[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mechler', 'H')owever, from my observations, the typical American attitude is "burn it while we've got it." I'm still in awe about how many people drive SUVs and big trucks...

[UIUCstudent01]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'I')f we one day start making hard policy decisions like gasoline taxes and mandated effeciencies etc. it will be important that the public is backing it.

[Kickinthegob]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', 'I')MO what needs to happen in the US especially is some serious culture jamming

[Cobra_Strike]

I have been watching it, damn....I am all for this info going mainstream but when they go all 4 horseman it shuts many people out (the Simmons interview at the beggining)...I still liked it though.

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kochevnik', ':')!:

Best part was Matt Simmons, guy asks Simmons for his worst case scenario and Simmons says, you don't want to go there - so guy pushes harder and Simmons says, "Towns fighting towns, neighbors fighting neighbors, countries fighting countries over the last of the oil." And the guy says, "Chaos ?" and Simmons says, "Total chaos".

[TWilliam]

Just finished watching it. My impression was that they laid out some of the bigger pieces, but were very careful to avoid assembling any kind of clear picture or drawing any significant conclusions.

I'd rate it a C, maybe C+...

[eastbay]

Excellent report.

While discussing the sugar cultivation in Brazil it would have been informative if it had been mentioned that it's growing on land that was once the Amazon Rain Forest. It would have been informative if they had mentioned that Brazil is destroying the Amazon partly to power personal transportation vehicles.

[mekrob]

I thought this was a very bad 'initiation' into PO or the oil crisis at hand. First off, they sell it as 'plausible' yet they talk of a massive storm (200 mph I believe) and then 2 days later, an al-qa'ida attack that disrupts another 7 mpd. How many people new to PO would keep watching after this and still take it seriously? There are plenty of people out there that think the media are in cahoots with oil companies to jack up prices. They report bad news and then oil prices jump up. This will only reinforce their beliefs on the subject. As pointed out earlier, bringing in the oil wars 'patters' to the radical left (Iraq =oil war) but who aren't PO'ers. That drops out pretty much the rest of the people. They don't want to hear about this, and since it came from a biased reporter and news network, it's much easier to just believe what the Saudis say and the rhetoric about our 100 billion barrels that are untapped.

Ibon, the US has not started to get into the mindset of a powerdown society. Oil and gas gets expensive. What do they do? Conserve every little bit? Enact mass transit? Have a massive effort to push hybrids and other powerdown options? No, they turn to ethanol and damn SUV's powered on them. The car companies are just trying to be green so people don't go foreign and so they don't lose even more investment. As someone around here has as their mark, ethanol (biofuels) is the answer to the "What else do we have to burn?" question to PO. No solution, just more money for big business.

[eastbay]

.... plus, when it was mentioned that Alberta tar sands are subjected to hot water in order to 'make' oil they said nothing about how the water is heated with natural gas.

[Lore]

Just got done watching it… I thought the whole thing was a bit of a yawn. Too much of posing the question and then dancing around with answers that were just thrown out but not really discussed as to the pros and cons. It gives the uniformed the belief that the solutions are there for the plucking. Just a mild pass that some of these fixes are years in the making. To be expected in a corporate news cast I guess. I give them credit for at least raising the specter of what’s coming.

Then again maybe I’m just becoming immune to the inescapability of it all.

[Odin]

Hmmmm, I wonder what fuels those dump trucks hauling the oil saids, diesel maybe? *Sarcasm* The image of FF-powered vehicles transporting the ore is so rediculous it's sad, quite frankly.

[ReJoyce]

I missed the segment on Situation Room a couple of days ago when Wolf Blitzer spoke with Roscoe Bartlett. But imagine someone who wasn't well informed about peak oil catching that segment and then watching WWW. I'm hoping this gets some people thinking and then maybe acting.

I'm just glad I live in Florida. I've started planting some things already. This is the best time of year, when I don't need air conditioning or heat.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mekrob', '
')Ibon, the US has not started to get into the mindset of a powerdown society. Oil and gas gets expensive. What do they do? Conserve every little bit? Enact mass transit? Have a massive effort to push hybrids and other powerdown options? No, they turn to ethanol and damn SUV's powered on them. The car companies are just trying to be green so people don't go foreign and so they don't lose even more investment. As someone around here has as their mark, ethanol (biofuels) is the answer to the "What else do we have to burn?" question to PO. No solution, just more money for big business.

[Zardoz]

It was a good start. No, it wasn't quite perfect, but here they are, at last running one-hour features on the coming oil crunch in the mainstream media, and we're nit-picking over details of exactly how they did it.

This was the first of many. There'll be a lot more like this, very soon.

[Alnitaka]

I just finished watching this, and am typing this again because the computer threw up "This page can't be displayed" when I tried submitting it the first time and clobbered all I had written. This time I will cutpaste and save first.

I felt disappointed by theodcumentary for several reasons:

1. The ads did not go with the documentary. One of them was a Lexus ad for this fancy schmancy car that advertised all that's great about it except fuel economy. Another one was about how cool it was to have a cell phone that wasn't a cell phone because it was a video game with cell phone capability.

2. An executive from Exxon-Mobil said we had 100 years (or was it billion barrels) of oil left in this country if they could dig for it. What I know is I think of this Hubbert curve for our country peaking in 1970s after a discovery peak in the 1930s, and then I think of world production peaking in the 1960s and drawing the curve from there, except that the executive wants to push out the right side of the curve as though it were Pinocchio's nose.

3. The main problem I found with this documentary was that it used an unlikely double disaster scenario as its base point for discussion. I think it would have been better if it had shown absolutely no Katrinas, Ritas, al-Qaedas, bin Ladens, planeattacks or any other such deviations from business as normal and still shown that the effects of the crisis would still occur: high oil prices, empty Wal-marts, no tourism, people fighting with each otehr, and plunging stock markets.

4. I do note that that point that another poster made about the ethanol from sugar cane solution working only in Brazil showed up absolutely nowhere in the documentary.

5. I also note that for the hurricane on Houston they used footage from Rita, and for the disaster in Saudi Arabia, I think they used footage from Persian Gulf War I.

[ubercynicmeister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alnitaka', 'S')o why is Brazil profiting handsomely from it? Is it because far fewer people drive in Brazil than in other places (although the segment showed traffic jams in Brazil's cities)? They do seem to be operating efficiently; for example, the energy to run an ethanol production plant comes from burning the chaff of sugar cane plants.

So does Brazil have the answer?

[dub_scratch]

...just saw it too...What a yawner. I was not expecting much, but I at least though the show would have tapped into the real debate and concern with the near future of oil.

Here is a list of what the message of this documentary was.

Oil supply is getting tight (yet no mention of the Hubbert peak and the current 5% base decline that will likely follow).

With supplies getting tight, our next oil crisis will be due to terrorist bin laden or terrorist hurricanes (someone or something else to blame).

Weekday morning traffic jams are of vital national security interests and we better find some other fuel to squander for our stupid cars (Woolsey).

China wants traffic jams and deadly car crashes like retarded America. We Americans better go over to China and show them how to create an economy not dependent of so much oil so we can have it all for ourselves to squander on our precious cars.

There are alternatives to oil. If we just wish hard enough for them and enact the right policies they will come true and will make the National traffic Jam permanent. One idea is to convert our entire food production for the use in cars (no mention on how much we can expect a starving public to drive).

I'm sure there are more forgettable points I'm missing here. But in the time it has taken to right this post I have forgotten them already.

[Ibon]

Change isn't going to happen because of one television documentary. The process to get the collective culture to change it's values or adapt to a new energy paradigm isn't going to happen overnight. This is the first of many reports. With each upcoming calamity and resulting oil price hikes there will be further analysis and probably in the not too distant future further documentaries addressing strategies and actions citizens can take to offset soaring energy costs. As reality rears it's ugly head you can be guaranteed peak oil will go mainstream. We are witnessing the opening acts. Finally

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'A')s reality rears it's ugly head you can be guaranteed peak oil will go mainstream. We are witnessing the opening acts. Finally

[eastbay]

2. An executive from Exxon-Mobil said we had 100 years (or was it billion barrels) of oil left in this country if they could dig for it.

Alnitaka,

... it was 100 billion barrels. When he blurted that out I remember mentioning to my daughter that it amounted to about 3 years worth of oil for the world. I told her it was 'chump-change'. 5% of all there ever was... a nickel out of a dollar.