150 by 2030! Bah. Ridiculous.

We will be over 150 by 2010 if there are no major wars or disruptions.

World oil production 'peaked' in 2005.

World crude production is FLAT. World demand and population is increasing. The price of a barrel of oil has nearly doubled in 2 years. Why would it take 20 years to go up to 150? At the current rate of inflation, that would be a drop back down to about $5/barrel! What a joke the media has become.

Want more MSM news like this? http://www.theoildrum.com/

Now CEOs of major oil companies are admitting this fact. We've been lied to
about the 'abundance' of oil reserves and now the problems are impossible to
brush aside. We're in for a wild ride in the year ahead.

Everyone should pursue the immediate impeachment of Dick Cheney, HR 333; his cabal's sick, demented attempts to plunder our nation's way out of this problem is both treasonous
and stupid.

----

Here are the studies:
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/

Why are my comments always held for moderation. Is it the links? It's a bit odd and annoying. I hope other people don't experience this. It just doesn't seem warranted.

Rising energy use in China and India will indeed negate whatever little progress is made in the west.From 200000 cars sold a year in 1990 in india, the number today is 1 million. the number of 2 wheelers sold is 5 times that.Air conditioning, washing machines and refrigerators, earlier the prerogative of the rich have permeated the middle class, as has air travel. 250 million cellphones need to be charged daily.200 million tv's play daily. Despite the peracapita energy usage being only 1/10th of USA, it is increasing fast in india and faster still in china.
the addiction to energy is stronger than any other. Try doing without it. Increasing the price of addiction helps decreaase addiction, as with tobacco, but has few advocates, as we are all addicts.Energy spcialists tell us that we have coal for 200 years, no worry. This is such a brief span of time in human and earth existence. No major alternate energy source has been found in the last 50 years, or is likely to be. (that is why study of physics and chemistry helps) Ethanol, that requires more energy to produce (even after discounting the sun) than it provides, is wasted energy, not an energy source.

For mankind there are no other lands to sail to, no virgin territories.If we do not protect our 'home', there will be none to live in.

Hi Stiv, Yes, include too many links and your post will be moderated for SPAM.

Something Mr Gwyn alludes to but doesn't say outright is that none of the devloping economies will ever match the levels of auto ownership seen in the US as there is NOT enough oil in the ground to fuel them. The run-up to the extraordinary OPEC Summit and statements from various OPEC and Saudi officials suffer detailed scrutiny and discussion at theoildrum.com as well as the IEA report referred to in this article. And yes, there IS a problem. Here's the supply OECD countries were able to purchase:
2005 49,554,000 bp/d
2006 49,245,000 bp/d
2007 48,779,000 bp/d average for the first seven months of 2007
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t17.xls

Over this timeperiod, OPEC/Saudi has said numerous times that it's satisfied with the current amount of supply (OPEC) and that we (Saudi) will soon increase productive capacity to 12Mbpd (Saudi is currently extracting @8.5Mbpd down from 9.6Mbpd), to the most recent statements by both that $100 oil is a fair price. More relevent links,
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-11/14/content_6254740.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071114/ts_afp/oilopecsummitoutput_071114095542;_ylt=Ao1jlWJxA0qpJZQZWzZ_GmqAsnsA
http://www.gulfnews.com/business/Oil_and_Gas/10167372.html

The last link has large implications for diesel supply, which is already in shortage worldwide. We've seen what $3.50 diesel does to overall price inflation; envision the havoc at $4, $5, $6 AND gasoline prices that trail not too far behind.

Yeah, we'll see if my very on-topic comment with several links gets posted. Edited to note that my initial post did appear above this after I clicked submit, subject to moderation, of course.

As Richard Gwyn writes:

"Once car ownership in these countries reaches half of the present American level, their combined daily consumption of oil would slightly exceed the entire world's current total daily consumption level."

That will never happen, because world petroleum production is not going to grow substantially beyond present levels, and may already be declining irreversibly.

So, what this tells you is that either prices are going to rise very steeply, or the world is going to revert to some kind of direct imperialism instead of a global market, or some combination of both; or, finally, we are going to get into a global war over oil, ending in nuclear holocaust.

Oh, there is one other possibility: that we endure a period of shortages, high prices, and imposed conservation and restraint, avoid war, and move forward with new technologies to use oil much more efficiently and replace it with fuels derived from nuclear, wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

Why would I read Richard Gwynn to learn about fuel consumption? He is a mainstream political columnist from Canada who specializes in Canadian federal politics.

Why does he think that China would allow so many cars on the road in the first place? The price of car insurance is beyond what an average person can afford. China is pricing cars and car insurance so that they can only be afforded by the elite class.

This article is another a la The Economist that is more about instilling fear of the brown man than anything.

You can statistically project out just about anything you want to a ridiculous conclusion. If you don't take into account outside factors you come up with these wild outcomes. Obviously, car ownership rates in places like China and India are not going to rise to our absurd levels. The oil is not there for that to happen again. They may aspire to it, they may try to get there, but it's not going to happen. Nor should it. We need to start being more the way the Chinese were like when I was there 20 years ago - heavily bicycle/transit dependent, very little in the way of modern highways, massive use of passenger rail for travel, localized economies, limits to childbearing, etc. Granted there are great downsides to what was and is happening in China - huge smog problems in most cities, sanitation problems - using "night soil" to fertilize crops for instance, lack of personal and political freedom, and on and on.

The fact of peak oil is undeniable to anyone who looks at the figures rationally. There are those of us who have taken a deep breath and come to terms with the inevitable changes that are going to happen. The tragedy is that most will deny the deep hole we have dug for ourselves until we are at the point where we head inevitably towards mass die-off, resource wars and environmental collapse. At this point, I think the most practical thing those of us who realize the truth can do is come together to help ourselves survive in what Prof. Richard Heinberg calls "lifeboat communities". Fortunately, there is a place where we can find our lifeboats, the Fellowship for Intentional Community (www.ic.org). We desperately need as many committed and concerned people as possible to come together ASAP to form these sustainable communities in the few years left before the bottom falls out of our current way of life.

Unless we take the lead in promoting birth control and sustainability over endless exploitation, the unfortunate but best short term remedy for the world's problems may be setting off a few neutron bombs in the highest population centers... or maybe the bird flu.

There's a difference between "peak oil" and "easy oil". Most poeple in this field believe we have reached the peak of easy oil. There's plenty of oil available but it's going to cost much more to extract in addition to increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. We need intelligent alternatives.

Energy Bulletin is a good site with differing opinions: http://www.energybulletin.net/about.php

The one thing that cannot be limited is our creativity--our ability to envision and bring forth a better, more sustainable life for all the life forms on the planet.

There are already plenty of green, sustainable sources to develop, and if coupled with sane and sensible commitments to conservation, we could avert any looming disaster. Too bad big oil will continue to make policy....

It only matters about peak oil, if you buy into the current paradigm. It doesn't work, even for those fortunate enough to be beneficiaries of its inherent inequality.

I couldn't help but notice that nowhere in the above article did the author mention what would happen if we, here in the USA, halved the number of cars per 1000 people. While not feasible, perhaps, although not impossible, surely, until mass transit is fully developed and funded, we could be consciously headed in that direction immediately had we the national will to do so.

truthteller,

"We desperately need as many committed and concerned people as possible to come together ASAP to form these sustainable communities in the few years left before the bottom falls out of our current way of life."

Cheers. If we all look deeply into a future that is stitched together by sustainable communities, we couldn't help but taste the closest thing to panacea.

The author of this piece wrote:

"Try to imagine China and India and others agreeing to forgo a car in every garage in their long-delayed escape from mass poverty."

Well, where did this perverse, equation of car ownership with prosperity come from?

Please, think!

The idea that every adult human on planet can only "escape poverty" through the use of a massive 1500kg box of metal and glass on rubber wheels, using 35 megajoules of ancient sunlight energy, to transport their 75kg bodies 10km to get a loaf of bread or to employment, is positively loony tunes! Someone observing us from another planet would be stupified!

Somehow, in the early 20th century and before, humans in cities got all their chores done with just their two legs, maybe a bicycle, or by hopping on an electric trolley (only farmers, busineses and very rich people had horses). And, I suspect that they they enjoyed life a whole lot more than we do today.

The car has got to go.

Nice, PJD,

I will vote to elect you urban planner on the other side of what's coming.

Some potential sources of fuel are virtually never mentioned. Do a Google search using 'fuel dung' and see the possibilities for the billions of tons of potential fuel which is now mostly wasted. In the future your Christmas dinner may be cooked using the output from your Thanksgiving dinner!

Why don't any futurists predict a time at which a tipping point of all these negatives cause our global economy to collapse? Seems that it will be unsustainable well before $150 barrel oil is reached, and what happens thereafter is likely best predicted by science fiction.

China and India both register extremely low income per capita. Neither nation is going to "catch up" to the West or Japan. They are essentially Third World countries dependent on foreign technology, investments and know-how.

Hell, India's infrastructure from lower-levels of education to roads would put Albania to shame. Furthermore, most of the benefits of India's and China's economic growth still winds up in the hands of the few. It certainly doesn't "trickle-down."

For example, India's IT sector probably only employs about one million people.

The state in both countries does little to redistribute wealth to the majority. In fact, both governments have cut back on their wealth redistribution mechanisms. That is why they are attractive to First and Second World corporate investors.

The above phemomena is called non-developmental growth: growth without much social and economic development. The results of such growth are privately accumulated into the hands of a few -not the many.

Very few nations rise from the bottom to the top of the global hierarchy of production. As Wallerstein biblically expounds, "Many are called; few are chosen."

However, China, India, Brazil, etc. will, or course, spend more and more on oil, nuclear and other forms of unsustainable energy. Unlike the West and Japan, most of this energy will fed into generators not gas tanks.

Good discussion of a typically superficial editorial. Bottom line is utter chaos is on the way and soon. Fuel costs for cooking and public transport are already at the upper limit in most poorer countries....the populations there DO know what street demos are, unlike the pampered and ignorant asses we in the "west" have become.......But most folks on planet earth can still eat halfway well and get around without the infernal combustion engine, as I observed for decades in South America...Ironically, some of the poorer regions will actually suffer the least, and be in the best economic situation possible under any final world economic collapse...

Intentional communities are wonderful, having built them myself, but will solve nothing if not fully integrated into the larger local reality, after crunch time. If one is serious about survival I recommend any well watered loamy farmland area replete with a healthy small farmer class, like Swaziland, Chiloe Island, or upland Costa Rica.....and make sure you don't have a transitable road to your place if you expect to avoid the looting....Cheers.

Buenos dias, Esteban
Don't forget the options of oxen and horses, bicycles and fishing boats with pars and sails!
You mentioned that "poverty is the wealth of nations", so to speak, and that's a topic that I don't read much about in these conversations that are generally held between people living in the northern realms of the planet. Of course not, the vast majority of the interested parties are still not involved in the conversation.
It seems likely that there will still be a very mixed population - personalities, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, when the crunch reduces the unsupportable numbers of human beings on Earth. OK, then, if anyone else is passing by Chiloe Island here, stop by for a cup of tea!
Richard

In the future that is being thrust upon us, one of the things we have to look long and hard at is making ALL our endeavors as sustainable as possible, especially energy production. Factor into that the looming climate changes we will be facing, and it becomes obvious that our current plans for corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel are ludicrous. These are water-intensive crops! To base our energy future on crops which, due to the looming widespread drought now being predicted under global warming, we will soon be unable to grow, is suicidal. And this totally ignores the added lunacy of converting food crops into fuel when we are already experiencing starvation on a global scale.

Intelligent societies would be looking for crops which produce the greatest possible volume of biomass for a given input of water, which are sustainable with a minimum of petroleum-based pesticides, fertilizers, and harversting systems, and which are not already food staples. Which is of course why we have corn and soy being offered - not because they are the intelligent choices, but because some corporation stands to make a shitload of money off their exploitation for fuel.

It's time to start making some long-term energy strategy decisions that reflect the environmental realities we will be facing 20, 30 or 100 years down the road. The west and center of the US are going to be drier. We are already seeing the beginnings of this in the long-running droughts in the southwest, mountain states, and southeast. So where is the crop which will provide the biomass necessary, with no requirements for additional water?

Back in the 70's the University of Arizona did some research into the viability of tumbleweeds (Russian Thistle) as a fuel source. No, it doesn't sound very exciting as a crop. In fact, it's long been considered an undesirable (albeit unstoppable) invasive weed. In the context of a low-maintenance fuel crop however, it has a lot of plusses. It grows well on semi-arid marginal land with disturbed soil. You know, like plowed cropland which is no longer viable for anything else due to lack of rain? It requires only the water provided by naturally occurring rains, without any other additions. Of course, additional rains would lead to additional crops. It is, after all, an opportunistic plant. It has, according to the UA study, the per-lb BTU equivalent of lignite coal. It is carbon-neutral in that any CO2 produced through its burning is recaptured by the growth of the next crop. It can be pressed into "logs" for burning in fireplaces, of can be pulverized to a powder which could be burned in a boiler. As I mentioned above, it doesn't require fertilizers or pesticides. It's actually hard to PREVENT it from growing! And best of all, it actually harvests and re-seeds itself with no input except from the wind.

Now in designing a method of collecting all these tumbling tumbleweeds, it makes sense to let the wind do the work. All you need to do is guide the little rolling buggers where you want them to go. An additional gain would be to integrate the collection system with the processing system, i.e, process the weeds into fuel form at the same location where they are collected. This would be accomplished yet again by using the wind. I envision the collection sites as each being equipped with one (or perhaps two) of the 1.3 Mw wind turbines currently being used in wind farms. These would provide electricity to light and heat the facilities, and to power the processing equipment. Any elecricity generated when tumbleweeds were not rolling could be sold to the power grid. Basically, except for initial construction costs and those of transporting the end product to its' point-of-use, the system is entirely self-sustaining.

Perhaps this idea is a little off the wall. I just know that we have to start thinking differently if we're going to survive the changes coming down the pipe. It seems to me that this is a viable resource which could be exploited for minimal cost. Obviously it is not a stand-alone solution to energy sustainability. But it could serve as one of a number of systems with that aim in mind.

Let me know what you think of this idea. It may be totally crazy. Or it may not. I just want people to start thinking outside the box, because our survival may depend on it.

balakirev,

Good observations regarding India. India has had stunning success through it's Bollywood industry in presenting itself as having all this new affluence that, in reality, only a few percent of it's one-billion-plus population enjoys.

Oops! My mistake! It was Arizona University which did the aforementioned study, not U of A.

quousque wrote: "Why don't any futurists predict a time at which a tipping point of all these negatives cause our global economy to collapse?"

They already did, and their predictions are coming to pass. Google for "Club of Rome", "Limits to Growth" "Donella Meadows", "Beyond the Limits".

The warnings have been clear and strong for 30 years, to those who were willing to listen.

There is no silver bullet. A lot of bad things are about to happen. I agree with truthteller: go find a "lifeboat community" or ecovillage to join. They need you.

http://www.EcoReality.org