I'm always a little surprised by people who know a thing or two about peak oil stating that it is now. One of the features of peak is that you can't actually know it's arrived until you are a number of years past it. I will agree that it is most likely sooner (0-10 years) rather than later (10+ years), but there are too many variable for anyone to know for certain.

Well if we have not hit peak now where will extra oil production come from
saudi- who knows they dont say, I wonder why
Mexico- post peak
north sea- post peak
iraq - war/soon to break into 3 new countries
kuwait- post peak
Russia- peak soon
USA- post peak since 1970s
iran- peak soon
Venezuela- might be able to increase but Chavez needs and likes a high price
When was the last giant oil field found
Why do you think the US goverment created the SPR
So where will the oil come from and please dont say ethanol biodiesel or oil shale untill you do some reading about EROI
So please tell me where the extra oil is
I think we have hit the peak and are now in the plateau, how long the plateau is who knows

The solution may already exist. Current European cars use 50% less fuel than those in USA and Canada. At $6+ a gallon, gas and diesel fuel price may have something to do with it.

Many will say that doubling gas price will not change our addiction to oil. We will just get use to $6+ a gallon and keep on driving our gas guzzlers.

Canada has just started to apply $4000 penalties on gas guzzlers (famous pick-ups excluded) purchase and up to $4000 credits on the purchase of high mpg hybrids and equivalent. Time will tell if this is enough to change our attitude. The penalty and credit may have to be raised to $6000+.

Here is a good commentary on Detroit's true attitude to increasing fuel economy:

"... Likewise, people buy what they see... I work in an industry where I have to monitor how big the picture of an item is to balance its profitability in sales. The things with the biggest pictures outperform the ones with smaller pictures over 90% of the time. So, if an auto industry magnate really wanted to grab the bull by the horns, a hybrid/electric-type car could be very successful in the market place if advertised with the punch and quantity that the truck and SUV ads have. At least to a greater degree than they are selling now.

Merchants can create the market.

I just went to the GMC website to search for price comparisons. I clicked on "Shop by body type". The page that loads shows a 4 door "Yukon XL Denali" --

1) Yukon the sparsest and most rough terrain in north america,
2) XL "Extra Large",
3) Denali= the park/mountain range that is home to the Highest mountain in North America.

One name is not enough?

If I choose to shop by brand, the first picture I see is the new "Hummer H3" in front of both mail boxes, (signifying” home") and a mountainous landscape vista with rough shrubs and rocks (signifying the vast, untamed wilderness). Luckily the Hummer can tackle BOTH for the .5% of Americans who live in a remote enough area to need one.

Shop by Price? The Saturn Vue! The mini-SUV... same mountainous back drop, just this time with a lake in front of it. The Vue is for us "sporty" types who like to burn fuel!

Shop by model... the Pontiac Torrent, zooming around a bend on an on/off ramp. This is the city person's SUV, the speedy, zippy, yet tough and powerful looking SUV, perfect for cornering that rough and tumble City pavement!

Of the cars that get up to 33 MPG (highway), they range from $13,000-$25,000. The big Hummers? $53,000 to $58,000. Fuel Economy listed as "N/A". I guess they just haven't finished their studies yet.

Bottom line? GM and other car makers WANT to sell their SUVs and trucks because they cost more, and keep their oil partners in business. Besides, it's EASIER! We still have trillions of gallons of oil yet to waste, and a space station to go live on when the earth becomes uninhabitable, right? If they would band together to develop technology and products that are helpful to the economy, helpful to the environment, and helpful to consumers, they would still sell alot of product and everyone would be happy. ...."

Bottom line? GM and other car makers WANT to sell their SUVs and trucks because they cost more, and keep their oil partners in business.

Have you looked at the profit margins on those expensive SUVs vs. the smaller cars? The SUVs cost more and they make far more profit. The legacy costs are a much smaller portion of the overall cost of a $60k SUV.

If their small cars were just as profitable, they'd be making a lot more of them. But they can't make much money, if any, on Cobalts and Ions. It has nothing to do with "keeping their oil partners in business". It's all about the effect of legacy costs on profit margins, which on a Cobalt amount to well over 10% of the cost of the vehicle.

I just read an article that Ford has basically mortgaged the entire company on restructuring and new product lines. Literally. Even their logo is collateral. Desperate times and desperate measures... If they make the wrong choices, say goodbye.

anti-grav: My point is that your statement "I think we have hit the peak" is more accurate than your original statement "peak is now". Your list takes the most pessimistic view of every region listed (you left out the Caspian region and Canada). Yes, I know what EROI is. The bottom line is: we know it's comming, we know that there are many factors at play (geological, economic and political) and lastly the only way to accurately identify peak is in hindsight. I may be splitting hairs but credibility is lost every time someone makes another hard prediction that gets proved incorrect (e.g. club of Rome)

Neil i know what you mean if someone says we have hti peak oil and it turns out to be false they look like the boy why cried wolf, and yes it is true we can only be 100% sure years after the event
However in 1956 M K Hubert predicted peak oil in the US by 1970, people said he was mad
the only way to know when the peak will hit is if we had free access to saudi data which they will not give us, i wonder why
Using the information we do have most people think the saudis have hit peak now or will very soon, If that is true then the peak is here
The caspian region was believed to have oil reserves as large as the middle east we now know this is not true
Canada i dont think so

Title III provides billions of dollars to subsidize of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle markets.

Is this the optimal use of such funds relative to the ostensible goal of energy independence?
No.

Have all the alternatives been properly considered to see what the best shots are and the probabliities thereof?
No.

Why?
it would hinder politicians ability to wheel & deal and/or solicit campaign contributions.

Gas really isn't expensive at the pump in the US because it is subsidized elsewhere. Canada's gas guzzler tax is a good price signal. How does Canada divvy up the revenue?

Is our 'OIL ADDICTION' in reality just another induced 'BIG IS MORE BEAUTIFUL' addiction?

This may explain why we fancy and enjoy huge 4 x 4, huge pick-up trucks, huge SUVs, huge cars, huge BBQs, huge refrigerators, ALL you can eat restaurants, huge burgers, huge everything... even our 2M, 120+Kg progeniture.

Our energy and oil over consumption may be a secondary or side effect of another basic induced addiction. Wouldn't it be wiser and more beneficial to work on the source of the problem?

A similar example was trying to cure lung cancer instead of eliminating the real causes, i.e. smoking and polluted air. Tne many $$ billions spent to treat and trying to cure lung cancer (while the majority was smoking) was a waste of resourses.

Who convinced us we need a Hummer or a huge 3+ Tons 4 x 4 to drive to work or take the kids to school? That is one of the (false) conviction we have to change. Going from huge 2 - 3 tons vehicles to 1 - 2 ton units would reduce gas consumption by more than 50%. More efficient hybrids could do another 50%.

The lessons of the past should show the way of the future. Raise the price of fuel and people will demand and buy more fuel efficent vehicles. The Japanese got their real foot hold in NA during the 70's fuel crunch because the offered fuel efficent vehicles and Detroit ended up scrambling to put out offerings of their own. Look at the dip in SUV sales after Katrina. Nuff said, tax the gas.

Let me summarize. In America, bigger is better, more is better, even bigger and even more is even better. This logic also apparently applies to the size of our bellies. We have evolved to fit the size of our cars. Now it will be very difficult to evolve back to a size that would fit more appropriately scaled cars.

Is is just me, or do we all live in a time warp. Where I live, I see very little change, people are continuing to buy brand new monster trucks and monster SUVs. As if nothing has happened or will happen to change behavior. When TSHTF, we will hear pleas to make it easy on all those who are making their inappropriate consumer choices right now. We will be told to make special provisions for the poor who are making bad choices right now. We will be told about the legacy costs of all those ovesize vehicles on the road right now. But we are contributing to our future problems right now.

It is said that those who own Priuses may not emit a lot of pollution, but they emit what is coined as smug. I admit it. When the TSHTF, I will be unable to prohibit my smug emissions.

I am basically a liberal, but in this area I feel like a conservative. When the TSHTF, those who have made the wrong choices will be bailed out by the government. Essentially, we as a society have decided that no one has to suffer the consequences of their own bad choices. Ignorance of the law and ignorance of reality is, in fact, considered a reasonable excuse.

tom,

You sound more like libertian than liberal or conservative.

Great post. I agree 100 percent. Let people lie in the beds the make.

Scott

A wood block to improve gas mileage is a good point. What we have between the ears is most often hard to change. Our government is specifically aware of the technoloies I mentioned available now to improve mileage by 50% to 100%. Future technology we have, and the govt is aware of, has in testing done even better. Waiting 20 or 30 years to achieve something we have now definately smacks of suppression. you will soon hear about it. Keep your ears and brain open.

Ford has mortgaged their future. With new products like the Flex (Fairlane) large crossover SUV being shown, they are not indicating that they get it at all! This seems to be in the same catagory as the Chrysler Pacifica which may be discontinued soon. Ford can not afford to try to hit moving targets and keep missing by such a wide margin. When it is down to the wire, every move you make and every dollar you spend better be right on target, or get ready to go out of business.

When energy prices began to climb in 2001, Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, was asked whether the president was considering a campaign to urge Americans to conserve energy.

"That's a big no," Fleischer said. "The president believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country."

Ari Fleischer was apparently not aware of the fact that oil production in the U.S. peaked in the 1970s. Was his boss, an oil man, aware of that? What Ari Fleisher meant to say was that we have an abundance of resources in places like Iraq, which we are invading to ensure that those resources are available for our nonnegotiable way of life.

Our attitude that the American way of life trumps all other considerations is one of the primary reasons we are hated so intensely throughout the world.

I once heard a quote that went something like "Big powers don't have freinds, they have interests" People in Canada are very much aware of that truth. Softwood lumber comes to mind.

Cervus, you are quite right, Automakers like to push the big, brute vehicles because they cost the most and give the highest profit. This is a serious problem, if we want to improve fuel economy. My suggestion, have a sliding scale fuel guzzler/economizer tax/credit that consumer vehicles that use more than average energy (CO2?) per mile, pay a tax that is returned equally as a credit to vehicles that use less than average energy per mile. This would offset the incentive of automakers to sell their Hummers.

Make no mistake though, there is more going on here than meets the eye. The fact is GM had the Volt concept fully developed 9 years ago and suspiciously buried it. Another way to make a high profit margin is to produce a unique niche market vehicle, as the Tesla is. The simple fact is GM could easily made a series hybrid EV, that blows away the competition in fuel efficiency, silent operation, all wheel drive, zero turning radius, reliability, acceleration and emissions. It would be expensive but that is how you start selling new technology, to the richies who have money to burn, and want something different. Instead the NiMH batteries that would have enabled this GM transformation were secretly buried, sold to Chevron, and GM joined Big Oil in the Hydrogen Fuel Cell pretend vehicle scam.

How about telling people if you really dislike the Muslim world, and think them our enemies - do not buy big cars and trucks that finance them.

If any of you conspiracy buffs think that GM or any maker wouldn't love to have a 200 MPG car that they could sell, You are absolutely insane.

GM could charge big bucks and make tremendous profits if they or anyone else knew how to do this.

Go on, keep talking to yourselves about conspiracies and suppressed 100MPG carburetors, and all the other "urban myth" nonsense that you want.

The world will pass you by and convert to electric ground transport without any of your help. On second thought, if you believe any of their nonsense you couldn't/wouldn't contribute anything worth wile anyways,except get in the way or vote for dunderhead ed politicians that get in the way.