Peak Oil: What Are We to Do?

The Council should be asked to respond to this.

According to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons and most independent analysts, global oil production is now declining, from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.

This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.

Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnaly...

I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

‘Buy America Energy’ should be our focus for the future. We could have $2.50 gasoline from our own local supplies.

The world oil shortage is political, not geological.

In the U.S., the government prohibits drilling offshore, effectively blockading American companies from supplying oil to Americans so that foreigners can make obscene profits from our energy stupidity.

Half the home sales in Santa Barbara are foreclosures because we are sending all our money overseas for foreign oil, when it could be staying here for safe American oil and local jobs.

The entire economy and our communities are facing collapse because of the irrational ongoing attack on American Energy.

If the much maligned oil companies went on strike, within a month half the population would be dead;

Our entire modern society is build on fossil fuels.

Without hydrocarbons fuel you would soon be walking. You couldn’t be driving cars, and it wouldn’t do any good to call the maintenance or repair people because they wouldn’t be able to get there, as they would be walking too.

The food distribution system would quickly grind to a halt as cold-storage warehouses stockpiling perishables went offline due to lack of electricity,

Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own food assets and those we could reach by walking to them.

Without hydrocarbons fuel people in hospitals would be dying faster, because they depend on electrical power and natural gas for warming to stay alive. But then stoppages would soon include water, food, civil authority, emergency services. And we would end up with a country with many, many people not surviving.

FACT; There is between 2-3 billion barrels of proven-probable barrels of oil within 20 miles of the Santa Barbara County shores alone.

FACT; This could produce 300,000 to 500,000 barrels a day for 10-20 years, replacing more than half of California's oil imports, while generating billions in County, State and federal royalties, and make the County the wealthiest in the nation.

Or the County can continue to suffer 6,000 tons per year or airborne pollution from natural oil-gas seeps and not get a nickel in revenues or health benefits and continue bankrolling our enemies.

Change is urgently needed, or the American economy will soon disintegrate.

The OPEC-Russia-chavez oil cartel is not just looting the United States, but the whole world, and will accumulate over $1.5 trillion in net profits this year. At their current rate of take, OPEC-Russia will acquire enough cash to buy majority control of every leading company in the United States within six years. And you are voting into power the very American-energy-traitors who are doing this to you and your country.

Put American’s Energy Supplies First:

Thanks to the County Board of Supervisors for scheduling this hearing and to Tam for highlighting it.

Our nation's designated scientific advisers, the National Academy of Sciences, have done no studies explicitly on "peak oil" or "peak fossil fuels." The current energy studies omit this crucial fact, which is like omitting “The tidal wave is in an hour!” or “The asteroid will hit next week!”

Why does it matter? Because we have no objective analysis on how to deal with a near-term peak.

Congress should direct the NAS to undertake immediate, parallel studies that look at the problem in detail. We need to look at risk management, contingency planning and take an objective look at structural adjustments – as opposed to a narrow focus on how to make up for lost oil and gas inputs, which cannot really be done in time.

For a quick overview of how soon "peak" will hit, see the Wikipedia Oil Megaproject Database. For understanding why even this projection is overly optimistic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land....
Exports are and will continue to decline more rapidly than world rates. This spells catastrophe for importers, if left unaddressed.

Studies on the economic consequences of “peak” show disturbing results. (Scientific references are listed in the free report Cliff offers.) This is why many analysts, such as those quoted in Cliff’s report – are simply beside themselves. How can they get the point across?

All energy forms have positives and negatives.

Bio-fuels are not sustainable because they depend heavily on chemical fertilizers and cause food inflation. Electric cars rely on batteries that become toxic waste. Wind power is a visual blight that kills birds, solar creates silicon panel waste and often relies on batteries for energy storage that become toxic waste. Wave power industrializes the ocean, etc., etc., etc..

However, to satisfy our energy addiction, all forms of energy production will be created and increased. Solar, coal, nuclear, wind, natural gas, etc.. Whatever form of energy becomes the cheapest to produce will prevail. Rather than trying to force one energy form over another, the people that will make the biggest environmental difference will be the ones who take the existing forms of energy and make it cleaner, safer, and more efficient.