We might also wonder why the United States is not taking the initiative on evolving beyond the carbon era.

I believe the answer to this question came through pretty clearly in Bush's presser yesterday, in which he made it clear that what he wants is more of the same. We're not going to get any creative thinking about this at all until we get rid of this Republican leadership

We need a solution for NOW and there is nothing that will replace oil in the next 15 years on the horizon. The pathetic attempt of the left, with Al Gore's tie-breaking vote, giving massive incentives to grow corn for fuel has resulted in the usual unintended consequences that they will not own up to. This time it's the soaring cost of corn for food and feedstocks.

The solution for NOW, until there develops true alternatives is MORE PRODUCTION. To do that we have to make it a priority and not let the environmentalist lobbyists saddle us with unworkable and unreasonable restrictions.

We need more production in the short and medium term as El Viajero notes. This means opening up ANWR, exploring off ALL parts of the US coastline (including Republican FL and Democrat CA). In the medium and longer term, we need better land-use planning, more rapid transit, and re-urbanization. We need more and better hybrid cars as well as credible electric cars soon too. Also, more nukes. We should be building about 200 next-generation pebble bed reactors right now. Then we won't need the dirty coal plants or even as many gas plants. We should also phase out diesel commuter rail in favor of electrification (all metro areas--just like in Europe and Japan). Also, more conservation of course.

I am no economist, but it seems to me that this passage is confused:

When people dismiss the peak oil thesis, they tend to demonstrate their ignorance of it. Peak oil doesn't say that the supply is going to dry up, but rather that production will peak and then decline, while demand continues to increase, overtaking production.

How can demand exceed production, unless we dip into some sort of inventory? That's like saying that more shares were bought than sold on the stock exchange.

I think the peak oil idea is that production will go into decline, oil consumers will bid up the price of oil, making it increasingly precious, and consumers will either find substitute energy sources or see their standards of living decline, or some of each.

I doubt that anyone says that the supply of oil will literally dry up, any more than the supply of rubies will dry up.

Many who dismiss the Peak Oil theory don't understand the mechanism that will cause the "terminal decline" in production. Specifically, I find that there are two points that they tend to neglect.

First of all, they most often don't realize is that there are different grades of crude oil. From the Industrial Revolution until now, we've been able to tap "light, sweet crude" which is low in sulfur and making it cheap and easy to refine keeping production costs relatively low.

Secondly, extraction of crude oil up until now has been relatively easy. As we dry up these easy-access reserves, we're going to have to focus more of our drilling efforts off-shore or in other remote locations as well as in areas that have much smaller oil fields yielding a much smaller net gain.

As we continue to deplete the light, sweet crude and easy-access reserves, production costs will rise dramatically causing the "terminal decline."

The solution for NOW, until there develops true alternatives is MORE PRODUCTION.

Dear heart, you don't get it, do you? There is no "MORE PRODUCTION" to be had in sufficient quantities to make a difference. If we opened up ANWR today, it wouldn't have an impact for ten years or more, and even then, the impact would be minimal, at best. The same thing applies to the other items on your laundry list.

There is no NOW solution. Deal with it and start working on the TOMORROW solution because focusing on this non-existent NOW solution is just guaranteeing that the problem will continue for the foreseeable future.

There is no "MORE PRODUCTION" to be had in sufficient quantities to make a difference.

85% of the outer shelf has been taken off limits to exploration. ANWR, CA offshore. It all adds up.

And it'll keep us happy until we can build massive nukular plants, which is the future, even according to Mr. Moore, the founder of GREENPEACE.

Grow up, chicken little

It's dumbasses like PaulB and Al Gore who messed with the market and pushed ethanol. Yes, Al Gore cast the deciding vote for a tax credit for ethanol production.

Now we have world food shortages. Thanks Al. Thanks PaulB.

information is very clear. good and understandable explanation. super-topics. Thank you for sharing a very nice web site.