping on the oil consumption bandwagon. You can at least try to get yourself positioned though.

Oil offers a magnitude more energy than the next best alternative and you fail to realize that oil is required to create the alternatives. You have to build power plants, build alternative fuel cars, build hydro-electric damns. The energy to do all that has to come from somewhere FIRST before you can even begin to build something new.

A concise outline of the relevant problems can be found here:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

How much energy does it take to break the sound barrier? I'm curious because I know that relatively cheap oil (< $200 per barrel) will end in a few decades, and there don't yet seem to be any renewable jet fuels. After it becomes too expensive to extract oil from the ground, how are airlines going to keep their birds in the air?

The two wars alone probably cost more than we spend on heart disease in a decade. It sucks that a few thousand people died back in 2001, and no one is saying that nothing should be done. But what we should do should be PROPORTIONAL to the threat, and terrorists just aren't that big a threat. Even the small threat they do pose is practically impossible to eliminate, at least by our current measures.

$200B could have solved a lot of the world's problems. We could have built a 300-mile pond in the Sahara, pumped in with water from the Mediterranean, we could have put $80B into cancer research, we could have put $100B into alternative fuel solutions.

We all know what this war is about. Its always been about oil, pure and simple. Everyone knows it. There are no WMD. There never were any WMD. Saudis attacked us on 9/11, and we're still puttering around in Iraq. We're talking about Iran next, and my bets are on Syria after that. Its about controlling the world's "bloodstream", oil.

We should be in Afghanistan, but we know we can't win there. Why? Because 20 years ago, the United States funded, armed and trained the Al Queda to help them eradicate Russia from Afghanistan. They were successful, of course.

For another interesting perspective, read these two pages. The part I find best out of that material is:

The US government has been aware of Peak Oil since at least 1977 and has been actively planning for this crisis for over 30 years.

Three decades of careful, plotting analysis has yielded a comprehensive, sophisticated, and multi-faceted plan in which military force will be used to secure and control the globe's energy resources. This plan is simplistically, but not altogether inaccurately - known as "Go to War to Get Oil."

This strategy was publicly announced in April 2001, when a report commissioned by Dick Cheney was released. According to the report, entitled Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, the US is facing the biggest energy crisis in history and that the crisis requires "a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy."

Another thing to note is that we've done this terrorist attack planning before, back in the early 60's. Anyone remember Operation Northwoods? Scary stuff, how closely it parallels 9/11.

Don't worry, Peak Oil production comes after Sasquatch goes on tour with Elvis and the Aliens, so you'll have plenty of warning.

I suggest you read this, and pay special attention to the bits where they cite conservatives like Dick Cheney. They managed to convince me of their credibility, at least.

"truth is we're in for a moderate price climb, but it'll result in a pardigm shift."

With all due respect, I'd like to see you prove that statement.

As former CEO of Haliburton, and now for better or worse, Vice President, consider what Dick Cheney had to say on the matter in a 1999 speech:

"By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we will need on the order of anadditional 50 million barrels a day."

Only now, I believe the situation is worse.

Checkout this site for a viewpoint that differs. They are too apocolyptic for me, but it provides some good links and interesting data.

I believe that there will be some major changes, but not pandaemonium, and yes a change to alternate energy sources. I also believe that based on the data that is available--all indicators point to the fact that we have indeed reached peak oil (see the above site for more info).

There are a couple of wildcards, however. Do a search for Alan Chamberlin, Eden Energy or The Great Basin (in Nevada/Utah). Chamberlin is a geologist who believes to have found oil prospects in Nevada that exceed even Saudi reserves and has spent the last 20 years of his life (privately) on this quest after leaving Exxon, Gulf and Marathon. While major corporations such as Shell Oil spent nearly $200 million a half century ago sampling and measuring the area, then later abandoning it (along with others), advances in geological analysis might prove they left to soon. I recently stumbled across some of Dr. Chamerlin's literature and it was an interesting read. His company Eden Enegy, purchased 210,000 acres at the epicenter of the basin and begin drilling this fall. Just a few months ago, a company known as Wolverine announced a prospect on the eastern edge of the basin estimated at ~1 billion barrels that they have already drilled to success (they sat on this for nearly a year allegedly, as they purchased more property).

In any case, there is a lot of oil activity now going on in that area and my whole point is to illustrate that we may have a lot more petrolium than the current status quo agreement leads you to believe. I also believe that demand will exceed our expectations (led by China), along with environmental impact and that the switch to alternative energies might be more abrupt and driven by a greater necessity than a "gradual shift".

Some food for thought.

word economy would collapse if the gas would cost twice as much as it is now.
oil is not just used to run car,
its used to generate electricity, to make plastic, to run many factories.
an analogy would be the human body: which contains 70% water.
now, you don't need to loose all 70% to die, 10-15% would be enough.
read this fine article for more about it.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

any resource with an unlimited supply is better that any resource with a limited supply in the long run.
sooner than later, the limited supply would end, and the prices would exceed the "expensive" prices of the unlimited supply resource production.
if hydrogen fuel costs now 20$ a gallon, its only because of in efficient methods of producing/storing it, this will be solved.
but nothing will solve the oil problem other than a time machine.

There won't be enough energy to drive this vision of the future. http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ will show you why.