according to greg palasts "armed madhouse", peak oil is a falacy. it is a lie based on a faulty model.
in the chart upon which peak oil is based, the TOTAL oil to be found is actually less than what is to be found under venuzuela alone!!!!
Iraq only pumps half of 1 percent of its capacity.... i suggest research needs to be done and less scare mongering. It is a falacy used to keep oil price high ,,, and rising
Whatever the case, two things are clear to me:
1. We and all civilized countries will always need some amount of petroleum. It is an almost magical substance; there is nothing like it. Someday technology may change this, but for now and for the forseeable future, we will continue to need at least some oil.
2. We must ween ourselves of oil, to as a great an extent as possible. It is finite, it reeks havoc on the environment, and it is the direct cause of a lot of conflict, misery, totalitarianism, and death. How do we ween ourselves from oil? Technology, first; second, better governmental policies re: oil and alternative energies; and third, we must make the unwise consumption of oil (Hummers, Suburbans, industrial and domestic energy waste, etc.) taboo and, I would argue, illegal.
Wonderful Documentary! Very Educational! Well done!
I had no idea the World Population had increased another BILLION in the 1960's, then another Billion in the 70's, still another Billion in the 80's, and still another Billion again in the 90's ... to arrive at the 6 BILLION that we have now or the other 7 BILLION that we'll have by NEXT YEAR!
1800 - 1 Billion
1930 - 2 B
------------------------
1960 - 3 B
1974 - 4 B
1987 - 5 B
1998 - 6 B
2009 - 7 B
-----------------------------
2021 - 8 B
2035 - 9 B
2054 - 10 B
2093 - 11 B
* each new billion is added in but 11 years.
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~owen/CHPI/IMAGES/pop.html
The issue that's most clear to me is:
Without Oil to make the pesticides and the fertilizers for the food that we grow, that means at some point in time most people will eventually STARVE to Death! [
There is an unfortunate segment of the Left (Palast is an example, Alexander Cockburn is another) that refuses to countenance the possibility that one day we're going to run out of oil. I'm not sure why this is (it is a nonrenewable resource after all), but I suspect that it's part of a socialist faith in unlimited growth and man's ability to dominate and remake nature. Whatever the reasons, the evidence against their faith is growing every day, as the world's largest fields drop dramatically in production while no significant fields have been discovered for years. (Mexico, the US largest source of oil, is going to be a net oil importer before long.) Add in the impact of China's skyrocketing energy demands and you have the makings of a looming catastrophe. One can either plan how to avoid or least mitigate it, or one can stick one's head in the oilsands.
shareThe film made the valid point that even if the peak oil problem was solved (or didn't exist) we would still have all the other problems related to overpopulation and overconsumption, such as diminishing freshwater, and we'll be fighting over that instead. One Earth simply doesn't have ALL the resources that we need to live the way we want to.
The film also made the point that oil-producing countries have an incentive to over-estimate the amount of oil they actually believe they have.
We didn't use crude oil 200 years ago for much of anything. Plastic is more an issue than gasoline. I see more and more plastic use and that's a really under-reported issue.
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