borneo_cyclist

Peak oil crisis is not something you read on the internet anymore. It has a big chance of becoming reality if oil prices hit USD 50 per barrel next week. Question is : what will you do now for preparing yourself ? (If you dunno what is peak oil crisis , just do a search of 'peak oil' on the internet)
Here is my list :
1) Ask my friend to sell off all their stock market share
2) Commute as far as you can cause you will have problem buying oil soon !
3) Get myself mentally really for losing my job, the biggest economy cirisis in human history is coming !

If you still don't believe me, read the article at https://dieoff.org

enigmagic

Okay, see the thing about the whole peak oil crisis is that it won't peak, ever. Not noticably anyway. Oil production is such a large process that when it does peak, and begins to fall, as it inevitably will, it will be a gradual process. While I acknowledge that oil is not readily renewable and will run out at some point I very seriously doubt it is going to be anytime in the next decade. Dozens of fancy charts generally mean very little as said charts have predicted total oil industry collapse for many years. Somehow the date keeps getting moved up to the "near future" whenever it is eclipsed.

This being said, I encourage bicycle commuting as a viable alternative to fossil fuel comsumption, and utilize it myself--gas isn't something I like to buy at any price. But listening to the rantings of doomsday prophets who link to things like "Quicktime Movie of Dead Babies Being Thrown Into a Dump Truck" is asinine at best and just downright deluded at worst. This website is little more than a cobbled-together collection of quotes and badly executed and heavily biased semi-scientific charts all aimed at panic. Which does noone any good, really.

edit:spelling

Guest

I always bike, so oil only affects me for longer travel, like when I fly. But I will book my flight that I'm doing in September today, just in case the price of flying goes up in the coming weeks. *sigh*

Other than that, oil prices don't affect me much, unless they pass it along to the comsumer at grocery stores, but maybe I should just start going to farmers' market for now anyway.

Koffee

dobber

Blah, blah, blah, the sky is falling!!

If you look at the true facts, you'd see that the fair market value of oil is about $35 a barrel. The shamsters in the markets have decided to add on a "terror" premium. Pretty soon the bubble will burst and somebodys gonna be holding the bag.

I've yet to see a gas line or a station closed due to lack of gas.

And whatever happened to the whole Y2K thing?

enigmagic

Totally. Better food, generally pretty nice prices, and awesome selection relative to the corner supermarket.

Man, funny story about farmer's markets. (Cue segue music) My girlfriend and myself were driving down Clairmont in Atlanta, and we were kinda trying to find someplace to eat, and we saw this giant warehouse-looking building broadly labelled "Atlanta Farmer's Market". This was a generally pretty unassuming place, looked pretty all-around good, until we stepped inside. The place was heavily biased toward Asian and Hispanic food--going so far as to have live frogs and bags of fish heads proudly displayed. This, in and of itself, is not that funny, but my girlfriend is an animal lover, and pretty squeamish, at that. Her reaction when she saw the frog cage was priceless, "Oh, look! Frogs! I wonder if they're for sale? Are they pets...(realization that we're in the meat section dawns) Oh my god...".
Needless to say we left pretty rapidly.

ultra-g

AAhhhhgggghhhh!!!! The end is near!

I'm going to hide under my bed until Armageddon! (which is 2012 by the way)

P.S. Can someone tell Bobby Kennedy Jr. to stop taking private jets?

Poguemahone

"The shamsters in the markets have decided to add on a "terror" premium."

Given the political instability of the corner of the world where so much oil comes from, the terror premium is not wholly unrealistic.

Keep in mind there are other factors in play here as well, including increasing demand for oil in China and India, corporate legal problems in Russia (no joke), and supply problems in Iraq and Venzuala. It's really a confluence of factors driving up oil prices right now. They are likely to peak out and drop back, but the future probably holds a steady upward curve. Even the Saudis, who traditionally ramp up production to keep prices down, are close to peak production; their recent announcement of increased production did little to calm markets.

However, the price of oil is likely to continue a gradual climb. I doubt many people will change their driving habits; I sometimes think many people would rather drive than eat. They'll just whine loudly as the price goes up, like they already do.

It'll have limited effect on yours truly; I'm only halfway thru the tank of gas I bought back at the end of June. I don't really think the price of gas will raise the price of consumer goods as much as everyone thinks it will; the distribution system, even the US, is far more multi-faceted than most car drivers realize.

HereNT

Makes me glad that the only fossil fuel I knowingly use is my gas stove. Even then, I don't use it that often. No gas for cars would do nothing to me...

jjj

There really isn't much to argue about with Hubbert's peak. It simply says that oil production will reach a peak and this will coincide with the depletion endpoint. The main problem is projecting when the peak will occur, and we just happen to be at a point where more and more industry people are saying we could be reaching it in a few years.

Reaching peak oil also means it should be historically cheap, not expensive.

Conserving oil just delays the inevitable. Why not use it while its cheap and force the issue sooner. I see lots of people doing that.

Feltup

Your kidding right? If we ran out of gas you would lose your job and have to find a new food source. It ain't going to happen anytime soon but when it does we will all be affected. I think there will be an alternative long before fossil fuels are gone.

ultra-g

Actually, the big asteroid is going to slam into the Earth and make the human race extinct way before oil runs out.

In 2,000,000 years cockroaches will be using human oil for their cars.

(Yikes!)

HereNT

That's possible that I might lose my job, but doubtful. The people I work with that live 60-70 miles from work will feel the fuel crunch a lot sooner than I will.

I was thinking more of the crunch where everyone freaks out about the high price of gasoline. That will do pretty much nothing to me. I'd like to think that more expensive oil might influence the amount of it being used in fertilizer, perhaps resulting in more locally grown, organic crops, which would probably make me healthier. The conflicts between those with oil and those that want it will probably effect me a lot more. The lack of fuel for global shipping will probably be one of the main things that would effect me, but most trucks and trains and ships run on deisel, which can readily be substituted with organic products like ethanol - this is already happening in my state, where they offer hibred deisel for many commercial vehicals. There is a lot of grain that is either thrown away every year, and farmers paid not to grow anything in this country. Those crops could easily be used to create viable alternatives to fossil fuels.

There will probably be a lot of SUVs sitting and rusting, but I don't mind that either.

I give it 10 years, but I've always kind of wanted to see modern civilization fall. Go figure.

borneo_cyclist

Very good comment from all. But if you study history, we are living in an era called "Industry economy". And this "economy" are based on "cheap energy". So if "no oil" , then "no economy". The nature will take over. We have a population of 6 billion on this earth. And it is called "over population". Forget about alternative energy because it can only replace 5% of our energy used. Just think of the fact and you will see this is not another Y2K

ollo_ollo

Tell it to the Mennonites. Life goes on & this country managed to live pretty well in the 17th & 18th century. The main problems were medical & we certainly have made some improvements in that area.

enigmagic

Pretty dismissive from someone who doesn't back the statement up at all. France's 78% reliance on nuclear power seems to disagree. Oh, and Japan's 37% reliance on alternative power is pretty damning too, isn't it? Sorta skirting the 420 billion kwh that reactors produce yearly in a highly industrialized country, aren't we?
Boy, I wish I'd studied history so I'd know how doomed we are.

https://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm
https://www.asiatradehub.com/japan/power.asp

samundsen

Additional numbers from my home country Norway, which is one of the largest oil producers in the world. 99% of all electricity in the country is generated from water, and 50% of the total energy consumption is generated from water power (source: https://www.statkraft.com/, direct link to document in Norwegian: https://www.statkraft.no/archive/inte...3/Tysse057.pdf)

Chris L

All of the above is, at best, highly doubtful. Our species survived for 2 million years before oil dependence, I don't think we'll all perish if supplies were to run a little low. As I've said so many other times, it's just a matter of finding more efficent ways of doing things. Prices of consumer goods will never go any higher than what people are prepared to pay for them, that is a fact. Supply and demand is the main force that determines these things.

Perhaps all that is likely to happen is that governments might start re-directing some of their oil subisidies into alternative fuel sources, or perhaps even *gasp* subsidising the people who actually produce all these things that apparently need to be transported massive distances.

latortilla

Too bad the bacteria will eventually win. It's a lot easier to stay ahead of the game when you aren't worried about profit margins and maxing out a patent.

collegeskier

A concerted effort by the Unites States government could easily eliminate our lust for oil. Oil is always going to be very useful, but there are some things lubes, cooling, and plastics to name a few that oil is much better used for then fuel. Eathanol and bio diseal as well as bio-mass all make sense on many levels. If the automakers decided they could sell more cars and were not in bed with the oil companies you would see a very different energy policy, and if the energy companies did not get to essentially decide energy policy we would all be better off. Did I mention bio fuels contribute essentially 0 CO2 to the atmosphere. That could be nice.

Svend Karlson

I work for an Oil/Energy Company, a big one.

Reserve replacement is certainly not great at the moment, not every company is achieving even 100%b. However even very brownfield operations such as the North Sea (UK, Netherlands, Norway) have about 50% of total reserves still remaining. We just currently lack the technology to extract it, or it is too expensive to use.

We will eventually run out of oil, and sometime before that be unable to satisfy demand at prices that make oil usage feasbile for mass transit at present, but not inside 20 years.

There are significant players in the UK recommending a drive towards Nuclear power now aswell.

Dahon.Steve

It's funny but I said the same thing a while back! Lets waste all the fuel as possible. Conservation should be thrown out the door which will mean higher prices for the SUV drivers! (Just kidding)

Dahon.Steve

Unless we go back to coal, any alternative will be more expensive than the mode we currently have. That's just it folks. There will always be oil. Always. Just like there will always be diamonds. Whether you can afford it is another matter.

Dahon.Steve

This is what worries me the most. If we run out of fuel for mass transit, cities like New York and London are in big trouble. I suppose we will probably use alternative sources to generate electricity, but expect public transportation fares to skyrocket.

Guest

I don't see how we can't at least find some other alternatives to oil. More people driving electric cars would definitely cut back on our consumption and dependence on oil. And here in the USA, we should just overall be looking for a means for cleaner burning fuels like the corn derivatives and creating water from dams and recycling. For some reason, we can be the country in the world with one of the highest populations and do some of the worst damage to the environment, and not even think about the implications of the waste we produce, while at the same time, complain about the world around us!

I am actually going to management today to pitch a proposal for my building (40 stories high) to start a program for recycling- if it works, we will probably be the first building in the city to implement such a progressive recycling program that I suspect will actually work. I can't take not being environmentally conscious, and with all the shortage of supplies in the world, if we could take the materials we've used, I'm sure we could help to decrease the waste and push towards alternative sources of energy.

Koffee

javagrrl

More people driving electric cars only addresses the symptoms of our (USA) oil dependence, not the root cause. Those electric cars have to be recharged somehow, and the bulk of our electricity is still generated from oil and other fossil fuels. (https://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri.../table1_1.html) Don't get me wrong, the shift to electric/hybrid vehicles is a step in the right direction, but it's still a far cry from the radical change of thought and technology necessary to wean us from our wanton and profligate consumption of fossil fuels. I agree, more could and should be done to move the US away from our oil crutch. If we can put people in space, why can't we get super efficiency out of a PV panel? Our dependence on fossil fuels is likewise a marker of just how short-term our society thinks.

A book folks might be interested in that goes more into the fundamental flaws in the way current society thinks about the stuff we make and own is: Cradle to Cradle: Rethinking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.
(https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...17550?v=glance)