This seems not correct yet.  There is enough oil in Texas for the military.  I think it is asymmetrical power over our geopolitical competitors.  We have domestic oil and we do not want them to have as much access to oil.  Make chaos in the Middle East and we become relatively richer than the other guys.  Such will be very good for domestic oil producers.  The gambit is to deny China oil and gas.  Islamic civil war is intentional.  The objective is to remove oil from the market.  Its good for the oil business.  It is good for world domination.

Ethanol and liquid coal are instruments of propaganda for political war support.

The US response to the changing energy equation is messy and wasteful.  No question.  We flail with hydrogen cars, and then flail with corn ethanol.

The only good thing you can say is that we move fast enough on them that we can't ignore the problems in them for too long.

The blush is off hydrogen, I expect the same to happen with corn ethanol (corn hataz rule).

What happens next depends on ... what happens next.

It's funny, I expected $3.50 gas prices here in California and essentially got them, but I'm less sure about next year.  I sense consumer response building, or preparation for response building.  We could get a few flat years.  Or I could be completely wrong ;-).  Having read "Fooled by Randomness" I am not emboldened by the success of my last prediction, nor am I wedded to my current one.

This is already happening. Just imagine what could have been done if the money spent stoking the fire in the Middle East had been used to ramp up mass production of solar, wind, and thermal. Imagine what could still be done with the money yet to be spent stirring up conflict and hatred. The money and fuel burned in the Oil Wars will only increase the threat of future wars and anti-US terrorism. Way to go, Bushco.

a liberal in redsville

Sunflower --

I'm not sure what griffins have to do with it, but I've always loved the images.  On a more serious note, I don't think that Bush and co have the mental capacity to plan for a Middle Eastern civil war.  They are vultures, and they are certainly capable of  taking advantage, just as they took advantage of 9/11.  The oil companies like the idea of peak oil even less than global warming, they are doing quite nicely right now and they don't want to rock the boat.  

Rune --

Thanks for the links (who wrote the first one?), the third link you gave is the famous (or infamous) Hirsch report that everybody who cares about the environment should read.  It was actually suppressed by the Bush administration because it talked about peak oil (as per above, bushies hate the idea), but it outlines all of the awful ways to overcome peak oil that we are hearing about now, such as tar sands and coal to liquids.

I think Michael T. Klare is one of our great scholars, and probably the best writer on the machinations of the U.S. military.  He's concerned about peak oil, which is rare, and he has also tied in other resources (in the book "resource wars"), such as water, so I think he is worth listening to.  He doesn't have to be right on the money each time, nobody does.  But your points about the missing $2.3 trillion from the DOD and the lack of the peace dividend are very important and need more exploration, they are problems I have dealt with myself -- and gets to birdboy's point, which is why in my very first post I suggested we find much of the money for a shift to sustainability in the Pentagon's budget.

Odograph -- There are so many crises and so much complexity going on here (peak oil, global warming, mass extinction, ecosystem destruction) that prediction will be very difficult, but hey, somebody's gotta do it!

Think about those guys who go on financial channels at the start of each year, to call a finishing price for the DOW (or gold or oil).  It has been proven time and time again that their predictions are no better than random guesses.  But two things will happen.  At the end of the year the lucky predictor will be applauded, and at the new year a new round of serious predictions will be made.

It's good TV, it sells ... it sells a lot of things.

The rigorous guy who holds back and makes not prediction is not invited on TV.  He's no fun, and he certainly doesn't help sell anything.  If he's lucky, he'll be the "counterpoint" to predictions in slow parts of the news cycle.

So does somebody gotta do it?  In that same sense, maybe.  We all stop to listen to those DOW predictions even if we know they are crap.  We are fascinated by the future.  Our prefrontal cortex is arguably for fascination with the future.  We want to know ...

Even when there isn't data.  Even when a rational part of our brain should put on the brakes.

I pick option number 4)

Wean ourselves off Oil and shift our transportation to Electricity.

And even if we go with Coal, we're still better off on CO2 emmisions than if we had stuck with Oil.

However we needn't stick with Coal, since Renewable Energy in all of it's forms is used most efficiently for transportation as Electricity.

More or less we can consolidate our Two biggest CO2 problems and solve them more easily.

(With the advantage of solving our third problem as well, which is BioFuels causing an area the size of New Jersey to be deforrested every year in countries like Brazil, and Indonesia)

Electricity, Cars, and Deforrestation.
Solve thoses and we've got it made.

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Oh yeah, and "Energy Independance" and all that jazz.

If the mission is to serve the interests of the growth at any cost, corporate global vision, then more endless war is on the horizon.  

If our mission is to prevent future wars related to energy, resources, ecological collapse, and  mass migrations, then the faster we can lead the world away from oil and coal and a more sustainable vision of the future the more secure we will be.  

We have built our empire on this flow of oil and have sucked the entire globe into the stream via our globalized economy.  It is now the role of our military to attempt to stabilize the world economy to maintain the standing of the US.  Mission impossible.  

Well of course Oil is Renewable.

We just need to wait a couple million years for it to replenish itself.

_

Thats the split we're I'm not particularly fond of "Renewable", even if it is common jargon.

The real thing we should be talking about is "Sustainable"

i.e. Harvesting a resource at a rate which is less than it takes for it to regenerate.

_

That said, all BioFuels are Renewable.
But they aren't Sustainable.

Mainly because we are destroying our topsoil in the process.

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Another particularly scary prospect is that we have 1 big water resivour in the middle of the US called the Ogalala Resivoir.  It's already starting to experience the beginnings of shortages.

Water intensive farming to create biofuels is only going to make it collapse even faster.

If we're importing Natural Gas from Mexico, Canada, and Russia.

And then importing BioFuels from Brazil and other Tropical Regions.

How exactly is that energy independance?

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Isn't that merely "Independance from Muslisms"?

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And even to that extent, we wouldn't even be decreasing our Oil imports at all in even the most rosy growth scenarios.

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So wouldn't that instead merely just be raising our dependance on foreign energy?

"Energy Independance" is largely just a means to push.

Nukes
Coal with Sequestration
Agrofuels

Or basically:

Nuclear Winter
Global Summer
Destroying the Rainforrests, our topsoil, and our clean water resources

All of them being the most costly, most risky, and hardest to enforce policies in their areas.

GreyFlcn "Trust us" ...uhg... One of the main reasons I really don't like Nuclear.

Could you please clarify your comment?

Like I said, we cannot trust companies to Not cut corners, or to misbehave until they get caught.

Now obviously the plant may be safe, however the mining tailing and the waste as shown in nearly all points in the past has not been handled responsibly.

And in general, who gets stuck with the bill when that happens?  US Tax payers, usually via CERLA.

AND they get stuck with the cost of babysitting the companies to make sure they are behaving themselves.

_

In short, murphy's law amplified by corporate greed is a great way to ensure that something will go wrong.

Do you realize that you linked to a video in your comment, and that you mentioned neither it nor its contents in your "clarification"?

You have our good friends Bechtel cutting corners on a nuclear waste handling facility to save a buck.

They had to go through years of lawsuits merely to get them to comply with one detail, much less build the whole facility correctly.

And it was later found that they had created the same defects at 60 other facilities.

As goes on with Nuclear, and Carbon Capture Sequestration, massive oversight would be neccisary to make sure they comply with the law, much less prepare for the unexpected.

Now if we can't expect responsible oversight in the US, then what you think the chances are in other countries around the world?

_

In short, Nuclear is great as long as nothing goes wrong.

But thats not an assumption we can make.

Numerous powers that be have announced that if the U.S. is hit by a major terrorist attack involving weapons that panic large numbers of the public, martial law is all but certain.  These statements were made even before Bush announced that he had revoked Clinton's plan for government continuity and invoked one of his own that seems to put him in charge of all three branches of government whenever he determines that a "catastrophic emergency" has occurred.

Bombings by means of radioactive material would certain make for a catastrophic emergency.

The more nuclear facilities we have, the more nuclear material there must be transported around the country.  That means there will be that many more opportunities to pirate the stuff or just blow it sky high as it passes upwind of population centers.  The forces guarding against this (at public expense) are the same ones that still can't get it together to make sure similar material isn't moving through U.S. harbors all these years after the 9/11 event.  And, by law, again, these are the same forces that are to protect nuclear fuel and waste at each nuclear facility.  In fact, the plan being floated at the moment has it that nuclear waste from other countries will be shipped to the U.S. as part of a push to promote nuclear energy here and abroad.  Then, said waste will be guarded by the same forces that could not find even one of four hijacked airliners before 9/11 became the seemingly unstoppable argument for gutting many of civil rights once believed protected by the Constitution, before so much of it was "rendered quaint."

So, with the writing on the wall, I really think we should be asking ourselves, do we really want to be saying, in effect, "bring it on," when it comes to one of the next most likely means manipulating the unmistakable end to the freedom and democracy that we in the U.S. once thought made our country great?  Just asking, because I don't get the sense that anyone has really thought this through, let alone considered sacrificing elsewhere so we don't end up sacrificing our ability to make further choices for ourselves at all.  I've been in countries under martial law.  It's not particularly good for the spirit, to say nothing of effective problem solving on the scale we must act in the face of multiple environmental and social challenges.