There's been a very extensive degree of discussion on this back at SD.net that I'm drawing from. Suffice to say that the majority of reputable sources agree on a 2011 - 2012 peak, and we'll probably have ten years, maybe rather longer, of a "plateau" before a fairly rapid fall-off (because the plateau will be artificially sustained through methods which extremely rapidly deplete the oil fields like water injection). About 40% of economic activity--agricultural and transportation--relies on oil for energy, and though we'll have excess energy (only 30% of our total energy consumption comes from oil) when we lose that, we'll have to transfer that capacity to providing oil alternatives, while all remaining oil and substitutes are used for basic emergency operation of things like trains and barge traffic until we can electrify the tracks, build nuclear-powered vessels and fuel-cell operated brown water tugs, etc.Comrade Tortoise wrote:Where are you getting your information Marina?
As a result of this the service sector of the economy will entirely collapse, but that will free up resources to keep the population fed and industry working, even expanding in some places to meet the demand for offsets. A large number of mass transport projects and projects to increase electrical production will have to be completed in no small part with hand labour of all the people laid off from the virtually collapsed service industry, and the rest of them (along with plenty of Mexicans) will end as manual farm workers.
Recovery procedures will take about 20 years of hardship to fully implement, but many of them will involve things like relying on highly polluting coal, which means we will see more severe global warming and have to suffer even more to counteract that as well, by eliminating essentially all pollutants with continued expansion of nuclear, geothermal, and hydro power sources (and what renewables as prove genuinely useful). In addition to that, we'll have to do things like convert the old oil pipeline network for transportation of water for irrigation from very large desalination plants built on the coast, and alter our whole farming pattens (with the virtual elimination of meat from the diet, returning to a medieval pattern of meat consumption) to deal with loss of arable land and to allow the soil to rest so we don't lose even more from soil depletion, and also such things as the construction of truly massive dykes and flood containment works to deal with rising seawater and more intense storm activity.
In total the whole process will take at least 40 years, and if global warming proves worse, or the reaction to peak oil slower, it could be fifty; if both is the case, easily sixty years before we return to standards of living even approaching those we previously had and a pattern of upward growth. It will easily be another twenty years after that before we have any kind of large-scale electric car ownership, which will be a shallow imitation of our existing usage patterns and more resemble those of a European country, which most travel taking place by rail, and short-distance travel by the extensive mass transit systems which will be built up over the duration of the crisis and recovery.
Yes, I knew Ben should have known OOC, but how did Alvarius know IC? And the way the Archmage emphasized the fact that he knew the assassin's true identity should have freaked him out --after all, the secret identity is the key of his survival.
:thumbsup
