Even if Oil hasn't yet peaked it will , and probably before 2010. That's the suppply side.The demand side is going higher and higher with world economic growth. This can only mean one thing , much higher prices unless we are hit by a serious recession or worse causing a contraction in the economy of ourselves or China , the biggest consumers of oil. Goldman Sachs has a projection of $95 a barrel by the end of this year.

Wheat also seems to have hit a peak in production. This is very serious to the world''s food supply. Already we see skyrocketing food pricees in Asia. For food prices this is a double whammy.Most agriculture is very oil intensive . Planting , spraying , fertilizing , harvesting , transport to processors , to production to wharehouses and to market.

What we will see is more and more of people's income going to food and fuel. Other goods will also inflate in price causing consumer demand for items besides food and fuel to suffer from falling sales.

This cycle of falling demand for goods other than food and fuel will never end because oil will keep falling in production causing increasingly widespread economic dislocation. Eventually a new economy will emerge , but the pain and loss will be stagggering.

Our current economic position is perilous. With the fallout of peak oil many families and companies will go bankrupt creating a debt crisis that will swamp financial firms taking down all but the strongest institutions. The debt pyramid will crash.

Read this for very cogent take on our world today :"We Are In A Bad Fix" By Mathew Maavak

http://www.countercurrents.org/maavak091007.htm

Have a nice day ...

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Oil production goes up and down depending on a lot of different things, almost all of which have nothing to do with the amount of oil in the ground. But oil companies make money whether a barrel of oil is eight dollars or eighty. 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. One might even suspect that one of the reasons for destroying the country formerly known as Iraq was to take its subtantial oil production offline.

My grandfather gave my mother and my aunts and uncles the mineral rights to a piece of property in Mississippi back in 1948. The oil company capped that well for fifty years. Now they're pumping lots of oil out of it.

The world has to get off of oil because we are heating our planet to death, but we're not running out of oil. It's all over the place.

The real issue with peak oil is how chaotic the transition will be? The bright side is: we are already transitioning to a post-carbon economy. Renewable energy, recycling, sustainable agriculture (ie: the type of agriculture that is NOT as energy-intensive), mass transportation, AND the internet. The key to the transition is our increased ability to find inefficiencies across all systems, thanks to information technology... The greatest venture capitalists are already all over this, and so are Silicon Valley's best and brightest, so I don't think it will be nearly as cataclysmic as people believe it will be.

Perhaps I'm too much of a trekkie about this, but history tells us that doom has been repeatedly postponed in the past century (I mean, think of the 'population bomb' and pop-apocalyptic frenzies of that sort). It will be ugly, it will be messy, and we're certainly not helping ourselves right now, but in the end the human race will prevail.

Peak Oil hit the continental US in 1970 and production has been seriously declining ever since. And so goes the world now or within 3 years ...

Read about peak oil :http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

After all , oil is a finite resourse ...

Robert Kutttner said this :

"There are no short-term substitutes for gas and oil. When demand exceeds available supply, as we learned during the two oil crises of the 1970s, prices spike - with devastating effects on the rest of the economy. That crisis was contrived by the oil cartel. The coming oil crisis will be real."

"with devastating effects on the rest of the economy."

get ready my friend ...

Where Embraer produces turboprop planes that run on sugarcane ethanol, and are used for spraying. Electric vehicles (trains, hybrid cars, buses) will be adopted en masse when gas hits $7/gallon. Hell I think it will be a good thing in some respects: we'll produce more of our food locally, we'll probably quit beef and corn-based additives, we'll use buses and light rails. And blimps for air transport. I don't know, it might even be pleasant.

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.

It doesn't matter if oil production has peaked. I don't see electric cars, mass transit that is faster than cars and has greater flexibility, conversion of thousands of acres into farmland and, enough money to pay for people to work on the farm. We have none of the infrastructure staged to make a any transition let alone a radical transition. There doesn't seem to be the mindset which says it's okay to ship something that is less than perfect now if you can plug in new components a few years down the road that make it better. Why wait for lithium batteries that don't explode and burn when you can run on nickel metal hydride today. Design the cars so that you can swap out the lower capacity batteries for higher capacity ones. Let people get 10 years out of their car (like I do today) but makes some of the major components replaceable with better/higher capacity components.

a positive example of this is the work replacing part of a two stroke motor, changing how it operates, making it more fuel efficient and significantly less polluting. While it would be better to force everyone to go to a four stroke motor, it isn't going to happen. The people who run two-stroke motors can't afford it but with grants, the cost of the upgrade is put within their reach making their motorcycles, scooters, runabouts pollute less on less gasoline resulting in cleaner air over Southeast Asia.

we seem to have no way of limiting the damage from people who cry "not in my backyard" when it comes to major energy projects like the wind farms offshore. If they don't want the energy project, then as a group, they should reduce their energy consumption to offset the energy that would have been produced. Alternatively, offer them a buyout offer on the property and demolish the house to eliminate any future complainers.

we have no will to do simple things like ban incandescent light bulbs, appliances that really turn off when you hit the off button, reducing intensity and amount of outdoor lighting, and computers that consume less power when they are idle

But no, it doesn't matter. We could change, but there is no cultural or economic imperative to make this change and make it quickly. We have posturing by large companies and politicians and I'm sure those happy noises and stay with us as people start demolishing suburban houses for their sheets of particle board as they build slums around the urban cores when the oil finally does run out.

I would like to be more positive but the smart people that can build what we need are denied the capital necessary to make green replacements for our energy consuming appliances. These replacements would help us make those incremental footsteps to a greener future. Until we can shake loose the corporations protecting their earnings by living in the past, I don't have much hope.