Peak Oil and what it means

I love Permies.com and I identified with a lot of the ideas here long before I ever found the site, however it was a subject that has not been mentioned in any permies forum that I could find, that encouraged me to join this community. Peak oil is not just a political idea, it's the scientific fact that fossil fuel extraction rates have peaked and are beginning to decline. Sad but true, the world as a whole is addicted to fossil fuels and there is no other energy source that will meet the expectations of a way of life most people have grown accustomed to. Permies isn't dedicated to post government collapse prep and weapons stockpiling, but it is focused on living a more sustainable life which will not be negotiable in the future as oil prices rise, and the economy slides deeper into depression.

I didn't mean for this to be a "up on a soapbox" sort of post, but I just wanted to share some good resources for information about this stuff, especially since oil companies, politicians, and even some media outlets seem to be blowing a smokescreen around the issue and making claims that just aren't substantiated.

Books:
The End of Growth by Richard Heinburg is probably the best book out currently on the subject, and he updated it to make it current up to 2011. It can be a bit of a difficult read, he's an economist and he references several dozen scientific studies.

The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunsler is a very interesting read, the author is much more of a cynic than Heinburg, but instead of focusing on substantiating his claims he goes into more detail of what the world is going to look like once the party is over with oil and it is too expensive for most everyone.

There are many more, but I'll leave those for personal discovery or upon request

Website
http://www.postcarbon.org/ a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to educating people about energy and our dependence on fossil fuels. They have a Youtube channel you should definitely check out, I'll try to attach one of their videos.

The Transition movement:

http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

http://transitionvoice.com/

http://transitionculture.org/

or not.

Thomas Gold has postulated that oil is made by archeabacteria in the crust and lower mantle.

There is only one paper published that says he is wrong, and it isn't very convincing, compared to the amounts of bacteria they are finding in deep mines nowadays.

Most deep wells are slowly refilling. They say it is from crack leakage, but if there was crack leakage, then there wouldn't be any Nat gas down there with it....

Looks like he may be correct about Mars being an ice planet with mud volcanoes too......

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/gold_pr.html


The post oil world is going to be alot easier transfer because of the Brillioun Energy boiler, so not as distressing as first thought.
Kinda cool we are going back to the steam age....

Earthquakes in Youngstown blamed on fracking waste

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/01/earthquakes_in_youngstown_blam.html

Bryan: Thank you for bringing up this important topic.

Morgan: The process by which fossile fuels is made takes time. Since our rate of use is accelerating it doesn't really matter how it is made, we are using it many times faster than it is being produced by the earth.

Here's a couple videos that can help explain the problem better than I can.





If you haven't seen this before, I'm sorry. But this is WHY Permaculture is the most important work going on in the world right now.