The American people and Peak Oil.

Bringing up "bad" news is never a good idea during a campaign- but should the Democratic President make it one of the first priorities of the new administration to educate the country as a whole in regard to what's ahead?
An "Apollo"-type program to wean us off of dinosaur juice by the end of the decade would be a great way to stimulate jobs, investment, and the tech sector as a whole...and the research might even help us find a cheaper way to get to Mars- in the next decade.

But we're up against a huge wall of denial here. It's the same wall that we face with global warming. It is going to be extremely difficult to convince the land of oil junkies that oil is something we need to stop using, escpecially when Big-Auto and Big-Oil don't want those topics to gain credibility.

I have a new perspective on this issue. Portland has excellent mass transit, and a large number of car-free people. More people could be car-free if they just thought about it. If gasoline became too expensive for most people, many could switch to transit with little loss of mobility.

Minneapolis is an entirely different story. The transit system isn't a system at all, but an inconvenient, disorganized mess that has bucked national trends by losing riders in an era when most transit systems are gaining riders. After ten years of car-free living, I have had to start driving again, even though I can ride the bus about 50% of the time.

If gasoline guzzling is ever to stop, we need to build transportation systems that can at least partly replace the private automobile (mass transit and bicycle facilities) and the airplane (high-speed rail). Otherwise, people will continue to driving and will simply get bad-tempered when the oil runs out.

But then Governor Pawlenty got his slimy hands on that plan, if only for long enough to tear it to shreds. Now the light rail is just going to be "economic aid" in the form of transporters tourists from MSP and the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis.

to work with the exurban wingnuts in the legislature who consider any kind of mass transit to be the same as godless communism. He came out supporting development of "commuter rail" recently.

The Reps in MN are going to do their best to be sure that the light rail line fails. They see every dollar that goes into urban rail transport as one less dollar for their freeway lanes. Their philosophy is to solve traffic jams with more concrete. Idiots.

I just wish there was some more accurate timeline so the folks in the tropics and subtropics can be prepared for the massive influx of refugees. Old Chinese proverb/curse: may you live in interesting times.

More info.... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1077444&mesg_id=1077444&page=

http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/footnmouth/zwaste2.html

I'm pretty excited about this technology.

Discover magazine did a great article on this last year (google "anything into oil" to find it), but, alas, it is in the for-pay archives now.

Soylent oil is made out of people...peeeeeeeoppppppppple!

Websites of interest include:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Home.html
http://globalpublicmedia.com/
http://www.oilcrash.com/
http://www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk/
http://www.asponews.org
http://www.gulland.ca/depletion/depletion.htm
http://www.dieoff.org/
http://www.oilanalytics.org/
http://www.greatchange.org/
http://www.oilcrisis.com/
http://www.after-oil.co.uk/
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/
http://hubbert.mines.edu
http://www.museletter.com/archive/cia-oil.html

Energy Resources
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/

Alas Babylon
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlasBabylon/

Running on Empty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2/


Also a great article from Mike Ruppert at

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/013004_in_your_face.html

but of course it's vital, and irresponsible not to do it.

It needs to be couched in positive terms.

Yes, the Mars money should definitely be spent on this.

We need a Manhattan-project type of program to do this.

Otherwise, we're all gonna die!

There's a VERY depressing article in the new Harper's magazine about this. It now takes as many as ten calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of food.

That's how energy industry people refer to Carter's famous "moral equivalent of war" speech.

Maybe $3/gallon gas prices, said to be coming this summer, will get the American public's attention.

The growing oil scarcity is a fact. Republicans won't address it because they are owned by Big Oil. Bush gave us "Morning in America" by pretending that oil was unlimited. Dimson is forcing "Evening in America" because we didn't carry on with Jimmy Carter's agenda.

It does present a contrasting vision on America that Democrats should capitalize on. And, as you note, it presents an opportunity to address the problem with lost jobs.

Republican Vision = Oil Energy = Dead End and more wars
Democratic Vision = Energy Independence and Jobs creation

I hope we can make this a national strategic plank to run on....this would get Congressional Democrats elected, IMHO.

I understand that Kerry is onboard with this idea of an energy "Manhatten" project. Is this true? Is it a sexy campaign promise, or does he have an actual plan to go along with such an epoch changing proposition?

I really need to know! America needs to know.

to build some large electrical generators. I think some huge photovoltiac generation systems, say 10x10 miles in size, maybe 8-9 spread across the southern part of USA would allow us to exist as a civilization past the point of zero oil.

For the USA to expend energy resources on fighting for part of the world sitting on oil reserves that eventually will be depleted anyway is surreal. Even if we 'win' the resources, they will dry-up anyway. We must move to the only future we have, renewable energy.

Oil is a finite resource, we must plan for its exhaust. I want my great grandchildren to have civilization also. Fighting for something that will run out anyway is just plain dumb.

again be profittable to uncap the US wells. Remember in the 70's we were a leading exporter of oil.Once the price per barrel fell to less than 50$ it was no longer profitable to drill so the wells were capped. Any oil men here? oil women? Could we uncap those wells?

so what good would it ultimately do? besides our reserves are still a lot less than what's left in the mideast.

I don't know about uncapping old wells, but there's lots and lots of oil shale out there, which can be exploited at $50/barrel or less. That was Carter's synfuel program, which a colleague of mine (in geology) tells me would have secured energy independence for the US by the late 90s had it not been unplugged by Reagan in the early 80s.

New Albany, Indiana (where I live) sits on top of a oil shale. (But not a good enough one to be economic to exploit. Montana and Wyoming is where the good stuff is.)

there's also oil sands, they're doing this in Canada. You steam the oil out. Not real efficient, seeing as how you have to burn a lot of energy to harvest the fuel.

This is not quite as much of an issue in Alberta, but a big, BIG issue in the Intermountain west, especially in Colorado and Utah, where huge amounts of limited water would have to be diverted.

Tar sands also produce enormous amounts of waste water, which has to go somewhere.

burning oil is destoying the atmosphere, hadn't you noticed?

we need zero emission energy - i.e. electricity from the sun, wind, water, thermal sources - anything but burning more SHIT.

not i...

No really. They do not emit C02. Please bear with me as I outline the case for nukes:

They emit less radioactivity than coal (which puts more than just C02 into the atmosphere). If it's a choice between nuclear and coal, I would choose nukes.

The waste can be reprocessed (either into more fuel or into short-halflife isotopes that need to be stored only for decades). Actually, we had better come up with a good way of dealing with nuclear waste -- we already get 20% of our electricity from nukes, and we already have lots of waste on our hands.

New reactor designs are far safer, inherently resistent to meltdown. Nuclear proliferation can also be dealt with by designing the reactors to produce the wrong isotopes of plutonium (that can't be effectively used in a bomb).

Basically, we can solve our energy problems for $0.03/kilowatt hour. Photovoltaics are and will be much more expensive (even counting disposal of nuclear waste, but also considering that manufacturing photovoltaics is not exactly benign environmentally due to use of toxic metals in the amounts that would be required). The real problem with sun and wind is they're diffuse and intermittent, we don't have a good technology for energy storage.

Of course, in the meanwhile, we should push conservation for all it's worth.

is when the oil starts to run out they're gonna build nuke plants as fast as they can make 'em.

Sure, it works, it's relatively cheap, etc. etc. etc.

But the fallout (literally) is a bitch.

It seems he lost his Rockefeller funding when the car went mass production and the oil economy was born. Legend has it the US swooped in and collected all his data. Something about generating massive amounts of electricity from the Earths magnetism. Point is, somebody owns radical, proven technology.

This guy has been called a nut and in school they teach that Marconi invented Radio. But check it out.

1907 During the financial panic of 1907, Tesla agrees to release Westinghouse from paying royalties on every induction motor Weakened by the "War of the Currents", Westinghouse convinces Tesla to sell his royalty rights for $216,000... they were worth over $12 Million at the time. The Westinghouse Company survives...

1943 Tesla dies penniless in NY hotel on January 7, 1943 Tesla's died a lonely man at 87 in room 3327 in the Hotel New Yorker, his only remaining friends the pigeons he fed in the park. The FBI orders the Office of Alien Property to seize Tesla's papers and possessions although Tesla had been a US citizen since 1891. These were eventually inherited by Tesla's nephew, Sava Kosanovich, and are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia

1944 Tesla awarded Patent for Radio The US Supreme Court confirms that Marconi’s patents infringed Tesla's. Tesla finally wins…

http://205.243.100.155/frames/tesla.html

I cannot supply a link to this story, but I am sure its on the net someplace.

Tesla built a radio wave generator and pumped a 7 cycle radio wave into the sky. 7 cycles is interesting in that the circumference of the earth is 1/7th the speed of the radio waves, thus the waves will reinforce each other on subsequent passes, they will beat.

During the experiment, a huge bolt of lightning struck the tower and burned-up one of Boulder's 2 generators. The city would not let Tesla continue with his experiments after that.

Tesla in a gesture of goodwill, probably to get out of town without being tarred and feathered, rewound the burned out generator.

I have often wondered if Tesla without understanding what he did, somehow tapped the voltage potential between the ionosphere and the earth. Like shorting a huge capacitor. Of course, if he did do that, why hasn't some other experimenter had the same thing happen.

was free energy for everyone, but J.P. Morgan and other realized that free energy could not be metered or charged so they shut him down best tehy could (Tesla's lack of business acumen made it easy)

I read a paper he wrote from 1931 about geo-thermal power. It sounds plausible.

There is so much power and money in Big Oil.
If the government actually supported alternative energy as much as the fossil fuel giants, we would not be dependent on fossil fuels.

I live in LA, car capital of the United States.

1/3 of every gallon of gas here is burned while the car isn't moving. Yes, at red lights, or stopped on the highway.

The lights aren't synchronized.

This is the city that deliberately killed off mass transit for the benefit of the tire companies!!!!

No tin foil there, it's all documented. It's the framework of the plot in the movie Roger Rabbit.

Oil companies are very powerful here in LA. I honestly feel that the reason the lights aren't synchronized is because it would mean we'd use LESS gasoline here.

And we still don't have a mass transit system that's worth a damn.

Cheap oil. People like cheap and will kill the messenger who says cheap oil is done for.

So no candidiate can even bring up the subject. It will be up to the likes of us to educate the People, and when the time is right, our Democratic President will be able to lay out a plan to get us through the end of cheap oil.

We can find alternatives. We will have to change our lifestyles, to what degree, I haven't a real clue. But the changes can be made easier to deal with when we get the leadership to do so.

This subject has been on my mind for twenty years now, and have seen very little movement toward a solution. However, it is inspiring to see how many here are willing to face the truth.

Yes, we need to start the transition. Pointing out problems might be seen as negative...

But there is an answer. Tweak the tax code - no big deductions for SUV's, but give tax credits (not just deductions) for solar water heaters. Then increase research funding for a variety of alternative energy projects - including solar, of course, but other ideas as well.

And encourage becoming energy independent for the sake of national pride and patriotism. I think that would be very positive, and would lead to some relatively painless improvements.

Later, when the crunch hit, at least some things would already be in place...instead of nothing, as is presently the case.

I don't think you can completely get rid of the dependency on oil in 10 years, but you could easily issue a challenge saying that we should, say, reduce it by 75%. Keep in mind that with things like cars, not everyone will be able to upgrade.

this should have been a Democaratic priority since the mid-70's, but they've needed the petro "juice" to fund their reelections and lifestyles.



edit: can't trype when I'm drunk. tee hee!