We've Peaked!

So, I've been trying to understand the peak oil crisis a little bit. Here is my extremly limited understanding of what is going on.

At some point - think dinosaurs - there was a time of very warm temperatures on earth. Certain bacteria flourished and caused the earth surface to crack and seperate (into continents) and the spaces flooded with oceans. As the land fell to the bottom of the ocean it covered over this very hot bacteria which turned into oil.  (Please don't try to teach these words in science class, I'm sure much of it is wrong!)

Anyway - we come along and figure out how to get this oil and how to use this oil. Hooray for the industrial revolution!

But here's the catch: there is a limited supply of oil and the light easy to access and easy to refine oil lives at the top of the oil deposits and the stuff underneath it is heavier, sludgier, harder to extract and harder to refine.

So there is an equation for oil known as EROI which is energy return for energy invested. So it measures how much energy you must expend to get the oil, and how much energy that retrieved oil will generate. So at some point the EROI for oil was something like 1 - 100. It took one barrel of energy to get 100 barrels of energy out. Peak refers to the best EROI for getting the oil. After you hit that peak your EROI begins to decline, so maybe now it would take 1 barrel of energy to get 10 barrels of energy.

Okay - so now we get what the peak oil is. Here is the new question: When do we/did we peak and how long after peak can we continue to use oil in the ways we have been or at all?

This is where there is much debating. It seems that everyone in the know - scientists, politicians, economists, etc - agree's about there being a peak, they even seem to agree about what happens after you peak, they just don't seem to agree on timeline. Many believe the worlds oil has already peaked and we are on our way down, others believe the peak hasn't quite happened yet.

A huge aspect of these debates rests on economics. From what I understand, a capitalist economy is based on growth. I guess we are supposed to expect, or need about 3% growth per year, or something like that. Everything in our country is reliant upon oil - I mean really almost everything! Even our farming. So if we've peaked and we begin to have to dig deeper and deeper for oil and the oil we get is harder and harder to pull up and harder and harder to clean, then oil prices will start going up - obvi.

If oil prices go up - we suddenly can not afford to buy things - or afford to drive ourselves to the places to buy things. If a farmer has to pay more for the oil he uses in his machines and in his fertilizer to farm his land and grow our food, then he has to raise his prices. If the trucker who picks it up has to pay more to run his rig, then he also has to raise his prices. If we have to pay more to run our cars, by the time we drive to the store to purchase that piece of food that came from that farm on that truck - the price will be astronomical.

Okay, so no one can afford to buy anything so no one can afford to make or import anything, so our economy begins to collapse. I mean real collapse. People fighting in the streets for gas or food
collapse.

So you can imagine that there would be many people who would not want to accept that this is what is happening and even more people who do not want to let the public at large think that this is what is happening because they don't want panic and mayhem in the streets. But if you do any research at all - you will see that no one can fully deny that this is where things are going right now, they only differ on timelines.

So Peak oil is part of why I want to homestead. I'll let you absorb my long kindergarten ramble and talk more in my next blog.