[Cynus]

Post your thoughts on the most important events of 2005. It doesn't necessarily have to be PO related, but what events do you think were the most significant and will have the greatest affects on the future?

[kevincarter]

Seeing all those weapons taken away from the guys at New Orleans seemed to me like a clear sign of what’s the future going to look like. Not that is good or bad, but that IS the future in the case of severe crisis.

[killJOY]

In 2005, the following two articles made me wonder whether the ship hasn't begun taking on water:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state oil monopoly, said it expects production at its largest oil field to decline this year, earlier than previously forecast, and plans to boost investment by more than $1 billion from 2004 to make up for the shortfall at other fields.

Cantarell, which accounted for more than 60 percent of oil production last year, will produce an estimated 2.02 million barrels of oil in 2005, down from 2.11 million barrels per day in 2004, Vinicio Suro, planning director for Pemex's production and exploration unit, said on a conference call with investors.

[Seadragon]

You beat me to it, Leaf. New Orleans was a jawdropping example of so many things...reliance on energy, collapse, government lying/impotence/indifference, class/racial imbalances, effects of global warming, etc.

[aahala]

I think the biggest energy story in the US this year was the runup of NG prices triggered by the loss of production from the Gulf hurricanes.

The price for a number of years has been pretty uniformly upward,
adjusted for the season. I believe this price surge is likely to break
that trend for a while. The oil price increases doesn't seem to have
had much effect in reducing consumption.

[gt1370a]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('killJOY', 'I') would add that KUNSTLER has lost credibility this year, because of his a) inability to conceive of the US government as evil enough to enable the 9/11 attacks, and b) his patently false hysteria about the supposed "Christmas Clusterfuck" that never happened:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') The biggest shock to the public lies a couple of months ahead when the cost of natural gas for home heating (50 percent of the dwellings in America) combines with stubbornly higher pump prices to whap them upside the head. Natural gas at around $12.00 is now many times what it cost as recently as 2003 ($3.00). A lot of Americans will be shivering this winter and some of the weak, old, and poor will die as a result.
President Bush has already taken a hit on his appointees' Chinese Fire Drill response to disaster management. But the toll from the energy problems the whole nation faces will be more insidious. Strapped for cash from filling their gas tanks, unable to buy Christmas presents at WalMart, and huddled around space heaters, the public will be wondering why they were so poorly prepared.

[Sgs-Cruz]

I too lost all faith in Kunstler this year. He's sounding more and more like Heinberg: when your latest "the world is going to end this month!" prediction doesn't work out, just make another one for next month.

Hurricane Katrina obviously stole the spotlight for energy-related stories this past year. What's scary is that the world is still on the uphill part of the latest hurricane-frequency trend. Meaning that there's going to be more Katrinas and Ritas for another decade. There's also the uncertain (but probably not good) effect of global warming on ocean temperatures, and thus hurricane strength. I think the economics of extracting oil & gas in the Gulf of Mexico are going to change over the next 10 years, though perhaps even as costs go up, the price of oil will stay high enough to make Gulf extraction worthwhile.

With regards to the destruction of New Orleans: for me, it wasn't the government taking peoples guns, but the lack of response (aid). I think it woke a lot of people up to see the government so unprepared. You reap what you sow, I guess: people have been warning that Bush doesn't know what he's doing for years now, but the response was always "You hate freedom, don't you!" or something.

I'd have to say that the most important "event" of the year was the price rise in natural gas. It didn't get nearly as much coverage as the gasoline-price spike after Katrina, but I think it's going to have wider-reaching effects. The price is somewhere between double and triple what it was last year! That's a huge difference, doubly so because natural gas is used in so many things. Heating, plastics manufacturing, fertilizer manufacturing... all of these products are going to become more expensive as the manufacturers' hedged gas contracts run out and they are forced to pay full price for gas.

[Leanan]

Hurricane Katrina gets my vote for biggest story of the year. For many reasons.

We Americans tend to think we've tamed nature. Disasters like the Asian tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake can't happen to us. We have warning systems, and earthquake-proof construction methods. But as Northridge did a decade ago, Katrina reminded us that we haven't mastered nature, and we're fools if we think we have.

It also showed the extreme vulnerability of our energy industry. It's concentrated in the Gulf region, because NIMBY-ism keeps it away from the east and west coasts. With hurricanes increasing and seemingly moving west, this is not a good thing.

Katrina also showed how tight energy supplies are. A few years ago, the amount of oil and natural gas shut in by the hurricanes wouldn't have been a big deal. Not so this year.

And of course, there's what happened in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. Everyone is trying to whitewash what happened now. But talk to people who were there, and they'll tell you the initial reports were correct. It was chaos. Despite money poured into disaster preparedness after 9/11, the government was not prepared. Local, state, and federal, they all failed. Perhaps the most chilling report, still under investigation, is that doctors began euthanizing patients the fourth day after the hurricane.

What happened in New Orleans really makes it hard to imagine a future where we all work together to deal with energy shortages.

[duke3522]

Hurricane Katrina also gets my vote for the biggest story of the year. Uncovering the fact that the Feds are even less prepared for a major terrorist attack or natural disaster. It has been over 4 years since 9/11 with billions of dollars supposedly spent on preparedness and the Katrina relief effort was still a clusterfuck.

What would happen if our enemies were able to bring about the dislocation of tens of millions of Americans in several cities at the same time?

If we learn anything as individuals from this year it should be that everyone MUST make some preparations to take care of your own folk in the face of an emergency whether natural or manmade.