Wall Street Journal
"Energy Watchdog Warns of Oil-Production Crunch"
May 22, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121139527250011387.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
It's a rare day that I succumb to using vulgur language -- but this is straight-in-your-face bullshit. Honestly, the hairs on my neck are standing.
I understand the critical need for carefully measured words when facing a crisis of this proportion. I'll even support it to a degree.
However, to say that the IEA has warned us is akin to some guy telling you to beware of his dog... as it's knawing-off your left ass cheek, having already shredded both of your arms.
But hey, at least you were warned, right?
Now, imagine laying in a pool of your own blood, and a few other "concerned folks" pass by and tell you to "be cautious around that guy's dog."
Who are these other "concerned folks?"
CERA - Cambridge Energy Research Associates
USGS - United States Geological Survey
EIA - Energy Information Administration (not IEA)
DOE - Department of Energy
AND all your major government/corporate mass media.
From this point forward, we'll watch a parade of excuses and lies spew from these agencies' PR departments. In various forms, they will say that "oil reserves are essentially unknowable and any estimate of actual reserves is, at best, simple guesswork based upon the good-faith proclamations of our friends at OPEC." Hint: they are going to say "who could've known?" and then shift blame.
Blaming OPEC, however, will not be sufficient to recover their credibility. Anyone with internet access and half a will to learn the truth can easily expose a long history of lies, snobberies, and attacks.
Remember, it's one thing to say that you don't know. I can live with that. But that is NOT what they did. Instead, they offered up their scholarly assessments while lifting and shifting their noses as to avoid the stench of any who would disagree with them.
Ever since 1956 - when Shell geologist, M. King Hubbert, first warned us that world-wide production will peak somewhere around the year 2,000 - these agencies have dubbed as wackos anyone who said anything incongruent with the "oil, therefore growth, is limitless" chant. They have thrown a lot of good people under the bus.
There have been plenty of good neighbors attempting to warn you that there is a vicious dog in the neighborhood. However, the local authorities chose to muzzle a long list of guys with names like Hubbert, Deffeyes, Campbell, Hirsch, Simmons, Heinberg, and countless others. It didn't matter that these guys basically dropped their life to learn the facts and sound the alarm. They were to be classified as crazy doomers while the party-line prevailed: buy yourself an SUV.
If you wait around for organiziations like those listed above to give you ample warning... you're not going to make it.
Sorry.
On another note: Congress is considering suing OPEC! Oh, good idea guys. That'll do it.
I've got an even better idea. Why don't "we the people" just sue all of you (Congress and all of your respected agencies) for having put our republic to sleep on this issue for the past 35 years.
Unprecedented Crisis
Dads:
I'm issuing you a challenge that you'd be wise to take.
For the next seven days, I ask you to suspend your current "understandings" of economies, national security policies, real estate values, and the overall themes that govern the actions of industry, money, and government.
For the next seven days, I urge to read the links found in the right hand column entitled "Daily News -Energy & Economy."
Peak Oil has arrived.
In place of your "understandings," substitute the following fact: the world has reached peak oil - a period where our ability to supply additional oil to meet increasing demand has reached its all-time, upper-limit maximum, and that each passing day will now bring an ever-widening shortfall gap between supply and desire (demand doesn't work here anymore).
This is not about the falling dollar, speculation, greedy big-oil companies, oilfields off-limits to production, demand destruction, etc., etc.
It is much bigger.
If the world's demand for oil (now at 87 million barrels/day) continues to outstrip supply (now at 85 mil bbl/day) AND we have no possible way of increasing supply... what do you suppose will happen?
Just look at the past year. Crude oil has doubled from $60/bbl to $120/bbl. This doubling of price will now start to accelerate.
We are in a heap of trouble.
Why this challenge?
It is my firm belief that your views of the daily news events will begin to sharpen in focus. Your fuzzy understandings of the forces that are shaping our current and future world will begin to fade, and be replaced by a stunning and intuitive ability to assemble the puzzle of world energy markets.
Seemingly loosely related matters of war policy, foreign investment, humanitarian efforts, strategic alliances of government and industry, commodity trades, border security, government entitlements, and even the current and future value of your home will begin to mesh in your mind to form a solid bond of interconnectedness.
Take the challenge and I'll make you 10 promises:
1) You will become overwhelmed with varying emotions of fear, anger, and despair.
2) You will acquire substantially unpleasant and unpopular viewpoints and convictions.
3) You will encounter urges to make radical and drastic changes to the plans for your future.
4) You will find yourself isolated amongst family and friends.
5) You will survive.
6) You will find an altogether new level of "truth."
7) You will gather new appreciation for the phrase "the truth shall set you free."
8) You will regain your emotional footing and find yourself with an exhilerating new ability to think more clearly, make wiser decisions, and plan more effectively for your family's future.
9) You will develop compassionate attitudes, language sensitivities, and infectious convictions that will be much appreciated in the near future.
10) You will become a leader for countless individuals, families, and communities.
If you accept this challenge, then this site is for your use. Here you will find mountains of information, research, insights, and warnings that have failed to reach the average Joe American - but are critical for you to know.
I'll begin rather abruptly.
We have allowed the Gerber news networks and the Pravdas-of-print to shape our understanding of the world - and lull us to sleep.
This is what they're not telling us:
We are in the middle of a national and world-wide crisis of unprecedented and possibly unstoppable proportion. At the core of this crisis is peak oil and per capita energy use. Just as our populations turn hockey-stick skyward, our allotment of cheap energy is reaching the bell-curve peak. As we witness these two graphs interact with one another, we will begin to witness structural changes - of biblical proportion - to our world.
Humanity will now endure a slow-motion train wreck. The first wheels leaving the track are already identifiable: shrinking asset values (home, auto, stocks, cash), rapidy rising food & energy prices, escalating public and private debt, among others.
The next wheels to go are the industries relying heavily on cheap transportation fuels such as airlines, tourism, manufacturing, and - most critically - pizza delivery.
This all leads to loss of employment, collapsing economies, insolvent governments, resource scarcities and volatilities, environmental degradations, food shortages, and increasing geopolitical hostilities.
Unfortunately, this band of death is no longer on the horizon, down the street, or even knocking on the door. Rather, they've slipped into our living rooms and they've come for our lives. With our children at play upstairs unaware, the cathode-ray face with surround-sound mace hastily suffocates a brief flash of primordial instinct and call-to-arms intuition... "This just in, Britney Spears shaves her head."
With delusion secure by attention detour, a drumbeat of varied pitch sound-bites roll in to overwhelm our fragmented minds. The truth of our fate never reaches us. We accept - without question - the manufactured tide of common understanding with its counterfeit problems and sophistic solutions.
Our secular religion of "exponential growth" is a Pied Piper, and he has us marching toward the cliff in a drunken stupor. Wave after wave of us, unaware of our fate and/or unable to retreat through the weighted masses, are being shoved over the edge. Try as we might, it's too late. There is no Hollywood ending to this story. Our near-term future (dare I say... even here in the U.S.?) will include mass-scale famine, disease, war, and death unlike the world has ever seen.
We're at Peak.
If this age is remembered at all by the ensuing centuries, the 50 years either side of 2,000 a.d. may well be remembered as the "Peak Era."
Peak Era of __________... what?
Just fill in the blank and we are correct.
Life - Death
Health - Disease
Wealth - Poverty
Faith - Fear
Hope - Despair
Comfort - Pain
Abundance - Scarcity
Peace - War
Feast -Famine
Security - Terror
Love - Hate
Truth - Deception
For better - and for worse - the peak era of civilization is at hand. We are living it right now. If we've been gathering our "understandings" from the New York Times and CNN, then we are probably unaware that our children will face a world far more dangerous than we've ever imagined.
Up for the challenge?
You're family is counting on you.
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