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101 comments on ASPO-USA: Support for Global Energy Flow modelling and a Net Energy database

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Euan Mearns on November 1, 2006 - 4:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
there's no problem here that $10 billion won't solve....

What Cry Wolf says is true.  I suspect that some financial and / or human crisis will be required to kick start a genuine action plan.

If there is one thing I have learned from reading TOD over the past few month's is that many of the energy solutions are there - too many solutions perhaps, and we lack the knowledge to be able to pick the right selection for our optimal future.

Personally I don't beleive we are past peak oil, even though UK oil production is going down the tubes.  The recent down trend in Global production is in my opinion demand driven, and is a correction from an over-extended position of the last year or two.  Only when demand (and price) pick up again will we know if 2005 was the peak year.  My bets are on 2011 / 12.

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InfinitePossibilities on November 1, 2006 - 6:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It does not matter much when the peak year is because the peak will be broad. For the same reason there will be no serious crisis. There will be a learning curve during which people will adjust to rising energy costs until enough available technologies become competitive and politically supported.

We can see this already happening in Europe and some of the states in the US. The changes will be gradual and kickstart plans, like the mobilization of the US in WW II, will not be required.

Everyone with a home can become energy independent at the cost of 50 cents per kWh, tops. People without a home can just wait for the utility companies to raise their cost by a few cents. We might see a gas tax of up to a dollar a gallon. Big deal, not.

People will bitch and roll their eyes. Then they will discover that nobody listens and that eye-rolling hurts. They will stop both and simply pay the transition cost.

By the time our children have children the world will look different and nobody will mind the blue-grey color of solar roofs.

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