Instead of backing off as we approach the cliff we are speeding up. The evidence for a looming coal shortage is the fivefold increase in prices ex Newcastle 2002-2008. When China asks for more coal to maintain its industrial output I strongly suspect our Queensland hailing, Mandarin speaking PM will oblige. Despite being elected on a promise to reduce emissions I doubt that the new government will do anything to increase domestic electricity prices. The bright side is that some claim that an early coal peak will limit global warming to 2C barring runaway feedback effects. However just what the next generation will use for electricity is not clear. We are condemning little kids now in kindergarten to an uncertain future.

If indeed the problem is even solvable some minor pain now means less pain in the future. By 'pain' I mean carbon caps, green energy targets and resource rationing. Do it for the future if not for ourselves.

Would be a very amusing article if it wasn't so true...

Sadly people only respond to issues which unfold in real time and regretful hindsight will always be more popular than courageous foresight.

Having just spend a depressing hour browsing the food to fuel question, noting that grain futures have risen all months up to three years out, that Canada will increase it's domestic grain consumption next year by 7% from converting wheat to ethanol, that the grain ethanol plant on our Darling downs will be operational later this year, your article brought a smile to my face. Thank you.

Seriously, it is time for someone with more knowledge than I to present an article specifically on the merits or otherwise of converting grain to ethanol. It is rapidly developing into the biggest story of our time.

To bring this back on topic, I think it is the prime example of the greedy, unthinking behavior of humans which I presume you are alluding to. With the continuing mandating/subsidizing of grain to fuel in the face of starvation, civil unrest, environmental degradation, it is our governments being greedy and unthinking on our behalf.

This guy must be a gas to live with....Michael Lardelli don't worry be happy.

Presumably this article is intended as a joke - I certainly hope so, as it containes every single one of the ludicrous false assumptions and idiotic conclusions associated with the more extreme elements in the peak oil movement.

It is views like these that prevent the peak oil problem from being taken as seriously as it should. If the article is a joke, Michael, it is in poor taste.

What a waste of blog space. The only thing he got right was that he, not us, was stark raving bonkers.

Oh dear!

Mike gave us a good look up our own fundament -

- and some of us don't like the view -

Crikey Perseus. I though you would have applauded this article, given that you seem to knock anything green or environmental, and support the likes of Jennifer Marohasy!

Man caused global warming is a joke, a hoax, backed by no solid science. It simply isn't true, carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant, it is plant food, the second most precious gas, after oxygen, for human survival.
In the 70's they where warning about the coming next ice age, it's still coming, it's overdue It could start in 10 years or 10 centuries, but that should be our real concern, the coming Ice Age. It has always happened before and it will happen again, the question is do we take Mexico now or wait. We are the fastest growing 3rd world nation in the world, not an enviable situation and a situation that doesn't have to be.
But I digress, human caused global warming is about as scientific as the moon is made of cheese. Ethanol is another polical fiasco, not a sound scientific decision, it takes about as much, or more energy, to produce a gallon of Ethanol than the energy you get from it. In a few years the masses will realize this, after untold $$$$$ where spent to subsidize this folly and no benefit was gained. It is driving up food prices, from grain and everything that eats grain or is in the grain food cycly. What a joke, convert our food supply to a government subsidized fuel supply, which costs more to produce than the fuel benefit we derive from it. There is a $.50 to $.55 tariff on imported Ethanol, to make our home grown corn Ethanol competative with world market prices, and our corn growers are subsidized about the same amount. That is why there is a grain shortage, plant more corn and get subsidized, forget about the wheat and soybeans, they can be imported from Brazil and other countries, who needs Rain Forests anyway.

DeepDarkOpps

*We are short-sighted and think mainly of ourselves. We fight, we breed and we die - just like any other mindless species on this planet. That is how nature works.*

Basically yup, ignore nature at your peril. In a hundred years we
have gone from 1.5 billion to 7 billion, on the back of cheap oil.
When that runs out, nature will sort it out, as it was clearly
unsustainable.

We shipped boatloads of food to the third world, when they dangled
starving babies in front of our tv cameras and pushed our emotional
buttons. We shipped boatloads of vaccines to them, to help them
avoid diseases. But we have found it impossible to provide
hundreds of millions of third world women with basic family planning,
as our religious leaders, aka the Vatican, strongly objected.

More boatloads of food and more vaccines, landed up meaning even
more millions of starving babies.

Clearly we as a species are not yet smart enough to live sustainably,
so nature will sort it out.

I vote for placing this piece into a time capsule for future discovery by aliens from another planet. They'll wander our desolate planet looking for signs of life. And just when they reach the conclusion there was never any intelligent life on Earth, they'll find this and be very confused.

Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
www.growthbusters.com

Well, it's a unique take on peak oil and our mid- to long-term survival. Cynical perhaps but there's plenty of evidence for most of what is claimed. Better sooner than later, I agree. It will also allow me to say "I told you so" within my own lifetime.

Yes we humans are a funny lot. We consume, consume, consume until our resources diminish, then we find a new source to diminish and so it goes on.

Unless we all become vegetarians grain production for ethanol will provide a different set of problems. The issue of sustainable populations continues to be ignored and ironically our obsession with growth will be our undoing.

The bottom line is our whole system has to change and we all have to live more frugally. It is not difficult we have done without plastics before and we have done without plasma screens etc. In a pre-industrial world we operated in the local sphere - living, buying, growing and eating. We may have to adapt to something similar which is quite funny when free trade agreements have created the opposite - spending food miles importing from OS, food we can very well produce ourselves and often within our own local communities.

We can do it, we are an intelligent species even if we are a bit stupid at times.

We have an unlimited supply of energy. Think nuclear, always there, forever. America has hundreds of years of coal, time to go methanol, not to mention abiotic oil. Drill all over the place and while our hundreds of years of oil and coal run out, technology will solve the futures energy supply. Quite simple.

DeepDarkOpps

There is a solution to the problem and it is simple to implement and is guaranteed to work.

The problem is the problem of the Prisoner's Dilemma or in the multiparty version "The Tragedy of the Commons". We have a common resource where it is to each individual's advantage to consume as much as they can as quickly as they can. Unfortunately excessive consumption destroys the common resource.

The solution

Reward those who consume little or none of the common resource
Those who consume the common resource pay for the Rewards
Require the Rewards to be spent on building infrastructure to extend or create more of the common resource

I will be giving a talk next week at EcoForum 2008 on the Gold Coast for those interested in finding out more. You can also see more in a submission to the Garnaut Climate Change study under the company name of edentiti.

Fickle Pickle,

Yes, going back to the time period before we harnessed fire, coal and oil sounds like a lot of fun. No lights, primitive heat etc.. The course of humanity is forward, not backward, where have you been, in a cave with bin Laden ?

DeepDarkOpps

DeeprkOpps

The approach suggested does not change the GDP of a country and there are good arguments that can be mounted to show that it is likely to increase the GDP. In other words rather than going backward we will increase our wealth through this approach. True there will be a redistribution of wealth from the high consumers to the frugal but that may be a good outcome.

The approach is guaranteed to work, that is it will reduce greenhouse emissions to whatever level we want. It will do it while at the same time increasing GDP and it is socially equitable. Bit like the magic pudding.