[LadyRuby]

I'm fairly new to this whole issue, and I've been doing research and feeling pretty convinced that peak oil is a real problem that will have some pretty severe consequences. But a nagging question to me is if all this hype (on this board for example) is much like the Y2K hype from a few years back, which as we all know thankfully came to nothing. I think there are some profound differences, but in both cases it seems that some pretty smart people who seem to know a lot about the issue are predicting dire consequences. Why is the wolf really here this time?

[linlithgowoil]

if you look at hard data and ignore soom of the more political rantings, you'll see there is a problem. the mega projects scheduled to come online in the next few years cover depletion and a little bit of demand growth until about the end of 2007. after this, there are not enough mega projects coming online (and i believe in 2009 there are none) to offset natural depletion at all.

we have a 100% accurate picture of all mega projects (more than 500,000 barrels a day production) coming in the next 5-8 years, because thats how long they take to come to production from discovery. so - we have 100% accurate data on the projects coming online and we KNOW that these will not be able to offset natural decline by 2008.

thats the problem. declining oil production year on year after 2008.

i've no idea what this will do to the world. people said the world would hit depression at $50 a barrel - hasnt happened at all. oil might go to $100 in the next year or two - who knows what that will do?

i think that we're in for a decade of recession/depression and we'll start using natural gas to power cars and start using coal to generate electricity instead of nat gas - plus some nuclear.

i dont foresee a return to caveman times.

[RonMN]

Y2K was a fixable problem, although nobody seems to realize how much work us techies went thru to get the job done. 17 people received medals from the military for reprogramming our nuclear missiles "on time"...and yet the general concensus is "i told you nothing would happen".

Peak oil really isn't "fixable" without changing our ways (except for the miracle of fusion which is very unlikely).

[MacG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LadyRuby', ' ')Why is the wolf really here this time?

[gnm]

Ron has a great point - In my area we busted ass for 2 years to avoid major systems problems prior to Y2K, as did techies all across the various sectors. If not for that you can bet it would have been chock full of irritating (and possibly dangerous) problems. Never on the scale that the idiot pundits wanted to hype. But there WAS a real potential for trouble.

But I think the main problem with peak oil is not running out of oil but a shift in the paradigm. World economies are based on growth - who's going to loan money /pay interest on savings etc if the economy isn't expanding. Would you buy that $250k house in suburbuia if you think its going to be worth $100k in 10 years? Its possible that people can learn to scale back but over the course of a couple decades even that won't be enough. I would think we will hit a point where people just can't stand the endless depression/devauluation/downsizing and will start to get uppity.


-G

[MacG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RonMN', 'Y')2K was a fixable problem, although nobody seems to realize how much work us techies went thru to get the job done. 17 people received medals from the military for reprogramming our nuclear missiles "on time"...and yet the general concensus is "i told you nothing would happen".

[MicroHydro]

"Peak Oil Hype = Y2K Hype?"

Of course! Darn, why didn't I think of that. I'm going out today to buy a giant SUV and an overpriced house 100km from my job.

[RonMN]

We began changing code in 1994...and we still had alot of problems when the date rolled over to 00. Expect more problems in 2040 because alot of programming techniques used this:

If year < 40 assume year 2000
if year > 39 assume year 1900

[MacG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MicroHydro', '"')Peak Oil Hype = Y2K Hype?"

Of course! Darn, why didn't I think of that. I'm going out today to buy a giant SUV and an overpriced house 100km from my job.

[LadyRuby]

Spare me the patronizing, please. If you read my initial post I said I'm pretty convinced its a real issue but all the hype has reminded me of Y2K. I'm sure I'm not the first.

[RonMN]

you're definately NOT the first...i was hell-bent on disproving the PO theory when i first heard it...after 4-5 months of hard studying, i found i couldn't argue/disprove it...that's when i signed up on here.

[Pops]

Yes there are quite a few who see the wolf eyeing them from all directions; Y2k, PO, meteors, black helicopters/blue helmets, chem-trails (whatever that is), and all the rest.

I’m not any kind of psychologist but I think many people have heard/read of harder times in the recent past and have a greater or lesser degree of mistrust in our level of comfort-through-science today.

Continuing the analogy though, I’m not as convinced as some we’re about to be eaten in one big gulp, which I think was the thing that made Y2k so ‘romantic’ - for lack of a better term. IMO, the idea of the big “Rollover” – the instant life-changing event that forces change on people without them expending any effort to change themselves, is the basis of the hype regardless of the particular ‘wolf’. Even the term “peak oil” implies a discrete point in time at the very midpoint of production where everything changes, which in itself is somewhat misleading I think.

I suspect over time our children or we will have to learn new/old/different ways of doing things but I don’t think it will happen overnight.

As someone said (I think it was on a Y2k site no less): Y2k was about if, not when; PO is about when, not if.

[gego]

Fortunately, many people have been conditioned to these "end of the world" problems, so most who hear of it discount peak oil as just another cry from the boy who cried wolf.

I say fortunately, because there, in my view, will be a terrible struggle to survive over the next 50 years and that more will dieoff than will survive. Foreknowledge gives the holder some advantage, so the fewer that prepare, the better the chance of survival for the prepared. The lifeboats are few and are leaky at that.

How many of you could go out and buy a survival setup out from population centers if everyone were out bidding up the price of homesteads? You are shooting yourself in the foot by trying to help the masses. The masses must dieoff in order for mankind to come back into balance with nature.

This may sound cruel, yet I think it is an accurate assessment. The human mind has problems wraping around the idea that their secure little worlds can abruptly be shaken. Almost everyone I know who has died was a shock to me, seeming to come out of the blue. I think that this is the way that the dieoff will seem. The collapse will seem to have come out of the blue.

[khebab]

Peak Oil Hype? maybe but in this case If hype means more people are getting informed (and worried) I think this is positive.

[bruin]

The Y2K problem was like a house built with poor materials and we had to quickly replace the bad pieces before it fell down.

With PO, we will simply run out of materials to build our house.

[Trindelm]

I don't think that we will be cavemen in a few years.
maybe this is my denial.
Things are gonna suck bigtime though. Rolling blackouts, expensive food, gas of course but im in the city so i can walk to work or ride my bike.
ummm granted i have a job then.
One seemingly benign trend was forseen by someone asa more ominous portent to the oil crash was, a renewed interest in home gardening. Walking into the whole paycheck (whole foods) there was a class on home gardening.
Now there are all sorts of shows and articles about home gardening. Maybe I'm noticing it more.
Scary sh*te indeed!!

[bobcousins]

I think there are a few differences with Y2K. With Y2K, it seemed to be driven by media and consultants who had a vested interest in generating work. At the site I worked we found one trivial bug which was easily fixed. I knew that all the scare stories about appliances failing were science fiction, because I actually design such systems! Y2K was clearly being hyped pre-2K.

PO is so far being driven mostly by special interest groups like this or people with no great vested interest, apart from selling books perhaps, or a few people plugging alternative technology. I think PO is being "hyped" a lot less than it could be. As part of the psychology of good scare stories, having a definite deadline is a major draw. Events that take a while to unfold are just not so attractive to the scare merchants.

[syrac818]

I think a lot of comparisons will be made to Y2K, mainly because it came, it went, and nothing happened. I think that's what we all want here, but we know is not the reality.

This is a different kind of crisis because we are dealing with an uncertain timeframe, although we know it's coming fairly soon. There's no exact day to prepare for, which allows for some dangerous procrastination both individually and on a societal scale. With that being said, the word is spreading like wildfire. (True story - After finally breaking down completely to my partner about this last night, he sort of went from a "this is crazy" response to "this is something to look into" response. Then, this morning, his contractor told him he is considering moving to Italy because he is worried about the effects of oil depletion...)

I think peak oil is hitting the main stream, which is both good and bad. Good in that awareness on a large scale bases could result in actual change. Our "conservation" sucks so bad it's laughable. I truly believe we could reduce our oil use by 60%, buying us some much needed time for a transition while training us to live a low energy lifestyle. It will suck, but we can do it.

It's bad in that I worry that the reponse will be immediate mass hysteria as opposed to a response that will keep us alive. Right now, we are still raising the alarm, and at some point people will begin to ask "Ok, so what are we going to do?". If the only answer is to eat your neighbor's children and paint your face green and hole yourself up in a homemade compound, we're pretty much screwed.

The main obstacle we're working against right now is ignorance, a government that lies, and a system in which an elite few continue to try to hide this from the masses. However, this obstacle is breaking down as we speak. The next challenge is the big one...

[BrownDog]

The issue is pretty well covered, but I just wanted to add one more minor difference. I'm an IT person, and worked for a financial institution during Y2k. One of the drivers for putting all that effort into fixing all the computers was that nobody wanted to be in the news for missing anything. The fear of a loss of reputation drove an somewhat excessive level of effort into fixing it.

The same motivation doesn't exist for PO. It will affect everyone fairlly equally. And by the time it becomes apparent, most of the politicians, for example, who could now be doing something about it will have moved on.

[mohomesteading]

Peak Oil is like many historic catastrophies in that the people in the events didn't know the reprocussions until it was too late. The Romans didn't realize that one day early into the fifth century AD that the Visigoths would wipe out their city even though their power had been weakening for years.

The Crash of 1929 in the United States stock market had warning signs, but since it hadn't happened before, no one worried about things spiraling out of control.

For myself, I've come to the conclusion that there is no value in warning the populace about the dangers of Peak Oil. I warn and explain to those close to me, my family and friends. I give them the information and let them decide for themselves what they want to do. In the end, I can only prepare for my own needs.

The difference between Y2K and Peak Oil is that with Y2K you had no worries about supplies of items in themself, just that the computers wouldn't (theoretically) work to provide certain necessary functions. With Peak Oil you have your systems, but no way to easily power them. It is one thing to have computers out of wack when you can figure out a manual operation solution with enough time until a computer fix can be found. With Peak Oil where fuel supplies will rise in cost and drop in availability, it matters not that you have the machinery and technology when you can't power it all.

The timeframe of Peak Oil is fuzzy within a range of possible dates. Y2K had a firm date that one could say it happened or it didn't. When you are fuzzy, it is easier to dismiss it and think that it won't happen when so many people say different things.

My view is, prepare like you would for any other natural disaster or event and just do the best you can. We won't know exactly what will happen in deep detail, but we have ideas about possible events. How people react to the events is somewhat unpredictable because each part of the world and country may act differently and the effects of the events may vary as well.

I give Peak Oil my focus as a precaution. I will prepare as best I can for it.