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Do you NOT think about it? Are you not aware of it? Do you think it's going to "hit the fan"... people are moving away from suburbs and cities to go back to life as it should be...community centric and... local.
We live in a NYC suburb and people are just about as far from caring as I could imagine..."they will figure something out" kind of attitude.
We are not really sure if this is a place for us. I guess for myself I would prefer to figure out if is a place that's sustainable before I go digging my roots any further.
I think that oil and gas reserves are finite. The consumption numbers thrown about are staggering. The only thing that slowed down oil prices was a failing world wide economy.
I live in a walkable town and I walk/bike. I figure that the extra time it takes be to walk to the store is the same amount of time I'd have to drive if I lived in a suburb. But I get to meet and talk with neighbors along the way.
I think local, shop local, live local. I love seeing people improve their older homes instead of razing and building new or moving to a new gated community miles from everything.
I can't image how much less gas would be consumed each year if cities were better designed and people walked to a local market instead of driving to a supper Walmart.
Plan on gas being expensive ($5+/gallon), but available and you will be fine. People will be moving more to the inner cities where you aren't as dependent upon cars. We already see that where I live. Housing prices in the city are much stronger than in the suburbs.
Add that to: Crude Impact 6 part video on youtube and The Crash Course and you'll see a broken system that 1 man (Obama) can not fix. It's up to every person on this Earth to make some changes - the sooner the better.
And by the way, I theorize that global climate change will follow the same exponentiation patterns all these videos are trying to explain.
What can YOU do about it? START TO BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION-
-Get a BIKE!! If needed - get one with electric or at least a high mpg form of transportation. DO NOT FLY. Enjoy walking.
-Start to grow your own food (See Rob Hopkins Transition Towns) and get rid of high maintenance lawns. If you need a lawn for children, pets and such - plant no mowing grasses.(See: NoMowGrass.com).
-Insulate your house/apartment and cover windows with insulating curtains at night. Turn down the thermostat. Open south facing window cutains during the day to let in the warm sun.
-Re-think your power use and find ways to reduce the need before you add solar or wind. Use napkins instead of paper towels, quick buying things that come with excessive packaging, quit living the "disposable life" or the one being disposed of will be all of the human race.
-Use the energy we do have to build more sustainable energy products (bikes, electric cars, low power monitors and tv and such.
What do I think about Peak Oil? I think it'll be here before we are ready and few people are "getting it". I'll admit - it is a lot to wrap a head around, especially when most of us are in a work-a-day world and too busy to educate ourselves and others about how important this issue really is.
We've got three years tops id say, before we hit decline.
Based on? To make any kind of semi accurate assessment you would need to know the health of the world's major oil fields such as those is Saudi Arabia. This is closely held state secrets in these countries to the best of my knowledge.
I'm going from memory here but the DOE released a report back in 2002. Their worse case came in at 2022 with a possible long term outlook of 2075. The large swing in the possibilities is due to the fact they were basing their assumptions on outdated data because no current data was avaiable.
"Peak Oil" is often considered running out of oil but that's not the case, the world will never run out of oil at least for centuries to come What it will run out of is oil that is easily extracted as the "energy expense" to extract it increases as these oil fields age. The tipping point is when it costs as much energy to extract it as you get, e.g you spend one gallon of oil to get one gallon of oil. Having said that as new finds albeit much smaller than the largest fields in the world are found and new technology and techniques become available those numbers will change. Case in point many of the oil fields in Texas that peaked in the 70's are now vialble resources because of new technology.
There's lot of resources left to get oil from however the "energy expense" to extract it is much greater than from a new field where it comes out of the ground by itself. As the easily extracted oil declines these other resources can be exploited but the cost of oil and gas will steadily rise, the market will react accordingly and people will shift to less expensive energy. It's not a going off a cliff scenario as some would predict.
CoalMan - In the U.S. - we only get 5% of our gas/oil from OPEC. In 2012 - Mexico & Venezuela, where we get 1/3 of our energy is estimated to be on the down slide. It is true that they can let the fields sit and replenish for a while (15 years was how long the U.S. fields sat and are now pumping again). It's just harder to get it on the second run (harder to pump and all the top sweet crude is gone).
I don't worry about peak oil. We already had a pretty good run up on the cost of oil from speculators and from other interested parties. The sources we have for energy can be visualized as a balloon. If you squeeze one part of the balloon, another part will get larger. Note that the high cost of oil suddenly dropped just as people were starting to seriously look at alternative forms of energy and begin to make investments. It did that in the 1970s as well.
As an example of why it isn't important, electric cars are now entirely possible and practical. Take a hybrid, remove or downsize the gas engine and add either a magnetic type of pickup or even a sliding pickup similar to those used on subways, trolleys, and many other devices. That alone allows for power generation to be shifted to bulky and heavy generators, wind and solar, and other sources of energy.
We now routinely drill in deep areas of the oceans. In other areas of the oceans there are huge methane ice deposits that could be mined. Shifts in primary sources of energy will likely continue until it becomes possible for individuals to purchase power generation equipment that is inexpensive and user-friendly. We went from tallow and tow in candles, to vegetable oils in oil lamps, to whale oil in lamps, to gas lamps, to electric incandescent lamps, to florescent lamps, to halogen lamps, to sodium vapor lamps, to LEDs. We appear to be settling on electricity as the preferred source of power, now we have to work on the generation end.
What can YOU do about it? START TO BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION-
-Insulate your house/apartment and cover windows with insulating curtains at night. Turn down the thermostat. Open south facing window cutains during the day to let in the warm sun.
-Re-think your power use and find ways to reduce the need before you add solar or wind. Use napkins instead of paper towels, quick buying things that come with excessive packaging, quit living the "disposable life" or the one being disposed of will be all of the human race.
-Use the energy we do have to build more sustainable energy products (bikes, electric cars, low power monitors and tv and such.
What does conserving electricity have to do with peak oil?
If someone is on nuclear power (or coal fired power), conserving electricity will be of no use to conserve oil. I can't think of any power plants that run on oil.
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