Many thanks for an illuminating and well-done site to incite thought and action!

thanks

What a brilliant site! I've been looking at the implications of Peak Oil for Aussies for about a year and the work here is thoughtful and balanced - a great effort. (well done). To others looking to learn more about this subject I highly reccomend taking a look at a US documentary called "the end of surburbia"

http://media.putfile.com/End-of-Suburbia

whic h looks at Peak Oil's impact on every day suburban life. It will get you thinking! Cheers Rob

Many thanks for your efforts to further this overdue and very necessary consideration.
You have contributed greatly to humankind for many years. May we be conscious enough to make right use of it !

Thanks David. Keep up the great work!

Fascinating scenarios. I will read them carefully and watch how the world plays out against your baselines. I believe it is possible for informed individuals (groups) to remain winners in spite of the looming crisis. Looking into the future is a human trait that will get passed down though the genes. And, one does not have to bet on any one scenario, just stay flexible and know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em

Thank you for a most stimulating morning's reading. I had myself been trying to extrapolate into the future having watched the oil price rises, house and money market downturn, and the food short shortages. A mixture of climate change, peak oil and human greed were clearly implicated and we are obviously entering a new era, not experienced before by anyone alive today.
If I have a criticism it is that world population increase must be at least as pivotal a variable as the two you chose, peak oil and climate change. You do not dwell on the likely population losses that your different future scenarios must imply, nor offer many ideas on how population growth avoidance might be managed in an acceptable way in a sustainable future. Perhaps education, security, empowered females, good health services and a reasonable living standard are enough, but can these all be there in your future scenarios?

Regarding climate change, let me remind you that there exists significant dissent in the international scientific community with the predominant view on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It is best reflected in the open letter by 100 prominent scientists to the UN Secretary General dated Dec. 13, 2007:
http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=1 65020

Some of these dissident scientists propose that an important factor in short term changes (in the order of decades) of global temperature is the variation of solar irradiance modulated by the short term (11-year) solar cycles. If this view is correct, and the solar cycle 24 that started in Jan 2008 and the next are weak as some forecasts indicate, there could be considerable cooling starting in the next decade (certainly not a fully-fledged Ice Age, but in the order of XVII-century Little Ice Age).

Some of those scientists and their studies are:
Roy Spencer (Ph.D. in Meteorology, principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville, and one of the 100 scientists that sent the Dec 13, 2007 letter to Ban Ki-Moon)
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-g lobal-warming.htm
Nicola Scafetta (Ph.D. in Physics and Research Scientist at Duke University)
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/

Add itionally, the following study shows that the predictions of current climate models regarding vertical temperature gradients are completely at odds with observations:
Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearson, and S.F. Singer. 2007. A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology, DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651.
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy/ 2007_Dougless_etal.pdf
(The author is Douglass but the filename has Dougless.)

Finally, one of the authors of the above study, John Christy (Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences, Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote IMV one of the best summaries of the whole issue on November 1, 2007:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423. html

I think your view of Earth Stewardship is a bit naive. I think you would see a resurgence of spirituality (and superstition), but womens rights would go out the window. You also leave out the mass starvation and disease that will happen when millions leave the cities, the country folk are unable to absorb the influx, and they start shooting at those who would eat down the food stores that will be needed to get through the winter. It's really only the Green Tech quadrant that offers any "happy ending" for the majority of Earth's denizens.

David,

Thanks so much for your leadership.

In Bega, on the far south coast of NSW we have been planning for this peak oil period and developing a community website network for regional communities to enable them to grow into the new future.

The system is 'ground based' in that it enables changing priorities as the community adjusts to climate change/peak oil.

It is successful in the South Coast, so we rolled it out as a national model.

It is free for any resident of Australia to register a website in the network and begin editing, a range of additonal value-add services support the activities people normally undertake.

We are successfully running this as a self funded, not-for-profit project in combination with our quarterly journal Sustain Magazine http://sustain.org.au

Our national site is at http://australiancommunities.org.au

I hope this serves to inform your progress.

Geoffrey Grigg
The Australian Community Network

An excellent insight. An essay of great logic which has been well researched presenting clear evidence of human nature and what the future will bring. I now have lost some fear of the future and I am feeling more secure about what is taking place and how I will play a positive role in it.

A wonderful resource. Thank you.

I wonder if an additional way the scenarios might communicate to some people is by more emphasis on what the lived experience might be like, for example as things may fail that are taken for granted by many, things like centralised health care systems, pensions, water supply etc things which are currently core parts of how people perceive their lives and futures.