vtsnowedin wrote:So I should ride a bike to work in January in VT or at least the seven miles to the nearest rail line. (Valleys flat enough for railroad max grades are rare here)? I will start to do this when A. the price of gas gets to $25/gal from gas tax increases or B. The government confiscates all automobiles after declaring martial law. or C. When hell freezes over.
There is a lot of work that should be done to upgrade the rail system. Its amazing how few miles of double track there are nationwide. But they will have to do a lot more than that to deal with Peak Oil.
Or just take an HEV, a PHEV, or a BEV to work, and relax, even if the price of crude or the environmental laws get to where you can't afford to or aren't allowed to burn it? Wouldn't that be a lot simpler and involve a lot less arm waving?
Just assuming that "peak oil" means we have to plaster rail lines (and lots more) all over the place seems rather presumptuous, especially given that peak oil will most likely be from peak DEMAND, as motor transport moves towards electrification. If the price of oil pushes that more quickly, all the better.
Gasoline has been averaging around $2.50ish, near enough, in the US overall, this year. And the price of WTI has been averaging in the $50's, eyeballing the chart.
How in the WORLD is the price of crude going to get sustainably over $500 a barrel, forcing the price of gasoline to $25 or more? (Taxes don't have to increase, and electric technology means transport wouldn't scale at 10X, etc. so it would actually take a crude price more like $750 or so, I expect).
Given we KNOW that society will adapt to shortages and we NOW have the means to move to electric transport as the economics make sense -- the idea that we'll just sit around and whine while crude zooms to 10X+ its current price in the next decade or three makes NO sense at all.
At least not in the real world, with all the known oil resources, and all those that will become economic (and more to be found) if the price of oil gets to $150 for years, MUCH LESS $500 or more.
Seriously, give it up. Unless there is some sort of ELE (extinction level event), where having enough oil resources on earth is a moot point -- the whole "Mad Max" vision of the world from oil "running out" just doesn't make a lot of sense for MANY, MANY decades, at a minimum. (Oh sure, maybe in hundreds of years, they're fighting over the remaining oil for petrochemicals, though unlike doomers, I believe in society adapting to shortages re things like innovation and substitution -- same as it has since, say, the industrial revolution.)
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.