rstuart - clarification required. Sorry to disappoint you but I'm not acknowledging peak oil at all.. or rather not in the way you think.. I wasn't trying to cover all bases in the first post, just to point out some of the problems with the thesis outlined in the article. I saw one estimate that any likely beginning of the end of easy-lift oil (oil from the big reservoirs, not oil in general) might be about 50 years or so away. Sounds just as good as any other estimate I've seen, particularly given current prices. And that was before Iran started claiming major new discoveries. In other words, expecting the end of the car age is like waiting for the second coming. Sing out when its about to happen, but until then maybe ther is not much point in forecasting it.

rstuart
Since life and the world are constantly changing, so are prices, as they reflect the market data of scarcity, risk, innovation, wars, alternatives, and so on. Aren't you assuming that there is an underlying stability of prices that is normal and should be protected? Why?

The price is the result of the valuations now and in the future of everyone who buys or sells, or abstains from buying or selling. How can it be anything other than arbitrary to decide which changes are 'ordinary' and which are 'spikes' ie excessive in your opinion.

"In fact As the GFC demonstrates, a market left to its own devices can do some pretty dumb things in general."

So monetary policy, the control by government of the supply and price of money, has got nothing to do with the price and demand for money, is that what you're assuming?

"By forcing the price up now, you hopefully start to move over to alternatives sooner."

You do - uneconomical alternatives that use up more resources of input to achieve the same output -what's commonly known as 'wastage'.

"Yes, we pay more now as a consequence. But by making more energy available when the spike hits, you pay a lot less later."

What makes you think that your valuation of scarcity and risk is better than that of combined valuations of the billions of people whose valuations go to make up the price? Are you privy to all their subjective valuations, local knowledge, and time preferences are you? No.

You are assuming that you see society from a gods-eye perspective and if only people weren't so stupid, it wouldnt be necessary for you to use force to bully them into the configuration that *you* think would be better. But the point is this: if it were *possible* for you to do what you are thinking, then why would it not be possible for government to manage any and every given field of activity more economically than markets?

I am the author of this post. I don't expect the future to unfold as neatly as the charts suggest. The trends are what are important (world oil discoveries in long term decline, most countries post peak, Australia's production declining, many exporters are in decline). Add these all together and it indicates that over the long term our oil supply is likely to decline. Unfortunately nearly all long term planning by Government, business and individuals is based on an assumption that growth will continue forever. Economic and population growth are tightly coupled with growth in oil production. It is likely therefore that when oil production declines, so to will growth.

This doesn't have to necessarily end badly, but by basically ignoring it as we currently are, we are likely to cause ourselves a lot of unneccessary pain. If we as a nation got serious about implementing mass public transport, rail (preferably electric from renewable sources) for interstate transport and local food production, we could maintain a good standard of living.

However, the longer we leave any transition plan, the less options we leave ourselves. For example, it would take over a decade to replace the current vehicle fleet with electric vehicles or hybrids if every single vehicle sold from now on was of these types. We are unfortunately a long way from that.

Cameron Leckie

Sorry Cameron, but nothing I have seen justifies the immense expense you are suggesting - switching to electric cars, or extending public transport systems for example. At least not at the moment. The way this sort of forecasting is approached now is that planners put forward a number of scenarios then wait a time and scope the field to see which ways things are developing, and perhaps then react. No one tries to forecast many years ahead. Its a waste of time. Master plans have also been discovered, through bitter experience, to be a waste of time, mainly because the forecasts they are based on are always wrong. In any case, the economic thinking now is that the absense of a resource is a good thing, not a bad thing. Look at Finland! They've got no resources bar a bunch of lakes and forests and do very well. Nice thesis but it will be ignord.

Ahoy mates across the ocean,

We are on the global economic and Peak Oil Titanic going ahead at full steam. We knew we would soon hit the iceberg in 1956 when we were warned about oil depletion by M. King Hubbert and U.S. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. And then we had warnings from the Club of Rome in the 1970s and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1980: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11771

And few listened a few years back to The Forum's Chris Shaw (his articles are here): http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3837

There is little time and little capital to change much now.

Few listened then and few listen now, and there is only time to get yourself and family onto a lifeboat.

It is time to focus on Peak Oil preparation and surviving Peak Oil, here (no charge, no advertising, no scams):

http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

Cheers,

Cliff Wirth
Small town in tropical State of Veracruz, Mexico
Hey, come visit! clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com

curmudgeonathome,
I agree with you that it will be ignored. The 2005 Hirsch Report stated that to avoid severe economic problems associated with the onset of peak oil would require 20 years of crash action mitigation programs (both supply and demand). I believe we are either at or just past peak oil, meaning that the GFC has the potential to last for a couple of decades. Sure there will be ups and downs, but the trend will be contraction. Hence my concern.