And like these straight men, John is willing to bargain away other people's rights, out of some irrational belief that this will help gay people.

As opposed to you, who seem to be willing to "bargain away" the rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the irrational belief that this will help the transgendered and transsexual.

After 30 years there are apparently finally enough votes in Congress to pass some kind of rudimentary civil rights legislation for millions of gay, lesbian and bisexual citizens. It would be tragic - not to mention idiotic - to derail this legislation at this late hour over the inclusion of similar protections for the transgendered and transsexual, who apparently weren't even included in this legislation until earlier this year.

In fact, the more expensive oil is the more they make. Take that into account every time someone claims we're running out of oil.

They don't "make" oil - they pump it. Out of the ground. When a given source of oil is gone it's gone. It doesn't matter how high the price goes.

Oil prices skyrocketed in the US in the early '70s, and once again in the early '80s. We didn't suddenly "make" more oil here in the continental US. As has been pointed out, US oil production peaked in the early '70s and it's never recovered, and never will. The same thing appears to have now happened on a global basis. Easily accessible high quality crude is rapidly vanishing globally, in just the way the US started to run out of it in 1973. There are other sources of oil, but they're all frightfully more expensive and of lower quality, and can't maintain the flow of crude into world markets that we have today.

Peak oil doesn't refer to running out of oil in general - it refers to the point when the annual flow of oil out of all sources (in a given region, in a country, or on a global basis) hits its peak. After that it's all downhill baby.

Sorry, but I don't see anybody here selling a Mad Max Scenario. I think what we're looking at far more closely resembles the collapse of the Soviet Union, which also coincidentally (or not) happened right after they hit peak oil. We're talking a prolonged economic depression - how prolonged depends upon a slew of factors.

Sure some places are better equipped to handle skyrocketing oil prices and declining supplies than others - Western Europe is liable to cope far better than the United States, in part because they aren't already in debt up to their eyeballs and have industries which don't revolve around converting farmland into oil-dependent suburban sprawl - but it's not going to be a cakewalk for anybody. As oil becomes scarce, you can bet major consuming nations are going to flex their (remaining) military muscle to secure what supplies they can - that's part of what pushed Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor in WWII.

Why wait for lithium batteries that don't explode and burn when you can run on nickel metal hydride today.

Because they aren't remotely practical for an electric car, unless you're willing to tool around town in a $75,000 golf cart. That might be practical in San Francisco or New York, but it doesn't work so well in the other 99% of America. Other battery technologies:

1) Are still really expensive

2) Can't be deeply discharged or rapidly recharged without damaging them

3) Store only a fraction of the energy gasoline or diesel do in the same volume (let alone for the same weight)

They may be practical in hybrid vehicles, but for all-electric vehicles they just don't add up.

Oh, one more thing - fixed energy installations are pretty much useless when it comes to replacing oil. We use very little oil to generate electricity. What's unique about oil is that it can be cheaply refined into high-energy liquid fuels which are easily transported with virtually no loss. You can't pour electricity into your tank. There are no battery technologies which approach the energy density of gasoline, either by weight or by volume. You cannot transmit electricity without some loss, especially over long distances.

You might be able to replace coal with solar thermal, but it would cost literally trillions to build out the infrastructure. We aren't anywhere close to peak coal, though. There are arguably more pressing priorities.