We’ve learned absolutely nothing from 1973 or subsequent events.

* Jimmy Carter’s Tax Incentives for Solar were allowed to expire long ago

* We raised the Speed Limits the moment we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait (55 not only “Saves Lives”, it saves a heckuvalotta fuel)

* Continue to give Tax Incentives that were intended for Farmers and Tradesmen to Mary Kay Rep’s and Cell Phone Dealers to buy Hummers (an $85,000 Hummer after Tax Breaks and amortization costs about $21,000, not including write-offs for fuel, etc.)

* Fail to mandate even solar pre-heaters in new construction (Paying to heat water in the SUMMER? IN A DESERT ? ! ? !)

* Build McMansions aplenty (with ungodly amounts of vanity airspace to be heated and cooled, and then scream like stuck pigs when Natural Gas jumped 30%)

* Fail to enforce “Compact Car” parking spaces intended to reward conscientious citizens

* Watch as Japan (et al) kicks our butts – AGAIN – by providing superior craftsmanship and efficiency (GM stock is at its lowest since Ike was President)

* And in a world where our Brothers and Sisters – INFANTS and CHILDREN – are starving to death by the MILLIONS, we’re using FOOD to create fuel in an effort to prolong our gluttony

The fact is, we have plenty of energy available right here in the USA, without having to resort to using food for fuel.

Unfortunately, the chances of us as a nation ceasing to be arrogant, gluttonous and chronically analcephalic regarding the most important issues of our time are slim-to-none.

Shame on us…

The amount of land devoted to raising corn for fuel has diminished the number of acres for food crops, thereby increasing the prices of grain and other food crops. The “land banking” of farm land for fuel crops also drives up the cost of food. Ethanol isn’t helping the environment or the economy.

I couldn’t agree more with Bill. We have a habit in this country of getting excited over “quick fixes” and treating symptoms of problems rather than the causes. Coincidentally, I was reading this article in the UK Guardian as I read Bill’s observations:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

Cyclops my friend, actually there are courses of action to deal with this permenant energy crisis that have been written about in length in many books such as…

-The Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins
-Reinventing Collapse, Orlov
-The Coming Economic Collapse, Dr. Leeb
-Crash Course: Preparing for Peak Oil, Nowak
-The Long Emergency, Kunstler
-Powerdown, Heinberg

…As well as a library full of essays that have been archived at http://www.energybulletin.net

The American suicide rate is the highest it has been in 30 years, and the foolish will continue to do this in much greater numbers.

The smart folks will, first off, investigate the ‘Peak Oil’ dilemma until they are positive it is real, and imminent. They will then learn what it means in terms of consequences for our area.

Then, they will systematically, and aggressively reduce their energy consumption in a proactive way. They will learn the myriad ways to prepare for the collapse of our economy and be prepared to help those around them to whatever degree possible.

Wishing upon a star for technology to save you, the problem to go away, or ‘someone to do something’ will be the worst path that will likely end in starvation.

I have been relentlessly spreading the word about the horrible consequences of not preparing for ‘peak oil’ for purely selfish reasons. If Boise does not survive, we will all have to leave. Boise will not/cannot survive unless preparations begin immediately.

Cities around us have begun by creating city resolutions that name ‘Peak Oil’ as the city’s greatest threat, then assigning a task force to identify specific threats and solutions. Some of those cities include Seattle, Spokane, Oakland, and many others across America.

I am really disapointed that, in 9 posts, no one has noted that we have many decades of oil and half a century of natural gas already identifed in the USA but Congress will not allow us to drill for it. Congress is the reason we have $4 gas and will have until they let us drill. Some idiots confuse a slogan “we cannot drill our way out of this mess” with a real argument. I have a counter slogan…”We cannot conserve our way out of this” unless you want to reduce our lifestyle too about 1930.

Drill now, drill everywhere, oh, and build a boat load of Nuclear power plants.

Let me hit you with a real issue…I come from Maine. 90% of the heat for our 7 month winter comes from home heating oil. The cost right now in Maine is about $5.50 a gallon. We burn between 800-1200 galloms a season….Do the math.

Now consider the median family income in Maine, before taxes (the highest taxed state in the country) is under $40K

Paul said, “Ethanol may be ok for 4-stroke engines …”
Nope. I have 2004 Ford F150 pickup truck. The owner’s manual advises not to use *any* ethanol. Says to look for stations that do not put it in their gas (it now appears those may get hard to find).
A friend was rather proud to inform others that he bought a flex-fuel car — until he tried straight gas and then ethanol … and found that he got way fewer miles per gallon on ethanol.

However, if anyone still thinks ethanol is a good idea, why would they want to make it our of corn? Corn produces one crop a year. Ethanol can be made out of a variety of vegetation, including some that can be cut over and over (sort of like your lawn) throughout the growing season, according to those who seem to know (yeah, those scientist types).

Unfortunately, politicians, not scientists, get to make the decisions about what they will let us have.
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Rod, are you and Bob absolutely nuts? Do you realize you are suggesting that we “rid” ourselves of 80% of the earths population? Just how do you suggest we accomplish this goal of yours? Do we use tactical nuclear weapons? How about we just offer a machete sharpening service free to the leftists in Somalia, Rwanda, and Darfur? Do we tell the developing countries that “sorry, but we are making ethanol with our corn now,(never mind that it screws up our cars) so we won’t be sending you grain any longer. That is unless you can figure out how to gain sustinance from gas. Maybe we just “gas” China and India? While we are at it, we can supply unlimited ammunition to muslim extremists?
Your simplistic,illogical, and downright idiotic solutions are accomplishing nothing. That is, unless either of you have recently received your appointment as “Director of world-wide population control”.

Ahhh yes…the end of America’s happy motoring utopia is coming to an end. Cyclops, your sarcastic suggestions of how the world’s population should be reduced, misses the point that the superpowers are probably already assessing such “solutions” now. Take the basis for our own foreign policy principles, as advised by national security icon George Kennan in 1947. Here’s an excerpt from his PPS 23 memo to NSA planners-

“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…. We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

So you see, with these guiding principles that we have operated with for over half a century, it won’t be long before the powers that be make their decisions regarding the dispensation of the world. The question still arises, however, will peak oil permit such a “cleansing” and/or will we as a people change our lifestyles and polities enough to halt the course of global genocide so as many as possible can survive, or just so we can attempt to “keep on truckin'”?

Y22, because Kennan made a statement 51 years ago, and maintaining that his statement has been the force behind Global policies for over 1/2 century, requires a leap that ranks right up there with the black helocopters and the Mason’s protection of the holy grail! Opec’s president said yesterday that “40% of the increase in the price of oil can be attributed to the emphasis placed by consumer nations on bioethanol”. We need to become independant of foreign oil pronto!
But switching the emphasis to “alternative renewable” sources as our main supply is simply ignorant! Opponents to increased drilling say that we can’t get any meaningful production for 10-15 tears. Yet the king of Saudi Arabia said last week that the Saudi’s have discovered a new oil field and they will be pumping 1.2 million barrels within a year” WTF!!! And your side’s position is that there has been a 1/2 century long “decision” to allow 80% of the world’s population to “evaporate” so that the remaining 20% may survive and prosper. Man, you guys make Hitler aand Stalin look like choirboys!!!!

A foreign aid worker who just returned from Ethiopia said, “Everybody is starving”.

The very poor countries that our (and Europe’s) imperial tentacles have mauled are starving to death in the millions right now. We have driven their people into cities, destroyed their small farms, and now they cannot afford food on their $2 a day salaries making our socks and underwear.

The ‘drill everywhere / do anything to get gas back to $.99 crowd’ is just dead wrong. We need high gas prices so that we abandon this ridiculous notion that we can live in Oregon, work in Idaho, and vacation in Hawaii. Even if Peak Oil were 15 years off, now would be a good time to rearrange our disastrous societal layout. High food prices are good because getting your food from 1,200 miles away is just plain stupid. I like eating and would really rather have my food a tad closer to me. High prices will drive diversification in farming, and avoid long distance transport.

Look at Wal-Mart, they are going gonzo on local produce sourcing, fitting their stores with solar panels and buying all new trucks that get really good gas mileage. They see the future clearer than most.

The thoughts on population reduction are not policy related. They are resource related. Somehow, whether we agree on a course of action or not, the population will be reduced. We are currently using 10 to 15 calories of petroleum energy to create 1 calorie of food energy. We have depleted our farmland to the point that it will not even grow weeds without external inputs.

What America really needs is for the populace to stop being intellectually lazy and functionally illiterate. Turn off the television, and read a book folks. Books have bibliographies that cite other works of fact and scientific studies. Television and newspapers are largely a fictional medium that folks mistake for factual. The same people that complain about the liberal lying media are the same ones that believe everything they hear on it as Gods honest fact.

Cyclops- It doesn’t take a leap of faith, but an attention to historical facts to understand that the US has maintained a PPS23 mentality ever since the 40s. You can either choose to disbelieve or get educated. I’ll leave the black helos and Masons
to the those who think that drilling offshore, baking shale oil in the ground@ 700 degrees in the ground or slopping tar sands to become “energy independent,” will save us.

We are not going to meet 86+ mil bbls a day with those methods. No one is. Also, there are no more major oil fields anywhere. Matt Simmons, a guy who’s whole career is based on knowing such things, knows that.

And uhhh…we’ve been living under a Hitler wannabe for 8 years now.

As usual, the Statesman has their head in an awkward position! Today they dedicated 60 column inches to getting better gas mileage and not one mention of fuel selection. IS THERE ANYBODY BACK THERE?????

We tried the E85 stuff when Stinker had it cheap($2.00/gal) on Tuesdays. My wife’s Dodge Minivan is rated to burn it. My conclusions-
1. Okay probably to clean your engine every once in awhile.
2. 2/3 cost of regular gasoline evens out the poor mileage.
3. Switch back to gas after 2 tanks of E85. The car became very hard to start.

Thank you Werner! The most concise post here.
JimV, just a quick question. Who pays for “high speed rail everywhere”? Just curious.

Lots of talk about “Peak Oil”, but just how do you calculate that?

Well, first you have to estimate the reserves in each and every oil field, worldwide. Lots of posibble sources for error in that estimate, some intentional. You have to go back to the very first oil well, when records were poorly kept and estimates merely guesses. And how do you account for yet to be discovered sources?

OK, then you have to estimate oil usage, starting from the very first barrel of oil, and estimate every year’s usage up until now and then on into the future. Any possible source of error here? Any chance your estimate might be colored by your agenda?

Then you just calculate which year your data says is the year of peak oil. Then it’s all downhill from there. What’s the margin of error in that? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years?

Just remember, all these estimates and numbers are just stabs in the dark. Some like to call them wild-a$$-guesses. Nobody knows what will happen or when. Nobody can predict the future. So if anyone tells you they can – treat them like a snake-oil salesman.

Rod,

Before dissecting ‘Peak Oil Theory’, which was proven in 1970 by naming that year as America’s peak of oil production, you must actually know something about it.

But, if one is mortally afraid of science, this may not be possible.

You must also know that Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, many other magazines and a huge amount of investor newsletters are talking about Peak Oil and saying it is real, and it is here now.

The business community is being warned but not Joe Sixpack.

If you graph the volume of all worldwide discoveries (we do this using production reports), and then adjust across for known rate of usage (documentation from nations is available), you will find a bell shaped curve showing when peak oil will occur.

There is also the fact that if you graph worldwide usage; you find that it leveled off and peaked in 2005 and we have not beat that production figure since.

The world expert on Peak Oil, Professor Deffeyes of Princeton University, believes 2005 was the peak.

The only people disputing this and planting doubt are those trying to hide the fact that they knew all along; namely the politicians and the elite who control our media.

You can find a complete, easily understandable, short explanation of Peak Oil at…
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer

Well at least you don’t have to smog-check your classic fuel hog. I just had to get my new 30 mpg toyota checked, go figure? If you are going to whine about the cost to operate your “classic” then I suggest coming up with a new hobby. It is not your god given right to consume at the expense of others. It would be hysterical if you were a realtor who drives a government subsidized Hummer!

From the Small (tiny, even) Steps Department…

– – It would seem to me that the hydraulics of the Boise River would be enough to drive a small turbine (that could be installed at the Americana Boulevard diversion) and power the lights along the Greenbelt, or at least offset cost via co-generation.

– – The soon-to-be Whitewater Park could easily incorporate one also into the new construction.

– – Mandate through codification the inclusion of solar water heaters (or at least pre-heaters) in new construction. Again… Paying to heat water in the SUMMER? IN A DESERT ? ! ? !

– – Make vehicle registration fees proportional to the strain said vehicle places on infrastructure and the environment.

– – Enforce existing “Compact Car” Parking Spaces to reward the conscientious.

– – Replace the monster V8s and SUVs used by the BPD (you can’t outrun a radio), and the majority of wholly unnecessary SUVs used by various City, County and State employees with more efficient vehicles.

– – Fortunately I have have no first hand knowledge; but I’m guessing the State Prison Kitchens produce enough waste veggie oil to fuel a couple/few diesel vehicles.

So JimV I will assume that you want to develop rail lines INSTEAD of fixing roads, because we can’t do both with the same amount of money! Or, are you possibly suggesting that the road, gasoline and all the other transportation based taxes be DOUBLED to feed your light rail system? Good luck with that, but I would suggest you not buy your jelly beans by the pound!