solution:

free public transportation

http://frepubtra.blogspot.com

.

Don't put much stock in the Bible... well none actually, but have always been intrigued by the passage "and the meek shall inherit the earth."

Now if that isn't a threat and a call to action to the meek, then I don't know what is.

Or to paraphrase: ...and the meek surveyed their inheritance and cried to the lord "boy, did we get fucked."

"[Well, you all wanted to 'Save the Planet', didn't ya? Just don't freeze from jacked-up Oil (or BDR's purloined-Uranium, depleted-or-otherwise) during all of this 'Global-Warming' due to 'our misuse of Peak Oil'!]

C5H8 + O2 = CO2 + H2O — just like when you 'hold your breath' — and, "how long can-you", btw? Longer than you 'can't drink'?

Buy a now-cheap SUV, and run it on always-cheap/clean LPG — just like Schwarzenegger does in his Hummers — in a CARB-state where HE is the only-one really 'driving-legal'! There IS no Peak-Oil (just Peak-Refineries since JDR monopolized them here, and an 'Arc of made-Unstable' elsewhere), there is also no 'Global-Warming' (just 2,000-or-so above-ground 'Tests' that-'worked', unregulated Utility-Co's, and a great-big HAARP electric-bill since '92), and Oil is 'worth' exactly 60-cents-per-barrel, dumbass…(oh, and food-Ethanol requires more Oil than burning-oil, wrecks your engine, AND reduces your MPG by 10% while starving your grandchildren — so let some-other Dumbass Mandate it for you!).
Crap — why was EVERY 'child left behind' in America? Even UncleTom taught some basic-Literacy, didn't he? [Guess I can hope Uncle Obama might…NAH!] Gore, the 'eater of orphans' will be the perpetual Clinton-shadow — and you guys in CD all thought Cheney was 'bad'!]"

Daniel David, were are you hiding? [And is your real-name Mogan?]

Have any of you viewed the Shell commercial in which they state "we're working with the public - we're taking the oil out of the sand - then we put the sand back"?

Hilarious.

OIL SANDS ALERT
The pursuit of mining the oil sands in Canada and the oil shales in the western U.S. while sidetracking alternative energy development, highlights the contempt for our planet by the energy cartels. Their extraction require massive amounts of energy which compounds their contributions to greenhouse gasses and related pollution. The environmental destruction resulting from their massive excavations, and wasteful consumption of water only add to their ddisasterous effects.

These interests are well represented in the current administration who have continuously opposed real measures for conservation & carbon warming mitigation. Until we replace this administration with one that will stand up to these thugs and invoke needed reforms, the degradation to our habitat from their reckless environmental policies can only accelerate.

It is costing a lot to turn tar sands into oil products. It was said that as long as oil remains over $40 per barrel, it is profitable.

Imagine another scenario. India and China are using more, but they choose more efficient ways. The large users of oil adopt more efficient ways as well. Alternatives are used and conservation becomes a wide spread way of life.

This is more of a market based scenario, but it could happen. If most people act in their best interests most of the time, then count on that. If you use past behavior as your guide, you may be more accurate in your future predictions.

At the Indigenous Environmental Network Conference in 2006, my wife and I met a couple of Northern Dine (di-nay) whose reserve and indigenous hunting and gathering territories are being destroyed by corporations greedy to suck up the tar sands. The environmental damage is far greater than just green house gasses, which is always pretty safe to assume anyway in extractive industries.

The land base destruction is also a legally defined act of genocide (imposing conditions upon life to bring about the destruction of a people in whole or in part).

The two folks we met face heavy opposition from their fellow tribal members. The corprations are paying them some $30 an hour to clean bathrooms, etc. Since Canada, like the U.S., has FORCED poverty upon indigenous nations, anytime they can get a good paying job, they'll take it.

I believe it was from the movie, "The Year of Living Dangerously," that it was quoted of prostitutes in the Phillipines, I believe (it's been a long time)..."starvation makes a great aphrodisiac."

It's a complicated situation...but the corporations HAVE TO BE STOPPED!

Concerning sealevel rise, the 1 meter increase is possible before the end of this century. Longer term increases might include a total of 8 meters if the Greenland ice sheet melts completely, which is looking like a very strong possibility. The West Antarctic ice sheet, which is now undergoing some disturbing changes including increases seaward flow rate, would add another 8 meters if it melted. If the entire Antarctic ice sheet were to melt, which is also possible but over a longer time frame, sealevel would have risen by something like 80 meters. None of us will be around by that time, but it seems likely that not very many others would either after the famines and wars that would surely accompany such a massive societal disruption. And yeah, if the US still existed, somebody would probably still be bitching about not having any oil.

NylandJim wrote: "When the last bit of oil is extracted from the ground we will burn the coal, when the coal is all gone, we will burn the trees. Man's desire for energy will subsume everything."

It need not be that way. According to an article in the January 2008 issue of Scientific American magazine titled "A Solar Grand Plan":

Solar energy's potential is off the chart. The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year. The U.S. is lucky to be endowed with a vast resource; at least 250,000 square miles of land in the Southwest alone are suitable for constructing solar power plants, and that land receives more than 4,500 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of solar radiation a year. Converting only 2.5 percent of that radiation into electricity would match the nation's total energy consumption in 2006.

To convert the country to solar power, huge tracts of land would have to be covered with photovoltaic panels and solar heating troughs. A direct-current (DC) transmission backbone would also have to be erected to send that energy efficiently across the nation.

The technology is ready. On the following pages we present a grand plan that could provide 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy (which includes transportation) with solar power by 2050. We project that this energy could be sold to consumers at rates equivalent to today's rates for conventional power sources, about five cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). If wind, biomass and geothermal sources were also developed, renewable energy could provide 100 percent of the nation's electricity and 90 percent of its energy by 2100.

The federal government would have to invest more than $400 billion over the next 40 years to complete the 2050 plan. That investment is substantial, but the payoff is greater. Solar plants consume little or no fuel, saving billions of dollars year after year. The infrastructure would displace 300 large coal-fired power plants and 300 more large natural gas plants and all the fuels they consume. The plan would effectively eliminate all imported oil, fundamentally cutting U.S. trade deficits and easing political tension in the Middle East and elsewhere. Because solar technologies are almost pollution-free, the plan would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 1.7 billion tons a year, and another 1.9 billion tons from gasoline vehicles would be displaced by plug-in hybrids refueled by the solar power grid. In 2050 U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would be 62 percent below 2005 levels, putting a major brake on global warming.

This is completely achievable. And the proposed Federal investment of $400 billion over 40 years, much of which would be in the form of tax cuts to stimulate private investment in efficiency and clean energy technology, is far less than the massive subsidies already given to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, not to mention far less than the US spends on the military in ONE year.

There are NO technical or economic obstacles to attaining a sustainable energy economy, that provides ample energy for people everywhere to enjoy a comfortable material existence, based on optimally-efficient use of clean, renewable energy, while completely phasing out both fossil fuels and nuclear power. Indeed, with solar and wind generated electricity the fastest-growing sources of new energy in the world, with wealthy high-tech venture capitalists like the founders of Google investing in advanced photovoltaics, with China getting into the manufacture of both photovoltaics and wind turbines in a big way to meet the energy needs of the developing world, this New Industrial Revolution is already under way.

The obstacles are not technical or economic -- they are institutional and political, as this article well illustrates. The fossil fuel corporations are determined to keep raking in TRILLIONS of dollars in PROFIT from the sale of their products, until the last drop of oil and the last crumb of coal has been burned. That's why they spend millions on right-wing "think tank" propaganda mills to keep the public confused and uncertain about the reality of global warming with fake, phony "controversy" pseudoscience. That's why they spend many millions more to buy off politicians, like the Canadian Conservative Party mentioned in the article, or Cheney/Bush (who of course are themselves oil industry executives, running the government for the enrichment of their cronies and financial backers) in the USA.

The only plausible political counterbalance to those obstacles is MASSIVE public demand for efficiency and clean energy, for the creation of millions of new high-tech "green collar" jobs, for solar and wind investment tax credits and rebates, for efficiency retrofits of homes and commercial buildings, aggressive energy efficiency standards for vehicles and buildings and appliances, an end to massive subsidies and tax breaks for oil corporations like Exxon-Mobil with nearly $40 Billion in PROFIT every year, and on and on.

When the last bit of oil is extracted from the ground we will burn the coal, when the coal is all gone, we will burn the trees. Man's desire for energy will subsume everything. Concerns about clean air and global warming will be flung to the side by the vast majority who only want their super-sized house and their super-sized cars and their super-sized television.

When we have burned everything - if anything can survive on what is left of the planet, it will begin to recover.

A good way to help end the oil sands exploration and development in Canada is to support the Lubicon Cree Nation. The Indigenous Cree are opposed to it's extraction on their lands. http://tao.ca/~FOL/

Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History: Global warming -- through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding -- is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.

Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the locations of big city airports and major interstate highways.

Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians -- the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks.

The Albertans think they are doing fine with their Heritage Fund. Perhaps they should have gone to Norway to learn how to get the best deal. By the end of 2006, Norway had $306 billion compared to $15.4 for Alberta's Heritage Fund. Even the Alaska Permanent Fund $37 billion. But we will have a wasteland over this area anyway.

it won't be just the u.s. lamenting the disappearance of oil, the effect will be world-wide. thus canada's, and other countries, scramble to piss away money on mining oil tar sands.

things really are cyclical, but one has to wonder if we'll really get to hang around long enough to see the horse-and-buggy days.

This reminds me of some graffiti I saw in Barcelona once. It was in Catalan, but the rough translation was something like:

When the last forest has been burned,
When the last river has been fouled,
When the last flower has been trampled,
The US will lament that the oil is gone.

I guess the same goes for capitalists everywhere...

I read someplace they need to burn 1/3 of the tar sands mined to process the other 2/3. Also, they are thinking about a nuclear reactor for heat to melt the stuff. It would save money!

I read someplace they need to burn 1/3 of the tar sands mined to process the other 2/3. Also, they are thinking about a nuclear reactor for heat to melt the stuff. It would save money!

The old "environmentalism is a socialist plot" is old hat down here!

Sometimes it gets comical. For example on my job, when I visit the office of a coal mine, especially a big strip-mine, it is understood that you don't DARE ask the mine managers where the recycling bin is for the pop can you just finished.

Peak oil doesn't fight global warming. Peak oil assists global warming. It also assists environmental habitat destruction and pollution. It also triggers wars for money.

Fortunately, in Alberta, global warming is only a myth, or rather, a socialist plot to transfer wealth away from producing nations. Actually, I believe that now in Alberta, the environment itself is just a socialist plot to transfer wealth away from producing nations.

The socialist plot bit is from the current Prime Minister. And as Jean Chretien, one of his long-serving predecessors once said, "No country in the world would leave that oil in the ground".

Big_Money,

Your points are well-taken.

Oil (and coal a close 2nd) seem to be the economic equivalent of high grade heroin.

Even those who know better, like Chavez (who has more than a trillion bbl of dirty-to extract API 8-10 heavy oil in the Orinoco Belt, or Correa of Ecuador, who want's to re-join OPEC, are absolutely compelled by the global capitalist system to exploit their oil it to the hilt with no doubts or questions allowed.

Oil and coal - any survivors of our follies will pass on great body of mythology as to why humanity was cursed with these vile black substances.

"If we dig precious things for the Earth we will invite disaster."

"A container of ashed will some day be thrown from the sky, burning the land and boiling the oceans."

"The days of purificaton will be at hand when cobwebs are seen spun across the sky."

- Hopi prophcies, translated, as chanted in the film "Kotannisquatsi"

"Kotannisquatsi" (n) Hopi: 1. Life out of balance. 2. Crazy life. 3. A life that calls out for a new life.

PJD - Ooo, it's perhaps a bit worse than you think... With Tarsands oil (they weren't oilsands until the price of oil was high enough) they give off more pollution to get the crap out of the ground and into the tanker than there is left to burn. It's bloody hard to get out of the ground. With some of the sites, they use natural gas to extract the oil from the dirt. They use more thermal energy than a barrel of oil contains, to get a barrel of oil. Yup. You could convert cars to natural gas, use the gas they were going to use in the tarsands, leave the oil in the ground, and drive even further. Madness? Absolutely. Except for two groups of people - those who profit from the madness, and those who look to the GDP as the grand barometer for the health of the universe. Madness, yes.

Aaron Freeman of Environmental Defence has posed the wrong formulation. Canadian leaders should not be given the choice to "clean it up or shut it down." They should, unconditionally, shut it down and clean it up.

By 2020 Alberta could be just a few miles from the Great Inland Sea. Never in the history of the planet has any species rushed so willingly, so knowingly, to their own suicide.

David Blume's Alcohol Can Be A A Gas documents this problem more effectively than any other book, and offers solutions to fix the problem.

""All the major polluters, emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, will have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and that includes the oil sands," said Mark Warawa, parliamentary secretary to the environment minister."

But, what about those 3 million bbl of oil per day? I't gonna get refined and burned, right??? ISNT THE PRODUCT ITSELF IS THE POLLUTANT?Surely, there is some kind of willed-blindness going on here!

A while back, I contacted some old former, now-much richer-than-me co-workers from my oil patch days, they wrote of Alberta in terms as effusive as anything since the Alaska gold rush.

It is hopeless.