The Party's Over.

[peeplj]

The truth is you and I, average Joe Blows, aren't allowed to find out what the truth its.

To believe any of these studies, there would have to be unrelated groups of scientists, preferably without their own agendas, independently getting verifiable, replicatable results.

I doubt even the government at the highest levels knows the real long-term picture, because there are two many advisors who know their jobs will go extinct long before oil supplies do if they say the wrong thing to the wrong boss.

--James

[The Weekenders]

I'm looking forward to the day, frankly. I know we can convert our technology and nothing would make me happier, on the global level, than to stop enriching Arabs. They can grow melons and squash in the sand for all I care.

What I don't know about though is how the numerous other uses of petroleum products, like plastics, chemicals etc etc will be replaced. Guess they will be mining garbage dumps.

The whole SUV thing has mystified me from day one for the most part. I am a conservative person when it comes to resources, and the idea of flushing gas down the throat of a car to get you from point A to point B everyday is NUTS. I really want a hybrid for taking my kid to gymnastics four times a week. I don't care how ugly it is and I don't need a tiger in my tank to prove my manhood.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any stupider, Hummers came on the scene... I guess they are using different engines now, but the first ones were like giant Winnebagos for fuel consumption, I think.

FWIW, I buy "cheap" gas at $2.09 a gallon from a no-name company whose product doesn't have MTBE (a prerequisite for the Weekender). As you may know, California has to have either MTBE or methanol to satisfy questionable federal regulation for cleaner-burning fuel. I had to hold my nose and buy Union 76 for the longest time because they were the only refiner not to use the stuff (which penetrates many tank barriers and has polluted many underground aquifers). Ironically, they had some of the worst polluting refineries all the while. They charge about 2.19 now for reg.

Here in Calaforny, some folks actually do use their 4wd for going to the snow, but its a fraction. Somehow, its like a reflection of personal obesity, I swear..

I won't miss the fumes, I won't miss the oil companies.

To me, the least understood CONTEXT of looking at gas prices in California is that they are a tremendous source of tax revenue to the state. The state has all these stringent emission and registration laws for cars, but happily take the sales and specific taxes on gas, and the more we pump, the more they get. You can see how two-faced it is. Part of our state's fiscal crisis was the collapse of the dot.com thing. When people stopped driving to work, the tax revenues plummeted. I would imagine that now that we are in "recovery" the oil companies know they can charge more, in addition to all their other "reasons."

[mamakash]

If rising gas prices in the US caused people to purchase and drive smaller, more efficiant cars, I'm all for it. In reality, it won't as too many people here have enough disposable income to afford a fourty to fifty dollar fill up.
I own a great Nissan Sentra SE, which takes me to and from work for about a tank a week, maybe more with the snow tires off. Rising gas prices don't hurt me.

[DCrom]

There will be a significant amount of oil left 50 years from now. We're still using it because - much as we grumble about the price - we're effectively, after inflation, paying about as much per gallon as we did in the mid-1960s.

I agree that SUVs, and similar gas hogs, make very little sense for most folks. My commute car is a Ford Escort wagon - over 30 mpg on the highway - but for my next car I'm seriously interested in a hybrid. But that's more personal philosophy than anything else. I'd feel far happier if our economy - the world's economy - was much less dependent on imported raw materials.

But even if gas prices were to double, in real dollars, there will still be a lot of folks clinging to their gas hogs. Once it rises - in real terms, not in taxes applied after refining - to 3x or more the current world price I expect you're going to see some real conservation measures take root. But even now, over half the price of gas in the US is taxes. And the percentage in the rest of the world is far higher. In real terms, gas is still almost dirt cheap.

I expect that overall consumption will start falling long before we're out of oil, but only because the price will have risen to the point that other fuels become cost-competitive. And I expect the plastics and synthetics industry will be as hard-hit as SUV owners. But although high prices will keep marginal oil wells in operation, those same prices will steer any current oil-dependent that can do so away from using the stuff.

Currently, we - the world economy - are treating oil with all the careful conservation measures (please note sarcasm) that Los Angeles, Los Vegas, and Phoenix use for water.

[Lorenzo]

Nice poem there Aaron. I like that. You're right, no oil wouldn't really effect me. I've lived half my life w/o it anyway, and I'd kind of like to go back. I see myself living on the river or a lake someday, maybe buy one of those podoscaphs for calm days.

Weekenders, "...grow melons and squash in the sand for all I care." Why don't you make the kids walk instead of taking them to gymnastics four times a week? Then they won't need gymnastics to stay in shape.

"One drop of 'gasolina' can push a ton of lead."

We've really done a good job at pillaging the earth of it's resources. I think nature is stronger than mankind though. When things get out of balance, it has a way of dumping revenge back on us. We're on the verge of the 11,000 year ice age cycle. One effect from the temperatures rising is that the weather systems off the coast produce more moisture, and in the winters to come, it may not stop snowing for...let's say 50 years in a row. We see things in short terms. Nature thinks in terms of thousands and millions.

I agree with the small car-seldom use idea, and the hybrids.

[Montana]

If rising gas prices in the US caused people to purchase and drive smaller, more efficiant cars, I'm all for it. In reality, it won't as too many people here have enough disposable income to afford a fourty to fifty dollar fill up.

People do have disposable income but I don't think they are willing to blow it on gas. After too many $50 tanks of gas, they can no longer spend money on other things they want.

We did back-pedal on consumption during the gas "crisis" of the 1970's. That is when cars first started to become more efficient and people did conserve somewhat (but I think it was more because they didn't want to sit in gas lines than because of cost). I think the gas prices in the U.S. should be more similar to that in Europe. Most people won't conserve until they are forced to and the only way you can do that is to hit them in the pocketbook.

Recently I saw an old WWII movie called "The Eagle Has Landed" with Donald Sutherland and Michael Caine. Sutherland's character was given a motorcycle but told to be careful driving it because the ration was one tank per week. Such a small part of the movie but it was the part I remember most. If Americans were rationed to one tank a week, they would consider that unbearable (wah!).

Lorenzo, you are not apocalyptic. You don't have to be a scientist to do some simple math. a) Fossil fuels are a limited resource. b) Everyday consumption of fossil fuels grows. Ergo, a + b) we are going to run out and it will come at a point where dependence has become the greatest if we don't wise up. But we, as a people, won't. Things always have to get dire before we wake up and actually do something. It doesn't matter if we run out in 10 or 50 years; we know it will happen shortly. The fact is we can deal with it now when it's an easier transition or we can leave it to the next generation when the transition will be more extreme. And in the meantime, we'll run around drilling the hell out of the planet just to get more.

Hey, did everyone hear about Jessie's new baby, the one who will be living through the fossil fuel disappearance?
Wheew!

[Nanohedron]

People do have disposable income but I don't think they are willing to blow it on gas. After too many $50 tanks of gas, they can no longer spend money on other things they want.

That's why I've invested in instruments ahead of the game.

[feadog39]

I'm not going to worry about it. I'm sure the the Bush administration will save us from our follies.

[The Weekenders]

Lorenzo: To answer your question, my son is a competitive gymnast. Its basically Junior Olympic stuff, like the ice skaters etc. There are few schools he can go and none are even close to our home. We cross the Richmond San Rafael Bridge four times a week. Its only about 20 miles from the Weekender's Lair but it ain't walkable. No buses, either from here to there. If we were REALLY serious, we would move to San Mateo for him, where he could go five or six times a week and train with a Russki.

Believe me, I have asked myself how the hell I ended up with an "elite" athlete (that's the word all gymnastics schools use to convince you to pay $250 a month, endure 4-hour meets on hard bleachers and train 12 months a year) but it's that old thing about doing for your kid what nobody could do for you....blablabla.

The payoff: either he gets a scholarship at Cal, goes to the Olympics or joins a circus.

But yes, a hybrid would be nice for the trip. He's only 11, so it will be a few years before he could drive it himself.

[missy]

I have no problem driving a fuel efficient vehicle. But I hate being in a tiny car surrounded by Navigators, Surburbans, and Expeditions (not to mention 18 wheelers!).
We tend to not drive extreme amounts, if you look at the milage of our vehicles. We have a 1979 pick up with 74,000 miles (yes, that IS original). A 1996 Contour (DH's car) that has around 90,000. A 1998 Grand Am (my car) that has 54,000 (and gets 35mpg on the highway). And a 1992 Conversion van that is ONLY for when we need to haul music equipment - we bought it used last October and have put maybe 200 miles on it since (of course, it DOES have a 33 gallon tank on it, so it will NOT get used a lot!!!) I live 3 miles from work. One son is 2 miles from school, 10 miles to work on the weekend. The other was only 1 mile, but attends a different school now, so is 10 miles from home (that's why the Contour is getting up in miles, DH drops him off and picks him up). BTW - we have 3 drivers in the household, son is driving the pick up.

I agree with the poster above about the MtBE. Kentucky uses that. Ohio doesn't. I can always tell when I'm following a car that filled up in KY.

I don't know what the answer is. But since we tend to keep our cars forever (tuned and all, we do have Echeck) I hope gasoline is around for a while!!!!

Missy

[Redwolf]

Look on the bright side. Your whistles require very little oil. (There is a small CO2 emission, but that's another subject.)

I dunno. I oil my Busman every single week. Of course, I use a renewable source of oil!

We're seeing more and more cars here in Santa Cruz running on reclaimed vegetable oil. Aside from the fact that they smell a little like French Fries, they seem to work pretty well. I'd love to see the U.S. focusing on renewable energy sources such as this. Right now, the only problem with doing so is availability...I may be able to get veggie oil for my car in Santa Cruz, but what if I want to travel to Las Vegas, for example?

Redwolf

[DCrom]

We're seeing more and more cars here in Santa Cruz running on reclaimed vegetable oil. Aside from the fact that they smell a little like French Fries, they seem to work pretty well. I'd love to see the U.S. focusing on renewable energy sources such as this. Right now, the only problem with doing so is availability...I may be able to get veggie oil for my car in Santa Cruz, but what if I want to travel to Las Vegas, for example?

Redwolf

I think the problem with Veggie oil is that it's not easily scalable. If you've only got a handful of cars using it, and you're willing to do the work of collecting it, there's enough. If every car in the country tried to run on it - there's not enough out there.

And most of the "renewable" vegetable oil fuils out there actually cost MORE in energy use (to grow them) than they return. If they are a side effect of growing food for consumption, it still works out as a net positive. But I'm not as sure that it's a net positive if you're growing just for fuel. (I may be wrong, but I seem to recall reading that amount of oil needed to raise corn for ethanol is actually greater than that needed to produce the gasoline the ethanol replaces. So you may move the pollution point source from city to country, but the total AMOUNT of air pollution isn't reduced at all.)

The problem is that liquid fuels like gasoline are just so darned convenient - a high energy density, easily transportable and storable, widely available. That's why I think hybrids are a move in the right direction - the same advantages as current cars in terms of range and rapid/easy refueling, a mostly well-proven technology, and about twice the fuel efficiency of current gasoline-only designs. Batteries for all-electric designs are heavy, expensive, offer a much more limited range, and have nasty recycling issues of their own. I still want the cheap, clean, safe fusion-powered cars they told me about when I was a kid - but for all the progress we've made in that direction since then I'm not sure we'll see them on the roads in my lifetime. But it wouldn't surprise me to see half the cars made being hybrids in a few years time.

[jim_mc]

This will be the real twist, if oil runs out and we have other sources of energy at some point in the future:

The next shortage crisis will be that of WATER. And who will need to have more water brought in from other places than those who live in the desert? And what will those desert folk be doing to pay for their water once the oil under their sand runs out? It ought to get interesting.

Hopefully we'll work out some (non-oil dependent) terrific water purification/sea water desalination systems by then.

[missy]

hybrids are fine if you are talking self - renewing batteries, or are on the coast, where electricity is made by water power. But here in the mid-west, electricity is made by the burning of high sulfur coal.
So, yet again, you are trading one type of fuel and pollution for another.

How about we all go back to REAL horsepower, cuz then I could finally get that horse I wanted when I was a kid??!!

Missy

[DCrom]

Missy, hybrids are gasoline-powered. It's just that the gasoline engine runs a generator, and the output is stored in batteries. The car normally runs off the batteries, though some allow the gasoline engine to assist under peak load.

Since the gas engine can be run at constant speed (rather than under varying load conditions, and there's little-to-no waste when operating under stop-and-go conditions) they got, on average, about twice the the fuel economy of a comperable size conventional car. And with an on-board power source, the batteries needed are far smaller than would be needed if it was a pure electric design.

I think what you're thinking about are "electric" cars - and I agree with you on those. Somewhat practical for around-town use with frequent recharge. But their range without recharge is laughable and their highway performance is worse. As you mentioned, they have two major weaknesses, even if the range and speed issues are solved: electricity ISN'T pollution free (though if we'd lose our irrational fear of nuclear plants we'd be able to at least reduce it) and current battery technology just isn't there yet - the "refueling" options are wait a LONG time to recharge, or swap the whole battery pack.

And horses? I *like* horses - I grew up on a cattle ranch, and could ride nearly as soon as I could walk. But if I needed to commute the 15 miles to work without a car, I'd just tune up my bike instead - faster, better for me, and I wouldn't need to worry about where to stable it while I was working. Though the "finds its own way home" feature would be nice on those nights I've been working late.