Peak Oil........yep looks like it just started

[rocktop15]

50 something a barrel for oil. Get your guns ready.

[kestrel91316]

1. I hear the sound of more...........................

large SUVs being fired up for one last trip down the road to the dealership to be traded in..............not fast enough to suit me. But seriously, if everybody on earth really started to take energy conservation seriously, we all could breathe a little easier. Especially we wasteful Americans.

I recently bought a clothes line for drying my hand laundry (which is most of my laundry) out back on the patio. It cost $15 and will have paid for itself in a couple months. Low tech, zero dead dinosaurs burning during use, and more convenient than a trip to the laundromat. I plan to ride my bike to work as soon as it's cool enough. I already take the bus to work and walk home (45-60 minutes) an average of 3 days a week. Easy steps, good for my health, good for the planet, and good for the law of supply and demand as it relates to gas prices.

What have you fellow DUers done?

[gumby]

2. Wishing I could move to a warmer climate. /

[kestrel91316]

4. If it's cold, you can hang your laundry........................

on a wooden dryer rack in the bathtub. I do it all the time in the winter when it is rainy, damp, or the dirt blows too bad.

[Elginoid]

10. I air dry A LOT in the winter.

we have radiator heat, and the air is VERY DRY. putting clothes on a rack drys them very quickly, and ads a little humidity to the air.

[kestrel91316]

11. You get a GOLD STAR!!!!!!!!!

:yourock:

[Ravenseye]

3. I Work From Home...

..and just don't do laundry altogether :)

[WLKjr]

5. Well if I lived in or close to the city

and not out in the country where I have to commute 14 miles to work and 78 miles to school one way, I would bike or walk or get an electric scooter.

[kestrel91316]

12. The days of NOT living where we work....................

are coming to a screeching halt, very soon.

[WLKjr]

30. Yeah I know

seems like everytime I had to go find a job, I had to drive further and further away to find one. I coulndn't stand it, makes you want to move to where you work.

[SammyWinstonJack]

17. Well I just recently bought a SUV

And since I only on average drive about 50 miles a week, I don't think I am contributing to the demise of the Earth through oil consumption. But thanks for lumping us SUV owners all together! Have a nice day!

[natrat]

21. you just bought an suv?

what did you get a hummer? bright yellow

[Adams Wulff]

18. it has been a painful adjustment, but

I bought an '85 Toyota Tercel SR5 to replace my "82 Jeep Cherokee.
Then I found out that the "overheating problem" might be a blown head gasket. Of course I find this out after i spent an extra $400.00 on coolant system replacement. Don't know if i believe this guy, though, he wanted $900.00 to fix it. Plus, I'm driving it and it seems fine to me.

Cross your fingers, if this thing works, I go from 12 MPG to 30-40 MPG.

[kestrel91316]

31. Give the man a GOLD STAR!!!!!!!!

[drunkdriver-in-chief]

19. Repubs will never give up their gas guzzler SUVs

Every night the wife laughs at that 3 inch sponge between their legs and they need that 6000 pound SUV to make themselves feel like a man.

PS - i dry my clothes on a rack too. If you live in a fairly dry climate, it makes all the sense in the world. I'd like to ride a bike but it's so dangerous what with all the nut drivers out there. They scare me even when i'm in a car.

[LWolf]

26. Those are great steps!

I'm a really efficient driver. It helps that I just don't do "shopping;" it's not a recreational sport for me. But I don't do any shopping that can't be done on my way to or from work. I don't make any extra trips.

I don't take the bus; in my area, our public transportation system is minimal. It's a really long way between bus stops, the routes don't connect well with each other, the busses start late, end early, and don't stop often in between...we really need a better system.

I don't ride my bike; I tried that, a long time ago. Rode my bike to work, and at the end of the day got on the bike and realized that I was going to have to ride 4 miles directly into a 30mph wind. I'd forgotten to take our normal afternoon winds into account. It doesn't blow that hard all the time; sometimes only 10 or 20 mph. Sometimes 40 or 50. I ended up dragging my bike home on foot.

I don't use my clothesline; again, the wind. Here in the desert, that wind comes with a lot of dust. Clothes end up really gritty. I found that out the hard way. ;-)

What I *do*:

I use an evaporative cooler instead of central air; deals with the triple digit temps without a triple digit electric bill.

I keep the thermostat low in the winter, and wear warmer clothes indoors.

I use low-watt energy saving light bulbs, and only have one light on at a time; in the room I happen to be in.

I drive an efficient vehicle; gas mileage is not high; 20 -23 mpg. But it runs efficiently for a couple of hundred thousand miles without much time and money outside of oil changes. I'd love a hybrid; when they make trucks hybrid, I'm there. Meanwhile, my little toyota hauls dirt, rocks, feed, water, etc., without a problem. I can haul everything in my little 4 cyl. but my horses. If I need to haul my horses, I have to find someone with a big truck.

[AntiFascist]

6. I heard on the teeeveee a long time ago that when oil hits $50.....

the economy would crash. Clarification?

[Fuzzy LaRue]

8. I can see a crash happening if

the price had jumped up from under $40 to $50 at once. But the price has been going up incrementally. Not as big a shock. Not a pleasant thing, but not a complete disaster...yet.

My major in college was Petroleum Geology and I see Peak Oil as a flawed theory. Not completely without merit, but flawed in a few details.

[arcos]

9. such as... ? n/t

[kestrel91316]

13. I see chronic intermittent financial strain....................

rather than acute collapse. But we will have to find alternatives and not bury our heads in the sand.

Denial=Death

[Kool Kitty]

16. So, Fuzzy-

don't keep us in suspense. Let's hear some flawed details. I really want to know what you think, because I think this is a bad thing. Sounds like it's going to cost an arm and a leg for heat this winter.

[Fuzzy LaRue]

20. Peak Oil is Based on...

the fossil fuels theory. Dead prehistoric plants and animals became oil over the course of millions of years. If this is where oil came from, it would take over 98 tons of dead dinosaurs to produce ONE GALLON of gasoline. 196,000 pounds. 3,920,000 pounds to fill up a 20 gallon tank. Just think of how many millions of gallons of gasoline the world uses in a year. Not enough plants and animals lived to produce enough the oil that is being used and has been used so far.

Also, it is not so much the oil prices that is driving up the gasoline prices. It is that the refineries are running at capacity right now. Even if more oil is produced, we cannot produce the gasoline to meet demand right now, we get more oil, it will just have to be stored until it can be refined.

[rman]

23. so you went to a different school then (most of) the other oil experts

Abiogenic theory has it that natural oil reserves do replenish from below, which doesn't explain how Texas oil reserves did in fact become depleted some time after production from those wells peaked during the 70's.
There are no indications that there is a practically infinite amount of oil. There are however indications that the opposite is true, for instance the fact that Shell recently had to reduce its estimates about the natural reserves several times for a total of some 30%, which cost Shell's boss his job.

biogenic vs abiogenic origin of fossil fuel:
http://www.fact-index.com/f/fo/fossil_fuel.html

[Minstrel Boy]

29. Abiotic oil is unsupported by science and common sense

From a rebuttal of "abiotic oil" by Dale Allen Pfeiffer:

There is some speculation that oil is abiotic in origin -- generally asserting that oil is formed from magma instead of an organic origin. These ideas are really groundless. All unrefined oil carries microscopic evidence of the organisms from which it was formed. These organisms can be traced through the fossil record to specific time periods when quantities of oil were formed.

Likewise, there are two primal energy forces operating on this planet, and all forms of energy descend from one of these two. The first is the internal form of energy heating the Earth's interior. This primal energy comes from radioactive decay and from the heat energy originally generated during accretion of the planet some 4.6 billion years ago. There are no known mechanisms for transferring this internal energy into any secondary energy source. And the chemistry of magma does not compare to the chemistry of hydrocarbons. Magma is lacking in carbon compounds, and hydrocarbons are lacking in silicates. If hydrocarbons were generated from magma, then you would expect to see some closer kinship in their chemistry.

...

Finally, because oil generation is in part a geological process, it proceeds at an extremely slow rate from our human perspective. Geological processes take place over a different frame of time than human events. It is for this reason that when geologists say that the San Andreas fault is due for a powerful earthquake, they mean any time in the next million years -- probably less. Geological processes move exceedingly slow.

It is a simple geological fact that the oil we are using up at an alarming rate today will not be replaced within our lifetime -- or within many lifetimes. That is why hydrocarbons are called non-renewable resources. Capped wells may appear to refill after a few years, but they are not regenerating. It is simply an effect of oil slowly migrating through pore spaces from areas of high pressure to the low-pressure area of the drill hole. If this oil is drawn out, it will take even longer for the hole to refill again. Oil is a non-renewable resource generated and deposited under special biological and geological conditions.
http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/peakoil1.html


And from Michael Ruppert, responding to Dave McGowan's claim that peak oil is a "hoax":

In the two-plus years since 9/11 an increasingly sophisticated body of researchers has become aware of tactics intended to stall and distract, rather than educate. Your recent postings seem to indicate that this argument is to be won by the sheer number of words that can be thrown at the subject as opposed to arguments addressing an issue of the utmost importance to mankind. Not only have I, but a great many others, become wise to such tactics, we have learned to counter them. The debate you have assumptively proposed (as opposed to the one I challenged you with) is one which will allow you to occupy center stage for endless hours while engaging in the most insidious and duplicitous kinds of sophistry which would never be permitted in a courtroom or in a properly moderated debate, governed by rules of critical thinking and analysis.

You have employed dishonesty, straw arguments, and libelous character assassinations instead of addressing the only question that matters to anybody. That question - Is abiotic petroleum and natural gas readily available and making its way into commercial use in sufficient quantities to establish that there is no imminent energy shortage? - is rightly the only question any of us should give a damn about. That is the question for debate.

Instead you are dancing around the issue with falsehoods which are typified (as only one example) by your statement that I and a number of petroleum scientists argue that oil is derived from dinosaurs. neither I nor any reputable scientist - especially those who are Warning of Peak Oil -- has ever made such a claim. We all gagged as you put these words in our mouths. Yet it suits your purpose to falsify our statements and then defeat words which we never uttered to prove a point and thus boost your ego.
http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/FramingTheDebateOnAbioticOilByMikeRuppert.htm

[NickB79]

32. There weren't enough plants and animals? Are you serious?

The mass of all the biomass on this planet is in the hundreds of billions of tons. Much of it is in the form of small organisms (bacteria, fungi, insects, algae, etc) that are unbelievably abundant, and have been for the past 400 million+ yrs. Before this, bacteria and algae dominated the ocean for 3 billion yrs, adding organic material to the deep oceans to eventually be absorbed and converted to oil.

You don't seem to grasp the long span of the age of our planet, and the incredibly massive amount of biomass that has dominated it's surface for hundreds of millions of yrs. For example, it is estimated there is currently ~500 million tons of krill in the ocean alone (one of the most abundant species known, and a vital basis for the ocean ecosystem). That would translate into 5.1 million barrels of oil based on your 98 tons per barrel conversion. This, from one year's growth of just one species of organism on this planet. In only a few million years, the planet could produce all the oil we have today and more, using only a tiny fraction of the total biomass produced on this planet, if it weren't for plate tectonics destroying some oil reserves as new ones are formed. Given the billions of years life has existed on our planet, I see no problem with the biotic theory of oil production.

[Swamp Rat]

33. The Earth is flat

[Blitzburgh]

7. kick

[unslinkychild1]

14. So who won the bet?

Wasn't there a lotto going on here to see who could name the date it hit $50?

[arcos]

22. yup... no one did! link here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2401817

[cosmicvortex20]

15. Calm down... its not at its highest once adjusted for inflation.

Its a long way from record highs actually once adjusted. Blame the fed for making it look like the cost is high.

[gandalf]

24. care to share your source?

Or did you calculate it for yourself?

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Using inflation to adjust, this is true

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp

price in 1981 $31.77 a barrel - $66.20 in 2004 dollars.

However, you might also want to compare it to a measure of basic labour value - the US minimum wage (since we're comparing it all in dollars).

Minimum wage in 1981 was $3.15; so the adjustment to $5.15 now gives an equivalent price today of 31.77 * 5.15 / 3.15 = $51.94.

So the price is now pushing the record, compared to the minimum wage.

[gandalf]

28. Thanks for the information

And even though the oil price is not at record levels for all possible adjustment methods, it is quite high, and it seems to stay high in the next time.

I'm still searching for a financial instrument to participate. There are not warrants on the oil price as far as I know, and a future would involve too much money. The stocks of the oil companies are not parallel to the oil price, so they are not a good proxy.

[Flammable Materials]

27. 1991 Mitsubishi Mirage

I can still fill up for under $20, and it lasts me an entire work week. And I commute 35 miles each way.

[freeminder]

34. Future oil is trading up as well

On our belgian morning news :
banking expert saying oil production in 2007-2008-2009 is now trading higher too, indicating that the prices are expected to stay high for quite some time (he said this future production trades at over 30 where it used to be 25).

They also explained about different grades of oil, Saudi-Arabia primarily pumping high-sulfur-content heavy oil which is not what is needed. May explain why Saudi-Arabia's promise to pump more is not helping much.

my 2 cents