Saturday, September 3, 10am

A Talk by Maynard Kaufman PhD., Founder of Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance
Lakeshore Interfaith Institute, 6676 122nd Ave., Ganges Mi. 49408
donations for the talk welcome

 tapas@accn.org  269 543 3951

"Not to worry-- but life as we know it today will soon cease to exist" 

This is the scientific conclusion of hundreds of scientists from around the world. These are the most widely respected and reliable investment bankers, geologists and physicists, and given their background what they have to say about the phenomenon of global Peak Oil is truly terrifying. It is imminent & guaranteed by the natural laws that govern our physical world, and nothing in science, technology, or engineering can prevent it. It has far reaching implications that only few understand with little thinking devoted to the crisis certain to follow.

The world is not running out of oil. What the world is shortly running out of is its ability to produce high-quality cheap and economically extractable oil on demand.  After more than fifty years of research and analysis on the subject, it is now clear that the rate at which world oil producers can extract oil is reaching the maximum level possible. This is what is meant by Peak Oil. With great effort and expenditure, the current level of oil production can possibly be maintained for a few more years, but beyond that oil production must begin an irreversible decline and civilization is in trouble.
                THE MOST DECISIVE IMPACT WILL BE ON FOOD PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION

It is now widely acknowledged by the world's leading petroleum geologists that more than 95 percent of all recoverable oil has now been found. We therefore know, within a reasonable degree of certainty, the total amount of oil available to us.  Any oil well has roughly the same life cycle where the production rate peaks before it goes into terminal decline. This happens when about half of the oil has been recovered from the well. We have consumed approximately half of the world’s total reserve of about 2.5 trillion barrels of conventional oil in the ground when we started drilling the first well at a current rate of over 30 billion a year, meaning the world is nearing its production plateau. 

Worldwide discovery of oil peaked in 1964 and has followed a steady decline since. According to industry consultants IHS Energy, 90% of all known reserves are now in production, suggesting that few major discoveries remain to be made. There have been no significant discoveries of new oil since 2002. In 2001 there were 8 large scale discoveries, and in 2002 there were 3 such discoveries. In 2003 there were no large scale discoveries of oil. Given geologists' sophisticated understanding of the characteristics that would indicate a major oil find, is is highly unlikely that any area large enough to be significant has eluded attention and no amount or kind of technology will alter that. Since 1981 we have consumed oil faster than we have found it, and the gap continues to widen. Developing an area such as the Artic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska has a ten year lead time and would ultimately produce well under 1% of what the world currently consumes.