Too little oil or too much money?

[nunya]

Seeing Kohei Minato mentioned in one comment and slashdot.com mentioned in the next, but not seeing any mention of the slashdot article about Kohei Minato, I had to post - http://science.slashdot.org/article..../04/15/1928229 The article is over 2 years old and has some of the same quotes as Chris.

[Chris Coles]

EJ, I think you have left us stunned with the perspicacity of your final observations. You have made us all rush to read survival books we bought years ago and threw to one side. But the one thing you do not mention is the dramatic influence this will have on food distribution.

When I was a child, late 1940’s to early 1950’s here in the UK; everything was created locally. Local production of food was a staple of the society we lived in. Napoleon once described the UK as a nation of shopkeepers. But that was our strength. Everything we needed was available from within a few miles. There were very few transport companies, and similarly, few trucks or lorries. And what there were, were small and grossly under powered.

The local butcher, did exactly that, he butchered the meat from the local farm. Very little indeed came from any distance. Every imaginable variety of food was locally manufactured. The basics are meat, bread and cakes, but then mostly bread. The cakes were made at home using spare eggs some sugar and fat, mostly lard. The soft frits such as currents and raisins were to be purchased in the small corner shop.

All that will have to change back again. But, the real problem is that, if you get any sudden breakdown in transport today, there is nothing available to act as a back up for the present supermarket chain environment. All those local producers were put out of business half a century ago. The little shops no longer survive and all the produce comes from hundreds of miles away.

It is my opinion in an emergency where transportation breaks down because of fuel supply problems, that we may see mass starvation, particularly in the major cities. Many people are at least fifty miles from any sort of rural environment where the local food production will be forced to return. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the locals will look after themselves first. Pure survival rules the rules of survival. I am off to stock up. My mother used to have a food cupboard full of the things we could not get easily. I think we must all return to those ways of thinking.

[EJ]

Chris, glad you got something from the piece. Not sure it' time to stock up the pantry... the process is going to take decades, conservation measures will buy us a lot of time, and with several energy shock induced recessions along the way we can expect periods when prices collapse again and it appears we've gotten the "all clear" signal to become wasteful again as we have been for the past 20 years.

BTW, the reason I haven't called is the the my mac had a hard drive failure. I'm pecking away on my wife's PC, hope to get my drive restored and email etc up and running later today.

EJ, I think you have left us stunned with the perspicacity of your final observations. You have made us all rush to read survival books we bought years ago and threw to one side. But the one thing you do not mention is the dramatic influence this will have on food distribution.

When I was a child, late 1940’s to early 1950’s here in the UK; everything was created locally. Local production of food was a staple of the society we lived in. Napoleon once described the UK as a nation of shopkeepers. But that was our strength. Everything we needed was available from within a few miles. There were very few transport companies, and similarly, few trucks or lorries. And what there were, were small and grossly under powered.

The local butcher, did exactly that, he butchered the meat from the local farm. Very little indeed came from any distance. Every imaginable variety of food was locally manufactured. The basics are meat, bread and cakes, but then mostly bread. The cakes were made at home using spare eggs some sugar and fat, mostly lard. The soft frits such as currents and raisins were to be purchased in the small corner shop.

All that will have to change back again. But, the real problem is that, if you get any sudden breakdown in transport today, there is nothing available to act as a back up for the present supermarket chain environment. All those local producers were put out of business half a century ago. The little shops no longer survive and all the produce comes from hundreds of miles away.

It is my opinion in an emergency where transportation breaks down because of fuel supply problems, that we may see mass starvation, particularly in the major cities. Many people are at least fifty miles from any sort of rural environment where the local food production will be forced to return. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the locals will look after themselves first. Pure survival rules the rules of survival. I am off to stock up. My mother used to have a food cupboard full of the things we could not get easily. I think we must all return to those ways of thinking.

[CJ]

As a long term iTulip lurker (glad to see you back), I thought it was about time to contribute to the discussion. In answer to the topic question, I'd have to say both. Too many dollars being printed can't be discounted as a cause for the recent rises, but peak oil is something that we need to face up to sooner rather than later...

I agree with a lot of the comments in the article, but I think that there is one key point which has been overlooked. The low cost and ready availability of (geological) oil has had the effect of depressing investment in the development of alternative fuel sources. If you look at the back-catalogue of research into alternative energy sources there is a spike in activity immediately following the 1970's oil crisis, followed by an inexorable decline as governments and investors withdrew money from the projects. It's noticeable that with high oil prices, these projects are now coming back into favour. There's no shortage of alternative energy sources out there, it's just that they need the kind of billion dollar investments that are bread and butter to the oil industry to be directed their way. Of course, that will only happen when investers see a better ROI than putting their money into oil... and I think that tipping point is getting very close.

Of course this doesn't solve your 'how will I fuel my SUV' problem. The way I see it is that by the end of the century, the internal combustion engine will look as archaic as the steam engine does now. We already use electricity regularly for long haul transport (think trains), so the demise of the long distance trucker is well overdue. For local transport and commuting, current battery technology is already adequate, and the energy density of batteries has been increasing dramatically over the last few years.

In summary, I'd be worried about peak oil if there wasn't the technology and resources ready to replace it, given the right market conditions. As it is, I think that any country with a well developed (electric) rail transport system, which is geared up to generate a substantial amount of its electricity from renewable and nuclear sources and which does not rely on oil-hungry air travel for its domestic travel infrastructure will manage just fine. Hmm.. having put it like that, it might be worth moving to France.

CJ

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The easy answer is: There is never an easy answer.