On Thu, 29 May 2008 16:21:15 -0600, william <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Alec Wood wrote:
>> This requires you to believe the Peak Oil Myth, Because without it they  
>> couldn't get away charging $5.00 a gallon for gas.
>> There is enough oil for about another 200 years.
No.  Every large field in the world is in decline.  The ANWAR in its most
optimistic total capacity could provide the U.S. less than one year of its  
current
petroleum use.  Then it's gone. (At the low end of gov. estimates, it  
could provide our
needs for no more than 3 months.)

The oil shale and oil sands take huge amounts of energy to extract and  
refine,
and that's either petroleum or natural gas energy (also peaking).  If it  
takes more than a gallon of petroleum to extract and sell a gallon of  
petroleum, you are not really getting ahead.  Of course, the same is true  
for ethanol, where it takes at least a gallon of petroleum to produce a  
gallon of ethanol.  Doesn't make sense except that the taxpayer is  
subsidizing the process, so plenty of money is being made along the way.   
But no way does this reduce our reliance on imported oil.  The ONLY way to
reduce our reliance on imported oil is to use less of it.

> There is also the story that oil is not a fossil fuel, but rather a  
> product of geological process; if true, we will never run out of it.
We can politely call that story a "fairy tale".  If this was true, the oil  
fields would
not be in decline, they'd be topping themselves up even as we speak.  Why  
would we buy
expensive oil from unfriendly countries if we had an infinite,  
ever-restoring process always filling up our wells?

The myths of 200 years of oil, and perpetual oil, are being foisted onto a  
gullible
public by about 40 "research groups" funded in part or in total by Exxon.  
You
can either start getting yourselves ready for a lower-energy lifestyle, or  
you can keep getting blind-sided by soaring costs for transportation,  
heating, electricity, food, and everything else that you buy.

For more details and references on this subject, you can start with
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
There are a boatload of other very well-researched sites out there.

Apologies for being off-topic.  On the original topic, yes, feedlot beef  
will soon be too expensive except for the very wealthy; the rest of us  
will have to "settle for"
grass-fed meat. Conventional agriculture will be too costly; we'll have to  
eat (shudder) organic food.  Whatever we eat, it will be mostly local  
food, in season.  Sunflower seeds from China and strawberries from  
Argentina will be too expensive.
Want to eat like stone-age people? Just wait... you'll get your chance.

	Lynnet