The author has introduced CO2 emissions into the discussion and these
emissions should for now not be considered.
The IPCC computer models have erroneous data for their inputs of
available fossil fuels. Until they use the more realistic data AGW
should not be a consideration.

Natural gas as an alternative to liquid fuels has real possibilities.
However to scale up the distribution system to equal the present
petrol and diesel system is a cost that we may not be able to bear in
our present financial condition.
However for a moderate number of CNG users there are commercially
available overseas compressors which you can plug into your domestic
gas supply and compress for use in a car gas tank.
However I doubt if the gas supply could cope with everyone coming
home from work and starting up their compressors.

CNG while an option may not be developed fast enough to equal the rate
of depletion of oil supplies. It would however provide a good buffer
and delay the need to find the ultimate solution for transport energy.

Production of gas fields falls very steeply when they start depleting.
Because of this it may not be possible to ever provide a fast enough
increase in production to overcome oil depletion. We will probably be
in a race to the bottom of the barrel (pun intended).

Additionally government could reserve CNG for use in power stations
and ban its use in road transport.
I know that we have very large reserves of gas but after we honor our
contracts with China and Japan, would we be able to supply all our
transport needs and power station demands ?
A related question; how long would we need to use CNG and how much
time before we need to find the permanent alternative ?

All those are questions that our government has never even heard let
alone considered an answer.

I notice a number of respondents here seem to think that peak oil is
history. Well they are right peak oil according to the International
Energy Authority occurred in 2006 !

Many of the finds mentioned are expensive to produce and will take
something like ten years to get into production. When you see figures
for some of these fields, divide the available reserves by 85,000,000
and you will be surprised at how few days supply there is available.

The cheap fields are depleting and the new fields are expensive.
It can only mean more expensive petrol & diesel.
Expensive fuel will mean that we will stretch out the supply but many
uses are not optional. Food is a good example as the amount of energy
used to produce our food is very high.

Popnperish. You are not unkind, just mistaken, through poor reading comprehension.

I said electric cars will always be the cars of the future. They will never be the cars of the present. When enough people have been misled into buying them, and realise what they have done, there will cease to be a market for them

As I have asked many on this space before who assert that human emissions have any measurable effect on climate. You assert climate disruption, so please point us to any scientific evidence that this is so.

No one has produced it yet, because it does not exist.

If there were such evidence the IPCC would know about it and the best they can do is say that it is “very likely”.

They predicted that the science to prove it would be the “hotspot” in the troposphere which would be the “signature” for AGW.

There is no hotspot, no signature, and still no apology from the mendacious IPCC for attempting to mislead us.

I am sure you will apologise immediately, popnperish, for asserting this nonsense.

As for your puerile “eutrophication of our waterways”, why don’t you grow up.

Heard it all before.

Forty years ago, my high school teachers warned us how the world was running out of food, while my science teacher assured my class that we were heading into a new Ice Age.

In 1979 the Arabs put an oil embargo on the west, and "experts" told the public that the world had only 20 years of oil left. Then there was the "Millenium Bug", where all the worlds computers were going to crash along with any airliner flying, which turned out to be the bigest non event since the last Halley's Comet.

Now we are being told that the earth is suffering from a runaway grenhouse efect, the oceans are going to rise, and we are running out of oil again.

Give me a break. I will believe it when I see it.

Bazz - sorry, but none of that's relevent.

Oil industry analysts would have largely dumped peak oil as a useful concept, even for easy lift oil. The IEA estimate, if they did make it, is probably old. A better, more reliable estimate also pre-dating the salt layer discoveries, by the highly respected consultancy Cambridge Energy Research Association, put a peak at sometime to the 2040s, from memory.

Now even the most pessimistic analysts have admitted that the Brazil and Gulf of Mexico discoveries are collectively huge, and have come on top of recent developments unlocking vast oil shale deposits. (Google "fracking", as noted before.) Oil may become more expensive, but who knows what oil prices will do.

Otherwise, peak oil as a scare story is dead. Best to move on.

Curmudgeon said;
The IEA estimate, if they did make it, is probably old.

Every year the IEA produces an outlook document.
It was in the 2010 year document which came out about October 2010.
It referred to peak crude oil which is a few years earlier than
crude oil plus all liquids which seems to have been in 2008.

It is no theory, it is a fact that all oil wells and oil fields
experience it as did Australia in 1999. Like all other "huge" finds
compared to daily usage of oil they are all not drought breakers.
I have forgotten what the expected available oil is for the Brazil
finds but it will certainly help but not solve the basic problem.