Preparing for a world without oil

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=299376

The current surge in the price of oil is certainly not driven by a conviction that oil supplies have peaked and can only decline from now on. The dealers in the London and New York exchanges who make the market react to the daily flow of news — a possible Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, two North Sea rigs closed for a week because of bad weather — and don’t bother much about longer term issues like peak oil.

The market is a simple-minded beast: Supply is tight and disruptions are possible, so the price goes up. But the market is so tight because demand has been growing faster than supply for years, mainly due to the economic boom in Asia — and now the fear is that supplies may have stopped growing altogether. The German-based Energy Watch Group declared last month that global oil output peaked in 2006 at 81 million barrels per day. It will fall to 58 million b/d by 2020, they predict, and to only 39 million b/d by 2030.

That would give us just over twenty years to cut our use of oil by half — or rather by two-thirds, really, since world demand for oil is set to increase 37 percent by 2030, according to the annual report of the US Energy Department’s forecasting arm, the Energy Information Administration. In theory, two decades ought to be enough to come up with more efficient engines and other conservation measures for the half of all oil that is used in transport, and to switch to alternative fuels for much of the rest. But there are many who doubt that we will succeed.
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Nick Lampson at the step it up meeting talked about that we had 10 years We are scrambling
and reality is Keeping the military machine going on oil and gas is going bye bye

[Strelnikov_]

1. History Channel: Mega Disasters-Oil Apocalypse

http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=251195

Tuesday, November 13, 11 PM EST

The oil that our world runs on won't last forever. The gap between supply and demand is ever increasing. Will alternative energy save us or is it already too late? What would happen to the world as we know it when our oil dependent industries come to a grinding halt? A worldwide depression is a certainty but a power struggle for the basic necessities of life would be complete chaos.

[kimmerspixelated]

3. Even though it's Oil shale,

you'd think our big oil guys would be spending some of their extra loot(which is a fortune) on the world's largest reserve right here in the USA in The GreenRiver Formation(Colorado, Utah). I have always wondered exactly what has stopped them from starting the process, since those kind of guys could care less about land conservation OR the environment! Please note-I am definitely for clean energy solutions and don't advocate this. Biofueling is the only way to go.

[Strelnikov_]

2. Don't Panic

Interesting editorial that parallels my thinking regarding peak oil. That is, the real threat to industrial society is the political response.

There is no reason that with sound leadership and sacrifice by the public a vibrant economy with sustainability and quality of life as its hallmarks cannot emerge at the other end of the ‘Long Emergency’. This economy would probably be a fusion of socialist principles on the macro scale and free market on the micro scale (the China model?).

The problem is that this will take, as noted, leadership, sacrifice, and a willingness to change. Qualities that seem to be nearly nonexistent today, just as they have been throughout history. And without competent leadership, all the brilliance of our engineers and scientists will be of little help.

Nothing has yet been written,though. The shape of the future is in our hands.

Hope the worlds 'leaders' have their towels handy.

++++

If peak oil is here, must we all now go into the dark together? Of course not. The predicted rate of decline in world oil production once we are past the peak is only two percent a year. If demand were still rising by about two per cent a year, that would imply a four percent shortfall in supply next year, an eight percent shortage the year after, 12 per cent the year after that.

However, that presumes that Asian economies continue to grow at the present rate, but they won't go on doing that if the oil price goes through the roof. So let us assume that we have to cope with an accumulating oil shortfall of around three per cent a year. Could modern economies transform their basic transport and energy structures at three per cent per annum? Certainly they can, provided they continue to co-operate internationally and don't panic. Moreover, the technologies they need to wean themselves from their excessive dependence on oil are precisely the ones they need to get their carbon emissions down and ward off the threat of runaway global warming.