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Gold/Mining/Energy : PEAK OIL - The New Y2K or The Beginning of the Real End? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (571)	5/19/2005 7:48:13 AM
From: Mahatmabenfoo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1183

There's certain room for skeptics. For instance these: gulland.ca ["peak oil" is bunk] rmi.org [Lovins on efficiency, hydrogen] freeenergynews.com [research in energy] Unfortunately, in many cases there's more "disbelief" than skepticism. We are more primed to accept the arrival of aliens than the end of oil. What's tricky is there are really two subjects on which one might be skeptical: 1. Is peak now or soon? I think the answer to that is obvious -- obvious to some people since 1956, and to others since 1979, and most of us over the age of 45 have just been pretending to forget. 2. Will peak mean we won't have enough energy to make a smooth transition to (1) alternate energy + (2) a different style of life? Some people, like Jim Kunsler, would say the answer to this is obvoius too. If oil runs out at 14% at year (as it reportedly is in some fields in Oman) and if gas disappeares 15 years after peak oil (because there's practically no bell curve for gas -- as a vapor it doesn't stick to wells); then we won't have the time and energy to build nukes, solar, wind powered electricity and h2 generation, and research wilder things. But... it might be 2% not 14%. And we might endure an even more rapid fall off than 14% (forcing out oil now) if we could use the energy to make the transition now (build a rail system for the USA again, for example). There really is a third question: what do we mean by a different style of life? Even Matt Simmons seems to forsee a comparative modest change (trains instead of trucks, but still living in the suburbs) whereas other "optimists" see survival as every shopping mall for itself (its own windmill, and re-fabbed into a self-sustainging unit for living working and farming where the parking lot used to be. This reveals secret bias. I like trains. Jim Kunsler doesn't like suburbs. Bias may lead us to the "right" conclusions, but the certainly lead us wherever we are in the spectrum. - Charles