Is The End Near?

True, but you can't disregard the number of gigantic poseur SUV (Sub-Urban-Vehicles) clogging the roads and chuggin' down the gas at a rate of 11-12 MPG, and that's being generous. I'm actually surprised that we have not run out yet! I was in car sales before coming back to school, and NO, the MPG stickers on the windows are NOT accurate. Well, they could be, if you mostly coasted, and put an egg on the accelerator. Stop and go city traffic, merging onto the highways, quick starts and stops, improperly inflated tires, etc. will lead to a realistic 3-5 MPG drop from what is listed.

We need to be far more European or Japanese with our vehicle concerns (small, efficient hatchbacks and wagons, microcars, electric/fuel cells, hybrids, small displacement/turbo, rotary or diesel engines)and less Texan (pick'em up trucks, large SUV's, giant early 80's domestic land barges, etc.)

Mike

Moira, who are these "independent scientists," and where have they published their findings?

Students who have had me for journalism or freshman comp know that I'm a stickler for accuracy when it comes to citing the source of statistics.... and they know that statistics posted on "ilovepuppies.org" are going to be biased in favor of puppies.

Since unsourced statistics aren't proof, there is nothing (yet) to disprove -- but, in the interest of introducing alternatives and encouraging exploration, I can offer a suggestion or two.

I did a quick search and didn't immediately find any concrete answers.... but I'm at home on a slow modem, so I gave up more easily than I would have if I were connected.

There have been apocalyptic predictions of mass starvation and economic collapse before, most notably in the book The Population Bomb. There haven't been food riots in American cities, and in fact western civilization is dying of obesity rather than starvation.

An article reprinted on the website "junkscience.com" offers the opinion that technology and economics will soften the impact of the depletion of oil reserves... in short, as oil gets scarcer, corporations invest more money into creating better technology to continue extracting oil.

http://www.junkscience.com/news/fumento.htm

If the cost of finding oil exceeds the profits that can be made by selling oil, then corporations will be motivated to pour huge research dollars into alternative energy.

And that's the key -- western civilization is so dependent on oil that we will all probably pay a lot more than we pay now for the necessities.

I recognize my own technophiliac tendencies may prepare me to accept a solution that suggests human intelligence and tool-building will help us prevent the kind of crisis the ecological doomsayers predict.

For example, for a while it looked like we were running out of copper -- we needed so much of it for telephone and electrical wiring. But the communications industry learned that fiber optics -- glass, made out of sand -- was actually superior technology. That reduced the demand for copper, at least in that particular industry.

On a social level, I agree that overconsumption and global greed are bad. Dire predictions attract attention and they spark people to action, but on an intellectual level, I would prefer to be convinced by peer-reviewed evidence. If such evidence is available, I'm surprised that the many activist and ecological groups whose pages I've just looked through aren't citing it.

If it weren't almost 2am, I'd do an EBSCOhost search and report on the results...

Anyway, the NMJ site has been looking a bit empty lately, so thanks for yet another thought-provoking post.