[getsmart-l] The Peak Oil Crisis: The GAO Report

[23skidoo]

The evidence for an imminent peak is much better than the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) makes out here folks just as many Peak Oil activists have been screaming..

Them G- men might be tuning in now ,but the song remains the same and the music is playing a bit faster than they seem able to dance to.
We've said it before and we might as well say it again...
Best plan for alternatives to oil that are sane, clean and affordable (which therefore excludes nuclear)

Meanwhile on the list of what NOT to do...
Ya gotta hand it to Ex Alberta Premier Ralph Klein. 
Good old Ralph must of left that show on automatic 'upside down' cuz they're now planning to use nuclear to turn the once untouchable tar sands into oil.
Why depend on one horse with no game when real fools can afford two?

He should have thanked them Green Peace activists who politely put solar panels on his house to turn his lights on sort to speak - to point a way out, but instead he had them charged with mischief?!

Most of us are going to face the reality of Peak Oil the hard way it seems because as usual our system of governance is only capable of knee jerk reactionary remedies and sadly still prone to blindly accepting the disinformation from its very own wise guys who've turned out to be mere dupes of high priced corporate lobbyists.

Film at 11:00
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http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1088&It... 

      The Peak Oil Crisis: The GAO Report 
      By Tom Whipple 
      Thursday, 05 April 2007 


      Last week the Government Accountability Office released its long-awaited 
report on peak oil. This report is clearly a milestone on our journey through 
the oil age for it is the first time the staff of a major government agency 
has looked at the issue and concluded that peak oil is real and, if it occurs 
soon, could cause a world-wide recession. Even more notable is that the 
Departments of Energy and Interior generally agreed with the conclusions. 


      There is little in the report those following the peak oil story do not 
already know: 


        a.. The US, as the worlds biggest consumer of oil, is the most 
vulnerable to the consequences of peaking; 
        b.. Sixty percent of the worlds oil reserves now are controlled by 
unstable countries; 
        c.. At best, the US could only hope to replace about 4 percent of its 
liquid fuel consumption with alternatives by 2015; 
        d.. A hydrogen-based economy is not in the immediate cards; 
        e.. And, most importantly, the US government had better get its act 
together soon to do something about all this. 
      Now we all know that the key question about peak oil is when will it 
happen, and its corollary, when will the economic troubles begin? For those 
of you who understand American football, the GAO simply punted by concluding 
that peak production come anywhere between now and 2040 thereby removing any 
sense of urgency from the issue. If it comes soon, peak oil could have serious 
consequences. If it comes later, things might not be so bad. 


      By adopting this rather ingenious position, the GAO staff saved 
themselves a lot of grief and a lot of controversy, but got everybody on board 
 the Departments of Energy and Interior, the EIA, the IAE, and maybe even 
ExxonMobil and its anti-peak oil friends over at Cambridge Energy Research. 


      Judging from the blogs, most people following and writing about peak oil 
are outraged at the preposterous judgment that the most that can be said about 
the timing of peak oil is sometime in the next 33 years. The evidence for an 
imminent peak is much better than the GAO makes out. 


      However, lets turn the story around for a minute. Suppose the GAO staff 
really had studied and debated the evidence and concluded, as others have, 
that world oil production has already plateaued if not peaked. Suppose, they 
went on to say it is unlikely that world oil production will ever again 
increase significantly and that when you throw in all geopolitical factors 
wars, insurgencies, expropriations, bad governments  the amount of oil 
available for importing countries is likely to drop sharply very soon. 


      If they were in a candid mood, the GAO could have added and by the way, 
kiss any expectations of robust economic growth you might have goodbye. It 
simply is not going to happen for a long, long while. 


      The GAO could make an even bigger splash by convincing the president to 
go on prime time tell the American people that all available evidence leads to 
the conclusion that, soon, gasoline will be too expensive for them to afford. 
They should immediately sell their gas guzzlers, put their over-mortgaged 
houses on the market, stop using credit cards, dump all their stocks, and 
plant a garden. 


      For obvious reasons no president will ever make such a speech. Despite 
quiet preparations for peak oil in many countries around the world, no 
national leader has as yet said anything similar  the consequences are simply 
too unpredictable. 


      For equally obvious reasons, no responsible government agency will ever 
officially conclude that serious economic problems are coming soon for the 
immediate consequences could be needlessly severe. Those who had hoped the GAO 
report would once and for all confirm that peak oil theory was right and that 
world oil production was hovering at the edge of a collapse were bound to be 
disappointed. 


      It is more likely that the world will muddle its way into the era of 
peak oil in much the way it has muddled into global warming. Various segments 
of the population will catch on to the problem at various times amidst much 
fussing, fuming, and denial. 


      Thus, the real dilemma of coping peak oil, for a while at least, is 
really quite simple. If the government should lay out the full ramifications 
of peaking in hopes of rallying the people to make preparations, the most 
immediate consequence is likely to be serious economic setback triggered by an 
unambiguous announcement itself. 


      The alternative is to remain silent. Leave the future a bit murky with 
room for hope. Don't panic anybody into selling assets or husbanding their 
money with talk of an unaffordable future. Talk about reducing dependence of 
foreign oil instead. This carries the implication that the foreign oil will 
always be there in an emergency and that reducing dependence will be a matter 
of patriotic choice not necessity. 


      As no responsible government wants to see economic troubles start any 
sooner than absolutely necessary, there will probably never be a strong, 
clear, unambiguous, widely disseminated report on the timing of peak oil. The 
National Petroleum Council is poised to pronounce on the issue in the next few 
months. It would not be surprising if they come up with a formulation similar 
to the GAOs. If governments have their way, we will stumble into peak oil 
over a period of years during which gasoline prices cycle inexorably upwards 
and various compensating actions are take. 


      So there you have it. The GAO did their job by warning the Congress that 
peak oil might just be a very serious problem very soon, and the DOW is still 
going up. Sometimes government agencies are not that dumb after all! 

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