So some April fools wants to go fracking?

Why for fracks sake?

Guess who's hiding

8 times as much oil as Saudi Arabia?

18 times as much oil as Iraq?

21 times as much oil as Kuwait?

22 times as much oil as Iran?

500 times as much oil as Yemen?

Anyone?

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

Arjay, we need your conspiratorial skills, here ... now!

I would like to see many of the author’s ideas become a reality.

Not necessarily because of a possibility of peak oil, but because such a lifestyle is likely to be more satisfying.

I can remember the satisfaction I had when eating food I had grown, and living in a house I mostly built myself.

I have significant doubts that much satisfaction can be achieved when living in a secular, feminist society, where family is becoming non-existent, where everything is now imported, where all food is bought (and about 50% of that is imported), where the education system is now devoted to producing students that become workforce fodder for multinationals, where mortgage costs can eat up most of take home pay, where government agencies exist to run government agencies, and the most satisfaction that many people seem to get is when they are stoned or drunk.

Vanna - that's your view of society. Very few would agree, particularly the bit about being stoned or drunk to be satisfied. If you count up the number of people employed by multinationals, you would find that a disappointingly small part of the workforce. The government sector is the biggest employer.

As for living in a house made by myself. It would fall down. I'm no good at that sort of thing.

Curmudgeon
It would be interesting to know what creates satisfaction in a secular and feminist society that imports almost everything. I would think “not much”.

The rate of drinking alcohol in Australia is actually increasing, particularly binge drinking.

If you look closely at many companies in Australia, almost all the equipment used by the company is imported and produced by multinational companies or foreign companies. So Australia is fast becoming a consumer or puppet for multinational companies. Australia is now very dependant on mining, but if you go onto a coal mine site you will find almost all equipment being used at the site is produced by multinational or foreign companies, and Australians are simply being employed to operate or service that equipment.The education system is no exception to this, and almost everything in a school or university is now imported.

As for oil sands or oil shale, they normally contain oil with high level of impurities, which means the refining costs are higher, which means the eventual price of petrol, diesel or petroleum products is higher.

Refining high impurity oil also produces higher quantities of pollutants.

Of course it is likely that mining companies will first begin mining oil shale or oil sand deposits that have low levels of impurities, but they will quickly run out, and then they will have to mine the material that contains higher levels of impurities.

"technically recoverable oil"

What an endearing term.

Here's a link to Canada's version of a technically recoverable oil industry - the Alberta Tar Sands. Probably the worst single polluter on the planet. It's been called a "toxic moonscape" the size of England.

http://one-blue-marble.com/alberta-tar-sands2.html

poirot, so we've gone from the article proclaiming peak oil to be the great trigger for civilization's (as we in the west know it) collapse.

To snide remarks and activist sites about another source of fuel.

No one said replacement for energy would be clean and pristine, just be happy there are substitutes, and we'll mine it use it and over time the site will become whatever it becomes .. so what.

Anytime now I see a report like that, linked to other activist sites, I completely disregard it, they are so well known for spin and BS that there is no point even bothering to read them. It's probably stacked with references to every type of "bad" thing they don't like.

The point is there are and will be more replacements for fossil fuels, and of course the activists don't like it because for some insane reason, they appear to want everyone to suffer.

We'd have clean nuc power now if it wasn't for hysterical activists, that's who I blame if CO2 is really a problem.

vanna, I agree not much is made here, and you'd be stupid to do it, since our labor laws are disgraceful. Evidently that's what the people want, fine. You can't have that and an industry. The only industry here is industry that is so essential it can't move, everything else will go.

My company moved our manufacturing to the USA where we get government help for god's sake on how to deal with environmental issues, not hindrance or snotty articles in the media. This country is hostile to anyone making a buck or a profit.

I'm still waiting to see all these green jobs from "new technologies" we constantly get told by our eco activist buddies .. still waiting (I assume they will come when the government can tax me more and subsidize them completely)