I have never been to Europe, so I have a question.  I was reading this A/C article that states that American vehicles burn more energy for A/C alone than all of Indonesia [pop 240 million] uses in its energy entirety.  This 7 billion gallons of gas for A/C is probably due to the fact that it is nearly impossible to buy a vehicle without factory installed A/C.

Do most European cars come without factory A/C? Is it a European mandate by the Govts?  Or is it because European fuel costs are already so high that most consumers prefer a vehicle without A/C to self-limit total car usage?

It would seem obvious as gas prices rise to eliminate A/C in cars.  This reduces the car's intial cost and weight, and simplifies future maintenance, besides increasing the gas mileage.  But most importantly, if no A/C was installed-- people would not be so inclined to drive needlessly wasting fuel.  It would also encourage more people to use A/C mass-transit versus sweating in stalled traffic jams.

The Asphalt Wonderland, here in AZ, is the king of A/C and dark tinted windows--if A/C vehicles were abolished, I bet population would drop 15% in the first year alone.  If most Phoenicians had their windows down they would also be much more likely to see and hear motorcycles and scooters versus having the windows shut tight to ease their ability to ceaselessly yap on their cellphones.

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

"Here people work only 35 hours a week with a minimum of 6 weeks paid holiday per year, plus 14 public holidays which become 4 day week-ends whenever they land on Tuesday or Thursday."

"I really don' see a big problem with peak oil. "

You probably do not see the problem because you are Naive.  And your Ignorance makes you complacent.  Like a two year-old child, you seem to believe your government will just keep supplying you with Nipplez and, if not, why all you have to do is "Protest!"

By the way, how goes it in your suburbs this year?  

Our economy is already faltering, poverty increases (which I directly witness every day). People eating one meal or less per day become widespread. Access to social help becomes really difficult for a lot of people.

We will suffer as much as the rest of the world. Haven't you noticed how much stealing of raw materials and gasoline is up ?

Our coins are made of base metals already. :-)

I would expect instead much greater temporal and spatial variability than 'dieoff' suggests. 'Dieback', to my mind at least, implies a trend toward lower population, but one with more scope for complex variation - perhaps like a cannon ball rolling down a bumpy incline with a variable slope. I do think one or more diebacks is/are inevitable, partly for reasons Jay Hanson and others have expressed.

Shortages of critical resources - or even merely the perception of shortages - result in conflicts in a world where different 'tribes' (for want of a better word) do not trust each other enough to engage in a mutual powerdown. As Roger Connor has pointed out, the risk of a huge over-reaction to peak oil and financial turbulence is substantial. The consequences which would flow from destabilizing human over-reactions (military adventures etc) would be far worse than what one would expect from production declines where the global socio-economic context remained unaffected. It is primarily the fallout from maladaptive (for the collective anyway) human respones to shortages which I would expect to be responsible for one or more diebacks.

Both Syrian and Iranian support for Hezbollah has declined significantly over the past dozen years, particularly since the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from southern Lebanon.

In reality, Hezbollah's strength derives primarily from popular support within the Shiite Muslim minority in Lebanon which has suffered from heightened poverty and displacement as a result of the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000, the U.S.-backed Israeli bombardment of the Shiite-populated areas of the country from the 1970's through the 1990's, and the U.S.-backed neoliberal economic policies of the Lebanese government that have decimated the traditional economy. As a result of the violence and misguided economic policies, hundreds of thousands of Shiites were forced to leave their rural villages in the south to the vast shantytowns on the southern outskirts of Beirut where many found support through a broad network of Hezbollah-sponsored social services. As a result of gratitude for such assistance and anger at Israel and the United States for their situation, many became backers of Hezbollah's populist, albeit extremist, political organization. In the wake of the forced departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the destruction of the secular leftist Lebanese National Movement by successive interventions from Syria, Israel, and the United States during the 1980.s, the radical Islamist Hezbollah rose to fill the vacuum. In other words, "Hezbollah's strength" was very much an outgrowth of U.S. and Israeli policy. Indeed, the group did not even exist until a full four years after Israel began its occupation of southern Lebanon.

http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2421.cfm

Your quote: "I generally consider Iran to be a hot headed country."

This got me thinking that the Iraqi climate is very similar to Arizona, maybe even hotter over a larger area.  I wonder how much of the violence that is blamed on Shiite-Sunni-Kurd religious differences is actually addicted detritovore violence over fossil fuels and electricity.

Imagine sleeping on your roof nightly for months on end because it is too damn hot inside your house, and electricity for your refrigerator is so intermittent that the food constantly spoils.  It might be very tempting for a small group of thugs to use their AK-47s to shoot someone for their pickup, then shoot some homeowners to steal their small generators, window air-conditioning units, and the 5-gal. jerry cans of gasoline to run it all.

How badly will postPeak Americans act when our energy situation gets this bad?  For example: what would you do to keep your family from freezing to death?  Criminals already carjack vehicles in broad daylight with full TV coverage from helicopters--I expect them to become much more brazen and brutal postPeak.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
 

Be assured, they know what they're doing in Teheran.

In Jerusalem too, however. They have purposely provoked Hezbollah, who either had to react and be drawn into hard confrontation, or decline and lose face. Expect Israëli troops in Lebanon. There were already UN troops there before the hostilities started. It didn't stop Israël or Hezbollah from using violence. They also killed UN personnel and attacked refugees, after those obeyed an Israeli command to leave their village.

The game goes on.