The alchemist; did you really mean to push the ‘blank’ button over at CSIRO?

Ludwig; Yabby; We may have seen one solution running right here in the capital on Australia Day only a km or two from CSIRO. It was a great display of vintage stationary engines, most run on the smell of an oily rag. Several looked like the ones abandoned in my boyhood backyard. They were Australian Made and I loved it.

We have just two problems, all were managed by old timers like me and none could likely fly despite their huge ‘fly’ wheels. However most as displayed were driving old water pumps, an essential job in this climate.

I believe by looking back we can find a winner here. These old energy transducers were engineered before cheap oil. The transport of this lot from original designs was either man hauled or horse drawn.

That means any youngsters whose folks went around then or looking on today have a lot ‘getting back to basics’ to learn all over after ‘peak’ oil strikes us here for real.

Growing your own bio diesel somewhere handy is only part of your problems in future. I feel particularly sad for the ones who recently bought high rise apartments on the sea shore. I reckon we are a long way off harvesting bio energy on these margins.

David; playing at the margins of the long hops in this country particularly on the goods side is hardly responsible. Collectively we have been living recently in an aberration of good times with easy outcomes.

I reckon the next haul will be the hard one.

diesel is one thing, aeroplanes only run on oil...

imagine a world with no air travel... back to the boats! all space exploration will have to stop, I don't think there are any alternatives to oil available for air use (I would obviously be extremely greatful to anyone who says I am wrong on this!).

solution to chaos that breaks out after peak oil, move to the rural areas where there are not tribal frictions. check out some of the survival guides on the net to see considered opinions on what to do in case of peak oil destruction of society, as well as lots of other scenarios such as pandemics or nuclear war etc. all look pretty likely.

Don't forget the world ends on 21-12-2015 (mayan calender). Don't believe me, how did the aztecs know when thier destruction was coming, to the correct year? By the way, we are overdue for a comet to strike the earth (a regular event) and for a supervolcano to erupt (a regular event), and then you look at global warming. Might not be the mayan calander date, but we are all dead!

its true we need a plan for the future, but i'm confident in the near future because we have such an inefficent relationship with oil that there's heaps of room for improvement. i think petrol could cost 5 times what it does and not make very much difference.
75% of oil is used in the transport sector as the article says, half of which is cars and one quarter commercial vehicles. the average car could use less than half the fuel tomorrow. For example there's a peugeot 307 diesel which gets less than 5L/100km -which is almost the same as the hybrid prius car! what i'm saying here is that if tomorrow we decided that 180kw falcons and commodores were not the ideal car to drive to work in everyday then there are existing options.
another factor is that with the rising costs of transport, more produce will be made locally- reducing the uses of fuel in the commercial sector.
more factors; people will take more care as to how close they live to their place of employment. people will adjust where they will go for holidays, where and how often they will shop, how often they will use public transport etc.

so i think we are relatively ok for the near-term (ie 15-20 yrs). but the age of cheap oil for transport is nearing the end.

after that it gets tricky... i'm kind of thinking coal is our best hope at the moment- if they can make it clean and convienient for transport use then its a winner- there's heaps of the stuff.

in any case i'm hoping we don't find a replacemnt for cheap oil too quickly (unlikely anyway)- that will force everyone to adjust to an efficiency frame of mind and promote a localised economy and community spirit again -which we all badly need after decades of consumerism and globalisation.

DDT, I think our society is pretty precariously balanced. There is not very much room for further stress before some pretty big issues manifest themselves. We have seen strong economic growth since 1991 and yet our woes haven’t lessened. Practically all realistic social and environmental indicators show a worsening trend over that period.

I don’t think it would take a very significant hike in oil prices, or a very big resultant recession, to really start engendering strife.

As you say, there is heaps of room for improvement with efficiency in the use of oil. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy. As with everything else that we have tried to improve, such as tree-clearing rates, overfishing, over-allocation of water for irrigation and many others, it will not happen in an equitable manner. Some people will be disaffected much more than others. Divisions will appear and unrest will grow.

It is all very well to say that the average car could use less than half the fuel tomorrow. But how would you make it happen? How would cut down on the unnecessary use of cars without affecting those who really need to use their cars to just about the full extent that they do now? Whatever you do will be inequitable and will no doubt disadvantage those who are already struggling.

Even if we are OK for the next 15 or 20 years, we still need to start preparing right now. This is what I’d call a best-case scenario. But we should be prepared for the worst-case scenario, or at least a scenario towards that end of the spectrum. If we over-prepare, so what (if that's possible). If we under-prepare, we are in deep doo doo.

I don’t agree with your last paragraph. If we did manage to find a replacement for cheap oil quickly, it would not force us to adjust to an efficient and sustainable frame of mind, it would be business as usual, with the same old rampant consumerism and growthism, taking us quickly into the next resource crisis.

Taz, “I feel particularly sad for the ones who recently bought high rise apartments on the sea shore. I reckon we are a long way off harvesting bio energy on these margins.”

Sorry, But I don't, but you are right. Most of the population are aware of the situation, but refuse to accept it or believe that their illusion will continue and someone else will fix it. Those that live in cities, are the last to notice detrimental changes, but the first to be really effected. Our earth was once like a set of scales, nicely balanced, now it is heavily weighted to one side and is toppling over. The only way it can be rebalanced is for the weight to be removed, that means humans, nothing else will do it.

As to growing your own biodiesel, its economical and environmentally a good thing, for the present situation.

fide mae , you are right about fuel for planes, even though they have been trying, so far there is no substitute for kerosene. Now that may be a good thing as most commercial flights around the world dump at least 2 tonnes of unburnt fuel into the atmosphere every flight. So the removal of that from our skies would go a long way to reducing the destruction. 2015, sounds a good time for a collapse and is very feasible. Whatever happens, the earth will survive in some form and so will life. Humans, well it will depend on how you prepare individually, not as a society.

In Tasmanian, fuel prices are already having a big effect outside the cities. We are controlled by just 3 corporations one is destroying the environment, ( Gunns) one destroys the social fabric (woolworths coles) and the other, (lab/lib coalition)in conjunction the previous two, destroys everything else.

The answer, get your own act together first and look after those close to you, then cope with the change.

Ludwig, you misread my last paragraph! i said i hope we DON'T find a cheap replacement for oil too quickly. By *not* having a ready replacement, it will force a belt tightening to prepare for the dwindling oil supply that is around the corner.
i agree 100% that changes will be UNequitable (they usually are!), it'll be the people at the bottom who will suffer most, people who's financial situation is finely balanced with almost no buffer to absorb the affects of high oil and fuel prices.

actually it's the rapid changes that affect these people the most, perhaps we should pre-empt all this and artificially increase the price of fuel gradually to bring about the necessary social changes required in a controlled manner. if we wait for huge and sudden price surges to wake everyone up then it'll be too late, you want to start the efficiency drive before it's *really* required. people need time to change their living, work and leisure arrangements but they need to be pushed.

extra money gathered from artificially gradually raising prices can be used to develop better public transport or any other things that will help position our society better in a very high oil price world.

However for this to work, our government must come up with some kind of strategy and inform everyone including businesses that this-and-that is going to happen so at the same time as we are being squeezed to live more efficiently through raising petrol prices, businesses are adjusting their product lines.

if i knew today that there was some plan to be put in place starting tomorrow to increase fuel prices by say 30c/L per year for the next 5 years, then i would start preparing NOW for it. If the gov tells you the price is going to go up its a sure thing- if some guy in the oil industry tells you we're going to hit peak oil production soon, you think "yeah maybe, wow thats interesting", but you don't actually do anything to prepare yourself for it.