Martin's comment on Peak Oil has triggered me to note something about Peak Gas.
I'm starting to suspect that PEAK GAS may actually be a worse problem than Peak Oil, if only because generally speaking gas is needed to provide us with most of our electricity.
Loss of electricity due to blackouts and brownouts is going to be much more obvious signal to the population at large than gradual increases in petrol prices.
The other problem with Gas is that it seems, from Deffeyes and others work, which is easy to find around the web, that supply volumes tend to 'fall off a cliff' after peak.
This is different to Oil which declines gradually with production decaying along the mirror of the path which it has climbed up to reach peak.
This plummet in gas supply will create crises faster than oil production decline - and that's bad enough already.
People talk about "The Market" not receiving a price signal from oil in time to ramp up alternatives, and that's with a 3-6% per annum increase in the gap between oil supply and demand.
The gas gap looks as though it could easily grow at 10-20% per annum. I realise that is a wide range but there are so many different figures around.
I have a UK-centric view of these things and am quite jealous of how easy it is to find 'official' information about the situation in the USA. We have Official Secrecy instead of Freedom of Information, which is not very useful when trying to research.
The DOE information at
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/yourenv/eff/resources_waste/energy/
is embarrassingly short on detail or links to detail.
By comparison see
http://www.doe.gov/engine/content.do?BT_CODE=PRICESTRENDS
In particular, drill down to
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html
Perhaps some helpful passerby can hint at where to find UK natural gas reserves figures - monthly alongside monthly top-up and draw-down would be ideal. I expect the information will be commercially sensitive and not available !
Cynical, moi ?
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