the concept of "peak Oil " is blarney
 

Right. Just like housing prices are going to go up forever, Wall Street banks are financially sound, Bernie Madoff is a really great investment adviser - and Santa's going to bring you a new SUV for Christmas, too.

Two points to make on this topic.

One, our country is sending 5 billion dollars per week to a foreign country for their oil. We will never see this money again in our country.

Two, will it really matter how much oil the earth has for our use, if we discover that global warming is real, and now we've painted ourselves into a corner we can not get out of?

We are getting poorer and hotter. Or are we?

Something to think about.

Jim.

When we wake up and really commit to efficiency as a population, we will stop sending our net worth overseas, or over borders. We can easily double the efficiency of every vehicle we drive daily, if we could only look far enough into the future, without agendas driven by greed and short term gain instead of long term benefit.

It will happen globally and the supplies of oil will not run out any time soon. Hype driven price hikes may be the only way for many to wake up and we need to dedicate funding towards efficiency. I have been an advocate of efficiency all of my 61 years, raised by a Father who was an efficiency expert and a perfectionist.

Since 1971 when I read about an Opel that averaged 26 MPH and got 125 MPG, I have spent many hours researching efficiency in cars. Hypermilers (wonder what they were 50 years before that term was coined). Today I rode to meet my friend for lunch. 20 miles on less than a quart of gas. We should be driving cars that average 1 ounce of fuel for 1 mile of distance travelled. This is possible right now, 128 MPG averaging 25-30 MPH. Go ahead tell me it's not possible when it was done 41 years ago.

What would $300,000,000,000 dollars in capital kept in the US do to any economic situation. Multiply that by 10 through the banking system. They would be desperate to loan you that money and the budget could be balanced and it would be possible to reduce the national debt. Those who prevent that from happening will be the ones whose graves are the spitoons of our descendents.

Back to peak oil. Does any rational person actually believe we have located all of the potential reserves on this Planet. Probably the same ones who believe Social security is actually a retirement fund. I read that airborne auto emissions in the Los Angeles basin have been reduced by 98% in that same 40 year period. We alredy have the technology to fix all of our transportation issues, right now, TODAY. The future will only provide us with better solutions.

regards
Mech

If? Sorry, but you're a couple of decades behind the times.

We have demonstrated a virtually infinite demand for a finite commodity. What happens next doesn't seem too complicated.

nice to see "constructive" arguments! :rolleyes:

...instead of the typical "...half FULL or half EMPTY..." quandry

...it's more like "...1% FULL or 99% EMPTY..." oil reserves.

Just a proactive reminder that the forum has a policy of non-political subject matter, and also ... civil discourse! (Mwebb, please keep that in mind. Thanks.)

No problem with this thread's subject matter, otherwise.

But I have a prediction (based on years of experience!) of where this is going. :)

If we keep eating fast food, we'll have an infinite source of cooking oil to match demand