Knowledge is way-preferred over ignorance, even if that knowledge makes one want to blow chunks, shit-the-pants or go run-and-hide, or maybe all three right together.

My post over the weekend was on peak oil, so today (via TheOilDrum‘s semi-daily-must-read Drumbeat) there’s a well put-together piece by noted writer/reporter Dahr Jamail at Aljazeera English on just how dire the straits as the world churns toward most-likely phase one of the end of cheap oil.
And one shit-face of a paradox — even as the sources dry up, the demand for oil increases, 1.5 to 2 percent a year.
From the Aljazeera piece and Tom Whipple, an energy scholar, and a CIA analyst for 30 years:

“One thing to remember is that there is global depletion,” Whipple said.
“If you don’t come up with new sources every year, you can’t keep up.
Wells are going dry daily.
World depletion is three to four million barrels less oil available each year in existing fields.”
Whipple is blunt about what life will look like in a post-peak oil world.
“You’re going to see major changes in industrial civilisation,” he said, adding that he expects oil to once again approach $150 per barrel in the next 18 months.
“In the US, where we aren’t used to paying $10 for a gallon of gas like they do in Germany, that [$150 per barrel of oil] will really slow things down.”
He believes discretionary driving will basically stop, and added: “Anything with a parking lot out front is going to be in trouble.”

Read the whole article, though, the knowledge gained is not all that funny.
Sobering, especially when driving.