[Il_Mostro]

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The market will react faster than any govt could. But govt could easily screw things up by getting too involved.

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I simply don't belive this to be true. What evidence or resaning do you have that market forces will start a crash-program to move society away from oil 20 (or more realistically 30) years before we start to see depletion really start? I call that idea ridiculous on it's face.

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When electricity gets expensive enough, panels become economical. It's pretty simple.

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Except of course that you need cheep oil to produce the PV panels. If they are to be cheap.

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Coal powerplants are more common than gas and nuclear. These will increase, along with nuclear.

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And then we will run out of coal next. Not to menition CO2 emissions.
And uranium, unless we can get breeders to really really work.

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Farm equipment will almost certainly run entirely on diesel alternatives. While this may increase the base cost of food, that is still a far cry from the peakoil alarmist view of mass starvation.

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And how do you expect to grow all the crops needed to run the farming machines? Remember, you need all arable land to produce food... (at least you will need in 20 years time, if population forecasts are true for the US).
I don't really belive in mass starvation, but I belive there will be a move back to having 25% or more of the population working directly in agriculture.
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Frankly it's ridiculous to assume we've already hit a wall on every alternative energy path. Some may go nowhere, but for the doomsday scenario all alternative technologies must go nowhere. That's obviously not going to happen

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Of course they are going to improve. The problem of course is that without cheap oil everything else will also become more and more expensive.

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Just a few random thoughts.

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Unfortunately a bit too random, IMO.

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Don't panic. Pay attention, certainly. But don't panic.

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Absolutely.

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he apocalyptic types are that way by nature. If they didn't have peak oil to latch onto, they'd be in a cult waiting for the end times.

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Sure. But you also need to remember that there is a long string of civilizations that has gone under when facing depletion in their main resources. We might very well do too. Not overnight, but during the next couple of centuries.

And if we go under, there will most probably never be a civlization as advanced as ours. It's inconsivable that it would be possible to move directly from animal- to wood- to nuclear energy. And that is what will be needed if we use up all the oil and all the coal, which I don't have many doubts we will.

And exponential growth will get us in the end.