My neigbor purchased an 8 cylinder cheverolet 20 years ago. This vehicle averaged 70 miles per gallon. Not only did the dealership offer the man anything on the lot in exchange, but the CHRYSLER company, whom the government bailed out in the 80's tried to retrieve this "test car" that should have not slipped into the market. Does it not seem that our problem is already solved? Who is willing to stand up to the oil companies? Do they have more money and power than drug lords? People have been missing for less. They are not willing to let go of there riches no matter what the cost to human kind. And I'm not talking of global warming or natural habitats for endangered species, I'm speaking of the average American trying to place food on the table and shelter over there head. The prices are unfounded. Any mechanical engineer(intelligent of course) can tell you it can be done, but are they willing to lose there lives over the easiest solution?

mirf59 November 5th, 2007 3:09 pm

"Fossil fuels are obviously a finite resource, but we should remember that peak oil hysterics are part of right wing fear tactics and are used as justification for more war and defense spending."

Yes, and along with the justification for more war and defense spending, it's also a way to keep oil prices high to pick the pockets of average Americans while the profits get tranferred to Wall Street.

Meanwhile, the campaign contributions to the serpents on Capitol Hill increase while the middle class is being burried along with the poor.

"Mission Accomplished"!

"There is no panacea to the problem. To replace the equivalent amount of energy of fossil fuel with agricultural products is fantasy. You've been smoking to much hemp." - willo

And then LOSERS on the left wonder why the "right" RAPES and FUCKS them down to the ground. SpankinRankin is correct about the "doom and gloom" bullshit fatigue. Disrespecting real solutions is how the left will continue to LOSE LOSE LOSE. Hey, maybe it's true that producing oil out of hemp will take more labor and may not sustain the overpopulated mass that petroleum has successfully done despite the fact that it requires no petroleum, less land to grow, yields far more than petroleum in return in the long run, has 25000 uses and has been proven to be more durable, etc ... You still have a chance to fight for fuel efficient vehicles and bring back the real engines that ran efficiently on plant fuels before Big Oil HIJACKED the engine and got it redesigned to depend only on petroleum. But that doesn't seem to get through your brain DAMAGED skull so keep lying that hemp is "dangerous" despite the fact that tobacco and alcohol cause massive deaths and other casualties every year despite being "legal" whereas hemp causes NONE.

doc j--Thanks, I had forgotten about the Bardi paper.
JohnR--Peak Oil in principle is very basic: When about half the endowment of oil from any field has been extracted, its peak output is reached, and further extraction rates will decline at a predictible rate, measured as a percent, until the field no longer yields any oil. Displayed as a graph, it forms a bell curve, as depicted by the very complex one showing the global endowment at the top of ASPO-International's current monthly newsletter, http://www.aspo-ireland.org/contentFiles/newsletterPDFs/newsletter83_200711.pdf As for a book that is a good primer, Deffeyes book, "Hubbert's Peak," is well written; here's a link to his site for that and his latest book on the subject, http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/ Richard Heinberg has also written a series of books, the first being "The Party's Over," which is also very good, http://www.richardheinberg.com/partys-over.html

Another website with lots of articles and videos is http://globalpublicmedia.com/ and another organization not yet mentioned is the Post Carbon Institute, which is closely associated with global public media, http://postcarbon.org/

As for the very angry men up thread, their energy would be better spent by trying to create solutions for themselves, families, and communities. Peak Oil and Climate Change are NOT about politics; they are about very REAL challenges we ALL need to face because we have entered into OverShoot. As willo notes above, "There is no panacea to the problem,
;" ASPO-USA's mantra is there's no Silver Bullet, just many silver bbs. The IEA--International Energy Agency--for years has put forth very rosey projections for energy availablity, but is about to change its tune. The CEOs of several National and International oil companies have stated peak is here now. There is a small but growing Peak Oil Caucus in the House, but their work is difficult indeed because we've been enculturated/socilaized to always expect more/growth, which makes it hard to tell people they MUST now get by with less.

So as with climate change, Peak Oil is first a problem of awareness, then a problem of culture. Both crises have denialists, but their arguments are with the planet, not with those of us who recognize and understand we've gone past many limits. Peak Oil IS a PROVEN theory (as are all true theories); it is not a hunch or guess; it happens for each individual field and it will happen for the planet as a whole. The question till now has been When? so we might plan ahead. Unfortunately, it appears that the answer is NOW; so, we've squandered almost 30 years since Carter's 1979 speech on the need to conserve and diversify our energy sources away from finite fossil fuels.

There is no panacea to the problem. To replace the equivalent amount of energy of fossil fuel with agricultural products is fantasy. You've been smoking to much hemp.
Yes we should grow hemp but seriously, how much acreage of hemp would it take to power your average SUV for a year. Now multiply that by 100 million.
We have to change the way we live. Live by where you work. Vehicle efficiency. We've been terribly wastefull. It's a little bit late in the game but we should make what ever effort we can to move in the proper direction.

The worst part of peak oil is America, where people live in a festering sea of unsustainabiliy. America is 1.8% local, that is catastrophic. A nation should be at least minimum, 30% local. America is the most unlocal place on earth. How could you have let the consolidation take over your neighborhoods? You assholes!!!!!!

How do we measure how much oil is still in the ground? It's not enough for me to read "experts say" we've reached peak oil production. Do we trust the Saudis to tell us the truth about their remaining reserves? Does all this talk about abiotic oil mean it is a renewable resource? I know very little about this subject, but it will be a huge factor in determining future history in conjunction with climate change. But it's too complex for me to figure out.

Its OK to be a little hysterical over Peak Oil. The party is almost
over. The US faces a double whammy. We no longer produce and export sufficient goods to pay for our oil imports. We just push papers, buy and sell stuff, fight wars, drive around in circles, heat/cool/light our fancy homes and print lots of increasingly worthless money.

It wouldn't be surprising if OPEC countries take a look at their reserves and decide how many years they want them to last, and maybe give better prices to needy third world countries. Even the "easy" coal is gone. The wide and shallow seams have been mined and old uneconomic mines are being reopened. The Canadian tar sands are abundant but expensive, and for some reason initiatives to further integrate North American economies are becoming controversial up there. Hmmm.

All of these problems coming together at the same time will make this century "interesting". Global warming and climate change, peak oil, draining the southwest aquifers, over population and immigration, our shrinking middle class, and huge negative trade imbalances.

We need to take a look at the French breeder reactor program that uses less fuel and produces far less radioactive waste than American reactors. Its curious we are afraid of nuclear fuel confined to a well engineered system but can consider using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. If we don't replace fossil fuels with something that can produce substantial amounts of useful energy, we will have continued climate change, poverty, hunger, war and worse.

karlof1: well said.

endCapitalism wrote:
"The whole theory of peak oil is based on the common assumption that oil is a fossil fuel."

Not true. The idea that oil is abiotic rather than a fossil fuel is actually quite compatible with the theory of peak oil, as Professor Ugo Bardi shows in 'Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics?', an article possessed of that rarest combination of virtues, viz. genuine scientific insight and accessibility to a lay audience:
http://energybulletin.net/2377.html

Bardi points out that we need to distinguish between "strong" and "weak" versions of the theory of abiotic oil. Both versions maintain that petroleum is formed from the reaction of carbonates with water and iron oxide in the Earth's mantle. But the "strong" version, which is incompatible with peak oil, is demonstrably false, while the "weak" version, though it MIGHT conceivably be true, is fully compatible with peak oil. As Bardi says:

"What is the relevance of the abiotic theory in practice? The answer is "none." The "strong" version is false, so it is irrelevant by definition. The "weak" version, instead, would be irrelevant in practice, even if it were true. It would change a number of chapters of geology textbooks, but it would have no effect on the impending oil peak."

Bardi ends his piece with a quotation from Colin Campbell:

"Oil is ultimately controlled by events in the geological past which are immune to politics."

Had the advice implicit in this observation been taken seriously, a great deal of misspent energy, both intellectual and mineral, might have been saved. Back in late September, I cringed in pain over an article in Asia Times Online by the otherwise commendable F William Engdahl (cited approvingly by "witness", above), which argues that peak oil is a myth because ...drumroll... oil is abiotic. Had he bothered to familiarize himself with the the distinction drawn by Bardi, Engdahl would have known better. And then there's Greg Palast, whose tendentious, scientifically purblind attack on peak oil was admirably rebutted by Richard Heinberg in his 'Open Letter to Greg Palast':
http://energybulletin.net/17914.html

Engdahl and Palast -- two objects lessons in what happens when smart people with the best intentions let tomfoolery trump truth.

Galen November 6th, 2007 2:33 am

"Lobo: We can argue the merits and flaws of H2 all day. And in the end, The oil is still gone, Biofuels and H2 are PR poppycock that can't meet even a fraction of the world's demand for fuel, and technological civilization is resigned to the dustbin of history."

Yes energy is but one problem of many that we face but it is one that is solvable with hydrogen. All that has to be done is to build solar and wind energy electrical plants along the coast line of the U.S. to be used to extract hydrogen from sea water and we can produce all of the energy we need.

Lobo Gris

Lobo: We can argue the merits and flaws of H2 all day. And in the end, The oil is still gone, Biofuels and H2 are PR poppycock that can't meet even a fraction of the world's demand for fuel, and technological civilization is resigned to the dustbin of history.

And we haven't even touched on what the hell the giant agri-businesses will use for fertilizers and pesticides to feed our over-populated world. Nor what we will do as the oceans are fished past the point of any possible recovery. Or fresh water becoming scarcer and scarcer. These are all symptoms of a coming scenario of 'overshoot and collapse' as posited by the Union of Concerned Scientists over ten years ago.

The entire world is looking straight down the bore of a VERY large shotgun.

I am not trying to be alarmist, or a doomspaeker, but dammit people!! WAKE UP!! Play time is over!!

Yes, the techno toys were fun. Yes, we can keep people alive longer and (relatively) healthier.

But we only have ONE PLANET! And no way off it. And our present way of living DEMANDS the resources of AT LEAST seven Earth type planets. Seen any close by? No? So suck it up, princess. Learn to make do or do without.

Galen November 6th, 2007 2:10 am

"Lobo: Hydrogen is a great energy carrier,"

Hydrogen is not an energy carrier, it is a combustible gas the same as natural gas and propane or butane are which can be burned directly as a fuel.

Lobo Gris

templer November 6th, 2007 2:12 am

"Lobo Gris - The energy you have invest in order to break the Hydrogen from water , will be equal or greater than the energy you will get by burning the Hydrogen, or by use it in fuel cell"

Another red herring argument. We shouldn't be using fuel just because we get more energy out than the energy we put in to get it.

A. Hydrogen is a zero pollution fuel. Want to save the planet from the coming disaster of global warming? Burn hydrogen for fuel, the ONLY by-product is water. No global warming gases like CO2 that you get from burning fossil fuels.

B. Oil is a finite resource. Assuming that we have already reached peak oil or are close to it oil will only get more scarce and expensive. The world's oceans are 2/3 hydrogen and they cover 70% of the word's surface. Want energy independence and a stable price for a thousand years, hydrogen is the answer.

Lobo Gris

Galen November 6th, 2007 2:10 am

Lobo: Hydrogen is a great energy carrier

Hydrogen is not an energy carrier it is an energy source the same as natural gas, propane, gasoline, or diesel fuel is. IT CAN BE BURNED DIRECTLY JUST AS ANY OTHER FUEL CAN.

As for problems, tell the guys that converted a Hummer to run on it and drove it across country. The only restriction was that they had to refuel at industrial supply houses because that was the only place hydrogen is available right now.

For years out west we have been running vehicles on propane (a another combustible gas) because it is cheaper than gasoline.

Lobo Gris

Lobo Gris - The energy you have invest in order to break the Hydrogen from water , will be equal or greater than the energy you will get by burning the Hydrogen, or by use it in fuel cell. Hence the idea that Hydrogen is no more than a way of storing Energy (Like a Battery)

Lobo: Hydrogen is a great energy carrier, bt a disaster as an energy SOURCE. Even the best minds in the industry publicly admit it will be another THIRTY YEARS before the mass extraction, transportation and storage problems this VERY inflammable gas presents will be even close to have a marginally viable solution.

THIRTY YEARS.

Time and resources we no longer have.

You want to know what the car of the future will look like? Do a search under 'Bennet Buggy'. Lemme know what you find.

gde November 5th, 2007 6:31 pm

"Hydrogen is not an energy source, since the energy is put in to separate it from other elements. Hydrogen technology is potentially valuable for energy storage, essentially a cleaner form of battery technology."

What you are talking about is fuel cell technology, and that is not what I am talking about. Hydrogen is an energy source. It can be burned directly as a fuel in an internal combustion engine exactly the same way that gasoline and diesel fuel can.

As for having to put energy in, energy is used to break down water which is 2 parts hydrogen, one part oxygen to obtain hydrogen for use as a fuel. Energy also has to be used to drill for oil, pump it out of the ground, refine it to get gasoline or diesel fuel, and to transport it to where it can again be pumped into individual vehicles.

Lobo Gris

I have seen the future... and probably so have you. It's not 'Star Trek'. Very breifly it will be 'V for Vendetta' crossed with 'Brasil'... followed VERY shortly there after by 'Mad Max'...and then...

Silence.

Post technological man will arise, and go back to his horse drawn plow, eaking out a local subsistance living, listening to tales of long ago and far away spread by travelling entertainers and tradesmen. Religion will devolve, and people will (hopefully) turn away from destructive monotheisms, and remember the deep cycles of the earth and her seasons.

A pipe dream? Perhaps.

But I know how to grow a garden, and build a house from raw timber. And I have freinds who will help me as I shall help them, in this smaller, quieter world.

Convert your car to an Electric Car.

Advantage:
- Less than 2 cents / mile in electricity bill (Average person will pay less than $20 / month)
- No oil change, Engine far more reliable, no gear, no colling system. Say bye bye to your mechanics.
- Since the car is much more reliable - It will not depreciate as fast as an internal combustion car.
- Quite and clean.

Disadvantage
- Need to replace the batteries every 3 - 4 years ($1000)
- Limited millage
- It takes a few hours to recharge.

This solution will be good 99% of the needs of 80% of the population.
- Those who need to drive long distance - can add a generator.

http://www.off-grid.net/2005/01/21/convert-your-gas-car-to-electric/

Who killed the Electric car?

There is a couple of hundred years worth of fossil fuel energy left. If we can come up with a system that works during this time, great. If not, then human civilization goes down the tubes... This would not be a good thing....

Silly how no one in this forum mentioned the hybrid integrated permaculture systems that can empower villages. Check out what Catalina Island is doing. www.ecosoul.org. Click on the Avalon participants and you will see the best energy and waste system in the nation. Systems like these are the solution. They can be achieved with a group who invest and create the new world models.

Get off your asses and stop crying and being afraid. The fact that you recognize peak oil does not make transitions back to natural patterns. You live in a monkey trap, where you cant get your hand out of the coconut without leting go of the fruit, so you just die from greed. You are the one living on the upper deck of the titanic and when the ice berg hit you stayed in your consumption mode of fester and drowned until the bitter end. The only way you can save yourself into a version of a modern world, is to come together in a community and build an ecosoul project. But first, start collecting seeds, learn composting, and solar installation, and then cob strawbale construction. I dont thnk any of you are going to make the shift. I challenge you all to wake up and smell the solutions. Russell www.ecosutra.com- braodcasting permaculture!

Russians did and do not regard oil as a fossil fuel. This easily verified fact is the only good explanation for why they are now an energy giant.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/II27Ag01.html

But as usual, orthodoxy is good for war.

This is why bush started the war against Iraq, and why he wants to start another war against Iran. It's all about oil; oil for his rich republican buddies.

I consider myself a far-left type and I'm all for the legalization of hemp. I fully support it as a cash crop, but don't be fooled that it can totally replace oil as a transportation fuel. It's true that hemp has many valuable uses but I don't believe you can eat it, if I'm not mistaken.

"Hemp? Come on. ... Save the hemp for better uses" - culicomorpha

It's LOSERS such as you that keep the Bush/Cheney NAZIs alive ! You LATTE/LIMOUSINE "liberals" give real working class liberals a kick in the face and then you wonder why the Bush/Cheney Limbaughians keep winning. Every damn thing that is manufactured from petroleum can just as easily be manufactured from hemp but you're in denial to get that through your foggy brain ! Put your DOOM and GLOOM BULLSHIT away and try the real solutions. I guess Frederick is correct when he points out that any leftist who calls for giving up everything deserves to be SHOT.

An interesting spread of responses.

I'm with karlof1 though. The peak oil thing isn't a right-wing conspiracy. I wish it was. Instead it is fundamentally an energy issue. It doesn't matter how much you might want to pay, if it takes you one barrel of oil to extract one barrel's worth of oil from tar sands, then why would you ever bother doing that? You'd still have to get the oil refined, get it to market, pay your employees and the equipment would suffer wear and tear, for what? No, the fundamental issue with peak oil is not at all about economics, and any who believe it is should actually look at the energy math.

Certainly the Cheneyhawks have taken a militaristic approach, but I don't see that as being all that much worse than the cornucopians who always are looking for ways to keep this industrial monster running on anything we can find that burns. Hemp? Come on. I think the call for progressives is not to discount the realities that peak oil will create, but rather to use this topic as an opportunity to remind the general public about our total dependence on oil, and how that actually has a much larger impact on our actual security than any terrorist possibly could. There are other ways of life that don't require so much in the way of energy to be happy and fulfilled. In fact, that's the kind of world I would really like to live in. I sure bet the air would be much nicer to breathe. Save the hemp for better uses :)

"How about we stop trying to figure how to keep the internal combustion engines turning but instead try to do away with the need to drive.

Work local, buy local, bicycle local."

Very well put!

I'm working on this myself and vow to walk or bike to work by Spring.

Mr. Mckie states in the next to last line that "the world produces 75,000 barrels a day". Actually the world produces about 75,000,000 barrels a day. This amounts to about 27 billion barrels per year, although I have read that the world uses 33 billion barrels per year and the U.S.A. uses about 8 billion barrels of that.
Mr. Mckie warns us in the very first line that oil will soon trigger a global conflict that will cost millions of lives. A few million? More than 100,000,000 people die each YEAR, mostly due to natural causes. The earth has more than 6 BILLION people on it and rising. If war got rid of a few BILLION of us it would be just a setback in our rise in population. War is not going to make much of a dent in our population trend. But famine...

I cannot understand why people have not seen the obvious.

If you look around your living space, no matter where you are, you will be hard put to see anything that does not contain an oil component. It's either a chemical compound containing oil, was shipped by an oil transport, or was manufactured by a machine that used oil for its lubrication and manufacture.

Even the grass outside was cut with a lawn mower. So we keep nature at bay with oil. When the oil goes away we go away.

Here is a diagram that shows the efficiency (power_out/power_in) for using hydrogen power compared with battery power.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8d/Battery_EV_vs._Hydrogen_EV.png/600px-Battery_EV_vs...

Using current hydrogen technology as a battery to power cars gives an efficiency of about 25%. Compared with current battery power (L-ion), which gives an efficiency of about 83%.

The same wikipedia article gives a good summary of the other shortcomings of hydrogen power. I dont think hydrogen power looks very promising.

"The world produces 75,000 barrels a day." Would you believe 75,000,000 barrels per day?

Conservation, please...

FrederickJohnson,

Most people don't know or refuse to acknowledge the fact that hemp requires NO PETROLEUM or fossil fuels whatsoever to manufacture into its 25000 uses including fuel. The problem with the left is they'll tell you to "give up everything" just to solve a problem. In addition, most of them still buy into the pot/weed NAZI propaganda. Frankly, these people deserve to be SHOT !

Keep in mind that many "solutions' require more energy INPUT than they will extract.

Watch

HOW CUBA SURVIVED PEAK OIL

Caelidh said it best : Watch , learn and copy

Yes, Community Solutions is an excellent organization in Ohio; they are quite correct in saying we MUST change our culture and thus adapt. But becoming adaptable means understanding the problem being adapted to in order to make informed choices on present actions for those desired future outcomes. One Primary US cultural behavior revolves around the automobile and MUST be modified. But as with global warming, behavior change in response to Peak Oil is very problematic, to understate the needed magnitude of change for both crises.

As far as I'm concerned the oil can't run out fast enough, especially in the territory of our friends, the Saudis. The poor dears may find it a bit difficult to maintain their totalitarian Islamic regime, propagate the faith abroad, buy our politicians (like the Bushes) and enjoy a high standard of living when they have nothing to sell the world but sand.

However, perhaps the oil industry has secretly funded this film to justify high prices.

Hydrogen is not an energy source, since the energy is put in to separate it from other elements. Hydrogen technology is potentially valuable for energy storage, essentially a cleaner form of battery technology.

Higher energy prices will help things along. The world economy has been badly distorted by cheap petroleum.

The problem with alternatives--they are all 'parasitic' upon petroleum. The MSM have kept people ignorante of this issue and it is just beginning to get some coverage.

For current and regular news about this issue:
http://www.theoildrum.com/

Here is the recent NGO study & its executive summary referred to in the article cited below:
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/Erdoel-Report.32+M5d637b1e38d.0.html

Published on Monday, October 22, 2007 by The Guardian/UK
Steep Decline In Oil Production Brings Risk of War and Unrest, Says New Study
· Output peaked in 2006 and will fall 7% a year
· Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted
by Ashley Seager

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/22/4737/

Keep in mind that many "solutions' require more energy INPUT than they will extract.

Watch

HOW CUBA SURVIVED PEAK OIL

http://www.powerofcommunity.org/

Go to COMMUNITY SOLUTION

www.communitysolution.org

While Plans A and B seek to maintain unsustainable levels of resource consumption through energy alternatives, Plan C advocates for cultural change.

Plan A – More and dirtier fuels like tar sands, oil shale, coal-to-liquids, and "clean" coal (bury CO2) to keep up with growing energy consumption.

Plan B – The "clean and green" approach proposes using large-scale renewables like wind, solar, biofuels and hydrogen to maintain our high energy way of life and keep us complacent and consuming.

Plan C – Our strategy of culture change, conservation and curtailment.

Through reductions in resource consumption, dramatic conservation and curtailment of energy use coupled with an increase in local community living we can survive peak oil and create a sustainable world in its wake. Plan C addresses many of today's issues head on and reduces the impetus for war. Our solutions look at how each individual can make a difference, reduce CO2 emissions, and help bring peace to the world.

Yep, hemp oil. Why is hemp still illegal? all "ditch weed" does to those that try smoking it is give a headache.

How about we stop trying to figure how to keep the internal combustion engines turning but instead try to do away with the need to drive.

Work local, buy local, bicycle local.

mirf59--transfers of the sort you allude to are already happening with ethanol and in other areas; look at both the latest energy and farm bills. It should be noted that Conn. is the first state to establish a Peak Oil-related committee in its ledislature. Portland, OR was the first major city to empanel a Peak Oil Task Force, whose final report is here, http://www.portlandonline.com/osd/index.cfm?c=42894&a=145732

braithwa842--about coal, "Global coal production to peak around 2025 at 30 percent above present production in the best case," see this, http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG-Coalreport_10_07_2007.pdf

There is 100+ years of coal left *at current production levels* we are already ramping up world wide coal consumption with China building a new coal fired power plant at a rate approaching 1 a week! If we start replacing oil with coal that 100 year figure goes down pretty drastically, down to as low as 25-30 years. And coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

The ability to extract oil from the ground is dependent on price *to a certain extent*, but you get to a point where the energy you put into getting the oil out of the ground is greater than the energy that the oil provides - the economist neglect that reality at everyones peril. This is Energy invested over Energy returned or EIOER.

Ethanol from corn suffers from the same misfortune. The US is currently subsidizing farmers to pour oil on corn which they then use to make ethanol at a net loss in terms of energy. With leaders like these, why worry?

@karlof1: Interesting! Then we already reached a peak for crude oil in 2005, and the world has used approx 50% of its crude oil reserves.

I will have to see the film in order to be better informed.

Hemp can produce oil. Coal can be converted into oil (and there is 100years+ of coal left). There is natural gas. And there are oil tar reserves. The devil is in the numbers and the economics of using these alternatives, but not counting the numbers and going on intuition, it seems we could get by without crude oil.

Personally, I was hoping that we could run out of crude oil and the alternatives that produce fuel to be burned in the atmosphere in order to save the planet from global warming, acid rain, atmospheric poisoning, and poisoning of the oceans, i.e. in order for our longer term survival! It has become obvious, that as a species, we are incapable of cutting back voluntarily. The latest election here has convinced me of that, with every politician promising new freeways. But the way I see it, being cut off at the supply will happen too little - too late.

Even in the best case scenario, hemp still requires industrial style fossil fuel based cultivation and harvesting to crop on a scale needed for significant fuel production. There are more drawbacks, such as competition with food crops (thereby raising prices) and the soil degradation that inevidably accompanies industrial scale agribusiness.

Hemp should be legalized as a crop to replace fiber crops and tobacco. The seeds and oil are good foodstuffs. But turning to it as a biofuel is a wasteful gambit. The US doesn't even have the cultivatable acreage to meet demand.

Karlof,

Yes. Peak oil is real, as implied by the phrase above "fossil fuels are obviously a finite resource." Anything finite and in demand will peak in its rate of coming to market and eventually deplete.

With respect to your final paragraph, I think it's a calculated decision based on two things:

First, the benefit to the fortunate sons and daughters of the fossil fuel tycoons is measurable and is in the hands of Big Oil now as opposed to the more abstract and less controllable benefit of sustaining the environment or shifting investment to a less proven cash cow. So, this gets the conscience off the hook 100% vis a vis sticking future generations with terrible crises.

Second, public bailout is always a possibility. When the problem becomes dire, and hysteria hits a certain mark, it becomes easy to divert tax revenue to costly carbon capture technology. Yet another scenario where the benefit is privatized and the costs are socialized. Wealth transfer. Class warfare, etc. This is another area where irrational exaggerations of peak oil doomsday scenarios play on the public fear and fatten up the public for wealth transfer through federal taxation.

"Anyway, the point is — progressives, be very wary of peak oil hysterics and how they are used to push war, defense spending, drilling in wildlife areas, or pushing costly nuclear technologies that will profit all the wrong people."

I would aver there is nothing "hysterical" about Peak Oil. That it might be put to the uses you suggest is quite possible, and I would argue has already been done in an obfuscated fashion. I also advocate hemp and its seed, and have for decades. I think it entirely possible for farmers in individual states to challenge the federal ban on hemp growing as is the case for medicinal marijuana. As for other biofuel feedstock, I prefer castor beans and sugar beets.

The big picture is the USA has lost its negotiations regarding its "non-negotiable" lifestyle with the planet, who is the sole determinant for this "assertion." The USEmpire will now have to cope as its lifestyle unravels and level of comfort declines.

mirf59, damn right. We would do better to grow our own oil and it can be done by first making INDUSTRIAL HEMP legal as has been pointed out in this forum and previous posts. However, the Left is too DUMB DUMB DUMB to realize that they've been FRAMED. If the LOSERS who complain about biofuels would do their fucking homework, they'd realize that not all biofuels are the same and that hemp does not deplete, is environmentally friendly, contains very little THC which exposes the big lie about hemp = marijuana, etc ...

Remember, it is NO coincidence that USA fights resource wars over oil, at the same time that it PROHIBITING farmers from growing one of the worlds most oily (seed and resin) plants!

Fossil fuels are obviously a finite resource, but we should remember that peak oil hysterics are part of right wing fear tactics and are used as justification for more war and defense spending.

All our "enemies" are sitting on reserves or are strategically related to oil distribution networks, right on down the line: Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, China, Russia. The other key element, of course, in some semblance of self rule.

Every time I see a peak oil article here on Common Dreams, I cringe a bit because progressives are falling right into the trap set by the Roves and Cheneys of the world.

Greg Palast argues quite convincingly in his latest book that oil reserves are always available or not available at a certain price. Fossil fuel reserves are not fixed. A unit becomes available when it becomes economically feasible to extract.

Therefore, the answer to -- "what are worldwide reserves?" changes daily as it is the solution to a function that involves both the stuff in the ground, the cost to get it out, and the value of the stuff in the market. As the price approaches $100 per barrel, we are now into the price territory where it becomes economical to extract heavy oil -- that oil mixed with sand and silt and which would otherwise be too costly to extract.

Anyway, the point is -- progressives, be very wary of peak oil hysterics and how they are used to push war, defense spending, drilling in wildlife areas, or pushing costly nuclear technologies that will profit all the wrong people.

karlof1 November 5th, 2007 12:24 pm
EXCELLENT POST...SPOT ON...

Biofuels are a false hope. The problem is that nearly all world food production is currently highly dependent on fossil fuels for production (fertilizer, fuel for tractors and harvesting equipment, transportation to market). When oil becomes expensive we will need to grow more food without fossil fuels - organically. Organic farming yields are lower per acre per crop than current fossil fuel practices. Biofuels are already displacing food crops around the world as this market grows - how many people should starve so that you can continue to drive?

Hydrogen is another false hope - It's better to think of hydrogen as a battery than as a source of fuel. You need something to charge that battery and current technology is quite inefficient. Transportation of hydrogen is another huge problem, it cannot be done in the same network that natural gas uses because the volume of hydrogen equivalent at normal temperatures is many times that of natural gas. And you cannot fly a jet plane on hydrogen.

Wake up - the oil age is ending, the overshoot of human population on earth is about to begin it's downturn. I only hope that it happens soon, before we completely destroy the habitability of the planet with CO2 from fossil fuels.

The whole theory of peak oil is based on the common assumption that oil is a fossil fuel. There is some debate on that question. A rather good debate. :-)

The real answer is still hydrogen.

1. Hydrogen is a zero pollution fuel. The only byproduct from burning hydrogen is water

2. Hydrogen can be extracted from sea water which covers 70% of the earth.

3. Hydrogen is more efficient than gasoline by about 30%

4. Every car on the road now can be converted to run on hydrogen, which cannot be said of any other alternative fuel.

5. Hydrogen can also heat our homes our water and can be used for cooking rather than natural gas, another declining resource.

Lobo Gris

Matt Simomns, oil investment banker and author of "Twilight in the Desert," made these comments recently, http://www.thisisnorthscotland.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=149212&command=displayContent&sourceNode=1...

"If I was redoing Twilight in the Desert today, I'd sharpen the severity of the warning quite significantly.
"May, 2005, still stands out as the all-time record high for global crude production - 74.3 million barrels per day, and now we're down 1.2 million barrels per day. The IEA shrug that off, saying that if you look back over the last few years, records have been set several times; a peak followed by a falling off, then another peak, and so forth.

"That's an interesting thesis. But as we watch Mexico start into its big-time decline and UK and Norway continue their rapid declines, plus Indonesia, Egypt, Argentina and others besides - you can see several years of relentless decline. Add them up and say, find me one area coming on in the next few years that will halt such a collective decline - it's just not there.

"Major oil companies have quadrupled their spending over the past five years and, other than acquisitions, basically they're in liquidation."

I saw his ASPO-Houston presentation, which was very impressive in its data density, yet chilling in its prognosis. Here is a link to the slides used in his presentation, http://www.aspousa.org/proceedings/houston/presentations/Matthew_Simmons_Thursday_Lunch.pdf
A youtube video of his latest CNBC interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0P8yQSTU74

A link to menu of all the ASPO-Houston slide presentations, http://www.aspousa.org/proceedings/houston/presentations/

Ever heard of hemp for oil? HEMP replaces petroleum and doesn't harm the environment whatsoever. No wonder it has been banned for far too long !

http://www.hemp4fuel.com/

Every week, ASPO-USA publishes "Peak Oil Review," which can be subscribed to at ASPO-USA's website. Here are the top two items for this week:

1. Production and prices.
When the Wednesday morning stocks report showed that contrary to expectations US crude inventories had actually fallen by 3.9 million barrels the previous week, oil prices rose by more than $5 to an all-time high of $96.24. After reaching the high, oil slumped a bit amidst the now familiar concerns about economic growth, the credit squeeze, the falling dollar, the Kurds, and Iranian nuclear sanctions.

While US crude oil stockpiles are still in the middle of the average range, they are currently at the lowest level since recovering from the October 2005 hurricanes. They have been dropping steadily since last July and we are now well into the time of year when they should be building, thus suggesting that something different is happening this year.

Gasoline inventories did increase by 1.3 million barrels last week thanks to surprisingly-large imports. The price of gasoline has risen 19 cents a gallon since mid-October so that the national average is now $2.94 a gallon. This is well below the national average of $3.22 reached last May during the conversion to summer gasoline blends.

A Reuter's survey conducted last week suggests that OPEC increased production during October by 180,000 b/d over September with 100,000 b/d of the increase coming from Saudi Arabia. An OPEC source told Reuters that Saudi output in November is to increase by 200,000 b/d to about 9 million b/d.

Many in the West remain concerned that a few hundred thousand b/d production increase will not be sufficient to meet growing world demand during this winter's heating season. France's Finance Minister issued a call for OPEC to increase production and the head of the US's Energy Information Administration told a meeting that "we are in a very tight situation." Various OPEC spokesmen continue to reiterate that the markets are well supplied and that there is little they can do to slow price increases.

This week will likely bring more volatility. Industry analysts are now saying that US inventories probably dropped last week because of the storms affecting Mexican exports. Gold is at a 28-year high above $800 and the dollar reached a new low of $1.45 against the Euro. Many are expecting additional credit market troubles to be revealed shortly and the Federal Reserve is becoming more concerned about inflation than supporting economic growth. Most analysts are now saying that $100 oil is a virtual certainty in the very near future.

2. Storms close down Mexican production and exports
Pemex has had a very bad month. The week before last a Gulf storm with 80mph winds and 25' waves drove a drilling rig into a production platform. Eighty-six PEMEX workers were forced to abandon the platform and 21 died in the stormy seas. The accident caused natural gas and oil to leak into the Gulf.

On Sunday Oct. 28 when another storm came along, PEMEX closed its three major export terminals and was forced to shut down about 1.2 million b/d of production because of lack of storage space. On Sunday Oct. 28, 200,000 b/d were shut-in, followed by 400,000 b/d on Oct. 29 and another 500,000 b/d on Oct. 30. Operations resumed around noon on Oct. 30 from two oil ports and by day's end approximately 800,000 b/d of production had been reopened.

On Thursday PEMEX announced that 11 million barrels of production had been lost during the outages. Whether full production has been restored is unclear for severe flooding has occurred in the State of Tabasco, resulting in nearly 1 million people being driven from their homes. On Friday Mexico's President said, "The storms have forced the closure of three of Mexico's main oil ports, preventing almost all exports and halting a fifth of the country's oil production."

As the US imports about 1.3 million b/d from Mexico, some drops should begin showing up in US imports and stockpile numbers in the next couple of weeks.

And of course, there's much more. As I stated in the Iran thread yesterday, Peak Oil is no joke--it most definately NOT "Big Oil" propaganda to sustain higher profits. Next to the most visible global warming related droughts, it's the most visible sign of OverShoot--planetary caused resource depletion. And millions have already died, been gravely injured or displaced in BushCo's Global War for Oil/Hydrocarbons; so the movie is actually trailing reality. The most revealing statistic above is the 2% reserves yet 25% consumption; and the three IIIs--Israel, Iran, Iraq--aren't about oil--Yeah, Right!