Below is a link to a related story regarding the ever increasing fuel prices. This was written almost exactly 3 years ago and the events since only validate and confirm the statements made in the article.

This is a must read! If this doesn't get your grey matter boiling - nothing will! Bottom line: "The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race." Translation: We are so !%$@!#!!!

The Long Emergency - What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?

 

that article (originally printed in rolling stone magazine) sounds very similar to the hysterical warnings about Y2K- no supplies, and violence in the streets, and the global warming alarmists who say society will fall apart because millions of people's homes will be under water. do a search on the author, james kunstler, and you'll find a man who seems to hate the automobile, and the idea that many people choose not to live in the big city, and, in many ways, thinks the U.S. would do itself a great service, if it were more like many western european countries. most of his writings are very similar in tone to the rolling stone article, so i wouldn't hold my breath for mr. kunstler's predictions to come true.

 

I'm with chipmonk, I don't see us ever coming to that point. Technology continues to improve, and if you havn't looked around lateley there are wind energy farms springing up everywhere overnight. I think that we will overcome our oil dependency and wind and solar power will continue to evolve.

 

If one thing is predictable; it is that things will change. If another thing is predicable; it is that you probably can't accurately predict how things will change. I too get a kick out of these doom and gloom articles. Humans, particularly the American version of Humans are incredibly adaptive, creative and resourceful. This guy would have predicted we would have to go back to plucking cotton seeds by hand the first time Eli Whitney's Cotton gin broke down.

 

Whats wrong with that, I wish that there were fewer suburbs crowding my hunting grounds. Where I bowhunted in NY I could count 30 houses, almost all of which I could hit with a bow if I chose to.

 

Sorry chipmonk, I don't share your optimism or naiveté. I'm of the opinion that civilization and life itself is a very fragile thing and someday we (or our descendants) could be living the "Road Warrior" (the movie) lifestyle - "the time of chaos after the collapse of the oil-based economy, and the apocalyptic world war that followed."

I think we're living in a fool's paradise and one day the party will come to a very ugly end. Hopefully, I'm wrong. Meantime, party on!

 

So, exactly how much hunting land do you own?

 

peak oil is very real. we should be investing in alternative fuels. so far all weve really gotten from the geniuses in washington is ethanol fuel which costs more energy to make than it gives when burned. It also raises the prices of food dramatically. turning food into fuel takes food out of peoples mouths. ITs nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to scratch the back of big agri-business.
If we had to pick one technology to invest in, Id say it should be algae biodiesel. Its not a food and it doesnt take farmland to make. It can be fed waste streams like sewage and co2 emissions.

 

Absolutely agree! We are in this fix due to the total lack of leadership in this country for many years. We need now and needed to begin a "Marshall Plan" 20 years ago to develop alternative energy sources and independence from fossil fuels. Now the pain and suffering will be much, much greater than it should have been. Again, we're fools living in a fool's paradise.

 

More like a Manhattan Project, but yeah, this should have been a priority years ago.

 

I'm working on a process to make diesel fuel out of spotted owls and California Condors............

 

That was from a 40 acre farm that I was allowed to hunt on (btw, I do get a little possessive with places that I hunt...), and all of those houses I could count from one corner of a field looking forward. It was a good place to hunt, the deer just got a little wiser after I arrowed 2 of them.

Don't own any land myself, too young to have the money to do that, but hopefully one day I'll have a quarter section or more to devout to wetlands and habitat restoration (bring back the quail!!!!)

 

We are possibly in for some very difficult times, but the author's doom-and-gloom prognostication is a little over the top.

We have a market system that shakes out winners and losers. When oil becomes a loser instead of a winner, the market will shift towards another source of energy.

The greatest threat is that we lack the flexibility to shift easily from one energy supply to another. Our infrastructure is heavily biased towards oil.

That means the cost of oil will have to rise high enough to not only pay for the cost of another source of energy, but also the cost to covert to that source. The conversion cost is what can be very high, and thus the saga continues. Our marriage to oil may continue too long just because the "cost of divorce" so to speak is too high.

We may have seen or passed peak oil. People need to remember that this doesn't uniquely affect the US-- other countries will be hurt as well, perhaps even more so. We had the luxury of building our infrastructure with cheap oil. Developing countries may be deprived of that.


It pains me to say it, but a possible partial solution is higher CAFE standards and a national 55mph speed limit. The CAFE adjustment would minimize the number of 6K# SUVs used as single-person commuters. The 55mph speed limit would reduce per-vehicle oil consumption.

These measures would only buy us time, though. Time that would ideally be used to build an infrastructure that can migrate us away from oil.


The problem is not FOREIGN oil-- it's oil in general.


The current price though is simply out-of-touch with the economic realities. The speculators have propped the price up too far for too long.

I'm expecting a correction downward in the price of oil, possibly major. The current price is so far off the supply/demand curve that reality will be very rude in bursting the bubble created by those speculators.

jmo

 

Please devout wetland habitat to bring back the quail, Just so you can go out and shoot them.If you were so consirned about animals you wouldn't hunt.


Something that would help lower fuel consumption in the US is raise the loads that semis can haul by 10,000 pounds This alone would save a lot of fuel and at the same time take some trucks off the road.

 

I have found that bio made from Blue whales makes more power than that made from fur seals. Black Rhinos are good also but it is hard to grind up the horn.