Britain faces 'oil crunch' within five years, Richard Branson warns

HammerSmashedFace

Radiantsoul wrote: »

I think that we are probably quite far from peak oil, but more does need to be done in developing alternative energy sources.

Well we're not that far away, it happened in 2008, however it's getting further away with each passing day, I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but there you go. Plateau now for the next decade then it's down hill all the way.

Spirit_2

Too far into the future for me ....we are coping with todays oil crisis.

Mr Spirit has cut through the pipe from our oil tank to the house. No heating, cooking, hot water. Sunday no roast dinner:eek:.

My recommendation is to buy shares in chinese takeaways and heating engineers. They are getting a spike in their revenue this week.

Kohoutek

"From the mid-1980s to September 2003, the inflation-adjusted price of a barrel of crude oil on NYMEX was generally under $25/barrel. During 2003, the price rose above $30, reached $60 by August 11, 2005, and peaked at $147.30 in July 2008. The recession caused demand for energy to shrink in late 2008 and early 2009 and the price plunged as well. However, it surged back in May 2009, bringing it back to November 2008 levels"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_energy_crisis

Today's oil price is $72.54. It's pretty obvious that demand for oil it starting to considerably exceeds supply, otherwise it's hard to explain the increases in price since 2003, for example today's price is 3x the 1980-2003 average despite the fact the Western world is in a recession. HSF's assertion of oil production peaking in 2008 is perfectly reasonable based on recent prices.

As the article in the OP says, we clearly need to act quickly to reduce our dependence on oil wherever possible to mitigate the consequences of inevitable very high energy prices. Otherwise it's clearly going to have a very damaging effect on our economy.

jmoid

I like how someone came back from the future to show us the graph posted earlier in the thread, the anarchy doesn't seem to have dampened our descendants' ability to travel through time.

Being a bit less facetious, I'm not that hopeful for the future either, but what makes you think the author of this graph is any better at predicting the future than the people in the 50s and 60s who thought we'd be living on the moon? And why does everything have to end in anarchy? Pre-oil we still had societies - not societies I'd particularly have wanted to live in but societies nonetheless. I get sick of over-confident doomers thinking they've got the future mapped out.

Davesnave

If someone is in a long-term property, one practical measure they can take now, besides improving the efficiency of systems, adding solar panels etc, is to look at the best ways to sub-divide at a future date. I'm certainly doing this, rather than pouring money into a 'now' house that becomes obsolete within ten years.

Few of us want to downsize, but I think there will soon be reasons for doing so, other than those directly connected with age.

Davesnave

Kohoutek wrote: »

I'd love to believe in a utopian, Star Trek like future, but I must say I have my doubts given the !!!! we're in from where I'm looking.

Have you ever seen futurology books from the late 60s? They assumed we'd have colonies on Mars and flying cars by now.

Yeah, but if you'd lived in the 60s, you'd also know that many of us put stronger odds on having blown ourselves to kingdom come long before 2010!;)

Really2

Kohoutek wrote: »

How come the opposites are so different was there anarchy in 1955?
Were people scavengers in 1965?
Were there riots and famine in 1970?

Who comes up with these pictorial graphs?
Do they really think putting their beliefs on a graph makes it hold some kind of weight as a fact?

I find them frankly bizarre and desperate, it would be like me drawing a lottery win and happyness graph. There are 3 problems to this.

1) Unless it happens it is a fantasy at best.
2) You really cant plot money and feeling on a graph, because it is plain stupidness.
3)you can't predict the future or predict how it would effect people individually. Everybody reacts to things in different ways,

Kohoutek

I don't think it's intended to be 100% serious. It's supposed to be a worst case scenario, but if we do nothing to prefer for peak oil then it's possible I guess.

The opposites are so different because the author of the graph believes that a rapid decline in the supply of affordable oil would have devastating consequences on our civilisation. The side of the graph that plots 1945-2005 plots a rapid expansion in the supply of cheap oil, so that's why there are no negative consequences.

If you think how essential oil is for our present standard of living, e.g. agricultural fertiliser, plastics, aviation, road transport, many industrial uses then a rapid decline in affordable oil would certainly be highly disruptive. Suburban living for example becomes impossible if energy prices are so high that the average family cannot afford to run a car.

HammerSmashedFace

Really2 wrote: »

How come the opposites are so different was there anarchy in 1955?
Were people scavengers in 1965?
Were there riots and famine in 1970?

I do admit the graph is a little simplistic, but..

The main difference between the upside and the downside, is a much bigger global population and most importantly 'expectation'. People expect their lives to get better as time goes on, send the whole population back to the 1930's and it's quite possible that anarchy or something close to it would ensue, although it's not a certainty.

Kohoutek

One of the biggest problems I think is that our economic system is based on the idea of infinite growth, but the fact is we're living on a planet with finite resources. The price of energy going up and up is not going to be good for any economy, to put it mildly.