Why #peakoil matters - the liquid fuel infrastructure and steep #collapse.

Conventional [easy, sweet] oil has peaked. The #tarsands prove this. Tarsands actually use more energy than they produce, as do most unconventional fuels. The problem they are trying to solve is the need for liquid fuel to support the existing infrastructure which may be worth up to $100 trillion dollars. Those who profit from the liquid-fuel system will try to keep it as long as possible. They are ramping up their anti-peakoil propaganda to delay policy shift. The more successful they are at delaying transition, the more painful that transition will be.

Asia Times Online :: Oil, politics and resource wars: There is something like $50 trillion to $100 trillion of capital equipment worldwide that is built to operate on liquid fuels - and I am talking about cars, busses, ships, trains, airplanes, and golfcarts. You don't quickly convert those or replace them, particularly if the problem takes place in a worldwide recession - there is less money available, governments are already weakened because of the present recession, governments will not be able to afford to do this kind of a thing.

So it's going to be very difficult and it is going to take a considerable amount of time to either convert an existing piece of equipment to operate on something else or to build a whole new one and have it put into operation, because what we are talking about is a scale that is absolutely enormous as far as the world is concerned.