Peak Oil

Morgenrot - Takashi Iwamoto











Peak Oil: This has been defined by many Geological Scientists as that point in which the exploitation of petroleum begins to decline due to reduction in the amount and quality of oil available. Many believe that this dividing line has been reached already.

What this all means is that anything made of petroleum; gasoline; cosmetics; plastic; heating oil; fertilizer; herbicides and pesticides; automobiles; trains; planes; children's toys. These will all become much more expensive and much more difficult to obtain because there will not be enough oil to meet the growing demands of humanity on this finite fossil fuel.

Get it?

This fact will irrevocably change American Society. Americans are about to get hit with one of the biggest alterations to our life style ever experienced by modern man. Everything we now enjoy as part of a 'civilized' society is going to be altered. You will no longer find sweet onions from Texas and grapes from Chile in your grocery store. Empty shelves will appear in the vast food stuffed wharehouses we call grocery stores. Seasonal foods will only be available in season. Clothing will be expensive and made from natural fibers. People will learn to sew and repair their clothing rather than buy new ones. People will learn to garden for their food, raise chickens and goats. Car pooling will become a necessity not an option. Car and transport vehicles will shrink and become much more expensive. Anyone in the service industry is going to be seeking new lines of employment because the extra income for luxury or non-necessities will be gone.

America is going to go through one of the most wide spread and disruptive periods in its entire history, and we lucky dogs are gonna get to live it!

This change is coming and it is coming damn soon. At most, we have 2-3 years to get our act together before the well runs dry, according to experts in this field.Look around you and marvel at what we have because we won't have it for long.

The ease of just hopping into your car, running down to the local grocery/hardware/convienence/clothing store and 'picking up a few things', will come to a screeching halt. Gasoline will hit $5.00 a gallon easily. Stores will have to increase their prices to pass along the enormous increase in the cost of transportation fuels. Further, shortages will be more widespread as petroleum becomes more expensive and harder to get.

This change is going to be freaken huge!

Everything we know will change. Everything we take for granted will change. What ever comfortable life we have right now will change for the worse. Hard times are acoming and you don't hear one word about this from our so-called 'free press' or our overpaid politicians.

If you are not striving for self sufficiency right now, you are going to be very sorry.

Oh, and the new alternative fuels harkened by the President and others is a non-starter. For one thing, every alternative energy idea is based on the availability of petroleum. That is the central and most significant problem of alternative energy that is supposed to save us. You cannot make wind towers, transmission lines, computers, solar cells; inverters; etc. without fossil fuels. Then, you gotta transport them to where they can do the most good and this will take even more fossile fuel. Plus hydrogen as an energy carrier has significant problems such as how you generate hydrogen and how your distribute it, but most of all, storage of hydrogen is incredibly difficult because it must be kept under presssure and is explosive. Ethanol, the savior of our mega-farms suffers from the fact that it is extremely corrosive and cannot be transported by pipe line. It must be trucked, adding to the need for even more fossile fuel or Ethanol itself.

Additionally each alternative fuel now being offered is decades away from being widely available. DECADES! We don't have decades before petroleum becomes in short supply. At maximum we have less that 5 years before everything changes.

Americans and American ingenuity is going to be tested as never before. Oh, and those people that bought houses in the suburbs, that have zero lot lines and absolutely no yard space at all, are going to be between a rock and a very hard place.

You know that Peak Oil is serious when the U.S. Military, the best financed element of our country, is searching for alternatives to fossil fuel.

Military Plans Tests in Search for an Alternative to Oil-Based Fuel

"..."Energy is a national security issue," said Michael A. Aimone, the Air Force assistant deputy chief of staff for logistics..."

Now here is where things get more interesting. In our desperation to replace fossil fuels, we could turn to coal.

"...If the military moves ahead with using the synthetic fuels, the Syntroleum technology could be used by factories elsewhere to produce the same 42 gallons of fuel from just $10 worth of coal, Mr. Holmes said.

"The United States is essentially the Saudi Arabia of coal," Mr. Holmes said. "It can be mined relatively inexpensively. We really believe that one of the things we can do to help our country's energy needs is to use the abundance of coal reserves.".."

In the next few years you will hear a lot about coal and how self sufficient the U.S. is in this mineral. Sure, it can be turned into gasoline and fuel, but there is an enormous cost, air pollution and a significant increase in Global Warming.

This is not trivial.

The entire planet is facing run away global warming, which includes the possibilty that whole sections of the world may become uninhabitable and storms will reach levels of intensity never before witnessed by human beings.

Global Warming is real and it is extremely important that we stop producing CO2 right now. Burning Coal is guaranteed to substantially "raise the CO2 levels world wide. If anything, Global Warming is more of a threat to the well being of everyday Americans than Peak Oil and Terrorism combined. So, yeah, we have lots of coal, but using it will turn into a Hobson's Choice. That is, the decesion to develop coal energy is just as poor as the decesion to continue with Middle East Oil.

No, we as human beings must face the reality that our world is changing and fast. Each of us will have to make decesions for ourselves and our families that we never imagined having to make.

What can we do? The best aknowledged plan for the immediate future is simply: Efficiency and Conservation. Right now figure our what energy you use, where it is used, how much, and how you can cut this consumption to the bone. You will be as aware of energy in your life as you are to wearing shoes and brushing your teeth.