The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Sleepwalking over the oil peak > Comments

Sleepwalking over the oil peak : Comments

By Michael Lardelli, published 5/11/2007

The major parties won’t talk about peak oil until they have to, but a liquid fuels crisis is closer than we think.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. ...
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. All
otoh, the sooner we run out of oil, and then coal, the sooner we can, will or must reduce population.

there's going to be a sweaty bit for awhile, but 200 years from now, the survivors will gather around the campfire and tell folktales of flying humans, able to talk and see great distances.

the kids won't believe it, entirely, but there will still be wreckage to support the claims.
Posted by DEMOS, Monday, 5 November 2007 11:00:14 AM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Excellent article. None of the major political parties seem to have heard of peak oil much less doing anything about it. They also seem to be interested in adding new roads when more rails / public transport will serve us better.

All industrialized nations are in serious trouble, I'd even suggest it was probably to late; oil has peaked and its down hill from here on in. We needed to be doing something about twenty years ago. We don't have the luxury of a slow steady decline in oil.

Bernie (and anyone who's interested),

Have a look at: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net -- there are also lots of good books on peak oil (e.g The Last Oil Crash, The Long Emergency etc).

I'd also suggest that "sane, calm decisions" are very, very unlikely, anyone think going to Iraq was a good idea ("Oh look" he said in a cynical tone, "the biggest oil users on the plant have hoved off to bring democracy to the third largest oil deposit on the plant...")?

We have seen the start of the energy wars and unless there is a dramatic change to the way we live then we'll see more.
Posted by Charger, Monday, 5 November 2007 11:08:24 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The double whammy will be 'lack of liquids' both fuel and water. That will create all kinds of compounding effects; for example even if the farmer could get irrigation water he may not get enough oil-derived fertiliser or be able to drive his produce to market. Some urban elites have said they will drive a Prius and all will be well; that option may not be available to battlers who struggle with a long commute from the outer mortgage belt to modest paying jobs in town. Another compounding effect will be the way we'll use currently plentiful coal to replace oil while pretending that the climate problem can wait.

Meanwhile Costello still thinks Australia needs more people. Maybe the momentum will carry over to retail this Christmas. However if $100 oil is here to stay I think everything will change fairly soon.
Posted by Taswegian, Monday, 5 November 2007 12:34:49 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Bazz, you say “we need decades to adapt.” Of course, if we don’t have decades, then we will perforce adapt more quickly. Cf an article in today’s Australian on the Nazi Blitz of London, whih gives an indication of our capacity to adapt rapidly.

Michael, a bit flippant, but I wonder if many of the people worrying about peak oil are the same as the we-must-stop-using-fossil-fuels global warming alarmists? Silver linings and all that.

More seriously, my understanding is that there are substantial quantities of oil which remain untapped because of cost of extraction/limitations of technology. Declining supplies and rising prices will make such oil more viable and accelerate technological development.

However serious such long-term issues, we can’t let them dominate our daily lives, we’d be in constant despair. And so often they are misguided – e.g. the Club of Rome forecasts around 1970 that we would have mass starvation and no resources within 20 years or so, and the fact that serious scientists even in the advanced global warming camp admit that our understanding of the processes at work is very limited.

I do live in a relatively low-resource, protect the environment manner, not on ideological grounds or because I’m terrified of what may be, but because it seems like common sense. If more people did so, many projected problems would be mitigated. But for Australia as a whole, we’re small players on a global scale and will have to be adapters to whatever befalls. As an economist, I’ve been stressing for the last 20 years that economic and other policies should be directed at increasing our capacity to cope with, to make the best of, changing circumstances. Change is the one constant, and too often Australia’s people and politicians try to deny change rather than to embrace it.
Posted by Faustino, Monday, 5 November 2007 1:22:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
In addition to the Oct 2007 Energy Watch Group report stating that oil production peaked in 2006,
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/Reports.24+M5d637b1e38d.0.html
here are three more made within the last month:

Ex Aramco Executive, Sadad al-Husseini, peak production plateau now and overstated recoverable reserves, Oct 2007
http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=67
http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=68
http://www.energyintel.com/om/program.asp?Year=2007
and a graph from the presentation here
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3190#comment-259196

The Oil Drum, Oct 2007, peak production plateau now
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3064

Colin Campbell's ASPO Ireland Nov 2007 newsletter
http://www.aspo-ireland.org/contentFiles/newsletterPDFs/newsletter83_200711.pdf
page 6 Campbell discusses the possibility of a peak plateau rather than his predicted peak of 87.3 mbd (excl refinery gains) in 2010
"A depletion based Peak may not of course be reached if high prices hold down demand, delivering more of a plateau than a peak"
and
"It can now be said with absolute assurance that Hydrocarbon Man will be virtually extinct this Century"
Posted by Tonye, Monday, 5 November 2007 1:51:08 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I failed to mention Natural Edge, patrons Ninian Stephens and Ian Lowe, the Australian version of these institutes
Worth looking at even just to counter the banality of the current election, auction sale? Liitle in the way of a plan for our future other than more of the past-pity! Natural Edge offers, it is up to us.
Posted by untutored mind, Monday, 5 November 2007 3:31:05 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. ...
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy