The Long Emergency - Global Oil Production will peak this year

[cyberpj]

The Long Emergency
By James Howard Kunstler
Current issue - Rolling Stone Magazine

What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

(snip...)
Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.

It will change everything about how we live.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7203633

[Mari333]

1. whoa...reality check.

I think I will stay in the upper Midwest. Its articles like this one that make me glad I will probably be dead in 30 years.

[cyberpj]

2. I know, I had to read a little at a time and take a break -

Taking it all in just made me even more furious at our media for spending days and months on the Bush approved topics while we get dumber and dumber about what's really going on!!!

"Some other things about the global energy predicament are poorly understood by the public and even our leaders. This is going to be a permanent energy crisis, and these energy problems will synergize with the disruptions of climate change, epidemic disease and population overshoot to produce higher orders of trouble."

[Mari333]

3. I wonder if its even worth working 37 miles away from work

at 9 dollars an hour...Im filling up my tank every 2 days and working just to fill up the tank..problem is, there are no jobs in my small town.

[cyberpj]

5. That will be a big one for everyone - so many now have long commutes

My spouse drives an hour each way to get to his latest job (3rd in 5 years) but luckily we bought a Prius in 2001 so gas hasn't hit us quite as hard yet.

We'd move closer but have already moved twice and then a corporate layoff happens and we have to start the looking all over again!

HOw pathetic - to have to settle on being happy just to have a job (when you're an eminently qualified and trained and reliable employee).

[acmejack]

13. I've been saying something similar for a while

The best thing about being a classic, I won't be here for the really bad times ahead. It just pisses me off so badly, who would thought it would have come to this? I was really invested in the Woodstock thing...

[xynthee]

4. Peak oil's coming a little early, huh?

Truly, truly frightening!

Guess I'll have to go live with my parents or my in-laws after the bank forecloses on our house because of the economy collapse (their houses are paid for AND they live in rural areas AND they all know how to farm).

[cyberpj]

6. Looks like you ARE in better shape than most.

We're in a condo but seriously considering getting a small house with a gardenable yard that we can pay in full.

[Mari333]

7. my oldest son is getting married in May

They are moving into the big house I own, and Im moving to a smaller house on the same piece of property. Its 3 acres,so I think its time to teach them how to farm some of it. I am selling the other 10 acres, cannot afford the taxes.
In the meantime, I dread the future for my kids, and my grandkids. I feel so helpless.

[Lindacooks]

8. What about ethanol?

Anybody knowledgeable on corn based oil? Is it possible to make machines that will run purely on ethanol? What about cars, furnaces, power plants?

[hadrons]

9. it was talked about in the DVD 'End of Suburbia' (great DVD)

they didn't feel there it was possible to grow enough corn ... they also had a dim view of hydrogen since it takes lots of natural gas to produce hydrogen and if you're running out of cheap natural gas ....

[Lindacooks]

10. Thanks!

I wonder, though, if the corn producing states might do a little better just because they HAVE corn which can produce ethanol, even though it obviously won't be shipped around the country.

[phantom power]

12. It's easy to tune an engine for running on pure ethanol

But can we grow enough biomass each year to supply the equivalent of the millions of barrels of oil we burn each day?

And still grow all the food we need?

Corn is almost certainly not the most efficient plant. Some claim that agricultural hemp is far more efficient. But I don't think the numbers add up, especially if we account for the fertilizer we use to "over-clock" the production from each acre of land. Fertilizer that is derived from oil.

Our best hope is nuclear power. We can use it for generating electricity, but equally important we can use it for manufacturing fuels, e.g. synthetic diesel, or even hydrogen, if we choose that path.

[megatherium]

15. The catch with ethanol

is how much petroleum is required to produce it (farm equipment and fertilizer or pesticides). You hardly come out ahead. In fact, I've read there's a net energy loss; only because there are subsidies does anyone bother.

[AmBlue]

11. Talk about a reality whiplash...

Saw this the other day. Geez, but we are in for one rough, long haul.

[phantom power]

14. I think he may be wrong about fusion.

There has been steady progress. The ITER project has been ready to build a functional fusion generator (still a test-bed, but a genuine electricity-generating plant), and it's been delayed for years because France and Japan won't quit arguing about who gets to build it.

[megatherium]

16. I think he's a little overwrought.

Yes we're at peak oil, but the annual production rate of oil will only gradually drop from here -- in ten years it will still be 90% of current levels. This will suck a lot but we won't be working the fields around the cities where we used to live happy middle-class suburban lives. We won't be driving our goddamned SUVs anymore.