This story may express the rapidly growing need for more Utility
cycles and utility cycling in north america. Better ,safer, roads that
have bike lanes , new laws to make room for utility cycling.

The story.........

"There is growing concern within the petroleum industry that we are approaching a limit to the amount of oil that can be pumped each day, and it might arrive before alternative fuels can be adopted on a large enough scale to avert severe energy shortages, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The story offers what the Journal calls "a significant twist" on the theory of peak oil while underscoring the urgent call to move beyond oil that the International Energy Agency made earlier this month in its annual World Energy Outlook. Taken together, they make a convincing argument that we've entered the end of oil and must move quickly, boldly and decisively to supplant oil as our primary source of energy."

The rest of the story.........

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/11/the-end-of-oil.html

Oh my god! No gas anymore! What will I do...?!

Oh wait, I don't even have a car so what do I care? ;)

Can I just point and laugh as the townies with their armoured personnel carriers have to give them away to homeless people for them to live in?

Oh wait, I don't even have a car so what do I care? ;)


:rolleyes: I sincerely hope you are joking. On the off chance you are not... the goods and services we ALL depend on are dependent on gas/oil. Unless you are growing 100% of the food you eat and making your own clothing by shearing sheep you keep penned up in your back yard, an oil shortage WILL affect you. Personally, I like buying T.P. with the little quilting that doesn't irritate my bum, corn husks (the oil-free alternative) can be so abrasive on the delicate parts. :p

Personally, I like buying T.P. with the little quilting that doesn't irritate my bum, corn husks (the oil-free alternative) can be so abrasive on the delicate parts. :p

There's always the three seashells...

And, if you'd notice, I said gasoline, I didn't mention diesel which has an easily and cheaply made replacement, biodiesel.

I've been doing some research into that and once I sort out the whys and wherefores of making my own I'll be looking into getting another vehicle, maybe a nice diesel Mercedes or a diesel powered pickup.

And considering some of the things they're making from corn and soy I'm not too worried about my trips to the supermarket... hells, you can even get a petroleum free chain lube now from an outfit called Bio-Lube (http://www.bio-lube.com).

Think about it: personal automobile usage will be restricted/regulated long before commercial transportation. We're not going to wake up one day with no petroleum. The USA and the American people need to get with the program.

Can we still point and laugh at them?

"Although production capacity at new fields is expected to increase over the next five years, it is very uncertain whether it will be sufficient to compensate for the decline in output at existing fields and meet the projected increase in demand. A supply-side crunch in the period to 2015, involving an abrupt escalation in oil prices, cannot be ruled out."

Translation: The oil party is over, time for the morning-after hangover.... and it's going to hurt.

I for one am looking forward to fewer gas-burning cars on the streets.

Can we still point and laugh at them?

I already laugh at the cagers around me every time I go past a gas station and see the prices.

There's always the three seashells...

And, if you'd notice, I said gasoline, I didn't mention diesel which has an easily and cheaply made replacement, biodiesel.

I've been doing some research into that and once I sort out the whys and wherefores of making my own I'll be looking into getting another vehicle, maybe a nice diesel Mercedes or a diesel powered pickup.

And considering some of the things they're making from corn and soy I'm not too worried about my trips to the supermarket... hells, you can even get a petroleum free chain lube now from an outfit called Bio-Lube (http://www.bio-lube.com).

Marrock, you may not realize that corn, soy, and perhaps to some extent biodiesel, are produced using fossil fuel for powering agricultural equipment, refrigeration and transportation of food, and production of fertilizer. No oil, no eat.

Just about all agricultural equipment is powered by diesel... and I already stated how hard that is to work around.

Oh my god! No gas anymore! What will I do...?!

Oh wait, I don't even have a car so what do I care? ;)

Sorry to burst your bubble but petroleum affects your life in far more ways than just how you travel.

What has to be considered are the transport of all your goods (such as food), the use of petroleum in manufacturing (such as plastics), aviation travel, home heating, etc.

The OP quoted an article from the Wall Street Journal...Tom Whipple a former CIA analyst writes a weekly column about Peak Oil (http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2123&Itemid=35).


Aaron:)

Sorry to burst your bubble but petroleum affects your life in far more ways than just how you travel.

What has to be considered are the transport of all your goods (such as food), the use of petroleum in manufacturing (such as plastics), aviation travel, home heating, etc.

They can make plastic from corn and soy, and diesel fuel from old used cooking oil, pretty much anything you need petroleum for can be made from plants or other renewable sources.

Do a little research online and you'd be amazed at the things they're doing now that they have no choice.

pretty much anything you need petroleum for can be made from plants or other renewable sources

Then people won't stop driving:

their armoured personnel carriers

and people won't have to:

give them away to homeless people for them to live in

They can make plastic from corn and soy, and diesel fuel from old used cooking oil, pretty much anything you need petroleum for can be made from plants or other renewable sources.

Do a little research online and you'd be amazed at the things they're doing now that they have no choice.

You're really not getting it. To make all those plant-based products, you need large scale agriculture. Large scale argriculture runs on fossil fuel for planting and harvesting, providing fertilizer, transportation, refrigeration, packaging. Fossil fuels have some overlap and interchangeability. If the supply of oil doesn't keep up with demand, all fossil fuels will be in short supply before long. We won't grow as much corn, or soy, and what we do grow will either be protected for food, or people will starve.
It's going to be a hard transition. You can't replace all of America's oil-based products with plant based products if you suddenly don't have the oil to grow the plants.

You're really not getting it. To make all those plant-based products, you need large scale agriculture. Large scale argriculture runs on fossil fuel for planting and harvesting, providing fertilizer, transportation, refrigeration, packaging. Fossil fuels have some overlap and interchangeability. If the supply of oil doesn't keep up with demand, all fossil fuels will be in short supply before long. We won't grow as much corn, or soy, and what we do grow will either be protected for food, or people will starve.
It's going to be a hard transition. You can't replace all of America's oil-based products with plant based products if you suddenly don't have the oil to grow the plants.

I think it would be possible to grow and harvest corn etc for fuel using vegetable oils, but I think that when you take out how much you will need to grow next years crop there may not be much left....

I'm done trying to reason with you... it's like talking to a rock, or an SUV driver, instead go educate yourself.

http://www.biodieselamerica.org/

I'm out.

I'm done trying to reason with you... it's like talking to a rock, or an SUV driver, instead go educate yourself.

http://www.biodieselamerica.org/

I'm out.

Maybe it's YOU that is the rock???

Biodiesel can NOT replace the amount of oil that we're burning... not even if you take EVERY SINGLE bit of food crops and convert it to biodiesel.

And then... what are you gonna do for food?

Oh... I get it.

Location: A secret laboratory located somewhere on Clinton Road.

CLINTON, IA - A new biodiesel plant will use new technology to make biodiesel for less money and space than traditional plants, the company's president said. The village last week sold 2.8 acres in its industrial park to Midwest Biofuel, based out of Macon, Ga. Tuesday night, the plan commission approved the company's site plan-minus a storm water management plan-for a 6,000-square-foot biodiesel plant that will create 22 to 25 jobs.

Must be big news locally... lots of talk in the press about how it's going to save the world, right?

Check into how many gallons of oil go into producing an acre of corn... and then look into how many gallons of biodiesel that you can get out of one acre of corn... See how well it balances out.

Oh... I get it.





Must be big news locally... lots of talk in the press about how it's going to save the world, right?

Check into how many gallons of oil go into producing an acre of corn... and then look into how many gallons of biodiesel that you can get out of one acre of corn... See how well it balances out.


No problem. You can make biofuels from human fat. Obesity epidemic and global warming solved. Where do I pick up the Peace Prize?

:p

No problem. You can make biofuels from human fat. Obesity epidemic and global warming solved. Where do I pick up the Peace Prize?

:p

:eek:

I'll just leave THAT topic alone. :p

Time to reread essays by Wendell Berry. If you are not familiar with him, start reading his books. He wrote about agriculture, and had plenty to say about modern agriculture and petroleum. Rather than do his writings a grave injustice by attempting to offer a precis, check him out for yourself.

I grow vegies, shoot deer, get eggs from chickens, and soon to get a cow. I think the food issue is solved.

The moment a food crisis hits, deer and other game animals wll go extinct within hours.
We do have plenty of alternative fuel options to run agriculture.. but not enough to commute and ship everything everywhere.

I grow vegies, shoot deer, get eggs from chickens, and soon to get a cow. I think the food issue is solved.

better start growing your own deer !!!!

The moment a food crisis hits, deer and other game animals wll go extinct within hours.

then we hunt the fat people...gotta get em early though! :eek:

No problem. You can make biofuels from human fat. Obesity epidemic and global warming solved. Where do I pick up the Peace Prize?

:p

I vote this the closest thing to a solution in the whole thread! :D

Oh my god! No gas anymore! What will I do...?!

Oh wait, I don't even have a car so what do I care? ;)

Can I just point and laugh as the townies with their armoured personnel carriers have to give them away to homeless people for them to live in?

Unless everything you use or buy was produced locally, at least part of the journey from raw materials to the store was powered by petroleum.

I grow vegies, shoot deer, get eggs from chickens, and soon to get a cow. I think the food issue is solved.

Not all of us can do that, though. Are we, to quote Mr. Scrooge, to "die and decrease the surplus population"?

I recommend that you read this: http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html

Not all of us can do that, though. Are we, to quote Mr. Scrooge, to "die and decrease the surplus population"?

I recommend that you read this: http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html

Most of us are in a position to raise chickens, though. If you have access to a yard, that is. Granted, this is assuming the city has no rules against farm animals inside city limits, but here in the middle of San Anto, you will find chickens in people's backyards, even though the rule says otherwise.


My $0.02

Most of us are in a position to raise chickens, though. If you have access to a yard, that is. Granted, this is assuming the city has no rules against farm animals inside city limits, but here in the middle of San Anto, you will find chickens in people's backyards, even though the rule says otherwise.


My $0.02

There's only so much chickens can scrounge for themselves - not enough to make them a viable food source in times of famine. If you have to feed them, you're better off eating the chickenfeed yourself than giving it to them.

It's amazing that for 99.999% of the 100,000 years humans have been trampsing around the planet we managed to get along without petroleum.

It's amazing that for 99.999% of the 100,000 years humans have been trampsing around the planet we managed to get along without petroleum.
There were a few less of us.

Bikepacker67: The same could be said of indoor plumbing, but I ain't going back.

I anticipate a crunch rather than crash. More local stuff, return of local manufacturing to avoid shipping, slower shipping via water, return to trains, trains powered by electricity. And people simply doing more efficient stuff when energy gets more expensive.

I recall living alone here by the lake. My electric bills averaged about $65/month. With a family not of the efficient mindset I have, they rose to $150!

Suspect we'll muddle through OK. Material standard of living likely to drop, thank goodness, or we'd need 6 earths!

I anticipate a crunch rather than crash. More local stuff, return of local manufacturing to avoid shipping, slower shipping via water, return to trains, trains powered by electricity

Recently saw some show where they were saying no more exotic (and not so exotic) fruits and vegetables, like bananas, oranges (for northerners), etc... Also, veggies like carrots, asparagus, lettuce, etc... which are grown heavily in So. California and other mild climate locales, then shipped worldwide, will stop. Local only. If you can't grow it in your neck of the woods, you aren't eating it. :(

Recently saw some show where they were saying no more exotic (and not so exotic) fruits and vegetables, like bananas, oranges (for northerners), etc... Also, veggies like carrots, asparagus, lettuce, etc... which are grown heavily in So. California and other mild climate locales, then shipped worldwide, will stop. Local only. If you can't grow it in your neck of the woods, you aren't eating it. :(

I can see that happening and some parts of the country will fare better than others.

Try the 100 mile Diet (http://100milediet.org/home/) website for more info. I live in a very well covered area here in central NC. We have everything but the exotics within a much closer range than 100 miles. We also have a local owned grocery chain that owns his own meat packing plant and cannery. He has a excellent line of local farmed/canned veggies.

Aaron:)

You can make biofuels from human fat.

Around here we call that "riding a bicycle". ;)

I think it would be possible to grow and harvest corn etc for fuel using vegetable oils, but I think that when you take out how much you will need to grow next years crop there may not be much left....

There is simply no way to grow out of this. It's absurd. Right now grown fuels
are made with a net energy loss. This cannot change enough to make such fuels more than a few percent of supply.

Biofuels will not be able to replace the amount of oil that we use currently, but it may support the more important processes. Afterall, farmers did just fine with oxen and horses prior to oil. What won't we be able to do?

Drive our personal car
Fly on a whim to some far away place
Eat fancy fruits and cakes from other countries
Drink or eat anything that needs to be shipped too far (this of course won't apply to water)
Live in a 2500 square foot house by yourself.
By crappy plastic doohickeys from China that peel your orange, or store your gobbtygook.

Does anyone object to this? I think it may help us here get back to our roots. It will bring people closer together, we will spend more time hunting and gathering and less time watching MTV. Sounds good to me.

Biofuels will not be able to replace the amount of oil that we use currently, but it may support the more important processes. Afterall, farmers did just fine with oxen and horses prior to oil. What won't we be able to do?

Drive our personal car
Fly on a whim to some far away place
Eat fancy fruits and cakes from other countries
Drink or eat anything that needs to be shipped too far (this of course won't apply to water)
Live in a 2500 square foot house by yourself.
By crappy plastic doohickeys from China that peel your orange, or store your gobbtygook.

Does anyone object to this? I think it may help us here get back to our roots. It will bring people closer together, we will spend more time hunting and gathering and less time watching MTV. Sounds good to me.

Well...hopefully it will knock out the bottled water fad. And in many parts of the country where drought is striking it may come down to importing water from somewhere. From what I read Atlanta has only a few weeks (8?) supply of water left. Some of the larger cities in NC are in the same situation but with 90 or so day's worth left.

No issues with simplifying here...

Aaron:)

It makes you wonder though...at what point in time did we start to think that we dominate nature? I recently read a book where the native americans were staring down at the remains of the big quake in San Francisco in the 1900s aghast that people were rebuilding in a place where it was so obviously ill fit to live. I think this when I see them rebuilding in the wake of Katrina or building in the middle of the damn desert. Why are we trying to beat the odds? Stupid, stupid, stupid....

It's amazing that for 99.999% of the 100,000 years humans have been trampsing around the planet we managed to get along without petroleum.

Yes, in addition to there being fewer humans, the humans on the planet were not
afraid of "manual labor" that preceded today "labor saving" fossil fed devices.

I think that we may have some population reduction, but I seriously doubt that there will be people doing foolishness over a gallon of gas a la Road Warrior. More than likely, we'll end up growing local stuff and becoming a bunch of small hamlets instead a large metropolis. The local farmers here have a market 3 miles from my house. I can keep chickens, and there is a buttload of pigeons (they were imported as hunting fodder, yum yum taste like dove) nearby to eat. Got asparagus, beans, squash and corn in the back yard.

Crunch, yeah. Crash, maybe. the best crash diet on earth, you betcha.

I think that we may have some population reduction, but I seriously doubt that there will be people doing foolishness over a gallon of gas a la Road Warrior. More than likely, we'll end up growing local stuff and becoming a bunch of small hamlets instead a large metropolis.


Big cities won't go away. If anything, they will get denser as people in urban industries move closer together to avoid long commutes Think medieval London or ancient Rome. Suburbia will wither, however.

Big cities won't go away. If anything, they will get denser as people in urban industries move closer together to avoid long commutes Think medieval London or ancient Rome. Suburbia will wither, however.

I agree that the face of suburbia will have to change...unsupportable. Cities will get denser to a point, but you have to supply that density with food and that takes a lot of farmland, that doesn't exist at the moment, it has been paved over by shopping malls and suburbia (landbanked?;)) They didn't call New Jersey "The Garden State" for nothing. It used to be covered up with farms that shipped food into New York City. It will take time to get that back. To me the best place to live will be a small to medium (7-15k or so) sized town that already has an industrial base and decent rail and highway access. The one we are moving to next year(?) has all of that, as well as a massive amount of locally available foods, local meat processing and local cannery. The only problem I can foresee will be the influx of people from depressed areas looking for the same thing. My biggest concern will be the people that have the sense of entitlement that they are "owed" something because they exist and will overwhelm the system expecting a hand out. As an example look at what happened after Hurricane Wilma in south Florida in 2005.

Aaron:)

It's amazing that for 99.999% of the 100,000 years humans have been trampsing around the planet we managed to get along without petroleum.

This post also points out that in a brief 150 yr period humans have found ways to force the
earth to yields that are not sustainable without petro products. Humans also replaced slave
labor with fossil fueled machines that are REQUIRED to plant, harvest ahd process the crops.

The earth can support approx 2 billion people in the low tech setting. High tech is not sustainable
so at some point in time millions will die from wars, disease, or starvation. But the earth will
rebalance itself one way or the other.

If you read many post on this topic you may note, as I have, that no one wants to talk about a
"die off" as part of the solution to most , if not all, of the problems facing modern society.
Sticking one's head in the sand will not stop the inevitable from taking place a lot sooner than
most would think. :(:(

I wonder what is more energy efficient; humans converting food to energy, or machines converting biodiesel to energy (taking into account the amount of energy required to refine the vegetable oils into biodiesel in the first place)? The answer tells us which agricultural method will yield the most net energy and therefore support the most people.

If the answer is humans - and I suspect it is - back to good 'ol manual labour for farmers. I don't think it needs to be with scythes and whatnot, however. I think it'd be cool to have several people "riding" a human-powered combine.

Tightwad: I agree completely - overpopulation is the world's single biggest problem, and people just can't face it. Somewhere along the line, the majority started seeing life as inalienably good and death as inalienably bad - completely ignoring the fact that life couldn't exist without death. And so we have bred beyond what the Earth will sustain ad infinitum. We have tried to circumvent the basic laws of physics, and, as per usual, they are going to give us a nice big b*$#@ slap.

Maybe it's YOU that is the rock???

Biodiesel can NOT replace the amount of oil that we're burning... not even if you take EVERY SINGLE bit of food crops and convert it to biodiesel.

And then... what are you gonna do for food?

Get people out of cars and devote all petroleum to vital uses... it was done in WWII and it can be done in the future. The idea that everyone has to drive a 300 cubic foot box about for personal transportation is absurd in of itself. The overly large waistlines of many Americans shows just how foolish this whole premise really is.

Hey, ever heard of a bicycle?

I wonder if over time the human population chart will follow something resembling Hubbert's curve?