Well expressed Ian and timely, following 4 Corners last night, which gave an excellent and extremely ominous overview of this subject.

This peak oil scenario is likely to be devastating to us in Australia (and around the world) in the very short term. If prices rise to $2 this year and $5 by 2010, or anything like that, basic economics at all levels from families to the whole nation are going to start failing.

Mass unemployment, chronic inflation, gross inequality and massive civil strife could easily result.

The single most important thing in Australian politics right now has got to be peak oil. We are so fundamentally dependent on liquid fossil fuels that this issue really does have the power to tear our society apart and destroy life as we know it.

I have long thought that our society (and the world) will reach thecrunch point in about 2012, after which the vast majority of us (that survive) will be living a third-world more or less subsistence type of life. This prediction is looking better all the time

I certainly think that we have reached "peak petrol and diesel", which must come before peak oil, because we are talking about embodied energy.

Mind you, I don't discount oil companies ripping everyone off in the process, but that may turn out to be the paranoia of profiteers.

We think that we may have used the "easy half" of the world's endowment of oil. In the best mining tradition, we have leaned towards the better grades of oil, as that is where the greatest energy profit may be had. But even the better quality oil deposits tend to yield their lighter fractions first, leaving the heavier, energy-lean residues to be scavenged later.

We know that the more abundant poorer grades of oil contain less energy and more dross (tar sand is an extreme example). We know that they require more energy to be consumed in extraction and processing, to produce the gasoline and diesel we need. So dwindling oil quality must have a "double whammy" effect on the availability of the desired article. By slow degrees, MORE energy must be sacrificed to liberate ever LESS contained energy.

No matter that we have enjoyed a plenitude of easy gasoline and diesel, that wonderful resource was never more than the "spare" energy left over after extraction and processing.

It follows that as oil quality decreases, the supply of oil and the scale of refining must increase for a steady amount of fuel produced. Yet oil suppliers and refineries are facing this reality during a period of increasing fuel demand.

Now add the tyrannies of distance and depth to reach unexploited oil deposits.

Add the costly capital investment, relative to the yield of smaller oil deposits.

Then to make things really confusing, realise that it is oil energy which sets the value of money, not the other way around.

That's the killer. Unless we see economics for what it really is - just another aspirational cult - we are doomed to collapse in ignorance. We are ALL members of Hillsong and we all live on Easter Island.

All these economic illiterates, fresh from predicting the imminent collapse of ecological systems, now have a dapple at predicting the imminent collapse of the economic system.
Answer? None of the above.

Lowe has had zero credibility since well before he tried to imply that a million hectares of clearing permits was equal to a million hectares of actual clearing, of actual old growth forest.

With anything Lowe says, just halve it, halve it again, and halve it once more and you may be somewhere near the truth.

And as for $5 petrol, most will buy a scooter while the SUV drivers will drop the kids at school with a designer quad bike until a better solution presents itself. Trains, tractors and interstate B-Doubles will switch to steam and the Lowes of this world will look for some new scenario to scare the kids with.

And the innovative ape will prevail.

Perseus, makes some very good points indeed.

The economic pressure of increased fuel price will (almost certainly is) lead to an increase in oil exploration, improved technologies for extracting oil including from Shale oil, and greater investment in refining capacity. My understanding of the oil industry is that periods of shortage are followed by periods of oil glut.

If this means extracting oil from so-called environmental icons such as The Gear Barrier Reef, NIngaloo Reef or Antarctica and so on, then so beit. Oil in my view is more important, by orders of magnitude, to civilisation then “sloppy” romanticism and Rousseau like fantasy.

Michael Chrichton in his thriller “State of Fear” makes it clear that doomsday scenarios are great for fund raising. Professor Lowe as ACF president can not be indifferent to the importance of fund raising for his organization.

Well, at least we wicked, wicked Australians don’t need to employ 40 slaves each; although, of course, we have put all of those people out of work.

The two words, “experts disagree” in this article are the ones we should be mindful of. Professor Lowe is obviously one of these experts.

Why should we believe him and not one of the many other experts who suggest that what he says is baloney?

As unpalatable as it may be, there are presently no renewable energy options which can fill the gap that declining fossil fuels will leave. The one that comes closest, in theory, is probably solar energy, but as yet much more technological progress needs to be made to improve the cost and durability of solar technologies.

For all the doom and gloom reasons Mr Lowe refers to, people will eventually have to realise that our medium term future lies with nuclear energy, imperfect as it is. The sooner we accept that, the smoother will be the transition.

I think the world's middle class of over a billion people would be unwilling to voluntarily cut direct and indirect energy consumption more than about 20%. I'm talking about less driving, bare bones holiday travel, no air conditioning, lower protein diet and so on. However the combination of oil depletion at 5-10% a year and the goal of reducing coal burning by 60% means we will one day have enforced energy cuts well beyond this -20% 'comfort zone'. So unfortunately we will have to adapt to some combination of rationing (eg by wealth) and less-than-ideal energy sources both coal and nuclear. We are locked in to some degree of economic sacrifice and climate change until we get the balances right.

A simple example of energy efficiency.

In my otherwise unheated office of twelve square meters, I use a 1000 watt oil heater during winter. I was still somewhat cold, so should I replace the heater with a more powerful model? Instead I decided to move its location to under the desk. I found that I needed to turn thermostat from 9 down to 4. Problem solved.

So instead of increasing consumption, there was a way of halving it.

Companies around the world are doing the same on a much larger scale with their various processes.

Solving the global warming is not about going backward. It's about going forward.

David Latimer, I hope that the disagreements I sometimes have with your posts are not terminated by your going to sleep at the oil-heater warmed desk due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

David Latimer says, "Solving the global warming is not about going backward. It's about going forward." Well said!
But a crucial component of the problem has not been mentioned and I think that is 'democracy'. Most people aren't going to vote for a party that wants to clip their wings because they are greedy and ego-centric. Less wasteful lifetsyles have to be made ego-friendly. Instead of people being proud of conspicuous consumption they need to be proud of being clever. It is happening slowly but the ecology image has to dump all the connections to feminism and gay rights etc that have completely discredited it. "Look at me! My XYZ gets 100 kilometres to the litre!

Professor Lowe, you are dead right, if a little too optimistic. On both fronts – climate change and peak oil – the urgently required response from decision makers is simply not there. Both horses have bolted.

Despite this, there is a lot to be optimistic about.

Turning away from oil dependency will cause some temporary hardship, for sure, perhaps even civil war and bloodshed in places, as scarcity bites deep.

But then for every negativity there will be many more positives.

Oil dependency has given us personal mobility, which we all love, but at an immense price. It has given us the road carnage, polluted and alienating cities, unsociable cultures, the obesity pandemic, raging consumerism - these leading on to a catalogue of social ills like drug dependency, mental disorders and now the onset of resource wars and consequent terrorism.

By contrast, those who walk and ride bikes and grow community food and spend quality time with their children are finding out that their lives become immediately more convivial, socially enriched, healthier and mentally and spiritually uplifting.

Good people like Professor Lowe do need to alert decision makers to the critical dangers we all face. But naked alarm is not empowering. We need to build new, realistic visions of society that are so compelling people will want to join the rush.

This should be no harder than coaxing prisoners to come out of their cells and enjoy, for the first time, the exquisite freedom of their dreams.

The heroic Professor Lowe gets the usual hysterical reactions from ostriches like Perseus and Anti-green - methinks they do protest too much. The truth is uncomfortable and so the reaction of some frightened minds is, as always, to shoot the messenger.

Isn't it great that we will have all those forests to chop down, & use to fuel our poor lives. Of course, it means the large cities will have to go. Too expensive [in energy] to cart the wood to them.

The truth is ugly. My opinion... We use too much, think too little of others and expect others to respect us in return. If you think it is getting bad now then you haven't seen anything yet. We are suffering the curse of the 50s 60s 70s material boom. The good ol days are over folks. Uranium can only last the world about 20-30 years. The end of western civilisation must be near. Western civilisation needs to ..squash..closer together like the middle eastern communities. Sometimes it is better to go backward in order to go forwards. The above is idealistic and unachievable because greed is suppreme?

Quite so Kang

Anti green writes: “The economic pressure of increased fuel price will (almost certainly is) lead to an increase in oil exploration, improved technologies for extracting oil including from Shale oil, and greater investment in refining capacity.”

Of course.

But what comes first - increased fuel prices or increased efforts being put into solutions? The trouble is, just about everything we do that is of a meaningful scale is reactive, not proactive. So the problem has to well and truly manifest itself first. Rising prices have been a major concern in Australia for a while now, but what is our Gov doing about it? Nothing apart from talking up nuclear power. Great mate!

Then we have the problem that the alternatives to fossil fuels all require a different economic climate in order to be competitive with fossil fuels – a climate in which fossil fuels have become much more expensive, by which time the economics of our society, from the level of the individual to the national level, will have changed considerably.

Then we have the problem that even maximised supply of all alternative sources put together is simply not going to go anywhere near that of current fossil fuel supply rates.

I wonder, did either anti green or Perseus actually see 4 Corners, or did they deliberately not watch it ?

They might also be interested in the message from Ali Bakhtiari, Iranian oil and energy analyst and expert, as per this evening’s news….
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/351FD000-D263-46D8-BE9D-C17E9D5CEB84.htm

I think the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Will people have to be smarter, more efficient and cut back on their consumeristic lifestyles? Undoubtably to an extent, or at least until alternatives are found. Will they like it? Not at first, but they'll get used to it and they'll find a greater level of self-sufficiency as well as ways of enjoying life that don't entail buying a lot of stuff. It's only two generations ago that people kept chickens, grew vegetables and had fruit trees (and preserved any excess as well as repaired or re-used everyday items such as socks or tools).

However, to suggest that western society is on the brink of collapse is a bit alarmist I think, if for no other reason than the fact that it's certainly not in the interests of governments or corporations to have society wipe itself out. If necessary, governments would intervene and ration fuels, and basically outlaw private transportation other than bicycles, horses, etc. and move people around by buses. Maybe they'd make everyone install solar electricity. I'm sure we can all imagine different possibilities, but the bottom line is that they wouldn't just throw their hands in the air before cracking out the stone knives and animal hides. Corporations or private entrepreneurs would fall over each other to find alternatives to fossil fuels.

Come on, if you credit these guys with the intelligence to form some international cabal that has us all fooled into killing ourselves (which I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with), then at least credit such people with the intelligence not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg (ie. society and its consumers).

Happily for those Australians that can afford it, what with rising (and soon to be exponentially rising) petrol prices and lowering wages (in our race to compete with both India & China) it may well soon be cheaper to employ the 40 slaves (sorry meant to say casual staff).

John Howard 'my guarantee is my record!' (multiple times, House of Reps, 2005-6). Righto, what sort of record is that, giving due consideration to the fact that two of your closest political allies have now stated that he welched on an agreement sometime in 1999-2000?

This is truly disturbing, when can we have laws so that we can sue AWB for their financial duplicity? Maybe if we ask Sen Abetz for laws so we can more easily sue unions he'll talk the rest into it?

What a fun, warm place Canberra is in July.

Inshallah

2 bob

Before we had oil, huge corporations and beaurocracies ruled supreme, with workhouses, poverty and no services. Oil originally gave people freedom to move, develop equality and living standards, creating many small businesses world wide. To attain freedom from enslavement required the collapse of the politcial elitist system.

With just a short time of freedom, we're back where we were, enslaved, losing our freedoms and choice. As in the past, the elite will push until they break the system themselves, fools with power always do. You can see by those supporting them, how ignorant and blind they are to anything but the dollar and power signs in their eyes. China and India, are putting more than 1 million cars a month on the roads, this doesn't take into account their requirements in manufacturing and power generation.

We'll have a massive collapse, once peoples freedoms are constrained to cattle truck condtions, it will be revolution. Our governments dropped most research into alternatuive fuels, and's making it impossible for anyone but established oil cartels to manufacture and distribute alternative fuels, is this rational.

Theres no chance it won't happen, it already is. If you haven't done something, you may not have time. Theres thousands of people who began preparing for this 30 years ago and many more since. They along with rural communities will survive. One uses his sillage pits to provide his dairy, house and workshop with heat and hot water all year round. He cooks on methane from digestor made out of old water tanks, giving methane gas and lovely compost. Using simple methods can reduce your reliance, consumption and cost of energy. It only takes a bit of common sense and makes good economic reasoning. Passive heating in cities would go a long way to solving problems as would methane to power generators from the waste we produce. You don't see government doing anything, nor will they, fools never do.

Tidily written Mr Lowe, another touching call to arms from a leading romantic. No, i'm no parrot of the flat-earth economic religion ('the market will provide') of Perseus & antigreen , but neither can i endorse naive 'we must/should/could use less' plea's.

The majority of humans in Australia and elsewhere have quite direct human experiences of selfishness winning over cooperative action, again and again and again, so its little wonder that when confronted with the prisoners dilemma of GHG's or oil depletion, the prime concern is getting theirs first. No amount of impassioned or logical text will alter learnt behaviour, at least not without years of unlearning, re-learning and re-experiencing, and thats assuming a society that supported cooperativism instead of predating on it.

It is only in sheltered 1st world (mostly white) humanist circles that the fantasy of the sustainability paradigm shift can be sustained, and even there few can really walk their talk for long (living as they do in a society that gladly soaks up their savings in a trice, ala Jevons). There is a small percentage, <10% of aussies for sure, that do get it and are making real progress in adapting their lives, but there is no historical evidence that the rest will even begin to adapt without some extremely pointy signals from Mr Overshoot. We've already said 'screw the whales', 'screw the climate' and 'screw the kids', its not till the very next chocolate biscuit is gone that most will concede some change is necesary. Such is (human) life, it seems.

No, Ludwig, I didn't watch 4 Corners on ABC. If I want information I google scholar, if I want a few laughs I watch ABC.

As for the rest, you cant have both peak oil and continued global warming. If oil runs out then obviously the CO2 emissions from oil also run out. And why all the shock horror stories. At $2/litre I will certainly fix my bicycle. I will lose weight, I will be fitter, I will live longer and get more done. And more importantly, my cycling will be safer because the $%&#@ in the Pajeros won't be able to afford the petrol they currently use to gas me and pretend that cyclists didn't pay the same amount for the road as they did.

In short, I can adjust to a petrol starved world in less than a week. Change may happen but there will be more positives than negatives for the optimists and more negatives than positives for the pessimists. Make your bed.

Anti-Green, I concur with your view, competitive opportunity will ensure technologies which are presently economically unviable will become viable as the price of oil increases, hybrid cars as an example – oh bring on the optimists.

Human ingenuity and the ability for inspirational innovation will ultimately overcome almost all challenges (eternal life and getting sense out of a bureaucrat or expert with a vested interest in a doomsday philosophy are the only non-starters).

As for making analogies between “slavery” and “energy usage”, Ian Lowe has, in harnessing such emotive and erroneous analogies, reduced his reasoning level and credibility to below that of the fanciful idiots who suggest cattle, sheep and other critters have the equivalent of human rights.

As for the plight of the .8 to 1.2 billion (depending on your choice of sack-cloth and ashes) lacking sufficient food or clean water, without seeming insensitive, the majority of those impoverished nations have benefited significantly from the endeavours of the supposed ‘wealthy nations’ since the end of WWII but have squandered that benefit on despotic incompetence and tyranny. My own view is, despite what idealistic “experts” thought, “benevolent colonialism” produces better social outcomes than “tyrannical self rule”.

As for emotional drivel like “It will only be sustainable if it is equitable, resourced and respects the limits of the Earth.”

We should continue to look toward reducing world population as we improve everything for everyone, rather than waste energy in diverting scarce resources on trying to make everything “Fair and Equal”

Perseus,

Peak Oil is different to CO2 and global warming. There is still plenty-o-coal in the ground. Australia has stacks of the stuff, and assuming we don't give a rats about 'the hole in the greenhouse' we can burn the stuff for power for many many lifetimes. But one day it will run out - as sure as the sun rises and systems obey the laws of thermodynamics.

But, I can't run my little hyundai 2-door on coal. There is only one plant in the world that can convert coal to synthetic petrol in commercial quantaties and that is in South Africa (See 4Corners). Suprisingly the cost is reported to be at about US$40 a barrel. 4C suggested it would take at least 10 years to get such a plant up and running given suitable investment and lack of greenie protests.

Without oil the trucks that deliver groceries to the supermarkets don't run. The planes that fly your mail (or you) don't work. Riding a pushbike from The Blue Mountains to Sydney (and back again) is not practicable - especially when you pick up some shopping. The trucks that move the coal for electricity don't work.

Given the choice, i'm sure most Australians if asked whether they wanted electricity at the cost of greenhouse gasses would elect to pick up the shovel themselves.

Given a sufficient public transport system, the effects of Peak Oil will be comensurate with the Great-Depression and not armagetton.

I too watched the ABC program. I watched for reasons of entertainment only. Surely, nobody believes that a complex and multi faceted field of knowledge can be reduced to a single 50 min TV presentation. One can have a great admiration for journalists with out expecting from them expert tuition on highly technical subjects.
The journalist correctly brings a subject such as “peak oil” to public attention. Surely, no body will argue that every detailed and differing expert opinion can be treated in any single publication.

For instance as students of calculus will understand, the selected experts did not stipulate if the “peak” was to be considered as a local maximum or an absolute maximum? There is none-the-less, a possible commonality between my position and that of the environmental lobby. Given that the peak is a local maximum there is no available prognosis for its duration.

By the way I have no objection to being likened to an ostrich. Who has ever heard of an ostrich shooting a messenger?

Shorbe, you wrote:

“However, to suggest that western society is on the brink of collapse is a bit alarmist I think, if for no other reason than the fact that it's certainly not in the interests of governments or corporations to have society wipe itself out. If necessary, governments would intervene and ration fuels, and basically outlaw private transportation other than bicycles, horses, etc. and move people around by buses…”

When we think of just how totally dependent on liquid fossil fuels we are and how predicted price increases can’t help but affect the price and availability of just about everything, and that the price of oil is very closely linked to inflation and monetary policy, and that rising unemployment will result from economic shock, followed by civil strife, we can’t help but view this whole business from a very ominous perspective.

Governments won’t act until the problem is blatantly underway, for two reasons;

1. Their gross economic rationalist outlook, which is so strongly enforced by big business, which does afterall hold the real power reigns

2. The fact that it would be political suicide to implement the policies necessary to prepare ourselves for this crisis until the crisis is absolutely upon us, because it would lead to major restrictions for the majority of the community, most of whom wouldn’t appreciate the magnitude of the situation, and many of whom would blithely think like Perseus; that we will be able to adapt to the changes as they happen.

Some interesting observations here.

Interesting especially that we are now crossing a new threshold in public debate.

Whereas the dangers of global warming and climate change have been aired a lot in the media in recent years - and perhaps have become manifest in disastrous cyclones and droughts - the most people have thought about peak oil to date is mooting a slightly higher cost of living, perhaps having to downscale the size of the family car and so forth. Farily trivial stuff,

That is, until we look at the reality of massive price hikes for oil. Beyong a certain tipping point, large corporations will go bust (look at GM in the US as an example of an oil dependent industry that did not read the changing market ), major national economies will go bust, oil-dependent tourism industries that go bust and terrible hardship for people at the bottom end who can no longer afford very basic (energy supplied) services, such as transport to and from work.

The ingredients are all there for widespread civil war.

I will contend that the oil peak will have much faster ramifications for society that will climate change. And arguably even more potentially calamatous.

This all presumes we do not act fast enough to avert the worst.

To that end, bring on the debate. Let's imagine the best and the worst and go for the best. It needs a touch of humility and a bridging of the philosophical gap between green and anti-green.

There is no sane future if tribal warfare is the order of the day

“There is no sane future if tribal warfare is the order of the day”

Gecko I think you have a pretty realistic impression of the magnitude of this issue.

It might not come to tribal warfare or civil war, but I reckon it certainly could come down to massive civil strife.

At any rate, it is by far our most important issue, far greater than climate change, or anything else discussed on OLO. Just about everything else discussed on this forum is dependent on the maintenance of a healthy properly functioning society. So everyone who is concerned enough to comment on any other topic on OLO should be concerned enough to research and comment on peak oil.

There is a great deal of concern about climate change. But this is a much longer time-frame event. Peak oil will largely take care that issue, in terms of drastically reducing GHG emissions. So it is time for all that energy and concern to be modified a little and put directly into peak oil planning.

A good starting point is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and gas - http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/

Ludwig: Europeans survived the Great Depression and they also survived World War 2 (and there was rationing after WW2 for several years).

If necessary, the government would basically seize control of certain industries, particularly transportation/fuel and food production and distribution and most people would go along with it if it weren't done at the very last moment. Yes, it would be pretty tough probably for a decade whilst everything was changed over and re-aligned (this country could get viable solar and ethanol industries up and running in that time and do all the conversions), but people could do it. People actually wouldn't starve to death. You can grow virtually all your own vegies on land the size of your nature strip; or public parks and gardens, sports ovals, etc. would be turned into market gardens for entire suburbs. You could also keep chickens and other small animals. It wouldn't exactly be an all you can eat smorgasbord, but it wouldn't exactly be the Siege of Leningrad either. People would probably have to be largely vegetarian for that time, but if major grain crops (and transportation) were nationalised there'd be enough of all that too. Furthermore, since we're not affected by severe winters in this country, people wouldn't freeze to death through lack of heating fuel.

Rather than being politically suicidal, it may actually be quite expedient. If a sizeable portion of the populace could no longer afford fuel to go to work, food became really expensive, businesses started going under in large numbers and unemployment really rose, I think there'd be a very strong mandate from the populace for government to step in and nationalise certain industries or provide really strong (dis)incentives on a whole lot of matters. This would occur well before the point of no return.

What I'm saying is people may indeed be self-centred, but they're not suicidal. If petrol looks like it's heading to $5/litre, people are hardly going to say, "well that's it then, I guess we'll all just have to stay home from work today and kill our neighbours or starve to death!"

Shorbe

Your scenario sounds highly feasible. But I suggest that it could well be a whole lot worse.

Yes government could do all sorts of ‘hardline’ things, but only if the populace and business community appreciate the need for it. And that’s what makes it so politically untenable to do things in advance to the extent necessary to really set ourselves up for this crisis.

So from the political point of view the timing for concerted action has got to be just right. Basically, a government has to find a point of balance between sufficient public concern for its radical changes to be accepted, and waiting too long and thus allowing too much damage to be done.

However, the timing that is just right politically does not align with the ideal timing, which is a full-on effort right NOW.

Narcissist et al appear to be confusing 'peak oil' with the end of oil. Peak oil means that the supply of oil will taper off over more than a century, not stop altogether in a decade or two. So to imply that a plant for the conversion of coal to fuel will take longer than 10 years to build and then conclude that there will be a gap in the supply of fuel is plain silly.

And frankly, if one lives in the Blue Mountains and is too dumb to work out that he can take his bicycle on the train to the city and back and use the bike at either end, then you have much more serious and immediate problems than peak oil.

And there seems to be some considerable ignorance about what happens when a company goes bust. If a resort goes bust due to a shortage of long distance tourists, the creditors are not in the habit of nuking the facilities. Instead, these are sold to a new operator at a lower price than that which needed to be covered by the former one and the new owner operates at a lower cost, and survives in the adjusted conditions.

But don't mind me. If you need to see the sky falling then by all means, indulge yourself. Just don't bother trying to claim that it is intellectual discourse.

Perseus, I couln't agree more. One could put the attitude of the Greenies down to economic illiteracy, but somehow I think there is a deeper political motive, engendered mainly by envy.
Strange that people are still trying to promote a certain social system even after it has long been abandoned by its main protagonists, because of its abject failure to perform.

Response to Perseus:

You have criticised Narcissist for being dumb, for not being aware of the Blue Mountains railway (14 July 11:28AM), but your criticism does not make sense. In that post, there was a clear reference to the coal industry relying on oil; trains being dependent on either coal or electrity.

One may argue that the trains would continue to run, but its not dumb to point out the dependency most industries have to oil.

I note that Narcissist picked up on you saying "you can't have both peak oil and continued global warming" (12 July 4:01pm). Were you feeling a bit sour about that?

For the record, I agree with you that Narcissist has painted a too pessimistic future, but is a dismissive attitude any more helpful?

David Latimer said, "there was a clear reference to the coal industry relying on oil;" Come again? Did you mean transport industry relying on oil? And how does this supposed reliance on oil apply to the electric (coal or future nuclear generated) trains to the Blue Mountains?

When I said you can't have it both ways it was firm in the knowledge that if China and India get even a third of their future energy from nuclear power and the rest from coal, and the modelling is realistic for densely urban energy use on the Japanese model rather than on the American urban sprawl model, then the IPCC warming scenarios have their sorry asses blown clean off the planet.

Ian Lowe:

Your disparaging analogy of " 40 human slaves working etc " is a poor substitute for a pseudo-scientific paper presumably addressing Global warming and Gas emissions ?

Slavery conjures our culpable, racial, Kanaka past.

Forty robots, or Darleks notwithstanding dehumanises the equation - quantifying ' beast-of-burden = kilowatts ?

As the Nuclear debate heats up with Howard/Blair sponsering Uranium enrichment, value added bonanza with Korea, China and India, who knows how many NP Plants will eventually be built at Port Stephens, Port Headland or Port Lincoln ? Speculation is rife at the ASX, we will soon be accepting the World's 'spent' nuke waste in a repository in Alice Springs ? Whatever next ?

Global Oil production and Reserves has a new meaning. The good news is crude oil is worth $ 80.30 a barrel finally. OPEC and all the Oil rich countries together produce 10 Billion barrels per day. " Imagine" !! John Lennon. Memories.

It's a gigantic CON - Oil will be depleted by 2010 ( absolutely ?)
An argy-bargy assumption not based on scientific fact. Oil exploration has without doubt, not reached it's zenith. Hiking the price, has spurred a Global renewal in Investment, development and exploration.

Unlike Europe and Japan dependent on Oil imports, China has negotiated $ 1 B deal in Angola to develop known reserves. $1.6 B for Siberian Oil reserves in Russia. The race is escalating and shows NO sign of abating in the short term. Meanwhile a UK Consortium is heavily involved developing the North Atlantic seabed.

Captive to the Giant Oil cartels, Howard's Energy Policies are moribund. Open exploration licensing is stingly restrictive. No wonder we are being slugged at the browser.

Fossilized Fuels for Electricity and Economic Growth is NOT the panacea, formerly accepted before the Ozone Layer and Greenhouse Gases became chi-chi. Aust, au fait contributes to the malaise by encouraging land clearing, livestock breeding, soil erosion and farm practices that is anathema to the Kyoto Protocol.

More woes: A new generation of status-symbol ' affluencza ', and a record blowout $35 B ' plastic-fantastic' debt, see more

household's investing in air-conditioners, electrical gizmos galore, giant TV screens, remote controls for every conceivable electric appliance invented.. to exacerbate emission tresholds, and raise Global warming by perceptable degrees.

It is manifestly clear, this Government should be increasing investment tenfold in R & D.

The US, Brazil, Japan, Germany and Finland lead the charge in the generation of Biomass, geothermal, solar and wind electric power.

NASA has developed a super efficient wind power turbine. Japan, cheap paper thin solar panels, for use by aficionado nerds and geeks. Germany the Ballard fuel cell - H2) and electricity. The innovations are ostensibly never ending.

Biomass = ethanol, butanol and biodiesel.

The derivatives from ' green 'technology is producing ubiquitous gains. Making it more economical for the gas guzzling Public. Sun flowers, soy-beans, castor beans, Jatropha plant, and animal waste is utilised extensively by more than 30 countries. In NZ, our resourceful kiwi cousins are harvesting oil from common algae.

We have to think SMART - to meet the new paradigm on Enviornmental and Social challenges.

The Nineteen Ninety's is the warmest decade in 1000 years in the Northern Hemisphere. After decades of rancorous debate, only a handful of the most doctrinaire die-hards still dispute the idea - human activity is heating up the Planet.

In hopeless denial, Sunday Mail's two-bob spruiker Andrew Bolt religiously preaches the Ozone Barrier as a Bin Laden's creation. GW an aberrant, ambigious issue proliferated by the Muslim World ? His Pro-Bush gas-bagging underpins his schizoidal pejorative psychosis. Never ceases to amaze how SM retains subscribers with his brand of scare-mongering.

Aerosols, refrigerants and fossil fuels are short listed for extinction - like Dino the Dinosaur.

As third World Countries play 'catchup' to Industrialised Nations, we will witness further excesse's on GG re-emerging. Expanding Economy's,livelihoods improving, it's their right to emulate Western Societal achievements this century.

We have arrived at a cross-road. We can either embrace the new paradigm of sustainable enviornmental and social challenges, or pursue the untenable hedonistic, self-indulgent lifestyle currently enjoyed by all, blissfully wallowing in the antipodes.

Bon appetit.

Ciao.

Anti-green said:
For instance as students of calculus will understand, the selected experts did not stipulate if the “peak” was to be considered as a local maximum or an absolute maximum? There is none-the-less, a possible commonality between my position and that of the environmental lobby. Given that the peak is a local maximum there is no available prognosis for its duration.
End quote:

No, the local, ie Australian peak occured in 1999. Bass Strait is at about 60% of its peak output.
The peak that is refered to is the sum of all oil field bell curves, which is the global peak.
The problem is not how long the bell curve remains at peak, it will look like a plateau, but the time when the demand curve intersects the bell curve.

At that time we cannot trust the local subsiduries of overseas oil companies to defy their head offices and refrain from out bidding the head office oil dealers. As they are based in Europe and the US it will be devil take the hindmost.
The experts are divided into optimusts, pessimists and the end of civilisation as we know it group.
If the optinists are correct and peak is 20 years or so away we need to have started doing something about it at least 10 years ago.
If the pessimists are right then we will have a very hard time indeed not proving the third group right !