Peak Oil

[UndercoverElephant]

Sorry, this is starting to sound like the "Doomsday of the week club."

Maybe that is because people have realised that this time it is not a false alarm. Those who react slowest will be the furthest behind when it finally dawns on them that 'peak oil' really is going to effect their lives. Have you seen the rapidly proliferating websites on the subject? A surprising number of them are not 'kooks'. They are from both sides of the political spectrum, from materialists, from hippie-greens - the lot. If you go out and take a look, instead of quoting on old piece of propaganda, you might be surprised. Alternatively you can just ignore it for a little while longer and be surprised later!

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Alternates for oil dependent products are being developed.

Check out this link about plants that have been genetically modified to produce plastic.

http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/pae/botany/botany_map/articles/article_28.html

The same goes for fertilizer and medicines. People know about the eventual exhaustion of oil and efforts are underway to replace the need.


Cars will be electric. It's inevitable. efforts are underway to make fuel cells affordable. (the same device which is used to generate electricity on the space shuttle)
Lubricants can made synthetically oil can, and will be replaced.

Ururk, yes we can make synthetic oil out of plants. The problem is that without oil-based fertilisers we cannot grow enough plants. The energy has to come from somewhere. At the moment you are saying we should grow plants to make synthetic oil to make fertilisers, for growing plants. This isn't going to solve the problem.

 

[Quasi]

Lomborg is politically-motivated and very short on accurate facts. He has become a figure not unlike Michael Behe - a person who is taken seriously only by those who approach it looking for someone to provide support for a fundamentally flawed position. Behe will continue to be quoted by intelligent-design proponents and Lomborg will continue to be quoted by right-wingers who do not like the environmentalist movement. But as far as the scientists themselves are concerned, Behe and Lomborg are treated as something they should not be asociated with. Lomborg is a statistician anyway. (lies, damned lies and statistics....)

http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/lomborg121201.asp

I thought we agreed you have never read his book, nor his responses to the critics. You now have the burden of the proof. I have already stated that the articles you provided supply no new criticisms of Lomborg, make deliberate false information and Brown actually admitts Lomborg was 100% correct when he stated Brown lied about the rate of extinction. (See my previous posts.)
Your total Lomborg denial is the same as the church refusing to look into the telescope. If you want to discuss Lomborg, read the book, otherwise, do not expect to get away with straw man attacks on this board. Further, even if someone has a vested interest, they can still make true claims, so that is irrelevant even if true. You are also implying the Lomborg deniers are pure, honest, non-profit researchers who are being wrongly attacked. Nothing could be further than the truth. Of course, debating this with you at this point is irrelevant as you are not even vaguely familiar with the material. I do not know, how can we debate this subject when Lomborg has provided so much relevant data in an organized fashion, all of which you are totally ignorant? Get the book, read it. Further, if this were true, those in power would be positioning themselves for the coming collapse. This is not happening at all. Virtually every source of information disagrees with the authors conclusions, from the US Dept. of Energy, to OPEC, even to Petroconsulting of Geneva, the people they supposively are associated with. Why? As already posted- the authors of the article on Peak Oil left out huge segments of readily available, abundant energy. Why? How can you claim a total worldwide collapse of energy by looking only at old oil wells? This is like looking at your kitchen and claiming you are going to starve to death because you only have food for one week. There is this thing called the supermarket.....

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Kookbreaker,

Having spent most of the weekend researching this, it is becoming ever clearer to me how this has happened. Everybody has been looking for excuses for avoiding facing the problem. The politicians close to the oil industry knew about it but it is in their interest to keep it quiet as their only means of controlling the oil price - politicians always think in the short term only. The economists have allowed their faith in free market economics to claim that as the oil price slowly rises it will stimulate growth in alternative energy, but they have not thought properly about the relevance of the peak itself, and the fact that as we hit the peak with no alternatives in place it will very rapidly cause serious economic problems because we are already so dependent on oil. The technologists have simply gone on believing that alternative sources of energy will arrive in time - but this is pie in the sky. We have no cold fusion, no workable wave power, wind power is happening, but it is slow and cannot replace oil. The alternatives they always dreamed would replace oil are not there - although I have heard every crackppt theory in the book as to how to replace the energy source. The oil industry itself has lied about existing reserves and placed great faith in future discoveries, yet the existing reserves are running out and many of the hope-for discoveries are not happening. Finally, as a last resort, the US invaded Iraq but now that has blown up in their faces. The US is clearly not in control of the situation in Iraq and there is no prospect that it can gain control. This is why this has all come out now - the Iraqi oilfields would have allowed the US to go on stalling for a little while longer, but now it looks like the US has no guarantee of access to cheap Iraqi oil.

Do you see what has happened? Because this is so serious, everybody has hoped the solution will come from somebody else and very few people have seen the bigger picture. Well, it looks like it is wake up time. The party is over, kookbreaker. Somebody is just about to pull the plug. Last year the government of the UK tried to raise taxes on petrol and it caused absolute chaos. If the predictions from all of these "oil crash" websites are correct (and there are lots of them - go see) then we are looking at an oil price which doubles, trebles, quadruples...in a relatively short period of time. It is not going to take 50 years for the effects of this to kick in. OPEC already cut quotas last week, the price of oil is already going up. It is never going to come down again. The oil party of the 20th century has come to an end. It is no use pretending it is not happening. It IS happening.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I thought we agreed you have never read his book, nor his responses to the critics. You now have the burden of the proof. I have already stated that the articles you provided supply no new criticisms of Lomborg, make deliberate false information and Brown actually admitts Lomborg was 100% correct when he stated Brown lied about the rate of extinction. (See my previous posts.)
Your total Lomborg denial is the same as the church refusing to look into the telescope. If you want to discuss Lomborg, read the book, otherwise, do not expect to get away with straw man attacks on this board. Further, even if someone has a vested interest, they can still make true claims, so that is irrelevant even if true. You are also implying the Lomborg deniers are pure, honest, non-profit researchers who are being wrongly attacked. Nothing could be further than the truth. Of course, debating this with you at this point is irrelevant as you are not even vaguely familiar with the material. I do not know, how can we debate this subject when Lomborg has provided so much relevant data in an organized fashion, all of which you are totally ignorant?
Get the book, read it.

Why would I waste my time reading a book which is widely discredited and several years old, in response to a problem which has only just become wide public knowledge? This is a red herring, quasi. We need to deal with the problem that has been presented to us. I am not interested in getting side-tracked into a discussion of Lomborg. He is a sole source, out of date, widely reported as being factually incorrect and one mans out-of-date polemic is not going to fix the problem. See my previous post. You want to keep the discussion focessed on Lomborg just like the cretinists want to keep it focused on Behe. This is not going to work.

Further, if this were true, those in power would be positioning themselves for the coming collapse.

Invading Iraq was an attempt to avoid the problem. Beyond that...see the post before this one as to why this has been ignored up until now.

This is not happening at all. Virtually every source of information disagrees with the authors conclusions, from the US Dept. of Energy, to OPEC, even to Petroconsulting of Geneva, the people they supposively are associated with. Why? As already posted- the authors of the article on Peak Oil left out huge segments of readily available, abundant energy. Why? How can you claim a total worldwide collapse of energy by looking only at old oil wells? This is like looking at your kitchen and claiming you are going to starve to death because you only have food for one week. There is this thing called the supermarket.....

Ha!

Dude, the supermarket gets it supplies from somewhere! There is no magic depot in the sky! Where do you think the depot gets its supplies from? Where is this "huge segments of readily available, abundant energy?" This is not wonderland. This is reality. You cannot just hope and pray and expect a solution to land in your lap - that is precisely how we got into this mess! Everybody just looking for excuses to go on believing that "everything will be OK". The maths doesn't add up. We CANNOT replace the oil. The oil really is about to hit peak production. When is the penny going to drop? This is not a false alarm. This is actually happening! For decades, people have been saying "one day the oil will run out". They are still saying it, but what has changed is the realisation that the economic situation does not change the day the oil runs out but instead it changes on the day it stops being a buyers market and starts being a sellers market. That day is not "one day". That day is NOW, and it is NOW because the US attempt to get and keep control of Iraqi oil supplies has failed because they cannot provide the security needed to get hold of that oil.

The problem appears to be that this is so hard for some people to accept that they are unable to comprehend that it is really happening. Well, get used to it, because it is really happening.

Go here :

http://www.after-oil.co.uk

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/
http://www.oilcrash.com
http://www.dieoff.org/
http://greatchange.org/
http://www.peakoil.net/
http://www.planetforlife.com/
http://www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk/
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/energy/energy.htm
http://www.oildepletion.org/
http://tvset.org/peakoil.html

All of these websites are making the same scientific, economic and political argument that there is a problem, that it caught us while we were not looking, and that it is here and now. Where are the pages providing the scientific, economic and political arguments that it is not a problem? Please find me some.

 

[Quasi]

Yawn,

The same argument they have been making for decades. Essentially the trend in reserves is declining, which they claim will lead to total collapse. The fact is that oil, like grain, and other resources are changing because our ability to distribute them is way better today than fifty or a hundred years ago. Further, many resources are better harvested and cheaper in various parts of the world in coordination with globalization. You could look at US steel production, etc. and you would see a sharp decline. This may lead you to believe we will be in a "peak steel" crisis. And if you ignored enough data, it would look real.
Energy is not in a crisis because of several facts:

Renewable energy such as solar and wind will be cheaper than oil in the near future.

Breeder nuclear reactors hardly consume any nuclear fuel as they are ver efficient (it is estimated we have about 100,000 years worth of known fuel.)

The USA has enormous coal deposits which still provide a huge amount of domestic energy.

Every official source of statistics (the only source of this data BTW,) agrees there is no looming energy crisis.

A few web sites does not truth make. Look at all the medical fraud web sites out there.
As for the supermarket analogy, it is very relevant because all of these authors ignore huge sources of energy, even oil. All you are doing is repeating the same non data, based on changes in known reserves. Same wrong argument from multiple sources, same errors. Current oil reserves are dropping therefore crisis. No mention of the total known energy reserves at all. This is the same as ignoring the supermarket.
As for Iraq, although oil may be an issue, consider we have signed deals with Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to supply us with our oil. We do not plan, nor need to import a great deal from Iraq, and considering the short timeline these guys give us, this does not make any sense whatsoever. Just wait a few years. Like the fundy christians "Jesus is always coming next year." Same here, the oil crisis always seems to be just a few years away. I am still waiting for a complete look at all current sources of energy, then showing how those sources, overall will be severely compromised in the next ten years. Everything else is total BS because we will be able to adapt over longer trends. Further, no one can predict virtually anything over trends longer than ten years because of the error involved. You do not provide any source which shows this, not even close. Since the same arguments here are essentially regurgitations from "Limits to Growth," a key work in terms of scaring people into believing in a coming resource armageddon, it is not Lomborgs work which is hopelessley outdated, but the same propaganda being presented as fresh and new in terms of a resource scare. I would even go so far as to cry plagiarism on the part of many of these guys against the doomsayers of the 1970´s. That is how old this material is. Lomborgs is from 2001 at least. Why do they not reference the original authors? Easy. None of their doom and gloom predictions came true. Selective data anyone?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yawn,

The same argument they have been making for decades.

No, Quasi, this is WAKE UP time, don't go to sleep on us.

This is NOT the same argument that "they have been making for decades". It is a new argument. It is about the economic effect of passing the global hubbart peak for oil production. I have not heard this argument before and neither have you. If you think this is the same argument then you have not been reading properly.

Essentially the trend in reserves is declining, which they claim will lead to total collapse. The fact is that oil, like grain, and other resources are changing because our ability to distribute them is way better today than fifty or a hundred years ago.

What on Earth are you warbling on about it? Please explain why you think this is relevant? You think that our ability to ship and pipe oil around the world has anything to do with this? Hello? anyone in?

Further, many resources are better harvested and cheaper in various parts of the world in coordination with globalization. You could look at US steel production, etc. and you would see a sharp decline. This may lead you to believe we will be in a "peak steel" crisis. And if you ignored enough data, it would look real.

You have not understood the relevance of oil to our global economy, quasi. This is not like "any other product". Oil is the one commodity that the entire modern world is built upon. The global economy is an oil economy NOT a steel economy. Do you understand the difference or do you want me to explain it to you using short words?

Energy is not in a crisis because of several facts:

Renewable energy such as solar and wind will be cheaper than oil in the near future.

Bwaaaaahahahahaha!

Now you are really trying to be funny, yes?

You might be right that wind power is going to be cheaper than oil in the near future, but it won't be because wind and solar power have got any cheaper. It will be because oil prices have gone through the roof! Do you think this will save our oil-based agriculture, drug and plastics industries?

Breeder nuclear reactors hardly consume any nuclear fuel as they are ver efficient (it is estimated we have about 100,000 years worth of known fuel.)

You have WHAT!? Where are you getting this data from, quasi?

In short...no we do not have 100,00 years worth of fuel. We have avout 25 years left.

The USA has enormous coal deposits which still provide a huge amount of domestic energy.

Yes, and it will become ever more dependent on those deposits. The UK will also end up re-opening coal mines.

Every official source of statistics (the only source of this data BTW,) agrees there is no looming energy crisis.

Now you are making me laugh out loud! Because GWB and the oil industry won't admit to a problem that means there isn't one! EVER TRIED THINKING FOR YOURSELF, or is that too hard?

A few web sites does not truth make.

I am waiting to hear a rebuttal of them. No rebuttal can be found online and you certainly have not supplied one.

Look at all the medical fraud web sites out there.

Look how easy it is to show they are frauds. Look at how difficult it is to show that the oil crash sites are frauds.

As for the supermarket analogy, it is very relevant because all of these authors ignore huge sources of energy, even oil. All you are doing is repeating the same non data, based on changes in known reserves. Same wrong argument from multiple sources, same errors.

What errors? What non-data? What are you talking about?

Current oil reserves are dropping therefore crisis. No mention of the total known energy reserves at all. This is the same as ignoring the supermarket.

There has been plenty of mention of other energy reserves. All this is examined in fine detail, not ignored. Oil is oil. Other energy sources are other energy sources. It is YOU who is confusing them, not the websites I linked to.

As for Iraq, although oil may be an issue, consider we have signed deals with Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to supply us with our oil. We do not plan, nor need to import a great deal from Iraq, and considering the short timeline these guys give us, this does not make any sense whatsoever. Just wait a few years. Like the fundy christians "Jesus is always coming next year." Same here, the oil crisis always seems to be just a few years away.

No, my friend. This time it is knocking on your front door.

I am still waiting for a complete look at all current sources of energy, then showing how those sources, overall will be severely compromised in the next ten years. Everything else is total BS because we will be able to adapt over longer trends.

Please, Daddy, tell me everything will be OK.
Please, Daddy, tell me everything will be OK.
Please, Daddy, tell me everything will be OK.
It will be OK, won't it Daddy?
NOT IF YOU KEEP PRETENDING THERE IS NO PROBLEM IT WON'T, NO.


You don't get it, do you? If we admit this is coming and start preparing for it, then it won't be quite so devastating as predicted. If, instead, we pretend there isn't a problem, then it WILL be devastating.

Now - are you capable of facing the truth or are you an ostrich?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.after-oil.co.uk/

In 1970 the Club of Rome commissioned a study of the effect and limits of continued world-wide economic growth. The findings were published in 1972 as a report entitled "The Limits to Growth". The highlight of the report was the use of "System Dynamics" to build a global computer model incorporating the most important components that determine and ultimately limit world economic growth.

The standard run of the world model produced a set of variables plotted from 1900 to 2100. World model standard run.

Taking into account the forecasts of the World Model, the year 2000 sits at the peak of world resources availability. It shows that from 2000 the rate of discovery of new resources falls below the rate of their consumption, notably in the case of petroleum, which is of course non-renewable.

The forecast breakdown in the world’s economy is caused by a combination of rising population and increasing consumption of resources by a favoured minority. As resources become scarcer, the amount of capital required to retrieve new leaner discoveries becomes uneconomically high. In the case of energy, more energy may well be required to create new sources than the energy thus obtained.

The key factor is the fall-off in the effectiveness of capital. The ability to correct situations will be lost. Improvements in public services and the urban environment will be non-attainable.

Such resources as remain will be sought competitively and no doubt fought over. For example, Turkey is competing for water resources with Syria and Iraq by damming the Euphrates. The presence of European fishing vessels off West Africa indicated failing fish stocks in more accessible waters and that EU fishing policies were insufficiently stringent to avoid catastrophic depletion.

Since there is no hope of planning for the survival of an over-populated world, the palliatives put forward by the World Dynamics modellers (See "Beyond the limits" 2) for universal salvation will not succeed - the necessary political co-operation between competing economies is unlikely to happen. For instance, the United States of America has made it clear that its foreign, economic and environmental policies will be based entirely on self-interest.

From 2050, the world population, having risen to around 10 to 11 billion from the current 6 billion, cannot be sustained and by 2100 has dropped back to 6 billion. The losses are caused by starvation and disease in the third world. The population of the developed nations will remain roughly the same throughout the 21st century at 1.2 billion: that of the developing nations will be halved from around 9 billion in 2050 to between 4 and 5 billion by 2100.

Britain is not self-sufficient and unless prepared will not avoid the consequences of global collapse. The first step for the United Kingdom is to recognise that there is a coming problem and that a national plan for survival is needed. The second step is to draw one up. We then have only 10 years to put the plan in place. We need to make use of currently available resources to install the capital plant needed to be ready for living without the said resources. If we wait until the rest of the world catches on, the resources we need in the interim will be approaching exhaustion and will be too expensive.

We also have a huge task in preparing the British people for a change in life-style before a more unpleasant change is forced on them by circumstances and to be able to re-direct capital and resources in a direction not currently taken, especially as it may contrast with that taken by the rest of Europe or of the world.

To a certain extent the exercise of free-market economics will re-allocate financial resources as circumstances force the pace. For instance, crude oil prices are expected to rise markedly in the first quarter of the century, anticipating the onset of exhaustion. Motor fuel consumers are likely to protest and insist on tax reductions. If they were more aware of forthcoming shortages and exhaustion of reserves, they would be more likely to accept a fuel tax escalator. But for reasons of defending economic growth policies, the politicians do not wish to put this forward. The need for high fuel taxation is justified as a means for gathering funds for health and pensions rather than that of reducing demand and giving incentive to the development of alternative fuels.

In 2000 the United States CIA issued a report “Global Trends 2015” stating that in spite of a 60% increase in demand for petroleum products, energy resources will be sufficient to meet demand. In 2001 the emphasis was that expansion in Asia, led by China and India, would lead to dramatic increases in energy consumption, but that meeting the increase will pose no major challenge. This unrealistic forecast is probably politically inspired, since a doom-laden prognosis would have encouraged crude oil price rises by both OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers. Fears of exhaustion would stimulate an escalation in petroleum prices with consequent economic difficulties for the USA.

However, the UK Ministry of Defence came to contrasting conclusions, suggesting that the UK will be a net importer of gas by 2010 and will import 90% of its needs. This assumes that others are willing and able to export their gas resources. Gas resources are pipelined through politically unstable transit countries or require reprocessing to liquid gases for ocean transport in special ships.

The UK Cabinet Office published "The Energy Review 9 " in April 2002 which expressed concern for the security of oil supplies, but considered supplies of gas would be secured by market "liberalisation" of continental supplies, mainly from the Former Soviet Union.

If we wait for market mechanisms to respond to shortages of oil and gas and to stimulate investment in alternative technologies, it will mean that we will come to the point of exhaustion in parallel with the rest of the world and the United Kingdom will be just as crippled as all the others. In wartime, resources are directed as needed and it is not difficult to obtain the necessary public consensus by good leadership. By providing information as to the reasons, it will be possible to argue for the imposition of taxes aimed at a strategic move from dwindling resources. This is not an argument for a command economy in the failed communist mode. National goals can be achieved by fiscal means, so that businesses can react to disincentives in the use of non-renewable fuels and to incentives for the use of alternatives.

As we face a future of global collapse in 25 to 50 years time, surely if the situation is properly explained and a sensible and considered plan for survival through the 21st Century is promoted, the nation will rise to the task. The introduction of the Internet has fortuitously come at the right time to allow information and exchange of ideas to take place. The timetable has started.

 

[DanishDynamite]

I'm not sure why you are so extatic in your view that the sky is falling, Geoff, but perhaps it has something to do with the great revolution of 2012. Do tell.

Anyway, according to the US Energy Information Agency (EIA 1997c:37) it is today "possible to produce about 550 billion barrels of oil from tar sands and shale oil at a price below $30, i.e. that it is possible to increase the present global oil reserves by 50 percent. And it is estimated that within 25 years we can commercially exploit twice as much in oil reserves as the world’s present oil reserves”.

That would seem to last a while.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm not sure why you are so extatic in your view that the sky is falling, Geoff, but perhaps it has something to do with the great revolution of 2012. Do tell.

It has nothing at all to do with 2012. It has to do with science, economics and politics. Also, the sky isn't falling in. It is not the first time human history has taken an unexpected turn which seemed like the end of the world to those facing it, but just became another part of history to those who follow.

 

[DanishDynamite]

JustGeoff:

It has nothing at all to do with 2012. It has to do with science, economics and politics. Also, the sky isn't falling in. It is not the first time human history has taken an unexpected turn which seemed like the end of the world to those facing it, but just became another part of history to those who follow.

So what is your point, then? What do you wish to achieve by your claims?

And do you have any comments to the assesment of oil reserves I gave above?

 

[hammegk]

Here is some actual grit in the wheels. If you know someone looking for a major, being a PE over the next few decades will be quite lucrative is my guess. Challenging as well, plus if you work foreign you will be watching the 3rd world revert to the stone-age.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4276583/

 

[Solitaire]

Maybe that is because people have realised that this time it is not a false
alarm. Those who react slowest will be the furthest behind when it finally
dawns on them that 'peak oil' really is going to effect their lives. Have you
seen the rapidly proliferating websites on the subject?

No I haven't.

A surprising number of them are not 'kooks'. They are from both sides
of the political spectrum, from materialists, from hippie-greens - the lot.

This begs the question of why?

Why would they board HMS Energy Crisis now?
Over thirty years ago the Energy Crisis was a fine ship, sound as they
come. But now? The waves do lap at the edges of the deck, hungerly.

If the United States converts biomass waste into 12 billion barrels of oil
each year will that change the doom and gloom outcome? Lets see
that's about 500 billion gallons of gasoline for 250 million cars or about
2000 gallons per car. Hm. I just might have to get out and walk.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

JustGeoff:So what is your point, then? What do you wish to achieve by your claims?

I was defending the claims made in the link this thread started on. I am trying to achieve the recognition that this is a problem, because I think it is better to recognise an inevitable problem sooner rather than later and prepare some sort of rational response.

And do you have any comments to the assesment of oil reserves I gave above?

Can you provide a link? It is a bit difficult to derive much from one figure from one organisation several years ago.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Synchronicity

If the United States converts biomass waste into 12 billion barrels of oil
each year will that change the doom and gloom outcome?

Sounds like a good start, yes.

 

[uruk]

Ururk, yes we can make synthetic oil out of plants. The problem is that without oil-based fertilisers we cannot grow enough plants. The energy has to come from somewhere. At the moment you are saying we should grow plants to make synthetic oil to make fertilisers, for growing plants. This isn't going to solve the problem.

If you read the site it's about plants that produce PLASTICS.
Though we do get oil from plants.

and there are MANY more sorces of fertilizer than oil
Check out this site:
http://dir.tpage.com/11/18/05/

 

[uruk]

http://www.uni-hohenheim.de/i3ve/00068900/25798041.htm

Hey! who would of thought. electric farm equipment.

 

[kookbreaker]

In short...no we do not have 100,00 years worth of fuel. We have avout 25 years left.

Considering that one single mine in Australia is listed as being capable of continuing to supply the world for the next 70 years just with its already dug reserves, let alone its confirmed reserves, or its probably reserves I find this claim to be very dubious indeed.

Add to this the reports that say the Ukraine could add the supply conservatively for the next 100 years.

Then there's the stuff that Australia hasn't even touched.

This is why I consider this to be ill-informed panic-mongering.

I consider the efforts being made towards alternitives to be good, but could be better. I do not beleive in fostering a panic-metnality where we deliberately seize up the engine of the economy that results in a backlash that hamstrings the efforts being made.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Hey! who would of thought. electric farm equipment.

Plastics from plants and electric farm equipment may well be signs of things to come, expect them from Europe first.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

This is why I consider this to be ill-informed panic-mongering.

The opening post referenced a webstie which was pure panic-mongering, but it was American and the end of oil may well seem like the end of the world if you have that perspective. We have seen how Americans reacted to Kyoto.

www.after-oil.co.uk is not panic-mongering.

I consider the efforts being made towards alternitives to be good, but could be better. I do not beleive in fostering a panic-metnality where we deliberately seize up the engine of the economy that results in a backlash that hamstrings the efforts being made.

That is part of the point being made by this UK site. They are suggesting we use the remaining oil to establish an oil-light economy BEFORE the oil runs out and makes those efforts so much more difficult. This is just sensible planning instead of sticking your head in the sand, not panic mongering. Panicking is no good, and neither is pretending there is no problem.