There is a 59 minute-old headline at Yahoo! News Home Page as I write this - peak oil is indeed hitting the mainstream news!! It was written by by MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer, and I think he did an excellent overview.

Here's a link to the story, because I don't know how long it will stay on the "front page" of "Yahoo! News"

Experts: Petroleum May Be Nearing a Peak

It's going to be a very interesting summer if the discussion of peak oil hits other mainstream news media - especially CNN, Fox, or the front pages of the major newspapers. Once one media major gets a hot story going, the others will jump on it like flies on dung.

Dave

This is a big development.

When I looked on Google News, more than 76 news organizations had put a version of this story online.

Forbes, Newsday (NY), NY Times, SF Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, LA Times, ABC News, and CBS News were among those that carried the story.

Energy Bulletin has an archive copy of the story:
http://energybulletin.net/6383.html .

A week ago, the Canada Globe and Mail (the big paper in Canada) started a week series on the oil crunch, with several stories per day. Now we have a fairly good summary of Peak Oil running in many of the important U.S. newspapers.

Step-by-step, we're on our way.

I think the people in the know already realize that we are at or very near peak oil.

I know in Pennsylvania many older coal mines are being reopened on a very large scale. Plus other mines are getting huge infusions of new capital to increase production.

This type of investment hasn't been seen since the 70's.

Consol Energy in the suburbs of Pittsburgh just announced they are investing $500 million dollars to increase capacity at one of it's mines. The investment will make the coal mine in South Western Pennsylvania the nations largest underground mine. It will produce over 17 million tons of coal per year.

If these companies didn't have very good information that the price of coal will remain high for the forseeable future, they wouldn't bother investing the millions that it takes to bring a mine on-line.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05148/512077.stm

Once PO becomes mainstream & everybody is aware...i give the stock market about 15 minutes...maybe less.

Dow: 37
Nasdaq: 2
S&P: 0

Once this becomes mainstream, my concern is that a degree of panic will set in. Markets will get even more jittery than normal. One thing will lead to another and the downwards spiral will start. As soon as panic hits, almost anything can and will happen.

From a pureley selfish reason, I hope it doesn't cause panic just yet - I AM NOT READY!!!!

LOL. the 2 nasdaq points will be solar panel manufacturers.

Good article.

Ron is such an optomist

Does anyone remember why its called wall street?

The barbarians are at the gate, on the gate and behind the gate

After reading some of the messages posted at the Yahoo News message board on Peak Oil, one gets the impression that it's all the liberals' fault.

Denial is running rampant on that message board too.

Those with the strongest opinions against the Peak Oil theory are beyond saving or convincing.

In a way, it may be best that the majority stays blissfully ignorant.

They mention that coal liquefaction creates oil at $32 a barrel, far lower than the existing price of oil today. They also say that investors are just waiting to see if oil remains in the $50s, before they dump money into coal liquefaction.

This implies that a cheap alternative to oil (compared to today's prices) already exists, but before we go ahead with it, we have to find out if oil is "really" peaking.

PO is not going to unfold over night. Most likely fuels will just keep getting more expensive over time, a little bit at a time.

Which means that PO will go mainstream. Ppl will talk, worry, and then forget. We will be back to Brad and, who is it Angelina now, in approximately three weeks after PO hits the mainstream.

It will only change the public mood once it is clear that this really constitutes a crisis. When the wars get really ugly, when fuel becomes unaffordable, when the economy seriuosly hurts, when ppl's homes are cold in the winter.

Once it's obvious that it is a clear crisis however, then the public mood may well change quickly.

I'm just not sure a news article and a movie will accomplish that.

T4T.

Geologically no, but economically and psychologically a change from the status que could happen very rapidly.

The Peak Oil discussion on the Yahoo! message board has seen about 1040 messages since May 28th.

The messages themselves give an interesting slice of the current views of the mainstream public.

The awakening and denial continues.

Saw this same article in the buisness section of my local paper today, accompanied with a graph claiming that there is a "95% probability" of the peak occouring in 2026.

I was happy to see the article-but its way to open to random interpretation to make any sort of difference, or even make anyone give a shit.

peakoil in maistream is like global heating in maistream: nobody could care less.
as long as they find gas at the gas station down the street, then the party is far from over.

Mainstream TV, magazine, literature and newspaper media doesn't want people responding to them like the last guy/gal you told about peak oil responded to you: "You're crazy."

Everytime you read a book/article see a news story etc, they play down the consequences or don't talk about them at all. The focus is always on the pump on cable news. People hear/read the material, briefly feel slightly anxious, but the story/article/chapter always ends with some nice warm fuzzy uplifting motivational-poster worthy sentiments about how we will overcome the problems, or will briefly touch on some of the alternatives that are in the works.

There is no way that anybody can get a sense of what petroleum depletion means, what the major players are saying about it, or possible consquences of it without reading a lot of material, and being driven to read that material by a spark of curiosity or a morbid fascination. Without one of those two initial conditions, peak oil awareness can never develope into the genuine concern and passion that is a necessary component of political and social activism.