by ralfy » Mon 06 May 2013, 09:37:10
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Your increasing food costs are caused in the most part by increasing demand about 30% - 50% through the SNAP program without adding any productivity. Suddenly you had demand up and supply stays the same or shrinks depending on season and product.
I dont think you have to worry about oil much. This is just North Dakota:

In February North Dakota produced over 842,000 Barrels of fine crude/day. Going through the well by well inventory of producers on the ND minerals site is very interesting. Its obvious depletion numbers are exaggerated when looking at the producing # of wells, wells capable of producing (off line probably because of permits or shipping) and of course the ever rising production.
With that kind of productivity firing up around the globe there may be a loss of interest in peak oil as it becomes clear it is a political science that is getting overwhelmed by facts resulting in a loss of website traffic.
Go back to your first paragraph: the problem isn't productivity but production catching up with demand.
We are now resorting to shale, etc., because conventional production has hardly caught up with global demand, and production for the majors has been dropping:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9946Thus, we're seeing the effects of peak oil even before conventional production drops.
As explained in other threads, the best-case scenario for NA is 12 Mb/d by the end up the decade, a production rate that can't even meet current U.S. oil consumption of 19 Mb/d. Globally, the IEA reports a 9-pct increase in production from all oil and gas sources in two decades, but to maintain economic growth, oil consumption has to increase by around 2 pct each year.
Such optimistic news is not new. For example, before 2005, several experts argued that by now we should be seeing global production at 115 Mb/d and an oil price of less than $30 a barrel. Even Saudi Arabia boasted in 2009 that they would easily reach 15 Mb/d by 2011.