Galen,
Thanks for posting that link at canada.com for the Vancouver Sun article. What an eye-opener. It was refreshing to see a writer tie in population growth to the other problems we are having. Besides all the other harsh effects the end of the oil era will cause, the major decline in agricultural production which will result will cause an incredible amount of starvation and hunger, an amount which is unimaginable at this point. The food riots occuring so far in 2008 are just the tip of the iceberg.

Besides the other steps that can be taken to try to reduce the coming harsh effects, one additional step would be to adopt "population policies" ASAP. These should never involve force, like in China, but should involve financial incentives to have less children, providing free contraceptives to all, and sex education to all teens, worldwide.

If anyone here thinks that population growth is not hastening the end of the petroleum age, please state why.

Much of what you said is true but instead of wringing your hands join with those of us that are doing something - Join Steven Greer
http://www.theorionproject.org

It's a nice day to garden.

Catch posted some of my response before I could register and log in, but in addition to explaining hydrogen's place as a solution to portable fuel there are a few postulates preceding to keep in mind. The world is currently in one of its flux eras. We cannot continue to use carbon-based fuels to anywhere near the extent we have. Fortunately for the planet, there is an alternative - non-carbon produced electricity. In the short term the production methods will vary locally - wind, solar and, to a minuscule degree, tidal motion. There's only one panacea I can see long term - geothermal. Deep drilling techniques are already improving, and this without much push for the depths necessary to access the energy stored beneath the mantle. Once the renewable electricity infrastructure is in place, fracturing sea water to obtain hydrogen is reasonable. Save petroleum for its unique uses.

As a general rule - do not be fooled by those who push resource avenues, be they ethanol, coal or nuclear. These serve to profit such as Archer Daniels, Peabody and General Electric. The first two avenues do nothing to significantly abate CO2 forcing and the third is an eternal nightmare all to itself. Remember, there's a helluva lot more profit in owning resource than in designing process. Nobody owns the wind, sun, and earth's core, at least not yet. Who knows what a Scalia court might decide in the future, though.

How did the original thread get bent off into climate change? Did one of the industry-paid whore-scientists see this site as an opportunity to badmouth the IPCC (again), whose report was by any account conservative, and spout the usual bunch of cherry-picked "facts", followed by patronizing remarks? Ahhh, well ...

Hydrogen is *not* free, even though there's an unlimited supply bound into water molecules. An electric current is required to separate it from the oxygen to which it's bound in water. The electrical energy needed will always equal or exceed the energy available from the resulting hydrogen. This is basic chemistry. Once extracted, more energy is required to compress it or otherwise convert it to a portable form. What hydrogen can do is provide a portable fuel, for instance, suitable for automobiles. However, a huge amount of electrical energy is required to produce significant quantities of hydrogen. A major issue becomes, then, where to get the electricity? Wind? Solar? Tidal? Incoming ocean swell? Hydro? These are all possible contributors, however, the point as made in the article is that we need to start serious development of all these different sources.

There've been several mentions of a need for petroleum-based fuels for aircraft. About a month back, one of the airlines ran a test using biofuel in one engine of a multi-engine jet passenger plan, and it apparently worked although I don't have details. Jet fuel is basically kerosene, only slightly more refined than diesel fuel and much less than gasoline. There's no reason biofuel wouldn't work in a jet aircraft. However, one might reasonably question just why we need all these aircraft in the air. Humanity did just fine before aircraft became cheap forms of quick transportation, and that was before we had the internet. It's important to differentiate between desire and necessity.

I just finished reading "The Ages of Gaia" by Janes Lovelock, for the first time. He combined a simple model of the earth and biological creatures, starting from the "Daisyworld" model. He shows the instability of climate in recent geological times with periodic ice ages to be a sign of instability of this system. Gaia is now working at the limits of stability that it can support, due to our Sun gradually getting about 25% brighter over the lifetime of the earth of 4 billion years. We are in the last 500 million or so before Gaia will fail due to increased solar output, unless technology or other temperature damping mechanisms can shield.

The very low carbon dioxide in the midst of Ice ages means that the inherent controls of the Gaia system have been driving down CO2 to the lowest possible consistent with plant growth and ocean fecundity to stay cool. Half a billion years ago, Gaia could tolerate a higher CO2 and still remain cool. So our human actions of quickly raising the CO2 and destroying the tropical rain forests at the same time is both suicide and attempted Gaiacide. Lovelock posits that Gaia will recover this time, but only after we perish from drastic climate changes or prevented from further meddling. The remaining reserves of oil and coal need to stay locked under the earth. We have already used more than the safe allotment. There is no cure except a reduction of human population or its CO2 emissions (or both) to less a ten percent of current.

Dear Future Archaeologist (who finds this note buried under the remains of our former industrialized city),

We're sorry. We fucked up. Industrialization was so much fun, at least in the short run. We fast laned, fast fooded, bargain shopped, and fastly got deluded. Sorry we left the place worse off then we found it, we just didn't have time to remedy the polluted. We got scared and built ICBM's. Watch where you step, it's still radioactive for the next 400 millennium.

Yours truly,
The Brainwashed Generation

PS. Please print and redistribute at your local decimation.

(contined-last)

"And we are already seeing the effects of global climate change. What do you think was the cause of the flooding in the US midwest? Cow farts? They are having a record monsoon/typhoon season in the Pacific, and the season hasn't even really started. Hurricane season in the Atlantic and the US should be quite interesting this year. If another major oil depot/refinery town (ala New Orleans) takes a major hit, US refining capacity, already stretched to it's limits will collapse."

Katrina and Mississipee flooding surely were not about poorly constructed and maintained levees. Global Warming is to blame. Noahs floods must have been due to Man Made Global Warming. What about the great Mississipi floods on 1927 and in the 19th century. In Taiwan and China we just had the coldest winter in memory. Hong Kong has had it's rainiest month since 1887. What caused the rain in 1887 when CO2 levels were much lower? But every weather event today seems get pinned on man made Global Warming without any evidence.

As for tornadoes, there were a great many more deaths in the early 20th century, probably due to the lack of cars and well constructed houses. However, even we see a downward trend from the 1950's when record keeping was much better. In fact, F5 tornadoes decreased 33% between the global cooling years of 1950-1979,and the global warming years of 1980-1999, and fatalities dropped by 50%. The number of tornadoes being detected is increasing due to better detection, and this helps reduce fatalities as well.

"All of your arguments fall when confronted with actual, documented EVIDENCE. There are a host of reputable books on the subjects under discussion. Read some of them.

'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.'"

When Galileo tried to explain the world revolved around the sun he was probably told he was a fool before being imprisoned as a heretic. They were reputable men with reputable books which said he was wrong.

(continued)

"You are right. The CO2 in the atmosphere will not linger for 100 years. It will linger for CENTURIES. The effects we are seeing NOW are from CO2 put into the atmosphere at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution."

Your deficiency in math shows. Some facts IPCC tries to hide. The atmosphere holds 750 gigatons of CO2, 212 gigatons is absorbed by Mother Nature from the atmosphere each year, while 215 gigatons is emitted into the atmosphere each year. Man accounts for 3% of total emissions, about 7 gigatons. But IPCC assumes all of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is 3 Gigatons per year, come from man. Somehow Mother Nature does not like mans CO2 and preferentially absorbs non-man made CO2. BS. In any event, what this means is that the mean residence time of CO2 in the air should be in the order of 3.5 years, or 750 gigatons divided by 212 gigatons absorbed each year.

"And if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are not melting, then how do you account for the 'discovery' of and ISLAND off the coast of Greenland, that was once COVERED by miles thick ice and was thought to be part of that sub-continent? WHat about the hundreds of square miles icebergs that are shattering off Antarctica, threatening the stability of the entire Ross Ice Shelf, the loss of which would raise sea levels by tens of meters in short order as it melted, and would release the entire ice mass that has been blocked up for tens of thousands of years, which would then speed into the oceans as well, raising the seal level even further?"

Have you never heard of the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) between 800 and 1300 AD when Greenland was green and warm, and the Vikings. Today we are in a warming phase. The Vikings did not burn oil. Following this, temperatures dropped and we entered the Little Ice Age (LIA) from 1300-1850, and the Vikings got cold and left. Since 1850, temperatures have risen, yet satellite temperature measurements of the last 23 years show little 'Global" warming. Most temperatures used by IPCC are from surface stations, with the Northern Hemisphere weighted out of proportion. Some of the stations are influenced by the urban island heat effect, and even those in rural areas have a bad habit of putting the temperature measuring appartus on the roof, or on top of pavement.

In any event, consider what the 2001 IPCC report says about the MWP and LIA, saying "current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries.

Antarctic sea ice has actually increased over the last 30 year, except the lesser Western section. The greater eastern Ice shelves sit on land and are so high that the great pressure liquifies the ice on the bottom so they sit on lakes. In the West the ice shelves actually have a Marine base and sit on the ocean floor, so they are already in the water, although the ice above the surface could contribute to some sea level increases, depending on the buoyancy of the ice that breaks off. There are also some active volcanoes in the area that could be contributing to some of whats happening in the west. It is unlikely any atmospheric warming could melt the ice in short periods to cause significant sea level increases, there is way too much ice there to melt quickly.

(continued)

"'Alternative' technologies are suppressed by the very oil companies that have opposed them from the get go, not because the alternatives could replace oil, but because the alternatives cut into oil company profits."

But what about our military and it's interests in National Security. If oil were really running out, would they allow Big Oils profits to trump their needs for dependable energy supplies to "keep us safe"?

Consider the Bakken Formation

http://www.nd.gov/ndic/ic-press/bakken-form-06.pdf

Dr. Leigh Price who worked for the USGS had sent out a paper for peer review in 1999, estimating the oil in Bakken, which runs from ND to Montana into SE Saskatchewan , had as much as 200-400 billion barrels of oil, based on an economically viable 50% recovery rate when oil was going at 20 dollars a barrel . He died in 2000 while exercising before the peer review was completed, so his paper went unpublished, but was seen by some of his peers who were reviewing it. Requests from USGS to release it are denied, since they argue it did not complete the peer review process, and this is againat policy to release unpublished studies, even though we the taxpayer paid for the study. They have just last month estimated the Bakken Formation as having only 3.5 billion of recoverable oil. This is 1/2 year consumption, as opposed to 40 years if Leigh Price was correct.

Leigh Price was a man who was very healthy man in his 50's, worked out a lot, and died while working out shortly before Bush and his Oil buddies hijacked the election and put themselves in a position to increase oil prices from 20 to 140 dollars a barrel. Thomas Gold died in 2004 from natural causes.

My bet is the military knows Oil is not an issue they have to worry about for the next 100 years.

"Solar energy is useful. But it does not even come close to meeting demand, and a crash course to install solar on every building in the US would wipe out the very materials needed to produce solar panels. And it still would not replace AT ALL the various multitude of oil based products, from fertilizer to aspirin. Ya can't turn sunbeams into CD's, ya know!"

No, but energy from solar can be used to extract oil from the tar sands in Canada rather than using oil or coal for the energy to extract the oil, and free the oil up for other things.

Also, we can use surplus humanity to extract oil at the rate of 6 people per barrel using thermal depolymerization. This will ensure a plentiful supply of CD's.

(continued)

"Peak OIl is a REALITY! You did even TRY to explain how Saudi Arabia is defining pumping 9.7 million bbl/day as an INCREASE when the were pumping 10.8 million bbl/day just a year ago? How do you do the math? Are you an ENRON style accountant?"

My poor fellow. Saudi has a production CAPACITY of 10.8 million barrels per day, but only pumps 9.5 million barrels per day since thats all it needs to satisfies it's customers. They did not pump 10.8 million barrels per day in 2007. They had reduced their production each year since 2005. They are increasing 200,000 barrels per day to increase supply relative to demand in a show of good faith effort to help lower prices on the global market. As OPEC said, their is no shortage of oil relative to demand, which is actually diminishing as a result of high prices. In the US alone in 2008 we have reduced demand by 500,000 barrels a day.

"World oil production is FALLING. Demand is increasing. That is the crux of the Peak OIl argument. With China and India coming online as oil consumers equal to the US, there simply will not be enough to go around. And if there is no such thing as Peak OIl, why have the major oil players not built a new refinery in 25 years?"

Sigh. And who controls how much oil is produced? Increasing Oil production capacity requires drilling more wells, increasing storage capacity, building more oil tankers and more refineries. If you limit production and supply to just barely meet demand, instead of having a large over capacity and high inventories, what happens?. Prices go up. Who benefits from man made peak oil?. Big Oil. Big Oil and OPEC are both cartels that benefit from high oil prices. Big Oil is the driver since most countries do not have the ability to find the oil and then deliver it to the buyer. Look at Iran, it has all kinds of oil, but due to sanctions, is unable to build it's own refineries and so has to import gasoline at 140 dollars a barrel.

As for refineries not being built. Every time you have a hurricane or a refinery goes down for maintenance or accident you have a great excuse to raise prices. They do not build new refineries, but they are expanding their existing refineries capacity. Taking care to not have too much over capacity.

Galen:

Well, these petro-geologists get paid by who? They certainly are not Ukranian or Soviet petro-geologists from whom Thomas Gold acknowledged had first developed the theory.

From Professor Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Chairman of the Department of Petroleum Exploration, Institute of Geological Sciences, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences

"The eleven major and one giant oil and gas fields here described have been discovered in a region which had, forty years ago, been condemned as possessing no potential for petroleum production. The exploration for these fields was conducted entirely according to the perspective of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins. The drilling which resulted in these discoveries was extended purposely deep into the crystalline basement rock, and it is in that basement where the greatest part of the reserves exist. These reserves amount to at least 8,200M metric tons of recoverable oil and 100B cubic meters of recoverable gas, and are thereby comparable to those of the North Slope of Alaska. It is conservatively estimated that, when developed, these fields will provide approximately thirty percent of the energy needs of the industrial nation of Ukraine."

Russia increased it's production after digging deeper wells in areas previously thought not to contain oil. Of course, replenishment is not instantaneous, and oil is finite, but there is plenty more black gold. Just have to look for it.

L A L O __ J E N K I N S,

Nice crystal balls that you have, the better to see into our future, ehh ?

Thank you very much, as any updates from Mike are much in need ( to fight the greed ).

Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King

End of Zionism.

http://www.mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Peak Oil Movement Is Unprepared For Its Two Biggest Challenges

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY

by Michael C. Ruppert

It is now only a matter of weeks before the truth about Peak Oil comes crashing through the mass media, the public consciousness and the imagined realities of life. In July we will see that OPEC (especially Saudi Arabia) cannot increase production. The long unconnected dots will become clear lines depicting a now inevitable collapse and die-off. The once impenetrable edifice of the old paradigm which locked our warnings away and blocked them from real public discussion will rupture. Peak Oil is certain to become an issue in the U.S.general election this November.

Two events are about to take place, and indeed have already begun. The Peak Oil movement, those of us who labored and sacrificed for years,have our collective pants tied round our ankles and our heads inserted deeply into non-energy-producing regions. The first event is easy to address if we focus. The second, however, may literally render what "was" the real Peak Oil movement ineffective and condemn hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to death. Because what people hear and learn in the first months of true Peak Oil awareness will determine the course of discussion, planning and of history, from here to eternity.

Problem 1:

Within weeks or months the major media will become "aware" of Peak Oil. They will come to the Peak Oil movement and say, "OK, what do we do now? What should a President do? What should congress do? What should people do? I have seen no serious or focused attempt to prepare for this demand. I am tinkering with a proposed Presidential Platform on the subject by myself and when I think I have something serious I will release it. The addresees of this email ONLY are encouraged to offer suggestions. [Ed: By this, Mike is referring to the recipients of his original email. Blog readers are encouraged to send suggestions to the blog. But Mike is not recommending that everyone start calling the media on their own.] But all of the people who have labored so long and sacrificed so much should be prepared for microphones to be thrust at them nationally and locally. What are you going to say?

Will you say, "It's time to go to Plan B"?...

Problem 2:

This is the most serious threat of all. Already, people who we have never heard of, and who have never sacrificed or contributed an iota, are starting to emerge saying that they have "discovered" Peak Oil. They are presenting themselves as experts. Their first approaches will be to local and regional media outlets who don't know their derrieres from a dry hole in the ground. The local and regional medias will be the ones funneling discussions and questions upward to the Larry Kings of this world. This is just the beginning of a deluge. More than half of those who will wind up on CNN, Fox, ABC and on the pages of our newspapers will be either one of two things: rank opportunists and snake oil salesmen who will distort and peddle bad ideas and self-promotion; or they will be out-and-out disinformation artists funded either by Wall Street or the US government. They will be intent on lining their own pockets, protecting the old paradigm and blunting a truth which has begun its demand for payment before foreclosure. These people will be murderers of the worst sort. Yet they will be flooding media switchboards, email inboxes and fax machines at media outlets around the country. And because they will be making noise they will get the air time that the real activists who have spoken truth will not.

How do I know this?

POWs, Iran-Contra, CIA drug trafficking, the 1992 presidential campaign and 9-11. It happened in every one of those "earth shattering" crises or events. I was there. I watched and felt it happen in every one of those sagas as it unfolded.

People who we have never heard of will be getting the spotlight and the Peak Oil movement will not -- because it gave up at just the wrong moment. The struggle to define Peak and what it means for mankind is just beginning. Are you willing to sit back and watch the snake oil salesmen, dilettantes, and wolves in sheeps clothing dictate the discussion and set the agenda, just when the window and demand for real education opens wide and beckons?

Michael C. Ruppert
Author: "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil"

MiMiCcs- Nice to see SOMEONE drank the 'Abiotic oil' kool-aid.

Which has been shot down by almost every reputable petrogeologist who has examined the idea. It first floated up when some of the 'capped' wells were found to have 'new' oil in them. It turns out it was just seepage that escaped from the surrounding rock after the main oil pressure was relieved and the 'abiotic' oil could finally flow, s-l-o-w-l-y, into the reservoir.

Peak OIl is a REALITY! You did even TRY to explain how Saudi Arabia is defining pumping 9.7 million bbl/day as an INCREASE when the were pumping 10.8 million bbl/day just a year ago? How do you do the math? Are you an ENRON style accountant?

World oil production is FALLING. Demand is increasing. That is the crux of the Peak OIl argument. With China and India coming online as oil consumers equal to the US, there simply will not be enough to go around. And if there is no such thing as Peak OIl, why have the major oil players not built a new refinery in 25 years?

Sure there will be those who will be able to afford gas and oil no matter what the cost. But the world has more poor than Rockerfellers. Do the math.

'Alternative' technologies are suppressed by the very oil companies that have opposed them from the get go, not because the alternatives could replace oil, but because the alternatives cut into oil company profits.

Solar energy is useful. But it does not even come close to meeting demand, and a crash course to install solar on every building in the US would wipe out the very materials needed to produce solar panels. And it still would not replace AT ALL the various multitude of oil based products, from fertilizer to aspirin. Ya can't turn sunbeams into CD's, ya know!

You are right. The CO2 in the atmosphere will not linger for 100 years. It will linger for CENTURIES. The effects we are seeing NOW are from CO2 put into the atmosphere at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

And if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are not melting, then how do you account for the 'discovery' of and ISLAND off the coast of Greenland, that was once COVERED by miles thick ice and was thought to be part of that sub-continent? WHat about the hundreds of square miles icebergs that are shattering off Antarctica, threatening the stability of the entire Ross Ice Shelf, the loss of which would raise sea levels by tens of meters in short order as it melted, and would release the entire ice mass that has been blocked up for tens of thousands of years, which would then speed into the oceans as well, raising the seal level even further?

And we are already seeing the effects of global climate change. What do you think was the cause of the flooding in the US midwest? Cow farts? They are having a record monsoon/typhoon season in the Pacific, and the season hasn't even really started. Hurricane season in the Atlantic and the US should be quite interesting this year. If another major oil depot/refinery town (ala New Orleans) takes a major hit, US refining capacity, already stretched to it's limits will collapse.

All of your arguments fall when confronted with actual, documented EVIDENCE.

There are a host of reputable books on the subjects under discussion. Read some of them.

'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.'

Check this out. http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4217016.html

"There's no getting around it: the great mass of humanity will be doomed in a post-petroleum age"

Some of us call it genocide. The neo-malthusians have talked for over 40 years of a desire to keep or get world population below 1-2 billion people. Read Kissingers NSSM 200.

The so called energy shortage is a myth. There are no gas lines. Everyone with credit can get as much as they want, yet the price has increased 125% in 1 year, despite demand drops due to higher prices and a looming recession.

Consider our military runs on oil. It would take decades once a new energy source is found to convert our existing equipment over, or build replacements. Given the National Security implications, in this time of war, where is the Manhattan Project to address this?. There is none.

Why? Because Thomas Gold was right about the abiotic source of oil and besides, the oil companies are capping wells that produce, and suppressing new finds with help from the USGS. Bakken may have over 300 billion barrels, but after Leigh Price died young in 2000, his paper which was undergoing peer review was never published, and new estimates are down to 3 billion. We have plenty of oil.

Consider solar.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1214606212-YqVS8q1...

"The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

"It doesn't make any sense," said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. "The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry."

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies' desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities."

Imagine that, on the one hand they push for offshore drilling due to the oil shortage, on the other hand they suppress solar over environmental concerns. If oil was in such short supply, why the suppression of alternatives.

Hardy har har. The jokes on you.

So anyways, we are running out of oil-they say. They say the carbon in the air will linger for 100 years-another joke. The world will flood as we run out of oil due to warming produced from oil previously burned. There will be famines, billions will die.

They got you terrorized.

You should be terrorized because thats their plan. But its not "man" who is to blame, it is the elite who act as gods who are to blame. They tell you we have depleted Mother Nature of her oil and given her a fever from our 3%
contribution to CO2 emissions. Sir Philips hopes he could wipe us out by reincarnating as a virus. Him and his ilk have decided to do it by other measures, since reincarnation is not a sure thing.

So they lie. Like 9/11, the GWOT, WMD in Iraq, CPI, etc. They are pathological liers who believe Strauss and Plato.

Leo Strauss influenced the current generation of our elite, and taught that within societies, some are fit to lead, while others are fit only to be led. For Strauss, a NWO would accept, understand, and harness man's tendency for "self-interest", or "human nature". Those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality.

He believed the world to be a place where policy advisers may have to deceive their own public leaders. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, the masses would quickly succumb to nihilism or anarchy. They "can't handle the truth". Thus, according to Strauss, it is necessary to maintain "the Noble Lie".

Strauss believed that the aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained by a powerful state. In other words, Fascism. "Because mankind is wicked, he has to be governed."

Plato recognized this much earlier. In his "Republic" he outlined the basis of the future totalitarian state, ruled by the elite he called "philosopher kings", or "guardians". The Republic provided the basis for communism and fascism, the elimination of marriage and the family, compulsory education, the use of eugenics by the state, and the employment of deceptive propaganda methods.

Faith based religion tells man he is a sinner, who sins against god. The Luciferian religion of the elite is a Science based religion with the gospels of AWG and peak oil. It tells man the same, he is a sinner against the goddess Gaia. Man is bad he must be controlled, and religion is a great way. Those who can not think for themselves, but adopt one religion or the other, follow mindlessly. Catholics follow the Pope, Jews their Rabbi or the secular head of Israel, Protestants their pastors, etc. AGW supporters follow their Scientists; Priests led by Hansen preaching Climate Change, in the interests of our elite Gods.

In the past, Christians led Crusades against Islam and many were killed. Global Warming Bunnies will lead the Crusades against the bottom 80% "consumers", and many will perish.

We're talking about the grand-daddy of all the pusher/addict/society relationships.

Bakunin- Read 'The World Without Us', or see the documentary based on the book.

It is a sobering look at just how truly insignificant humans are in the grand scheme of nature.

There's no getting around it: the great mass of humanity will be doomed in a post-petroleum age. 7 or 8 billion people will not be sustainable without petroleum based energy. Its doubtful that one tenth or twentieth of that number would be sustainable without oil. Within the next decade the collapse will unfold, and by 2020 the situation will be completely chaotic worldwide. Think the present is chaotic enough? You ain't seen anything yet. Yes, some will survive, but most of us won't. Its sad to think that "civilization" that city-based complex sort of human existence that started 10,000 years ago, will crumble once and for all, but to indifferent Nature it doesn't matter at all. And when you consider the crimes against nature that thick-headed humans have committed, then Nature, if she had a mind to think, would surely not be displeased to see the despoilers go.

This was published in our local paper today:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2eeece50-285f-4c4b-bb37-2d053d04d4e8

READ IT!!

poopdeck: "I doubt that it can provide the high-octane fuel for planes and helicopters"

The capitalists can put their little chemists to refining biofuels to work in their jet fighters to maintain "full rectum dominance". And surely they already have, ten times over. It's just that the taxslaves are not allowed to understand the plan. The process will consume ten gallons of biofuel to make one gallon of jet fuel. And rich farmers are already contracted to supply it "in the event of emergency", while people starve en masse. Capitalist speculators have free reign to jack around food supply/demand but not "strategeric" biojetfuel that is "key to securing the American Way".

"top officials of producing and consuming nations from around the world attempted to find a combination of solutions that would somehow extricate us from the current crisis over sky-high energy prices"

Top chimps create the problems. It follows from this that top chimps can't find the solutions. We have to ask ourselves why writers continues to produce delusions and readers continue to consume them, such that top chimps are to "deliver us from evil". Then we have to break this pattern of repeatedly failed delusions. People assume that chimp hierarchies are required to get anything done. This is wrong. Enlighten the people, and the people will get things done, WITHOUT the hierarchies. So people, are we ready to put the final stake through the heart of concentrated power?

BTW, at the meeting mentioned in the opening of this article, Saudi Arabia said they would INCREASE their oil output to 9.7 million bbl/day from 9 million bbl/day. Last year they were producing 10.8 million bbl/day. And in 1998 they were producing 12.5 million bbl/day.

So how do you count going to 9.7 million bbl/day now from 10.8 million bbl/day one year earlier as an increase? Some kind of ENRON accounting trick?

Come on all you closet economists, explain how a net decrease is really an increase.

And all you Peak Oil deniers, please explain to me how a net decrease in actual production is not physical evidence of depletion, and that the present price of oil is all due to market speculation.

Kloro- and you dig up the uranium ore using machinery powered by...what? Dandelion dreams?

OIl is FAR too central to our ENTIRE modern technical civilization. When the oil is gone, so are the toys.

homeward-angel wrote:
"Sally check this out…

www.waterpoweredcar.com

the technology is available to use now. We just need to IMPLEMENT!"

I always knew that such a thing might be possible. A friend and I did quite a bit of research on the work and patents of Nikola Tesla a number of years ago and we found some absolutely mind boggling things that could have given us safe, free energy - a century ago!

So, why aren't people out on the streets demanding water powered vehicles? Goodness knows, we have enough water available to power our cars. It's clean, renewable, and in most places, easily accessible.

Oh, sure, there are places where there are severe water shortages, and there are predictions of water being the next big resource that people all over the world will be battling for, but it is a renewable energy source. I don't see why more people don't know about this, unless the MSM is keeping it from them, in which case it is OUR responsibility as progressives to go out there and beat the drum of publicity for this new vehicle that can be produced and get our country back on track again with automobile manufacturing jobs.

And yes, making the conversion won't happen overnight, but if we start NOW, I predict that in 10 years time, we can make a significant enough dent in things to make full conversion a reality. We sent a man to the moon and safely back again in under 10 years - certainly we can make a full implementation of this technology in at least that amount of time, if we muster our best and brightest minds to put their heads together and make this thing a reality and really jump-start our "green economy".

I mean, just look at the soaring demand for Toyota Prius's. Toyota can't manufacture them fast enough and are adding more and more jobs to meet demand. So if a water powered car becomes a reality and there are ways to fuel it that are convenient, just think what it will do to jump start our sagging economy. We'll still need oil to manufacture other things, but if millions of vehicles are no longer using it, just think how much oil that will free up.

And if we've gone past peak oil, well, then we can muster our best and brightest to come up with new ways to make things that don't require the use of oil. As I said, we got to the moon in back in under a decade. So why can't we make the switch to alternatives to oil in that amount of time and begin serious manufacture of water powered cars NOW?

breeder reactors or die.

As someone who is utility free, I am stunned at the resistance that most Americans have to a hydrogen economy. By using solar and wind primarily to produce hydrogen, we can power our homes, transportation and businesses with this 'carbon free' alternative. Only powerful vested interests with their pliant media are preventing the general public from embracing this practical and eventual response.

Bugs Bunny, I agree with you: we need to get off the oil now, to save our planet. But neither our government, nor those of China, India or Europe, among others - has the political will to do that. As I said, we're screwed. I don't consider myself a doomsayer. I'm just trying to face reality. Doesn't mean I'm giving up on urging EVERYONE to mend their ways and go GREEN. I hope and pray that we can find a way out of this mess, and the first step is to GET OFF THE OIL, which is destroying us. It truly is the Earth's excrement. It will be the end of us, unless we figure this out.

If we use all the oil we already have this planet becomes toast. We are in a race with carbon build up and it's effects on the planet.

Scientists say we need to drop our carbon production by 80% and fast. We are being panicked into staying with oil till the last... profit.

Look at the amounts stated in this article and watch the ice cap this summer. We are in a race... to STOP reliance on carbon producing energy production.

Exactly which planet will all this oil be used so quickly? We increase our consumption of oil? In a panick we do indeed.

Look at the amounts and the time frames and if we use all this oil... we can't make it. Yes it is profitable, great news too...when we run out of carbon producing oil reserves by then we will have algal and microbe produced oil to keep burning.

Yeah sure we will... for years and years to come... adding carbon... yeah sure we will... till when?

Is there a till when at all?

Let's not worry about the carbon but let's worry about the lack of oil someday when it's oil that we can't use.

We are in a race to get off oil... not find more. Profits insist that we find and keep using more and more.

We have more than enough oil than this planet can use.

What about that? Too much.

Say 25 years more of gushing oil use. What? Nothing happens?

Who are they kidding with peak oil? Profits are so high they won't let go easily.

We are in a race...against oil.

Also, bear in mind that all the OPEC nations have been fudging their reserve data for the past thirty years, especially Saudi Arabia. So we really have NO IDEA how close to depletion those 'vast reserves' really are.

The Caspian Basin (for which we went to war in Afghanistan to secure the pipeline right of way) turned out to be an expensive dud. All the 'vast reserve' turned out to be was a mass of dry holes (something George W. Bush was adept at finding with his "Arbusto Drilling'), and minor deposits that went dry almost immediately.

The 'vast reserves' *could* (and I am VERY doubtful on this) last another thirty years. They could play out tomorrow.

I'm putting my money (and survival BTW) on it happening in the next 2-5 years.

I keep saying: Get ready now. There is no happy, shiny 'Star Trek' (tm) future. There will be a brief spasm of 'Mad Max' followed by the rest of human history being like the dawn of human history; to wit 'A World Lit Only By Fire'.

Anne- No worries!

Some books for the newly awakened: Powerdown, The Party's Over, The Long Emergency, Squarefoot Gardening, When Technology Fails, Readers Digest 'Back to Basics', Gardening When It Matters...

Other CD posters are free to suggest their favorites...

Galen, I referred to you as "Gaven" in my post. As I said above, thank you so much for referencing that link on one of your recent posts here. What an eye opener! Skeptics such as Thomas More above: you really should check out the "Crude Awakening" DVD. If you've already seen it, then great. But if not, I think it's worth seeing before you draw your conclusions. I understand what you're saying about all the prior "sky is falling" scenarios that have come and gone (I've read your prior posts and understand your position), but I found this film very persuasive. There is no down side in checking it out.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

June 14, 2008

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'

Chris Ayres

"Ten years ago I could never have imagined I'd be doing this," says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. "I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into."

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls "renewable petroleum". After that, he grins, "it's a brave new world".

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. "All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency," Mr Pal says.
Related Links

* Biofuel: a tankful of weed juice

* The arithmetic of crude oil

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this "Oil 2.0" will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm's president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. "How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?" he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being "prerevenue".

Inside LS9's cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9's bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. "Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars," he says. "Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000."

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.

However, to substitute America's weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.

"Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we'll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011," says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? "It's not the same as with food," Mr Pal says. "We're putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we're done with them, they're destroyed."

Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. "I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this."

Power points

— Google has set up an initiative to develop electricity from cheap renewable energy sources

— Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome, has created a company to create hydrogen and ethanol from genetically engineered bugs

— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/05/making-renewabl.html

Making Renewable, Carbon-Neutral Oil — From Algae
By Chuck Squatriglia EmailMay 29, 2008 | 5:45:25 PMCategories: Biofuel

Hirescrude_2

A San Diego start-up says it is using algae to make oil that can be refined into gasoline and other fuels that are both renewable and carbon-neutral, and it plans to produce 10,000 barrels a day within five years.

That's a fraction of the 20 million or so barrels of petroleum the United States consumes each day, but Sapphire Energy says "green crude" production could ramp up to a level sufficient to ease our dependence on foreign oil, if not end it altogether.

Company CEO Jason Pyle says the algal oil is chemically identical to light sweet crude and compatible with America's $1.5 trillion petroleum infrastructure, making it a direct replacement for oil. Although the algal fuels refined from it emit as much carbon dioxide as conventional fuels, the company says the emissions are offset by the photosynthetic process that uses sunlight, water and C02 to create algal crude.

"At the very worst, it's carbon neutral," Pyle says, calling the fuels a "benchmark for an entire new industry" and "a paradigm change."

Energy experts and air quality regulators say they'll withhold judgment on those claims until they've seen a production-to-combustion analysis of the fuel's emissions. But they say Sapphire could be on to something.

Making fuel from algae is nothing new, and a lot of organizations, from the smallest start-up to the biggest oil companies, are trying to find the best way to do it. But most of the effort has been on replacing diesel fuel or kerosene. Sapphire wants to replace petroleum.

"We designed it to be a completely fungible product with crude oil," Pyle says. He says the company has refined its algal crude into 91-octane gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene chemically identical to conventional fuels. He wouldn't disclose how the process works or what it costs but said it is competitive with deep-water oil drilling and extracting petroleum from tar sands.

Sapphire also avoids the food-for-fuel debate that has plagued crop-based biofuels because it uses algae and works on non-arable land with non-potable water. Pyle wouldn't say where Sapphire plans to build the demonstration plant it will have running later this year, but it's reportedly working in Oklahoma and may locate its facilities in the South and Southwest. It hopes to have a full-scale plant up and running within five years, producing 10,000 barrels of green crude a day. The company has lined up more than $50 million in funding from investors like ARCH Venture Partners.

Ramping up to that level of production without killing the algae can be tricky, one expert said, and the environmental impact of green crude remain to be seen. Even if it is carbon neutral, the algal fuels will emit pollutants that contribute to smog and ozone, says Don Anair of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"You're still going to get combustion emissions. You aren't eliminating those with algal fuels," he says, echoing a point the California Air Resources Board made. Still, Anair is cautiously optimistic.

"The fact that there is a lot of interest in finding a better way to fuel our transportation system is encouraging," he says. "This is one avenue to pursue that has very good potential."

Photo by Sapphire Energy.

Tycho- both solar and H2 systems are inherently dependent on hydrocarbons for the creation of the technologies they exploit.

It's a simple equation: no oil and coal = no derivatives to use for the creation of solar and H2 systems = no solar or H2 systems.

The coming age will be 'The Great dark Age' from which there will be no renaissance, because there are NO new lands or resources to explore/exploit. What we have is what there is, and when they are gone (or too expensive to extract/refine), they are gone. And with it, our modern technological society.

We will be forced back to what powered the world for thousands of years.

Brute muscle power. Either from animals or humans. yes, there will still be some steam technology, and yes, some primitive electrical systems will survive. For a while. But machines and complex systems are finicky beasts, prone to break-downs. And when you are more devoted to getting food in your belly, the study of nuclear engineering or brain surgery will fall into disuse.

There will be attendant wars as the increasingly enfeebled 'powers' squabble over the dwindling resources. There will be population decline, from wars, starvation and disease, things normally preventable, but 'winning' the Resource Wars will, for a short while, distract the ruling class from treating these symptoms of a wider malady.

And when all is said and done, the world will be a quieter, smaller place.

We heard this same mantra from Carter and club in late seventies, early 80's. The oil is running out. We need to ration, no oil in 20 years.

Same claptrap now. And no more true then than now. There is no shortage of oil. Refinery capacity...yes. Oil...no. Reserves abound.

Our decision as to what we want to do.

tycho, WHAT? hydrogen isn't energy? you really need to go back to school...(or are you just a paid troll for the oil and gas industry?) don't consider solar and hydrogen you say? You are nuts!

Not enough to be extracted? hello! you make hydrogen with WATER!!! that is the fuel, simple h2o! You have no idea! go to the above link to learn more (if you are not a paid troll that is)

This is a very important article, but it does not convey how truly dire the situation is. If you're able, you should rent or buy the DVD documentary, "A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash." As one reviewer put it, this movie will scare the bush out of you.

According to experts in the movie, the global demand for oil is increasing exponentially (esp. in China and India), and will result in an estimated demand of 200 million barrels per day. However, the world's reserves only enable us to produce 30 million barrels per day.

The scariest part of the documentary is its conclusion that even if we were able to utilize all the developing alternative energy technologies (hydrogen fuel cell, hybrid car, solar, wind, geothermal, etc.), this would be a drop in the bucket compared to the energy output of oil.

Bottom line - we're screwed. Without oil, we will truly revert to the horse-and-buggy days. In some ways, that would be wonderful. But millions and millions of people will die in the process. See http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net (Thanks to Gaven for the heads up on that link.) The site has great articles and suggestions on how to prepare for a future without oil.

Sally check this out...

www.waterpoweredcar.com

the technology is available to use now. We just need to IMPLEMENT!

You ask the question: "Will it be the Solar Age or the Biofuels Age or the Hydrogen Age?". People should realize that Hydrogen is not a source of energy, but only a means of storing energy. There is not significant amounts of hydrogen in the ground or anywhere else to be extracted. Therefore, it makes no sense to consider, for example, solar energy and hydrogen energy as alternative "sources" of energy.

the author forgot nuclear breeder technology.

Between this and the specter of an ice free Arctic this summer, we have passed the tipping points that herald the end of Western technological civilization.

With the collapse of the oil driven economy, many goods and services we have taken for granted will be scarce to the point of non-existence.

Think of all the things that are dependent upon oil for their very creation. Asphalt. Motor fuel. Heating oil. Pesticides. Fertilizers. Cloth. Pharmaceuticals. Tires. Plastics of all kinds, and the products made from them.

Think of all the food that is utterly dependent upon oil powered transportation. Of all the badly needed raw materials (coal, metal ores, timber) that rely upon oil for their basic extraction and processing.

Think of all the soon-to-be desert farming regions of the North American farming belt. Take into account that weather patterns will be changing with the rapidity of the chaos systems they are.

Now think of the ripples spreading through Western and allied countries as these factors affect societies as these products and items become scarce and hoarded by the obscenely wealthy. What will the middle class do when their cars no longer move? What will the poor do when there is NO food, and even the food banks have been picked clean by the starving middle class? What will the wealthy and politicians do when the realize that their populations are about to turn on them like rabid dogs?

Everything you can imagine is already underway. The truckers strike in Spain and Portugal. The food riots in Haiti and Africa. The raising sea levels that are engulfing the low-lying islands of indonesia. The flooding of the US mid-west. The increase in extremes of heat and cold.

Does the government have a plan?

Yes.

Why do you think they demonstrated the Microwave Area Denial System being used against 'protesters'. Why do you think Blackwater is now the 'fifth arm' of the US armed forces? Why do you think all those 'detention facilities' were built by Halliburton/KBR under no-bid contracts? Why do you think the US and Israel are preparing to attack Iran?

They have a plan. They have a place they intend to hide.

They have a liferaft.

AND YOU A'INT INVITED!

Face facts.

The world as *we* know it is drawing to a close.

Stock up on seeds, get the basic hand tools you need, learn basic low-to-the-ground survival and living skills, and have your bug-out bag ready.

Poopdeck,
I dont think Balakirev was saying go back to horse and buggy.I say go back to the bicycle and buy and grow food locally not shipped in from 1500 hundred miles away.
Clean air Clean water Rich top soil.
Its sounds good to me better then all that smoke we have to breath now from barbecues to SUV.
Time for a change for the better.
If oil gets tight it wont be dangerous nonsense but reality.

"have you noticed the full-court press by oil "experts" trying to convince everyone that speculation has nothing to do with the rise in oil prices?"

Who specifically is saying this?

Global energy reserves are in no way depleted. Solar radiation at the Earth's atmosphere exceeds 1300 watts per square metre and has a lifespan of around 5 billion years.

Although less energy reaches the planet surface most life forms rely upon this energy source, either directly as photosynthetic organisms (mainly plants) or indirectly by eating plants or plant eaters.

This is the ultimate source of all our energy (except nuclear, which comes from supernova explosions)including oil, coal etc. which are fossilized living organisms that have been deposited by geological accidents.

Considering the value of oil as a petrochemical feedstock it is the height of stupidity to merely burn the stuff except for aircraft. That is simply a historical accident due to the high caloric value of oil compared to the limited power output of early batteries when the auto was developed and the subsequent power acquired by the oil and automobile industries.

What is needed is a crash programme focussed on the electrical industry in terms of sources, storage and transmission technologies. The problem with electrical power has always been storage but there is absolutely no reason, other than political, why would could not all drive purely electrical cars with 100 mile range and the infrastructure to replace batteries within that range. The pony express successfully used this idea over a century ago.

Balakirev writes: "We must develop beyond a carbon-based society."
What, stop eating? Away with my dentures? No pencils? No books? No internet? No barbecues? Back to horse-and-buggy?
This is dangerous nonsense.

Even if there was an unlimited supply of oil reserves (which is a material impossibility), the fact is: Nature can't take it anymore.

The air we breathe, the water we drink and the topsoil we farm can't take the built up externalities of carbon-based energy use.

The extraction of coal, oil, gas, etc. produce horrible ecological results; the massive use of the same produce even greater ecological disasters.

The basic material resources we depend on are finite and thus they are rapidly being destroyed or polluted by our use of carbon-based energy.

So, we should evolve not just beyond a petroleum-based society; we must develop beyond a carbon-based society.

Of course, the nuclear-based option is more of the same except that its negative externalities are more far-reaching because its waste is both long-lived and deadly. It also alters the basic genome of any living thing it contacts.

The the level of damage is a function of the length of contact and the level of radiation emitted.

But there is always unpredicable and unknowable levels of damage.

safiyyah: "Most of us have become faithful believers in the religion that SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY can always conquer Natures's limitations when it simply just isn't true."

First, SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY is not a religion.
Second, it does not claim to conquer nature, rather to understand it and use it to it's full potential.

The best way to conserve the oil that is out there is to ration it based on population say the US is five percent of world population then instead of recieving twenty five percent of the oil out there we will recieve a big sum of five percent.
It is the best way for conserving and cutting our usage real fast.
More bike paths and less highways better public transportation.
There is a lot that can be done we just have to get out of our metal boxes and move around a little more.
I think one gallon of gas is the energy of six hundred hours of hard labor.
We are in for a big surprise if peak oil is the real mccoy.
We will be using our hands a little more then we do now.
The first thing we should be doing is planting fruit trees everywhere so there is ample supply of food out there.
If we dont change like Sallyuukent said we are up you know where without a paddle in this case a cheap supply of oil.

If we had begun, 30+ years ago, to pour all of our country's resources into R&D of alternative, green and renewable energy sources, we wouldn't be in this pickle right now. That we are, and that it's going to take decades to extricate ourselves from it, shows how short sighted we are as a people. Be prepared for even harder times, even sharper financial squeezes, rising food, energy and health care costs to where those things will become the purview of only those wealthy enough to afford them. The rest of us are going to suffer massively and calamity is just around the corner. We are bordering on it right now and it may be too late to do anything in the short term to fix it.

I have a good steady job at a career that I have had for 25 years, and the meteoric rise in gas, food and health care costs has reduced me to paycheck-to-paycheck living. At month's end, there's nothing left but a few dollars that I have to stretch until the next payday, and I am hardly living beyond my means. I live in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment that doesn't even have a full kitchen. It's more like a "kitchenette". My bathroom is the size of a broom closet. My rent, therefore, is very cheap. I drive a thrifty, 4 cylinder, 5-on-the-floor manual transmission, fuel sipping 2007 Hyundai Accent hatchback. I'm trying to eat healthier by going organic, but it's ridiculously expensive to do so. But I don't want to eat cheap overprocessed foods because it's bad for my health and I want to keep my weight at the good healthy level at which it has always been. I don't want to become one of the numerous obese people I see nearly everywhere I go. In fact, I've begun to gain a little weight by skipping meals instead of keeping my metabolism going at a steady clip by eating regularly.

But things like food and gas I now consider luxuries that I really can't afford a lot of. I am already taking the bus to work to save on gas and skipping one or two meals per day to save on my food bill. But skipping meals will eventually take a toll on my health (already has since I've put on 7 pounds recently from doing so). I'm hoping to find someone in a similar fix and see if I can do some shared meals where costs are split, instead of trying to just cook for myself. I may just rely on my family and see if we can get together more often for shared dinners where we all split costs and thus save ourselves a lot of money.

So maybe some little good will come of all this, but still.....this is what happens when Wall Street is allowed to run rampant without any watchdogs keeping a lid on overspeculation on commodities. And rampant offshoring of American jobs to China and India, thus creating even more demand for precious oil supplies that are already too high in price for the average consumer to afford. We're in a world of hurt and it's not going to get any better. If anything, the ability to own and drive a car is going to become a luxury that only the wealthy can afford. For the rest of us....we're screwed. Royally.

rtdrury, have you noticed the full-court press by oil "experts" trying to convince everyone that speculation has nothing to do with the rise in oil prices?

jj

What fuel will move tanks, half-tracks, and trucks of the army? What fuel will fly planes and helicopters of the air force? What fuel will sail the war-ships of the navy? What fuel will propel intercontinental ballistic missiles? Bio-fuels? Is that the reason why bio-fuel is subsidized by the federal government? Perhaps this source can provide fuel for tanks, etc and missiles but I doubt that it can provide the high-octane fuel for planes and helicopters. End of petroleum = end of armed forces as we know them? Back to horses, bows, arrows, and pikes? Or will there be a crash program for synthetic fuels which have never yielded high-octane stuff either?

until we all make a concerted effort to educate the majority of people who have the "it doesn't have anything to do with me, so why should I care" attitude about everything, nothing will change.

Those people have been rudely awakened by the rising cost of gas, and everything else, but most have no clue about the causes, or how they're all related. And that's exactly what the plan was. "Keep 'em dumb and shopping."

"somehow extricate us from the current crisis over sky-high energy prices"

Impeach the top two criminals in the White House. This in turn puts the teeth back into the anti-trust laws. This in turn puts the fear back into the hearts of the speculators and refining/distribution profiteers in the US. This in turn squelches their profiteering and the prices stabilize. But the consumption slaves have to initiate this sequence of events by marching in the streets and demanding impeachment of the criminals. In this respect the market is truly free - dependent on the free will of the consumption slaves. Ironically these slaves hold the key to emancipate themselves. It might be called "soft slavery".

The world as a whole is in a gigantic state of denial about the decline in world energy sources. Most of us have become faithful believers in the religion that SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY can always conquer Natures's limitations when it simply just isn't true.

Our worldwide capitalist economic system rose about through its ability to loot nature but there isn't that much nature left to loot anymore. Nature, and not man alone, creates wealth, and we have allowed capitalism to squander it. Capitalism is killing off Nature.