Peak oil and societal decline... How soon? How bad?

[DireStrike]

How soon will it happen and how bad will it be?

[Birthmark]

1. Never.

[DireStrike]

2. Seriously? Do you think Oil is abiotic then?

Or was that a joke?

[Birthmark]

6. Not a joke.

I just don't think that Peak Oil is a real problem. Oil will definitely get more expensive, but alternatives will take up the slack and eventually replace it.

[Deja Q]

9. That's optimistic.

If it takes 11 square miles of land to put up a new type of solar-based energy collector to match the power of the Hoover dam, we'll run out of space to put people, trees, farmland...

And it only works when the sun is shining.

Biofuel is nice, except we have to grow it. With current land prices going for housing development, farmers are selling their land because farming is not profitable.

Not to forget the amount of oil used in creating these alternate sources.

The big problem is ultimately transportation, which is where 67% of our oil need comes from.

Not to mention the stress placed on an already overstressed society.

[Birthmark]

14. I'm an optimistic guy.

Not only that, but I've heard enough end of civilization stories in my life that I am little affected by them anymore.

[AllyCat]

41. Don't you think that an increase in demand for biomass..

...would drive UP the prices of open space and encourage development in cities instead? This would especially be true if we could get off our stupid seats and decriminalize the growing of commercial grade hemp. Hemp oil is a decent source for bio-diesel. There is no reason to not use wind power where possible and diversifying our power sources is the best way to handle land use issues. That, and just using our muscles once in awhile to get the job done.

[cavanaghjam]

10. You may well be right

and I hope you are. However, there remains the facts that, one, overhaul of our energy deliver systems will take some good amount of time, and, two, we may indeed be broke by then.

[Birthmark]

15. I wonder if anyone has considered...

...that even if Peak Oil is true, that it may actually be a benefit rather than a catastrophe? For instance, what if everyone had their own home power supply - windmills, or solar panels, whatever? This would decentralize our electrical infrastructure and eliminate a rather costly bill that we all currently pay. That alone would free up a pretty good amount of energy. If we throw in better mass transportation on top of that, we can eliminate more wasted energy...and clean up the environment, no?

[Deja Q]

16. Awesome point. Except the energy conglomerate would despise it.

Our society's greed is the underlying problem, regardless of symptom or solution.

[Birthmark]

17. True, but if we're running out of oil

Then they are running out of political power as well. That is, unless they can come up with a solution. Looks like win-win to me.

[Deja Q]

11. If oil is mineral and not liquid fossil, how come

there's never been a reported gusher that was created out of its own accord? People always have to drill for it?

Maybe it is mineral and slowly regenerates. It's still a moot point. We are using far more than what can be replenished.

Our society, for lack of more apropos term, is headed for disaster. Thank money and greed.

[Delphinus]

20. "We are using far more than what can be replenished."

HypnoToad, this statement reminds me of the AP story in October titled, Consumption of Resources Outstripping Planet's Ability to Cope by Jonathan Fowler. Good article, but I'm afraid no one listened.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

31. A MUST READ > The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann

in 10 to 15 years people in the US and worldwide will start dying by the millions because big agri farms and getting food to market will be impossible because of the lack and price of oil...tribism and home farming & knowledge of proper canning will be all that matters..educate yourselves while you still can

[rustydad]

32. Oil

Actually almost all of the oil created by decomposition of organic materials has leaked away into the biosphere to be used by some organism or other. Here in So-Cal the Indians used seeping oil to seal their plank canoes. It is highly unlikely, by the way, that they burned it. It stinks compared to wood in a fire. Ad biotic oil is a myth and like the "hydrogen economy" is a diversion from the issue of adjusting to a world with less and less oil and higher and higher prices. Unless you own an oil well or two your world (mine too) is going to change radically. And if we burn coal instead we are literally toast along with everything else on this planet. Bob

[barb162]

35. the hydrogen economy won't work, per people I know who have

studied it. Coal pollutes like crazy, both forms of it. The fact is, oil is about all we have and we should be treating it as the precious commodity it is;it pains me to see SUVs wasting it. Ten or less years from now, people will say, why did the people back then WASTE like they did.

[havocmom]

3. Learn how to do some gardening. Save seeds. Fuel cost = high food cost

And learn to do more with less. I wouldn't go into a 5 year contract for the purchase of a new car, unless it got really good milage on sunshine.

[havocmom]

4. Might wanna think about water and food too.

And the fact that more than 40% of the food sold in the US comes from other nations. Recently (like last week, I believe) Congress dropped the requirement for labeling origins of food products, so look for that 40% number to climb fast, but unnoticed.

If you think having foreign cartels rule your gas tank is bad, think seriously about food production, patented seeds and private ownership of water. How do you feel about Soylent Green?

[Deja Q]

12. Soylent Green? As I recall,

it varies from person to person. :evilgrin:

[meow mix]

18. roving bands of cannibals..

eeps

[cavanaghjam]

5. There's a good chance

it's already started given what is almost certainly an overstatement of oil reserves by major oil companies to inflate their stock prices. Time for major project to ramp up biodiesel and hydrogen programs; time also to end the tier 2 pollution laws that effectively hamper diesel use in the U.S. This is something that would bring major benefits in a year. Europe is already enjoying the benefits of new generation diesel autos that get 60 mpg. Odds of that happening with two oil guys in WH? Nil.

[Psephos]

7. Agreed - more diesel equals less total oil consumed

The newer automotive diesel technologies are much cleaner than popular opinion supposes, and in several ways, cleaner than gasoline combustion. Because diesel engines extract more of the energy contained in fuel (i.e., they are more efficient), you add less total greenhouse gas to the atmosphere per mile traveled compared to a gasoline engine.

Using biodiesel instead of dinodiesel also takes a bite out of oil consumption. Almost any waste vegetable oil can be converted for fuel use through a simple process.

[cavanaghjam]

8. Right you are.

Try convincing Americans with their image of diesels as stodgy, smelly and smoking etched in their calcine brains that diesels are less contributive to greenhouse gasses. As I said, immediate repudiation of the tier two provisions are necessary to begin building new refineries and get those turbocharged diesel pocket rockets that the Europeans have been digging for a while onto the streets of the U.S. Then the image will change.

[BiggJawn]

22. I'd like to see a "clean" Diesel.

I've heard of them, but all I ever see, hear, and smell around here are those rattling, smoking, stink machines.

And I question the need to have 600 cubic inches of Catty-piller's finest to move a 1/2 ton truck that never carries anything heavier than it's 350 pound driver and his case of Bud....

I really think Murkans would not be interested in a Diesel that doesn't stink and make you deaf. Something about little boys and Things that Make Noise, I think....

But to get back to the original question, when "The Juice" does run out, it's gonna get really ugly....

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BiggJawn]

39. Oh, we got those here, too.

They still sound like all the hammers of Hell going at it under the hood...
Not much smoke, though...

[Deja Q]

13. Except we need petrochemical fertilizers to grow the biodiesel fuel

Vicious circle. Especially in overworked fields.

Unless the theory that algae can be used as fuel is true, but even then don't expect anything unless the oil cartel ensures its continued existence. And they have the money and power.

[slaveplanet]

19. listen here

before you vote in this poll :puke:

The Secret Heart of 9/11
and The Peak Oil Scam

http://www.kathymcmahon.utvinternet.com/mrn/audio/InsideTrackNews040909.zip

[sangh0]

21. Push poll

No choice for "never gonna happen" or "after 10 years"

[Thoth]

23. If you look at the peak oil graph at...

http://www.peakoil.net

you'll see that we're very close to the peak, but the initial decline will be a sliding plateau downward. The real trouble will begin when that plateau becomes a cliff, probably between 2010 and 2015. That's when the scenarios described in http://www.endofsuburbia.com will become particularly dire. We have a few years to prepare for the worst, but not much more.

[fortyfeetunder]

24. Gov't support of energy conservation

IIRC the US took a big step backwards in the early 80s when the energy conservation R&D budget took a steep nosedive in the shadow of an oil glut. Will we recover in time for a decline in oil supply? I am not optimistic about it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. Rule #1: Don't live in the suburbs

The way of life there is completely unsustainable without cheap oil.

Our cities and small towns were built before the age of the automobile, so they will be able to cope better.

[Thoth]

26. Kick. Important poll. n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

27. I am actually hopeful about this. Peak Oil means opportunity.

At our core, we're a capitalist society. While there appears to be no viable alternative to fossil fuels now (whether by design by fact), I am actually hopeful that when it gets bad enough someone - likely some big corporation - will launch a viable, sustainable alternate fuel technology. The market will be ready and the profits for the first-to-market will be huge.

My hope is that it will come from a socially responsible organization, one motivated by profit (nothing wrong with that) but guided by proper ethical and moral values. (I know, my rose colored glasses may need some lens cleaner.)

My only real fear is that the technology will not be American. If it is not, then we're collectively fucked as we become a nation dependent on the technology of others for a core need ...... and *that* would be a first.

[barb162]

28. "viable, sustainable alternate fuel technology" large corps. have

been looking for years for this. Don't think it will happen. No new technology hads been developed for decades now and a lot of people have been working on it.

[Stinky The Clown]

34. The definition of "viable" has to be revisited

Cheap (relatively speaking) oil made other technologies too expensive. As cheap oil gives way to expensive oil, gives was to scare oil, other technologies will, indeed become viable.

Perhaps it will one technology for cars, another for home heating, another for .... whatever.

Technology moves at a geometric (as opposed to arithmetric) rate so who can say what 10 years will bring.

[Peak_Oil]

36. Not gonna happen.

There's nothing that will take the place of oil. Get used to riding your bike everywhere you go. Seriously.

There is almost no upside to peak oil. The one good thing is we may slow down in our pollution of the Earth. That's a possible good thing. We will probably pollute with something else, though. We'll burn coal which releases mercury into the air. Think mercury poison.

We are almost at the end of economic growth. This is going to be a disaster worse than 1929 because there's nothing that will pull us out of it.

Throw this on the fire too. Russia has a lot of oil, as does the Middle East. The US is going to be screwed long before Russia and the ME. Think they might want to take a little revenge on us as we decline? I do. I think it's possible that Russia and Iraq/Iran will roll all over us as our military becomes increasingly unable to defend us. Our army is too dependant on cheap oil to continue to function effectively.

It was a mistake of uncalculable stupidity to build our economy to be reliant on a resource we don't even have here at home. In the early 70's, the leadership of the US knew this was going to happen one day. How incredibly shortsighted of them to continue down this path.

And guess what? Neither the Democratic nor Republican parties have any plan other than kicking ass and taking names to get us out of this. Horrible mistake. We should have taken that $200 billion and built a solar Saudi Arabia in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Southern California. Then, we could have built a wind-powered Saudi Arabia in North Dakota, among other places. This would have been enough to power us for many many years.

This is, without a doubt, the end of the US as a superpower. If we voluntarily demoted ourselves to the status of Fellow World Citizens, then perhaps the rest of the world would leave us be. With a moronic superchimp like Bush at the helm, we'll (continue to) be the big assholes of the planet, throwing our weight around, and fucking up what could be salvaged.

Hubris.

On technology. Technology cannot create power, merely harvest it. Unless we come up with a technology that will harvest enough power to allow our economy to grow...

On hydrogen. I met with one of Schwartzenpfeffer's energy cabinet members. He told me that hydrogen vehicles will come online in three generations. Not years, not decades... generations. I'd just ignore this topic as being unachievable.

On conservation/efficiency. We could cut our oil usage in half. If we did, it would leave a 15% cushion in oil production worldwide, assuming we achieved this goal instantaneously. Oil prices would crash, and the collective 2.4 billion population of India and China would continue to ramp up their oil usage to make up the difference. Since the population of these two countries is ten times our population, if they upped their usage by 10%, that would wipe out our 50% reduction.

US -- 67.85 barrels per day per 1000 people
China -- 3.8 barrels per day per 1000 people
India -- 1.9 barrels per day per 1000 people

China gets to 5 bpd/1000 and India gets to 2.2 bpd/1000 people, then we're right back to zero cushion.

There are forces at work here that are beyond our control. We need to stop using oil. The sooner the better.

Also, I have some news for the people in their 50's, 60's, and beyond. I'm starting to get pissed off at you guys. You were in your 20's and 30's when oil peaked in the US. You knew something like this would happen some day. You saw Carter on TV talking about it. I was not a decision maker in building our economy and infrastructure on a resource that has been in decline in this country for 30 years. Why didn't anybody DO anything about this? I'm stuck in a world built for something that isn't going to be here anymore. I really hope the party was worth it, cause I'm stuck cleaning up after your shit.

I've left my career as a stockbroker to pursue nursing. It's my intention that as soon as I have my credentials, I'll seek employment at the worst county hospital I can find. I want gunshot wounds, messy infections, stinky bums, broken bones, non-sterile conditions, etc. I have a funny feeling that I'll become extremely valuable in the future with those skills.

But hey, maybe the Mr. Fusion will just suddenly pop into being tomorrow afternoon before dinner, and I'll plug one into my flying car and the robot servants will go shopping for me.

[burrowowl]

38. I'm am a babyboomer

and it was us who started the eco and green thing. Carter started a policy that would have helped, but Raygun destroyed it. Took the Carter installed solar panels off the WH, symbolic. I'll bet alot of you voted for Raygun because he was so-sweeet!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. Another baby boomer here

The only Republican I ever voted for was Mark Hatfield, and he's a big booster of non-automotive transportation.

I lived in Portland for ten years without a car, and even here, I'm "car lite" rather than a heavy driver like almost everyone else in the Twin Cities.

One reason I enjoy Japan so much is that despite being an auto producing nation, they have an infrastructure that makes it easy not to drive, and they are continuing to improve their urban transit and inter-city rail systems while our Congress is still wondering whether it's worth keeping Amtrak alive. :grr;

[slaveplanet]

40. Those Germans sure were effective

warriors , taking on the world with their bicycles....they weren't exactly sitting on gushers...Makes you wonder how things like that can happen? does it not.....(Leuna facility)

This fear game has been played before ....remember the 70'S....is every generation going to fall for it?

They've been busy capping off productive wells all over the United states for the past 30 years. Some estimates say that there is enough in Alaska to run the US at present consumption for the next 100
years without a drop of imports....why would they be capping all those productive wells?

Sure everything is finite , but If you look at who is shouting loudest,
Who stands to gain, who has vested interest in just the right timing to stampede the herd.... It should give you pause


too bad the green party activist that wrote this just happened to keel over from West Nile virus after speaking out about this stuff...more coincidence theory...
http://bcpeace.vegdot.org/story/2003/12/4/121758/112


meanwhile the petrochemical and big pharma clock up epic profits .....

They'll roll out peak oil in the next 5-10 years allright...but It won't be for the lack of oil... and yes, it will be ugly

[barb162]

45. Alaska has how much oil? Two month supply in ANWR

[barb162]

46. agree with most of your comments but have a problem with the

comments about people in 50s and 60s. You know what, every house on my block has one or two SUVs except mine. Most of the people around here have gas guzzlers. I drive a compact car that gets great mileage. Most people today don't give a shit or are in denial about peak oil and always have been. People just think something will magically come out of science or technology, some new invention. I really don't know what it will take to get people TODAY to wake up about peak oil. People today are still wasting oil like crazy; it just isn't the older people.

"I'm stuck in a world built for something that isn't going to be here anymore" And we still can't seem to change it even today, can we, despite all the evidence out there?

[Peak_Oil]

47. I do what I can today

to educate my friends and family, and I try to change my habits today. Here's what I've done in the last week.

1. Rode my bike to my girl's place
2. Ate salad instead of meat a couple extra times this week
3. Switched from standard to rechargeable batteries
4. Marched in the Pasadena Doo Dah parade with the Pasadena Peakers. Rode my bike to that, too.
5. Got my hands on a digital camera for further publicity of an End of Suburbia screening

That's what I did this week. Next time I make a Costco run, I'm picking up a dozen compact flourescent light bulbs to replace the ones in all my fixtures and keep a few in reserve

Also, selling my totally bitchin amp and replacing it with a little dinky plastic 15 watt amp. The bottom end is gonna suffer, but it sucks down much less current.

I don't focus on the societal level. I do what I can today, right now, to make some kind of positive change. That's what the Dali Lama does too. Of course, a lot more people listen to him than listen to me.

And I reserve the right to be pissed. Sorry if that rubs you the wrong way, but I'm just starting to see how this all came together. I'm not pissed at you personally, but more at a collective group of people who had a really great time in the richest empire ever built, and didn't realize it was going to end when we ran out of oil.

I am conscious that every mile I drive today is a mile my children will never drive.

[barb162]

37. "other technologies will indeed become viable"

Above point is probably fantasy, pie in the sky. There is a fallacy that because we always thought of something before, we will keep being able to do that. We will have to go heavy into nuclear again for some energy. Oil will become super expensive and at some point be gone. Natural gas is also become rare.

For some reason, people can't understand or deal with the fact that once oil is gone that's it and other technologies we have now (solar, wind, hydro) together don't even come close to providing what a bit of oil provides.

I think we will be cutting down and burning the wood in our national forests too somewhere farther along the line. And when that's gone, oops. There will be big wars, millions dead, people scrambling to keep warm, etc.

I think this past summer when the Saudis said they couldn't produce more than they were was a wakeup call but I don't know how many heard it as such. Meanwhile China will keep up its voracious need for more energy and none of the peak oil models really deal with growing worldwide demand. The saudi fields are also getting old. We may have already hit the peak but not have realized it.

[Massacure]

29. 5 years bad managable, 10 years really bad.

[Thoth]

30. Check out the ASPO graph for yourself...

http://www.peakoil.net/uhdsg/Default.htm

They now predict global peak around 2006 (for all liquids). I guess we live in interesting times ;-)

[tom_paine]

42. I couldn't vote, as I believe 11-20 years, very bad.

[toddaa]

43. Strange optimism

Define bad? Bad as in corporations and governments crumble and fall? This is bad? Yes, population is going to take a downturn. As horrible as it is to think of that, it's a natural occurrence when resources become scarce. Nature always wins.

I don't like the thought of people dying miserable deaths, but I also cannot fathom a case were humans can triumph over nature and frankly I don't want to live in such a world.

In the end, we'll muddle through.

[number6]

48. kick

:)