[davidm]

Originally Posted by JEROLL DA TROLL

Strange how evidence backfires. Just at the time when global oil production is going down, we are supposed to believe that CO2 emissions are increasing and heating up the planet?

CO2 from petroleum is increasing, while actual extraction of petroleum is decreasing?

How does *that* work, pray tell?

I know this is Da Troll, not Da Numb, but it's exactly the dumb "point" he would try to make, so a few things are worth pointing out:

Again, global oil productions does seem to have roughly "peaked," or perhaps the better term is "plateaued" around 2006. Of course, the real "peak oil" is demand outrunning supply. Even if production increases somewhat but can't keep up with demand, you get higher oil prices.

None of this means a hill of beans as far as global warming is concerned, because a lot of the co2 is "in the pipeline" so to speak, its effects only to show up years from now. But the larger point, of course (does this really need to be pointed out?) is that crude oil burning is not the ONLY source of co2. Everybody, now: Can you say

COAL?

EROEI is really important. It's why the liberal dream of an alternative-energy infrastructure is a pipe dream. We're not going to power industrial civilization on switch grass, hydroelectric, solar, wind or nuclear. All of their EROEI relative to fossil fuels is minuscule. More: All of these things depend on a fossil-fuel infrastructure to exist at all. Try to imagine using nuclear plants to make more nuclear plants.

It's probably too late to stop runaway global warming in any case. And because humans keep breeding like brainless rabbits, the growth of population will ensure ever more craving of ever more diminishing resources. All of this, coupled with unstoppable global warming, promises a very bleak century.

Here’s what happens next: Natural climate feedbacks will take over and, on top of our prodigious human-caused carbon emissions, send us over an irreversible tipping point. By 2100, the planet will be hotter than it’s been since the time of the dinosaurs, and everyone who lives in red states will pretty much get the apocalypse they’ve been hoping for. The subtropics will expand northward, the bottom half of the U.S. will turn into an inhospitable desert, and everyone who lives there will be drinking recycled pee and struggling to salvage something from an economy wrecked by the destruction of agriculture, industry, and electrical power production.

At least the Babble-thumpers will get their yearned-for apocalypse, so the news isn't all bad.