In one sense, we have already passed peak oil. Deal with it.

[dawg]

I believe the worldwide volume of easily-recoverable petroleum has reached a peak that will never be surpassed. We may be able, through advances in technology, to achieve a slightly increased level of total worldwide petroleum production by exploiting Canada's vast tar sands and by doing even more deep water drilling. But the century-long party of free bubble-up is over.

Of course, we have a few more years to live in denial of that.

Liberals will blame the oil companies for price-gouging, republican politicians for using their positions to reward Arab dictators with whom they have cozy relations, and, of course Wall Street speculators for driving up the price of oil.

Conservatives will blame liberals for not letting the oil companies drill baby drill, the environmentalists for not letting us drill in all those acres of arctic wasteland, and Ben Bernanke for driving up the price of oil by "printing" money.

But the fact is, cheap oil is now a thing of the past (except during the occasional worldwide recession when demand is sufficiently depressed). And although our government will *not* be responding to this in a timely or intelligent manner, we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable.

[taught_me_patience]

1. Completely agree

I figured it out several years ago when "the biggest discovery of the last thirty years" amounted to one year of world demand. We'll look back in 30 years and shake our heads at how we wasted this precious, finite, resource.

[RC]

2. How many barrels of oil has the US military burned through in Iraqi?

Not counting what Saddam set on fire.

[Ezlivin]

3. And cargo-cultists demand that technology deliver a substitute

It's humor of the blackest kind to hear people voice their faith in a technological solution for dwindling oil supplies.

Anyone who has done the research will come to appreciate two things: 1) How very special oil is as a energy source, and; 2) The impossibility of creating a substitute. That's not to mean that we can't and shouldn't develop alternate forms of energy production. But nothing we currently have or that's under consideration is a true replacement for oil. Even with all of our alternate energy fantasies realized we will still have to drastically reduce our energy usage.

Unfortunately this country did not heed the call of President Carter and we've let 30 years slip by without focusing on alternate energy. I suspect that we've waited too long to "save" our culture from the bleak future that awaits it.