The coming oil shortage-what are you doing to prepare?

dave lackey

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Well, now that the holidays have settled down a bit, I noticed that we haven't had a discussion on the new year yet.

Fox News just reported that oil is hovering at around $91/barrel and a Shell oil company executive is predicted possible $5/gallon gas in two years for the U.S. and THEN, a 1970's style oil shortage by 2020.

We have prepared for the coming shortage by paying off our vehicles which each average a reasonable 25mpg and are contemplating an electric vehicle within 2-3 years. Also, with my wife retiring and my only hope for employment being a home-based cottage venture, our travelling will be minimal by then.

Thinking seriously about solar panels for the house in 5 years.

So...what are YOU doing to prepare for the coming doomsday scenario?:eek:
 
Also seriously thinking about this:

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Drill, Drill, Drill & do not import all our oil from the middle east. Remember the Alaska pipe line that was to fix our oil problem in the 70's. We are selling most of that oil to China. Best keep it in the USA. Problem solved.
 
Buy a diesel powered car - on a long run in the UK I get well over 60mpg out of my Skoda Octavia. You will fall off that scooter at least once a year and with the resulting medical costs you will have shelled out more than you saved. Forget the electric vehicle - probably a snare and illusion - at present I can't see the economics for it.
Buy a stretch of land and plant trees that you can harvest over a period of time - a good wood-burner is a real asset. Dig a hole and put in a heat exchange system.
- just a few thoughts.

jesse
 
Drill, Drill, Drill & do not import all our oil from the middle east. Remember the Alaska pipe line that was to fix our oil problem in the 70's. We are selling most of that oil to China. Best keep it in the USA. Problem solved.

The USA gets more oil from Canada followed by Mexico then the Middle East. You don't import all your oil from the Middle East. If the Alaska pipeline you are refurring to was to be an all land one, with no trans shipping by boat, it would have to go through Canada. It might be hard to pass the enviromental impact study for the Canadian portion. There is just so much BS floating around about where USA imported oil comes from that it makes you wonder.

I drive a small 4 cylinder car which gets about 44 mpg. I won't go diesel because the Ford diesel pick up I had was a can of worms to start in the cold winters we have here. Lets not even talk of electric cars as an common alternative as I am not convinced that they do not create as much polution as gas cars do in the manufacturing of their batteries or disposal of same. That is not to mention the heavy pollution created in the production of electricity for all electric cars. This production is still heavily dependant on coal fired generating stations in North America. There ain't no free lunch.

Bob
 
Replaced our dying furnace with a geothermal heating system. When the gasoline is gone I'm stuck at home save taking the 7 mile walk to the Post Office. Grocery store is 12 miles...
 
Easy. Stop listening to alarmist drivel. Yes, we need to be less profligate. No, we don't need to watch Fox News.

Electric vehicles? Good luck when you come to replace the batteries. Solar panels? Have you done the sums to get a payback time?

What's wrong with $5/gallon for gas? I pay far more than that already. And 25 mpg is pretty pitiful. My wife's car does 40+. As does my motorcycle. And her 1966 Mobylette does 150-200.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Plus one on what Roger says re Fox News. That stuff will rot your brain, in addition to misleading you.

The solar panels, high-efficiency furnace, fuel-efficient cars are all good no matter how much petroleum still sits in the ground. Many of the people sitting atop all that oil aren't too fond of those of us from countries that consume most of it. So, apart from the whole green thing, geo-politically it's probably not a bad thing to be weaning ourselves and to stop empowering all the crazy, angry people controlling that oil. Imagine our leaders having to come up with new reasons for starting wars when they didn't have to attribute to the strategic interests of oil-producing scoundrels (no, I don't mean Canada).
 
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Easy. Stop listening to alarmist drivel. Yes, we need to be less profligate. No, we don't need to watch Fox News.

Electric vehicles? Good luck when you come to replace the batteries. Solar panels? Have you done the sums to get a payback time?

What's wrong with $5/gallon for gas? I pay far more than that already. And 25 mpg is pretty pitiful. My wife's car does 40+. As does my motorcycle. And her 1966 Mobylette does 150-200.

Cheers,

R.

Dear Roger,

Have you read the Hirsh Report commissioned by the US government? Have you read the Joint Operating Environment 2010 report by the US military (actual report is here)? Have you read the leaked German military report on peak oil?

No, I didn't think so....

The Hirsh Report was released in February 2005. We did nothing about it. Robert Hirsh is now saying we're on track for a worse case scenario. You might learn a thing or two by watching this very recent interview with Robert. It's not Fox News ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcZI73cvr1g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7BLCnjISJw
 
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Dear Roger,

Have you read the Hirsh Report commissioned by the US government? Have you read the Joint Operating Environment 2010 report by the US military (actual report is here)? Have you read the leaked German military report on peak oil?

No, I didn't think so....

The Hirsh Report was released in February 2005. We did nothing about it. Robert Hirsh is now saying we're on track for a worse case scenario. You might learn a thing or two by watching this very recent interview with Robert. It's not Fox News ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcZI73cvr1g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7BLCnjISJw


Thanks, Jon...

It is certain that we will experience some tough times ahead. The problem is, most people in this country have their head in the sand thinking it will all be fine if they ignore the facts.

Not only are we preparing for that event, but we are cutting our costs as much as possible because energy costs will certainly be on the rise. Shell Oil obviously believes this to be true as well.

BTW, folks, forget Fox News, it was also reported across CNN and all other news agencies.
 
Dave, a slight correction! The correct spelling for Robert Hirsch's surname is "Hirsch" not "Hirsh". There's a "c" in there. My bad :eek:
 
Dave

It is really hard to come to any conclusions because there are lots of conflicting predictions on what will happen in the future WRT oil. Add to that the vested interests of the various groups, individuals and official organizations putting out these predictions and it is pretty murky. It seems most predictions on reserves are based on crude oil reserves which seems to cover about 30% of world reserves of various types of oil. One thing for sure is that change is inevitable, what isn't is how severe or how quickly it will happen. It is like preparing for death, there is only so much you can actually do to prepare but it should not hinder your ability to enjoy what is left of the rest of your life.

Bob
 
Dave

It is really hard to come to any conclusions because there are lots of conflicting predictions on what will happen in the future WRT oil. Add to that the vested interests of the various groups, individuals and official organizations putting out these predictions and it is pretty murky. It seems most predictions on reserves are based on crude oil reserves which seems to cover about 30% of world reserves of various types of oil. One thing for sure is that change is inevitable, what isn't is how severe or how quickly it will happen. It is like preparing for death, there is only so much you can actually do to prepare but it should not hinder your ability to enjoy what is left of the rest of your life.

Bob

Dear Bob,

A perfect analogy.

Who else remembers the genuine fears that the first H-bomb test would set fire to the atmosphere? There's ALWAYS a scare, and there's ALWAYS change. As the world has not come to an end yet, despite the best efforts of Cold Warriors in my lifetime, I can't get excited about the latest alarmism.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Taxes are the price we pay for a civlized society" (actually it's reported several ways but this will do). Tax oil products at a realistic rate and people will stop wasting them: 'waste' in this context including heating (or cooling) every room in the house at all times, and living many miles from where they work. These conditions have not obtained for most of human history, and can be given up suprisingly quickly. No-one has a God-given right to waste oil without penalty.

Anyone with any sense diversifies their energy usage as far as possible, and keeps it to a realistic minimum. I use wood, bottled gas, electricity (mostly nuclear, as I'm in France) and oil for private transport, the last being more necessary in the countryside than in a city. No-one needs hair shirts -- but anyone who is prepared to run a thirsty motor-car (worse than 30 mpg, say) needs (a) a good reason for doing so and (b) a willingness to pay for the fuel. My old Land Rover is hellish thirsty at 16-17 mpg but it's almost 40 years old (amortising construction costs over decades) and it's part of my livelihood (writing for the motoring press). My wife's car does over 40 mpg and guess which one we use more... For that matter, the last two cars we owned in the USA in the early 1990s both did 40+ mpg too, and you can't call a Peugeot 504 estate car a 'compact'.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger, the world didn't come to end during the era of nuke scares, but those of who us were born around that time (any time prior to the test ban treaty and the end of above-ground testing) are getting certain cancers at a higher rate than other people due to fallout (remember strontium 90 in cows' milk?), so there were and are still some things worth worrying about. Of course, one can also count on politicians of all stripes and their friends/enemies in the media to fan the flames for fear all out of proportion to reality.

While your Rover may not be terribly energy efficient, let's think about the costs saved by not using the energy to build you a new one every two years. That must be considerable. And, not dumping its carcass in landfill someone is good, too.

Life is filled with trade-offs, some of them good, some of them not. Regardless of whether the theory of peak oil is true or false, it wouldn't be a bad idea to reconstruct our profligate ways. If the US wasn't so thirsty, perhaps we wouldn't have paid that second, foolish visit to Iraq. China's dependence on lots of fuel for cars and industry certainly hasn't done anything to sweeten their air quality and it's likely to play a role in tipping some of the geo-politico-economic power balance as they necessarily get friendlier with oil-producing countries.

Roger, of course, you can buy a diesel to drop into that Rover and fix it up to run on spent cooking oil should the apocalypse arrive. If you choose your cooking oil sources carefully, you'll be followed cheerfully by folks expecting that you're cooking fish & chips.

As to electric cars, everyone seems to conveniently avoid asking about where the energy comes from. If it's being generated at a coal-fired plant, what's the calculus to see if these cars are having a net positive or negative effect on the planet? I haven't clue, but someone must be doing the math on that (and several someone elses cooking the books to fit a particular political or economic agenda about whether the damned things or good or bad).
 
Roger, the world didn't come to end during the era of nuke scares, but those of who us were born around that time (any time prior to the test ban treaty and the end of above-ground testing) are getting certain cancers at a higher rate than other people due to fallout (remember strontium 90 in cows' milk?), so there were and are still some things worth worrying about. Of course, one can also count on politicians of all stripes and their friends/enemies in the media to fan the flames for fear all out of proportion to reality.

While your Rover may not be terribly energy efficient, let's think about the costs saved by not using the energy to build you a new one every two years. That must be considerable. And, not dumping its carcass in landfill someone is good, too.

Life is filled with trade-offs, some of them good, some of them not. Regardless of whether the theory of peak oil is true or false, it wouldn't be a bad idea to reconstruct our profligate ways. If the US wasn't so thirsty, perhaps we wouldn't have paid that second, foolish visit to Iraq. China's dependence on lots of fuel for cars and industry certainly hasn't done anything to sweeten their air quality and it's likely to play a role in tipping some of the geo-politico-economic power balance as they necessarily get friendlier with oil-producing countries.

Roger, of course, you can buy a diesel to drop into that Rover and fix it up to run on spent cooking oil should the apocalypse arrive. If you choose your cooking oil sources carefully, you'll be followed cheerfully by folks expecting that you're cooking fish & chips.

As to electric cars, everyone seems to conveniently avoid asking about where the energy comes from. If it's being generated at a coal-fired plant, what's the calculus to see if these cars are having a net positive or negative effect on the planet? I haven't clue, but someone must be doing the math on that (and several someone elses cooking the books to fit a particular political or economic agenda about whether the damned things or good or bad).

I won't argue with a word you say. All I'll reinforce are your points that considered thought on a wide range of subjects (such as pollution, nukes, etc.) is a marked improvement on terror-of-the-moment, and that thinking about the 'back story' (very long lived cars, where the electricity comes from, etc.) is something else that most people don't do.

Cheers,

R.
 
This era of ours seems to turn everything on its head in the interest of short-term, short-sighted economic gains that look good an annual reports. The energy and auto industries operate with same foolishness as the pharma industry. In pharma, they are constantly concocting and discovering new compounds and then trying to create or discover "new" diseases by which to make money from them (honestly, "restless leg syndrome?" that deserves an award of some kind for "creativity" ... creating a disease, that is, to target with the compound). So, we should be little surprised that while technology continues to come up with new things, that we get very little progress from many of those things. If car companies aren't innovating with super-high mileage vehicles, there is probably some hidden agenda preventing them from doing it, as the technological wherewithal certainly is inches away from being commercialized. It would hardly surprise if we learn years from now that the auto firms held back technology while waiting for their secret partners in the energy sector to devise ways to monopolize the delivery side of the energy. No doubt that companies like Honda, Mercedes, Audi, etc. already have ways to put a 100mpg car on the road. No whether this is some kind of conspiratorial thing or simply a matter of there not being enough money in it yet, I have no clue. I do know that governments can incent certain useful behaviors among citizens and corporations. High petrol prices on the Continent and GB, as Roger will surely attest, have had the impact of changing behaviors of the consumers and the producers. Probably not such a bad thing. Perhaps six dollar or higher per gallon gas prices in the US would be a good kick in our pants. If achieved through taxing fuel at higher rates, the money could go to improving mass transit infrastructure which provides far great efficiency that traveling alone even in Sepiareverb's former 50mpg Honda (though, living out the woods as you do, mass transit can only be part of long-term solution). Here in the US, rather than committing resources to a solution like that, some politicians insist on going the opposite way (the foolish governor of my own state of New Jersey for example, cutting a $3B NYC to NJ mass transit project that would take many cars of the road, cut congestion, cut fuel use, open the roads for trucks and buses, boost economic activity, enabled business to have better infrastructure to move goods, etc.).

Anyway, Roger, what must we do to pressure you into upgrading that Landie with a propert 2.4L diesel power plant and get you running it on french fry/fish & chip grease? You of all people should love the DIY aspect of this.

To "Whatever": global warming is BS. Climate change isn't. Some of those mountains of snow that dumped on us on both sides of the Atlantic are no doubt due to shifting weather patterns. If it warms in the normally coldest places, all that released moisture and carbon dioxide has to have some unpredictable impact on climate elsewhere. Whether humans caused this all by themselves with industrialization or we're simply attenuating/accentuating natural long-cycle weather patterns hardly matters. What does matter is that our behavior is having an impact that wouldn't be happening quite the way it is without us here. Denying it isn't going to make it go away and whining about it isn't going to fix it. No one can know for sure what level of impact we're having on such a complex system, but anyone who totally denies that our immense input has no affect is surely deluding himself. If you doubt that shifts in temperature can impact things in unpredictable ways, next time you process some film, do an experiment. Do one roll at 80 degrees and another roll of the exact same film 65 degrees F without changing any of your other parameters. Let us know which roll works best for you. Then, extrapolate that set of results by a trillion or rolls of film. The weather is the result of an awful lot of complex factors, some surely as-yet unknown to us and others while known, still poorly understood. That doesn't moot the notion that all that crap we've been pumping in to the air for 150+ years is having an impact. Now, for all we know, that impact is aggravating or exacerbating some other process (the earth wobbling as it sometimes does on its axis), is way, way beyond my limited scientific understanding.

As to how much petroleum is still trapped under the earth's crust and oceans, I have no idea and chances are that even the best geologists and seismologists don't either. What is known is that wherever it is and however much of there is, it's getting harder and harder to get at without making a horrible mess. Even the big oil companies seem to realize it's smart to invest some of their record-breaking profits into alternative sources as things like fracking may not be good long-term ideas. This ought to cut across ideological fault lines. If growing algae can produce synth fuels and lubes that don't ruin the Gulf of Mexico and can be scaled so as to be economically viable, why wouldn't we be aggressively pursing this? Then, Roger can run his Rover on seaweed.
 
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