Sorta over the top and apocalyptic, but I think it is thought provoking:
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What do you guys think about our (US / CA) dependence on oil? What are some alternatives?
Mick
Wow... that's whacky...
The guy obviously knows what he's talking about; he cites legitimate sources...
I found it a bit of downer to be honest, I don't like how he shuts down EVERY alternative source of energy
I guess all we can do is try and cut down our consumption, but who's going to go first?
I refuse to be concerned by dire predictions that we will see a new stone age in my lifetime. Why is that? Because I won't be around to see it. Neither will you.
The author of that page pretends that we can get our financial houses in order and adjust. This is bullshit, of course; in the absence of a major war, you and I would be goin' down that road feelin' bad as modern-day dustbowl refugees, with donkeys towing our useless cars. Your savings won't tide you over. Not unless you're already a millionaire - and maybe not even then.
But cheer up. The author hasn't considered a simple truth: major powers will not gently into that good night. If the direst predictions are true -- total economic collapse within the next 20 years or so -- we will certainly see wars between major powers.
Major powers, I might add, that are equipped with nuclear weapons.
Wars accompany major shifts in the global power game as surely as night follows day, and there's no reason to believe that nuclear powers will (in Gwynne Dyer's idiom) keep the old game alive. And there's fuck-all anyone can do about that.
So good night, then. We're all doomed, and your kids will never grow up. It's inescapable.
So, to hell with it. I'm going to live my life. I will not go down under the ground because somebody tells me peak oil's coming round.
Great, first Bob Rock is producing the new hip album, now the world is going to end in the next 10 years.
This place can be such a downer.
More on topic: this site seems to be pretty airtight logically, but I'd like to get some dialectic going, anyone know of any sites that run counter to this?
Steve
Wow. Heady stuff.
I thought he beat the inevitability of death to death just a little bit, though...
Oil fielfs are refilling....
Deep underwater, and deeper underground, scientists see surprising hints that gas and oil deposits can be replenished, filling up again, sometimes rapidly.
Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the Gulf of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by petroleum surging up from deep below, scientists report. That may mean that current estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low.
Recent measurements in a major oil field show "that the fluids were changing over time; that very light oil and gas were being injected from below, even as the producing [oil pumping] was going on," said chemical oceanographer Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt. "They are refilling as we speak. But whether this is a worldwide phenomenon, we don't know."
Also not known, Kennicutt said, is whether the injection of new oil from deeper strata is of any economic significance, whether there will be enough to be exploitable. The discovery was unexpected, and it is still "somewhat controversial" within the oil industry.
Kennicutt, a faculty member at Texas A&M University, said it is now clear that gas and oil are coming into the known reservoirs very rapidly in terms of geologic time. The inflow of new gas, and some oil, has been detectable in as little as three to 10 years. In the past, it was not suspected that oil fields can refill because it was assumed the oil formed in place, or nearby, rather than far below.
And in my opinion...
Since gasoline is a normal good, Economics 101 tells us that we will have a series of price increases and a series of reductions in the total amount of gasoline consumed.
Eventually the price will climb to where gasoline will become a niche good purchased by very few consumers, while other consumers will have found alternatives to gas. When this happens there will still be plenty of oil in the ground, but consumers will have found alternatives that make more economic sense to them, so there will be little, if any, demand for gasoline.
Yikes....scary...really makes you stop and think...
ok so anyway, should I go with the 'Shadow Green' or the 'Slate Blue' for my new Hummer H3?
Well, I know that in the 70's everyone thought we were running out of oil..and we didn't. I personally think that e-commuting would help out a lot. I know at least with my situation..it's BS how much I run around delivering kids to school, picking up from aftercare..blah blah blah..
:x
Here where I am in the states, and pretty much all rural or suburban areas, our buses suck. They are dirty, inefficient, and just not very nice. If an fraction of what is spent on the oil exploration was put into effectively creating a decent bus system, I would take it more..
Thanks for the link, I was truly bummed out after reading this article yesterday. I don't have any solutions. It''s clear the US has the most to loose from this sincer their banking system is built on recycling Oil money... Canada isn't far behind in that respect.
Humanity will pull through, we always do... and if we don't, we won't know cause we'll be dead.
Merry Christmas!
Doc