dagblog - Comments for "Peak Oil: Comic Book Minds"

This is an interesting

EVsRoll — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:09:14 +0000

In reply to Peak Oil: Comic Book Minds

This is an interesting discussion, one that the majority of citizens mentioned in the discussion probably would not appreciate.

I do not think that the world will go to hell quite as fast as in the discussion. That is, Sao Paulo though may be a valid reference for poverty vs primacy, but the leap to a future world with helicopters ferrying the rich to and fro seems a stretch.

There are for example alternatives to oil use. Electric vehicles are an effective, resource smart, practical alternative to gas burners.

If you really believe in Peak Oil doomsday, go for a hike and take your friends along, then tell them to take their friends. Get to the trailhead in an EV if you can. Ride a bike or an ebike.

EVsRock!

http://www.evsroll.com

No, but the seed money will

Donal — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:42:44 +0000

In reply to Doubtful. All the subsidies

No, but the seed money will turn someone a profit for a while.

From what I've heard, to

Beetlejuice — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:13:24 +0000

In reply to I'm a green freak, but happen

From what I've heard, to cultivate such resources as oil and natural gas from shade deposits would be wasting more energy units to extract the resource than the energy units the final products would yield. Doesn't sound so energy efficient to me. Also, the amount of energy extract would only satisfy consumer demand for only a matter of months. Seems global thirst for oil is so huge that a large a super field with a yield of a billion barrels wouldn't last a year. Oh and that nice fat layer of excess that separated supply from demand was eaten up by new demands by new energy consumers from India and China...thanks to NAFTA and free trade moving their manufacturing bases there creating a new wave on consumers for a finite resource.

Ethanol, the recipe for

David Seaton — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 06:05:21 +0000

In reply to Unless there are govt

Ethanol, the recipe for starving people in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

It is in our hands... for the

David Seaton — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 06:02:45 +0000

In reply to As what you desire, do you

It is in our hands... for the moment.

Doubtful. All the subsidies

Austin Train — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:30:28 +0000

In reply to Unless there are govt

Doubtful. All the subsidies in the world can't turn an energy sink into an energy yield.

Unless there are govt

Donal — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:12:19 +0000

In reply to I'll tell you when they stop

Unless there are govt subsidies to do so, as with ethanol.

I'll tell you when they stop

Austin Train — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 04:09:44 +0000

In reply to I'm a green freak, but happen

I'll tell you when they stop going after oil - when it takes more energy to get the stuff out of the ground than they get from it.

That and only that will be the end of the oil nera.

I'm a green freak, but happen

quinn esq — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 03:39:50 +0000

In reply to Peak Oil: Comic Book Minds

I'm a green freak, but happen to have worked in/around this field for 20 years, and I find most of what's written to be fairly nutbar. Kunstler, for instance, I think is cracked. More widely, I find that most of those writing have very poor conceptions of how economics works. Not that I have it nailed down, I don't - but these people are buffoons. "Cartoon" may be the right word, I donno.

Cause it's not that the oil is gonna run out, it ain't. It's just that as we run out of that nice fat layer of excess that insulated demand from supply, we're gonna start seeing spikes and surges more often. So price will be used more often to push some people and sectors and countries out of the check-out line.

And the surprise - I think - will be that many Americans, especially the lower working-class, living in exurbia, driving two aging vehicles, may not make it. The Chinese and Indian middle-classes may well be better positioned to outbid them.

This will in turn trigger all sorts of structural changes, international changes, you name it. But anybody that tries to predict how those will play out is nuts.

And the whole thing about oil "running out" or the suburbs emptying or a full-scale shift to organic, labour-intensive agriculture? It may happen, but it'll because of war or somesuch - not because the oil ran out or prices went to $300/barrel or nonsense like that.

Finally, anybody wanna comment on "peak natural gas?" Cause a lot of these same people thought we had tapped natural gas out in North America. Turns out there were enormous quantities of it tied up in shales and such. Now, I don't LIKE how we're gonna access this natural gas, but access it we will - and are.

"No one knows what comes next" - well said.

As what you desire, do you

AmericanDreamer — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:25:14 +0000

In reply to I'm thinking about socialism

As what you desire, do you mean? Or what you see us headed towards? I was picking up on your comments on what I thought was the latter.