Peak Oil Wars

7 Comments on "Peak Oil Wars"

bobinget on Thu, 12th Sep 2013 6:15 pm 



Typical PSA made to influence lightly educated masses.
But fails.
Full of half truths and oversimplifications. Shows what contempt the old PO guard has for the public.
What’s more, a futile sense of denial worthy of any AGW denier.

All that ‘fracing’ in particular in natural gas has changed the (near term) fate of our US economy. We had already declared peak gas and were prepared to import more then half our needs. As it stands today we are exporting gas to Mexico who, as it happens flared off most of theirs during better times.

There are in fact several real ‘Peak oil wars’ currently in progress. The most timely, Syria, has finally gotten public attention. Perhaps, another war in Africa, between North and South Sudan should be easiest to grasp for the public at large.
How about pointing to domestic violence in Iraq that has take over 4,000 lives this year alone?

Why not call attention to the depute between China, Japan, Vietnam and others over a few uninhabited islands three nations are suiting up to fight over?
Look it up for yourself. THe strong possibility of oil under the “China Sea” or “Yellow Sea” is almost NEVER mentioned except in this Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands

Another economic oil war is happening under our noses in India and Pakistan. Currencies like the rupee are falling in value against USD. Feeding massive overpopulations in the face of Climate Change
prohibits importing sufficient higher priced petroleum

rollin on Thu, 12th Sep 2013 6:33 pm 



We are in the midst of a bigger oil war, the war of technology against the increasing difficulty of obtaining new oil production. All the new oil schemes are increasingly expensive to operate. They all involve severe damage to the environment which the oil companies will never pay for. No new technology produces oil more cheaply than we used to get it by just drilling a vertical well. The oil companies are sucking up the last dregs of hard to get oil, with ever more complex systems and ever decreasing gains. The media tries to make us believe that even more difficult to get “oil” will be coming on line soon.

As far as natural gas fracking, just add up the total output of gas from all those wells. It is enough to provide for the demands of 2 or 3 states, that is it. Meanwhile they say we have a glut and want to export more natural gas as LNG, slavering over the possible profits from gas starved areas.
Sure it looks like the production is going up, but a lot of that is due to the wells finally being hooked to pipelines. Check back in a year or two and see if the production holds.

J-Gav on Thu, 12th Sep 2013 9:44 pm 



An interesting exercise in concision and Heinberg is beginning to excel at it. There’s a firm message here despite the paucity of ‘information.’ Well, I guess quite a few here amongst PO readers could find this dangerously short. But of course the point is not to belabor what most of us already know. Let’s take it for what it is – a small, intelligent engagement in the ongoing PR battle of Man vs Nature. Our “winner-loser” mentality begins to seem kind of absurd when you realize what the stakes are …

dave thompson on Thu, 12th Sep 2013 10:52 pm 



Finite planet being systematically stripped of resources for corporate profit and an exponentially growing world population, what could go wrong?

GregT on Fri, 13th Sep 2013 3:44 am 



Dave,

It is not only ‘resources’ that the planet is being stripped of. It is being stripped of life.

We humans, being at the top of the food chain, are the most vulnerable to the loss of biodiversity. Our population will be amongst the first to be decimated when natural tipping points are reached.

I find it very ironic, that the supposedly most intelligent species on this planet, is the only species ever, capable of causing it’s own extinction.

Maybe we need to give our heads a shake, and wake up.

BillT on Fri, 13th Sep 2013 5:16 am 



JGav, there is only one winner in this contest, Gaia/Mother Nature. She will, over the next 100 million years or so repair the damage we did and replace the ecosystem with a new one and another dominant species, It will NOT be humans.

Sudhir Jatar on Sat, 14th Sep 2013 7:24 am 



High price of unconventional oil, shortage of water due to fracking resulting in accelerating climate change due to high emission of GHG is not sustainable.
Some thing has to burst; sooner than later.