when will the gas run out? & how will it change us?

[mopaul]

fossil fuel is finite, and it's choking us and giving us all cancer and we need to buy the newest model lexus when it comes out in the fall and humvees need to be made bigger. we are getting low, and the prices are making us whine. people are dying by the tens of thousands, but still our gas prices are too high.

when will our car mad culture stall and coast to a stop?

[Mandate My Ass]

1. The movies "Mad Max" and "The Road Warrior"

come to mind. No matter how it shakes out, it definitely won't be pretty. :scared:

[tom_paine]

4. Agreed, Monica.

No one can predict the details of the future.

It will be VERY BAD, and that is likely an understatement.

Worse, the Busheviks are pushingthe oment of crisis MUCH CLOSER and even forcing it in non-oil-related ways.

Yes, it is both :scared: and :grr:

[Turbineguy]

12. Actually.......it's part of a Cunning Plan

Bush plans to kill us all before the gas runs out.

[tom_paine]

13. Now, now, even a Bushevik knows you can't steal from the dead

:evilgrin:

I think we're safe from that "over-the-top" scenario.

But I look at other leaders from history like Bush:

Will he be as bad as Hitler? (probably not)
Will he be as bad as Stalin (probably not)
Will he be as bad as Saddam? (not him, but can you vouch for Nero Bush, Uday Bush or Caligula Bush in 2030 or 2050?)
Will he be as bad as Ferdinand Marcos? (IMHO, he already is, for Aquino read "Wellstone")

You may make light if you wish, but the similarities are there, including the same Propganda Motto:

"Propaganda…must always be essentially simple and repetitious. In the long run, only he will achieve basic results in influencing public opinion who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form despite the objections of the intellectuals."

Who do you think said that? Rush? O'Reichley? Insannity? Nah. They know that if you want to reintroduce a discredited old product in a sleek new pacakage you must AVOID bringing up memories of the old, discredited product you wish to re-introduce

Maybe it was Ann Coulter.

The answer is here:

http://members.aol.com/rantpage/newtsies.htm

[MuseRider]

2. When it does

I have some horses to sell! Seriously though, it is going to happen and has probably started already. It will change everything and we need to prepare now. Get off the grid if you can, get real good at gardening. Learn how to can, dry can, create cisterns of water. We will be needing this. Perhaps there is one bright side to this, although it will be painful to get there. It will bring communities back together. This is my wish but it most likely will not go down easily.

[progressiveBadger]

3. Great article in National Geographic

Something I hadn't thought about: China is fast becoming a major oil consumer. They have yet to even come close to matching the US, but they have now entered the second place spot and their consumption is growing very very fast. What do you think THEY are going to do when it is announced that world oil production has peaked and will only begin to run out from here on?
I don't want to be pessimistic, but I think the world will go crazy. It's not just cars that use oil. It's plastic, medicine, etc etc etc... it's going to be very scary. And we are almost guaranteed that it will happen in our lifetime.

[Speck Tater]

5. I heard various estimates

of when demand will outstrip known reserves. The tipping point, according to those estimates, might happen in 30 years, or it might have already happened 10 years ago, but isn't visible yet.

At the rate developing countries, especially China, are ramping up consumption I suspect we'll really start feeling the pinch in a sreious way by mid-century at the latest.

Either we will develop alternate fuels or we'll go back to horse and buggy. I'm betting on solar replacing oil by the end of the century.

[Gregorian]

6. Doesn't anyone care to seek the source of the problem?

First, what you're saying won't happen suddenly.
If we had leadership, we'd have used the money for this "war" to promote fusion and photovoltaic research. Not hydrogen.Both of those things are near being realities. Photovoltaics recently broke the 50% mark. That's huge news, and noone knows it yet. Hydrogen is not in our future. The only reason Stupid mentioned hydrogen was because if we were to go to a hydrogen system now, we'd be using DOUBLE the amount of fossil fuel to produce it. That goofball!


BUT, and this is the funny part, while everyone is looking at Bush, and war, and gas, the population is screaming. People, it's the population that is the driving force behind all of these issues. It's the population, STUPID! And in the event that you are offended, because you already have a brood of your own. Or you think I'm nuts, just watch. Water will be what gas is today. And we'll be fighting over it, as the poles melt away. Sorry to be so grim, but I've been sitting here for thirty years watching, as we go from four billion to six billion, to.......

[Dissenting_Prole]

8. I disagree

It WILL happen suddenly. It could be a slow, peaceful decline, but instead the crash will likely be triggered an economic or political event, like the collapse of the stock market or major unrest in the Middle East. We may never recover.

There is very little elasticity in the oil supply and it wouldn't take much at this point to cut off America from its supply of the drug.

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

[Dissenting_Prole]

7. The question is not "when will we run out?"

The issue is "when will we peak?"

Once global oil production peaks, we will have 2-3% less oil every year afterward. That's 25% less in 10 years. Meanwhile demand will continue to increase. The gap between the supply and demand will be the problem.

It's all explained here:

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

[htuttle]

10. EXACTLY! It doesn't matter when the oil finally 'runs out'

The issue of when we finally extract the last drop of oil from the ground is almost completely irrelevant.

What is critical to most people is the difference between what the world's oil producers are able to pump EACH DAY versus what the world's oil consumers want to burn EACH DAY.

'Peak Oil' is not about when the oil 'runs out', but rather when the world's oil producers are extracting as much PER DAY as they possibly can. The squeeze comes from the fact that the world's oil consumers show no sign of slowing their accelerating DAILY consumption.

When the world is pumping as much as it can each day, yet the world wants to consume more and more oil each day, prices will go up, stay up, and ultimately make oil too expensive to use for personal consumption.

Fact is, the 'West' has promised the developing world a rising standard of living, as long as they play by our rules (those rules being neo-liberalism). It is becoming more and more obvious that this promise (that everyone can live like an American someday) is a lie -- the West simply has no way to make good on it. There isn't enough to go around if everyone wants to live like we do (and consume resources like we do).

As this dawns upon the developing world, you will see them become quite a bit less cooperative with their resources than they have been over the last 50 years.

I did a short video on this topic, btw. It's the one called 'Peak Oil' at the top of this page:

http://www.piratevideo.tv/

[bluedog]

9. just a question

the reserve oil ............bush is filling them up....he filled them up in 2001......where did that oil go?? and..if the US is buying now at these high prices.doesn't that make the price of oil go up........and then in turn raise the price on us Americans?? To me it seems like hes buying now to rally hurt us in the pocketbooks.........

[whosinpower]

11. Here is an alternative

Currently the US patent office is in a battle with inventer Joe Newman. I found out about Joe while looking for alternative energy (pre Iraq war) and then saw a very very interesting program on TV late one nightthat interviewed him as well as other "eccentric" inventors.

One of the defining principles that Joe upholds is that his technology be available and affordable to ALL. He has traveled across the US showing his generator to any who will listen. The science is sound - it is YOUR GOVERNMENT that is holding back his application to the patent office - as they insist what Joe has is a perpetual energy machine and that is impossible(in their mind)

IF this technology ever becomes mainstream, it is Joe's vision that every household have its own generator - every one would be offgrid...and that does not bode well for the US government.

Check out the website and do a little research on Joe's machine.

http://www.josephnewman.com/

[billyskank]

15. Regarding the Newman machine

I must say that it sounds too good to be true, and such things usually are. I think it should be taken with a pinch of salt.

[Az]

14. Forget about the energy problem

Our entire industrial society is built upon oil. Imagine where we would be without plastics. When the oil runs out the plastic goes away too. Think of all the things in hospitals that use plastic. Thing of all the things keeping people alive right now that use plastic.

We need to get off oil NOW. If we have any intention of using the production properties of oil we need to find something else to use for energy now.

[billyskank]

17. I agree with you completely

but I will add one optimistic note. At least most plastics (probably all thermoplastic ones) can be recycled. If use of plastics is expected to be perpetually increasing then I agree that that is completely unrealistic.

[Dissenting_Prole]

18. Yes, but it takes energy to recycle plastic

You always lose some energy in the conversion.

[cosmicdot]

16. Cheney's secretive cunning prolly mirrors PNAC ...

and, CFR's Caspian Sea 'Research' http://treemedia.com/cfrlibrary/ ; the Mission of Cheney-Baker, et al's http://www.usacc.org/contents.php?cid=2 United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce; the Scowcroft Group; Kissinger McLarty Associates; etc.; ... and unfolding as we speak in the Middle East ...

... 4 more productive years gone by (lost) which could have been useful and proactive in resolving our energy issues ... issues which overlay foreign policy and the *Bush Corollary: 'they hate us because of our freedoms' ...

I believe there is technology available which is being suppressed by lobbyists, politicians, and gas-oil-motor vehicle-airplane-war machine corporate masters. What would it take for People Power to get behind it?

If someone has a patent, I'd consider buying 'a people power share' ... I'd buy more if I could ...

Our health will improve, health costs go down, pollution decreases, road rage subsides/disappears ... there are so many social pluses ...

Love to see "filling stations" joining the horse-n-buggy as 'history', and museum pieces.

Reclaim the land for nature - that'll really ticked them off.

There's a lot of infrastructure involved, and the effort will create jobs; inspire entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity, etc. Alternatives to oil by-products develop.

Another Republican corollary, Stay the Course, is a death wish waiting to happen.