Don't you find it rather odd that your sources are crackpot websites and random blogs done by people who admit to not being experts?
No, not really. Crackpots? Maybe. But over the course of the years I have come to realize that a) big news sites will print what they're told (and do not, in general, give a whit about getting information from the source) and b) none of the people at the top know what the hell they're doing.
I have evidence for a) from people who experienced things that have been massively misreported later, and evidence for b) in such enormous heaps it isn't even silly.
So look closer. All of these sites have one thing in common: Original research. People going to the source of the numbers rather than some intermediary. That eating fossil fuels article was written by a professor studying the subject, if I'm not mistaken. The wikipedia article - well, it's wikipedia. But King M. Hubbart clearly was not a crackpot - he was and is a rather respected geophyisicus who's predictions so far have been spot on.
The "wolf at the door" site actually takes most of it's numbers directly from the BP world oil reports - a rather respected source which according to some of the people on more pessimistic sites are actually very much on the optimistic side. And not a single one of these people has even the slightest reason to lie, misrepresent, or distort what they perceive as the truth: That our world is in deep, deep trouble.
And on the mass media side, the story they are trying to sell us stinks.
- Doesn't it strike you as odd that all of our political and economic leaders subscribe to this idea that economic growth is the one true saviour and the only way forward, when sheer logic dictates that such a thing is absolutely 100% impossible? Everything can grow only to a point. There are limits to growth. In fact,
that was exactly the title of the famous report written by the club of rome in 1970.
- Doesn't it strike you as odd that the response to our economic crisis has been to print money in such vast quantities that the US actually has to double taxes just to get out of debt?
The model that the mass media present of our economy and what is really going on is clearly deeply flawed. If all that has been going on was truly just a few speculators and banks doing silly and outrageous things with the money people entrusted them then our economic crisis should have been over years ago. But in the meantime .. the numbers don't look good at all.
Even if oil reserves have been massively overestimated (which I'm not that sold on anyway) and we are about to hit some peak oil point, once oil becomes restrictively expensive more and more will be invested into alternatives. The worst that will happen is another economic slowdown.
And that is where you're wrong.
1) The basic problem is not mere "slowdown". The basic problem is that at some point it takes too much energy to create more energy. All energy sources have an EROI ratio -
energy returned on energy invested. At the start of the 1900's, our global EROI was roughly 100 to 1. But over time getting energy has become more and more costly, because we have to dig deeper to reserves that are harder and harder to get to.
The reason why the US is investing in shale oil and tar sands is because they have better EROI ratios than classic oil. And where do these sources sit? at 5 to 1 and 3 to 1, or something along those lines. Solar power sits on somewhere between 6.8 and and 1.6, depending on what type of generation you're talking about.
2) We have no true alternatives for fossil fuels. Electricity, yes, you can generate that with wind (oh wait, that's unreliable and polluting, though the 20 to 1 EROI is actually rather good), solar (much more expensive, and again unreliable and polluting due to the materials involved), nuclear (massively dangerous if left alone or without backup power too long), or via hydro (oh wait, we kinda ran out of places we can easily build dams..)
But all of the materials? (Including things like steel, which you can't make without coal..) And don't even get started on transportation - electrical cars aren't all they are cracked up to be, since a lot of electrical power is lost in the power lines that move that power, never mind that the current state of our power plants means that most of it ends up coming from fossil fuels again.
3) Our food production relies on natural gas and oil to such an extend that losing the fossil fuels means losing somewhere between 2/3rds to 3/4ths of our food production. Never mind the transportation, the packaging, the cooling, etc etc. Going back to a situation without fossil fuels would reduce production to a level where we can feed somewhere below 2 billion people -at best. And with the way we are treating our soil, that number may very well be lower. A LOT lower.
edit: Oh, and "at some point" - that has already happened. Classic oil hit it's peak in 2005, and all of the numbers I've seen clearly state production is falling.
Only shale oil and tar sands are keeping us away from the cliff - for now.
Peak Oil will merely provide the incentive needed for governments to stop being pussies and get back on nuclear. And my degree will still be useful even in a nuclear holocaust
With what money, steel, transportation, and workers, pray tell? Once that crisis hits true, what makes you think we'll have the means to do anything of the sort?
And oh, by the way, what generation nuclear power plant are you envisioning? Because the current crop cannot go without electrical or diesel based backup for more than 72 hours before overheating their cores and/or their spend fuel pools. Which will be rather inconvenient when you can no longer keep the power grid functioning due to fossil fuel shortages..