Duration : 0:5:49

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Also, as the price of gasoline goes up, the amount of oil reserves also increases. This is because it becomes economically feasible to extract the oil from deeper deposits. So as the price of gas increases, our oil reserves will actually increase.

Then, on top of that, trucks/planes/boats all need a form of oil just to transport the food overseas to countries that are paying for it.

That is why, people will be getting hungrier as that fateful day (peak oil) draws nearer and nearer.

Their work represents an updated version of the famous Hubbert model, which correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil reserves would peak within 20 years. Many researchers have since tried using the model to predict when worldwide oil production might peak."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100312/sc_livescience/oilproductiontopeakin2014scientistspredict

How do you think this will impact global warming? Will concerns over peak oil motivate governments to regulate carbon emissions more quickly and strictly, for example?

I have no doubt that we’re around peak oil right now. I think as far as consequences for global warming it is more important where we are with respect to peak coal. World coal reserves are almost certainly overestimated, including US reserves. China uses coal like crazy but they never adjust their reserve level downward, and there is no evidence that they’re adding proven reserves. US coal reserves are based on mining by hand, and with more modern mining methods and higher demand for low sulfur coal, much of what are in the reserves should be withdrawn, because it involves mining too close to the upper and lower coal horizons, which are high in sulfur content.

As I’ve said on here before, David Rutledge of Caltech estimates that the total world hydrocarbon reserves are small enough that we cannot even reach the lowest of the Kyoto Protocol numbers. That’s great news for global warming, but bad news for the economy unless we can find a comparably inexpensive way of supplying energy to the economy.

EDIT: jim z may be a geologist, but he is certainly not a petroleum geologist. It doesn’t matter where you allow drilling in the US or offshore, US production peaked long ago. The US production in 1970 has never been matched, and will never be matched. Even when the huge finds in Alaska came online, production did not match the 1970 peak. Virtually every country in the world that has produced oil is on the downhill side of the peak–and despite what the brainwashed right may think, all those other countries find themselves with declining production too, no matter whether they have governments that care about the environment or not.

Many of the offshore oil drilling restrictions should be removed, they will help US supply, but the glory days of US oil production are long past. There just aren’t that many large fields to be found.

Duration : 0:4:16

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Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. The concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells. The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks and then declines—sometimes rapidly—until the field is depleted. This concept is derived from the Hubbert curve, and has been shown to be applicable to the sum of a nations domestic production rate, and is similarly applied to the global rate of petroleum production. Peak oil is often confused with oil depletion; peak oil is the point of maximum production while depletion refers to a period of falling reserves and supply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Duration : 0:9:50

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“SHORTAGE OF ENERGY” or “LONGAGE OF PEOPLE”?

By Jay Hanson, August 21, 2007
to discuss the issues raised in this paper http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/th…

Longage is always soluble; a shortage may not be. — Garrett Hardin

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation.
There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize.
There is a failure here that topples all our success. — John Steinbeck

A specter is haunting developed countries, the specter of “peak oil.” If you were born after 1960, you will probably die of violence, starvation or contagious disease. This is because our genetic demand for more-and-more resources, within a physical environment of less-and-less “net energy”[1] available for those resources, will inevitably lead to widespread violence and global nuclear war.

Geologists have calculated that global oil production [2] and North American natural gas production [3] are peaking about now. American coal is expected to peak about 2035.[4] No alternative — even nuclear [5] — has the potential to replace more than a tiny fraction of the power presently generated by fossil fuels.

America was specifically designed by special interests (e.g., General Motors, Firestone and Standard Oil) to require fossil fuel and automobiles [6] to be viable. The exhaustion of fossil fuel will leave many millions of Americans with no access to food or water and facing certain death. For example, ten or more millions of people in Southern California alone will die within a couple of days after drinking their toilet tanks and swimming pools dry.

Since it’s literally impossible to increase global net energy production, the only approaches which can mitigate this problem are national — to either increase national net energy, or reduce national energy demand, or both. The primary goal of American public policy should be to minimize the suffering [7] of as many American citizens as possible by delivering basic “needs”[8] gratis. Unfortunately, our democratic [9] form of government can not direct us to any specific goal because it is “process politics” instead of “systems politics”:
“As the name implies, process politics emphasizes the adequacy and fairness of the rules governing the process of politics. If the process is fair, then, as in a trial conducted according to due process, the outcome is assumed to be just — or at least the best the system can achieve. By contrast, systems politics is concerned primarily with desired outcomes; means are subordinated to predetermined ends.”[10]

Indeed, all measures that our present government takes to mitigate our problems will make them even worse! [11] Since our present government can not direct us to any specific goal, the first step in mitigation must be to invent a new systems politics. In other words, dump our present “special interest” government in favor of a new “common interest” government based on a new set of values:

“In brief, liberal democracy as we know it — that is, our theory or ‘paradigm’ of politics — is doomed by ecological scarcity; we need a completely new political philosophy and set of political institutions. Moreover, it appears that the basic principles of modern industrial civilization are also incompatible with ecological scarcity and that the whole ideology of modernity growing out of the Enlightenment, especially such central tenets as individualism, may no longer be viable.”[12]

The closest example in our experience was the country on a war footing during World War Two when our economy was directed towards the specific goal of winning the war. Moreover, even if the entire economy were directed towards developing renewable energy supplies, it would be a significant challenge to avoid anarchy because energy available for consumer goods could fall to about 30% of demand:
http://www.warsocialism.com/

Duration : 0:2:37

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