According to wikipedia optimistic estimates of when we will reach the point at which the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline or peak oil is 2020. So over the next while we will be looking at a massive increase in prices of oil.

I’ve heard many facts like this from environmentalists for years, oil is running out, so what? We’ll just switch over to electric and everything will be fine, but a little research and you’ll discover that isn’t the case. Before we can be sure of a replacement they must meet these requirements.

1. Any replacement for oil must be renewable, otherwise it will run out just like the oil did.
2. The vast majority of machinery runs on oil, conversion is going to be expensive
3. Oil flowed in massive quantities a replacement would have to match that volume.

A solution to point 1  and 3 could be a mixture of the following

• Wind Mills
• Solar Panels
• Tidal generators (not yet developed)
• Hydroelectric stations ala Shannon
• Biomass

Any one of them on their own would not produce enough electricity. Nuclear Power stations was suggested to me but that requires a non renewable energy source (uranium) but would help while the infrastructure is being built.

Point 2 is a little more tricky, there is no type of oil that can be produced in the same quantity, corn oil just can’t be producd that fast. Electricity is the obvious choice, you don’t really want the situation of a million different types of energy being sold. It means that everyone has to create a product for each type of energy. Electricity makes sense but the drawbacks are that it can’t be transported as easily, you can’t send it down pipes (doesn’t travel well) and batteries aren’t ideal either. This would probably result in a shift in focus away from energy in global politics.

When you put all of them together it doesn’t seem likely that the world as a whole will react appropriately. There will have to be some sort of fallout from the decrease in oil supply before something is done.

What I’d expect to see once the oil starts running out is the following

• Flights become prohibitively expensive (plane fuel costs too much)
• Imports/Exports down massively (too expensive)
• Local food supply (can transport in food quickly)
• No more commuter belt (petrol prices)
• Famines, doughts, econmic collapse in places previously wealthy (Areas with no farm land)
• Massive superpower shift from who has the weapons to who has the energy. The US will still be on top, but there will be massive shifts underneath.

Feel free to comment and add to the knowledge.

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I had wordpress set up using their cp, I clicked install it worked, I was impressed. Then I noticed that the upgrade feature wasn’t working, I tried even chmoding recursively to 777 (publically writable), no dice, it kept saying I had to ftp the upgrade. Unfortunately you can’t create an ftp directory that points at the folder of one of the cp installed web applications so that wasn’t an option. So then I tried moving the directory to the website root and removing the application because I had it setup on ‘/’ (http://www.lacy.ie/). Of course what is the first thing you forget to do when you delete something, that’s right backup! Miracle of miracles I actually remembered, funny thing is, the database names of the cp created web applications are restricted and so I couldn’t restore the database once it was deleted by the web app uninstall because I couldn’t recreate the database, oh and I forgot to mention you can’t choose the database you want to restore to. So my blog was down for at least a day while I waited for BK to get back to me and fix the problem.

Eventually they did and it was all fine, they even explained to me that the problem with permissions was actually that I had it set to php4 as well as php5 and php4 was used by default. The reason php 5 handles this better than php4 is probably something to do with how php5 is running, what should be happening is that the script is being run by the script owner but what was actually happening under php4 was that all php processes were being run as the same user. Now imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find php4 control panel. All I could find was “PHP Support” and “PHP5 Support”. Ok I want php, and I want php5, its just php4 I don’t want. But wait, I said to myself, this control panel wasn’t designed to make sense, and so I unchecked the php support option and my php based application worked fine. If you are looking for hosting, come down the rabbit hole at blacknight

See PHP Support AND/OR PHP5 Support

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I’ve listened to a lot of opinions on Israel and the territories. I don’t know what should be done there but I’m on the side of anyone who is effective at bringing the situation closer to peace than it was before. Currently I don’t see anyone both willing and capable of doing that.

Now usually when I hear an opinion on the situation from an Irish person, its pro Palestinian. Its understandable as its rather easy to relate to given our history. Their viewpoint is somewhat admirable and hopefully it will lead to some money going to aid workers in Gaza.

The problem I find with their arguments is that they are willing to place full responsibility on this entity known as Israel as if it has a single mind while when discussion Palestine it becomes a large number of people with a minority of extremists who have allowed themselves to be consumed in righteous anger towards the aforementioned single entity occupier.

In reality Israel is a state, the actions of which are driven by a population and that population are scared and angry. Angry at what and who they have lost and scared that it will happen again. The same situation exists in Palestine.

Generally the solutions I hear to the situation are unilateral actions on the part of Israel. Pull back to the 1967 or 48 borders, stop invading, tear down the fence, ignore the rockets and everything will be OK given time. I can see a certain logic to it, if you make life better for the Palestinians then they will have less motivation to attack Israel. I imagine this list would gain the response “seems like a good start” from most commentators I’ve heard on the situation. But its not me that needs to be convinced of this, its the Israeli who has to travel the bus to work everyday. How do you convince her that tearing down the security fence which has put an end to the suicide attacks will eventually make her country a safer place to live? How about the man who’s daughter was blown up in a restaurant? There may only be at most 10s of thousands of people in Israel who have pictures in their homes of people blown up by bombs but if you live in Israel you’ve at least met one and everyone has just left that cafe minutes before it exploded or the day before.

Fact is, this conflict is going to take a long time. I have no suggestions or solutions, I just recommend that everyone whether you are pro Israeli or pro Palestine, that you take a careful look at what will actually bring peace to that region before you open your mouth.

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