http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/refuel/

Nuclear waste isn’t the problem, it’s the solution!

Believe me, this is an overblown crisis if there ever was. The only reason this paranoia sticks is because gas prices are a number eveyone sees as they drive around… and a number that everyone pays at the pumps… so the same monkey-see-monkey-do that gave us a new millennium in 2000 (vice 2001) is convincing us that this number is going to end all life as we know it. I think not.

and in our fiercely independent society nobody is in a hurry to give any of that up an inch

What if they have to? What if the world is actually at peak oil, something you American’s went through in the 70s and is why you now import so much oil? What if because you built such silly, individualised and car dependent suburban city plans you’re now one of the most oil vulnerable nations on earth? What then?

Do you know oil is food? Do you know how much energy it takes to grow 1 calorie of food?

So, I can hear you immediately thinking peak oil is just a lefty conspiracy to take over and tell us all what to do and how to live. Wrong. It’s science. It’s maths. It’s sticking a map up on the wall and crossing off the oil producing nations of the world one after another as they peak and go into terminal production decline. That doesn’t mean they run out overnight, but it does mean they move from producing ever more light sweet cheap crude to ever less foul stinky sour crude. The age of sweet oil is turning sour, and this is what we are seeing at the pump. So invest in gas. When the stockmarket crashes and oil is nationalised under the IEA’s “Liquid fuels emergency act”, will you really get any benefit from your stockmarket tinkering? You’re fiddling while Rome burns.

Peak oil Top 10

1. In which decade did we discover the most oil?

2. How has the discovery of conventional oil been going since then? Keep in mind that oil is probably only 2nd to the military in terms of the money and technology available to their enterprise. Big oil have BILLIONS at their disposal for the latest discovery and drilling technologies.

3. What is the ratio of discovery to consumption? Are we discovering more than we use, or less? How good or ‘bad’ is the ratio each year?

4. How long has the trend been in this direction?

5. How many oil producing countries have already peaked and are in irreversible decline? What are their decline rates?

6. Which countries are still able to increase production and have not reached their all time historical peak?

7. Is there an ‘international oil cop’ agency that audits the fields and confirms the books of various oil blocks? Who reports to who? What is the chain of command down which the oil data has to travel in the non-OPEC western world?

8. How do we know whether OPEC reports are legitimate? Who do they report to? Who can audit their books? Does the western world get access to their fields? How do we confirm what they know?

9. If domestic consumption of oil exporting nations rises too fast (because of a booming domestic economy), how quickly can domestic consumption outpace their ability to export oil once they themselves peak? (Hint: there are historical precedents — google “Export Land Model”).

10. If those few exporting nations that are left suddenly DO decide to keep the oil for their own economies, how relevant is a global depletion rate of 5% per annum if the OIL MARKET has collapsed because ‘sellers’ are becoming ‘buyers’?

Lastly: here’s the real issue once someone finally does the math and realises the world is about to hit 4% less oil each and every year from here on in…

Is there any liquid fuel that can replace oil in the scales we need, the time-frames we need, and the infrastructure in which we burn it?
Answer: No. The only way to adapt to peak oil is to use less oil.

There are answers to this crisis. But you’re going to think they are socialist until you maybe travel to Europe and spend some time falling in love with a more appropriate city plan that just doesn’t require as much oil based transport in the first place.

@Jim Bisnett
Thanks for stopping by. If I was going to have a benefit concert the proceeds would go directly Haliburton.

I wrote this article 2 years ago.. I think it needs freshened.