Comments for Black Friday: Why This One Is Especially Dark at http://atlanticfreepress.com , comment 1 to 2 out of 2 comments http://atlanticfreepress.com Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:57:29 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/2899-black-friday-why-this-one-is-especially-dark.html#comment-3767 Look again, Larry. Next time you're out driving, look around you at your vehicle, the highway on which your are traveling, and, if you live in an agricultural area, the nearby fields. Most vehicles include a substantial number of mostly plastic parts today. Plastic is lighter and has been cheaper than the materials it replaced, but all plastic is made of petroleum, which means it won't be cheap for much longer. Automobile tires are made of synthetic rubber, which is primarily a petroleum product. I don't know about you, but many of the highways on which I travel are asphalt, and asphalt, too, is a petroleum product. In the fields beside those two-lane blacktop roads we see an increasing amount of corn, industrialized agriculture's favorite crop, which depends heavily on nitrogen fertilizers that are derived from natural gas. As petroleum prices increase, so will prices for natural gas, which burns cleaner than the other fossil fuels, oil or coal, and is a major source of energy for electricity production, for which demand is, of course, increasing. Our fossil-fuel-dependent economic, political, and social system is complex. Our affluent lifestyles are largely dependent upon cheap energy. Changing that complex system, developing new technologies and adapting the current economic system and its infrastructure to diminishing amounts of fossil fuels while populations continue to expand and energy demands grow accordingly is somewhat analagous to the challenges involved in redesigning and renovating a fully loaded airliner in flight. The notion that "no drastic technical innovation is needed" is simply ludicrous. But, the technical innovation may turn out to be the easy part, compared to the attendent economic, political, and social adjustements that will be required. - Michael Mon, 26 Nov 2007 04:46:30 +0100 http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/2899-black-friday-why-this-one-is-especially-dark.html#comment-3751 I see no reason to believe doom and gloom scenerios. Civilization survived WWII and that was much worse than peak oil. First of all people haven't even tried to conserve yet, civilization could function on 1/5th maybe 1/10th or less of current oil without truly drastic sacrifice. However oil isn't the only game in town, multi square mile solar plants are already in the works, putting out a hoover dam level of solar power. No drastic technical innovation is needed, its simply investors writtings checks, and believe me as soon as they truly believe peak oil is arriving they will be writting those checks left and right. - Larry Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:01:53 +0100