As you point out it's no great surprise so was unlikely to cause large market movements but if you think we're out of the woods, you're very much mistaken. For example do you really think we can safely assume that our wonderfully rational markets have already built into the price the potential for countries with depleting oil fields to cut exports in order to secure their own future? What kind of an effect do you think that would have on oil prices? As rjs points out, oil at prices north of $100 is causing considerable pain.

Reel$$ if you're going to cite people, can I suggest that you actually read what they've written? If you had bothered you would have noticed that, unlike you, both Heinberg and Hopkins recognise the reality and seriousness of climate change. The two issues of energy supplies and climate change are intimately interlinked, but the former will play out this decade while the latter will play out over centuries.

Where did I conflate peak oil and climate change?? We're in the middle of a Great Recession and yet oil is bumping up towards $100? I also don't believe that futures traders get peak oil, much like the politicians don't. Both groups are doubtless in thrall to the IEA's projections which are rapidly being revised each year. The reason for hurrying is that our economy is deeply vulnerable to energy price spikes; conventional, cheap, easy to access oil is depleting fast; new production can't be brought on stream overnight; and then there's that yawning gap that the IEA has plugged by assuming that we'll find two new Saudi Arabias of conventional oil by 2035. I think it's about the right time to make a quick move in the right direction.

Oh sure there are some great minds working very hard on the problem, but deploying those substitutes at scale will take a long time. You can't just turn the world's infrastructure around overnight. Well, actually we could pull something special out of the bag but the level of effort required is far, far beyond what any politician is even vaguely considering at the moment. Unsurprising because they don't get it. And yes we can suck harder on the straw but look at the depletion rate of conventional oil in that IEA projection. In the meantime we are in for a very turbulent decade. Trust me, we've never seen anything like this before.

But the dependence of the global economy on oil is total and the lead times for overhauling the global energy infrastructure are very long. And now even the IEA has said that conventional oil supplies peaked back in 2006 (they assume that we are somehow going to make up the shortfall through unconventional supplies and as yet undeveloped and unidentified (!) supplies of oil): http://www.iea.org/country/graphs/weo_2010/fig3-19.jpg It's those two facts in combination that worry me. I can recommend the Megaprojects analysis by Chris Skrebowski which you can find in the Peak Oil Task Force link above. It takes production rates from existing fields and ideal anticipated flow rates from as yet undeveloped fields and compares that against demand. Things don't looking pretty.

< My issue is, I never really see any doomsdayers offer solutions beyond 'We're screwed."> Really? I find that, for the most part, people who grasp the concept and implications of peak oil are also those who are most switched on to solutions. But what do you mean by doomsayers? Do you mean people who are very concerned about the implications or do you mean people who are convinced that we are on the verge of imminent economic and societal collapse? If it's the latter than you shouldn't be surprised that they aren't proposing much in the way of solutions, because as far as they're concerned there isn't time to mitigate, only to survive - their solutions are stocking up on essentials, buying backup generators, water storage etc. But I would say that most people who understand peak oil are more moderate (although deeply concern) and see our oil future as a decent (of varying degrees of steepness) that has already started or will do before 2015. It's these people who are proposing responses ( e.g. http://peakoiltaskforce.net ) or indeed responding accordingly ( e.g. http://www.transitionnetwork.org ). I think you should re-evaluate your concerns about oil supplies. Running out is the least of our worries; extraction rates are the worry. As an economist I would have thought that it should be obvious to you that it's not how much we have left in the ground, but how quickly we can get it out of the ground, as that is what satisfies demand.

Ryanair?? Does this mean that 2011 is going to see O'Leary recant his position on climate change? Wonders will never cease...

These are light commercial vehicles, up to 3.5t. Big cars.

Jevons was all well and good in his time and continued to apply while energy was cheap, but that time is over and energy price rises will offset efficiency gains so that the cost of energy services won't change much.

The EU capitulates to the vehicle manufacturers yet again. So weak!

"I presume the taxpayers paid for this useless guff." As usual stan wades in to outline his future fantasy without bothering to read the article or checking out the reference.

Ziv, it's mostly about the energy content of the fuel rather than whether the car is FF or not. Ethanol has a third less energy per unit volume than petrol.

Surely it can operate at temperatures *down* to -20 °C? :)

Subsequent research undertaken in 2008 suggested that the original research from 2002 was mistaken: http://www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/sass/pub/journals/Hong.etal.GRL.08.pdf But contrails do have a significant effect which is currently being evaluated under the EU's QUANTIFY project: http://www.pa.op.dlr.de/quantify

"not at the expense of killing our standards of living and transferring our hard earned wealth to 3rd worlders who wont stop breeding themselves into trouble" [and the rest of your diatribe] WTF?

Indeed. Arctic sea ice is not looking healthy: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png

And most importantly it's very short lived, being washed out of the air in weeks rather than decades.

Yawn indeed. Ironically, the rebranding of global warming into climate change was driven by the denial industry as it is less scary sounding.

Yet again zombie talking points lurch out from the GCC comments. If anyone is interested in the science behind the points trotted out above we have: http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm and http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm And Sulleney if you think the science of climate change has somehow collapsed after the CRU hack you are living in a fantasy world.

A question always worth asking, ai_vin. "Writing the synthesis was supported by a $26,000 research grant from the Beef Checkoff Program, which funds research and other activities, including promotion and consumer education, through fees on beef producers in the U.S." http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9336 Beef Checkoff Program: http://www.beefboard.org/producer/CBBFinalUnderstandingBrochure.pdf

This is definitely the direction we need to be heading in: ultralight, ultra efficient vehicles for day to day use coupled to sufficient renewable capacity to make them near to zero emissions. Make it a tandem two seater and I will be very interested. Car clubs could provide vehicles with larger carrying capacity when needed. Even in the not so sunny UK, a domestic scale (2.5kWp) solar PV installation will generate sufficient electricity (2,125kWh/yr) to power a car 8,500 miles (@250Wh/mile which is well above what this thing would consume). The car manufacturers sometimes talk about taking the car out the environmental equation, usually referring to large fuel cell powered cars but that won't work. This could though, possibly. Watching with interest!

"Great Briton has made some of the false advertising, Globalwarmist propaganda, illegal. At least we are making progress!" Err...wrong: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/13/government-cleared-climate-change-adverts

"Meanwhile, I'll go back to looking at actual data from both ground and satellite (without "homogenizing it") and see that... oh, wow, no significant change in 20 years. Then I'll think about Medieval Warm periods and that 800 year gap and whatnot." Aaron you are full of crap. That's what ticks me off about deniers like you and Stan is that they're spectacularly badly informed about the state of climate science but have no qualms about spouting inasne, unsubstantiated rubbish on internet forums. One more definition for you: /griːn/ adj relating to the protection of the environment But you anti-science lot are arrogantly content to condemn our world to a chaotic future just because you're scared of change.

Stan you are talking utter crap and you know it. The capacity factor for wind is closer to 30%. You lie constantly and should be disregarded at all times.

Lomborg's economic analysis on the costs of climate change is deeply flawed so I would argue that this perspective is flawed. Much more serious economists than Lomborg project action to reduce GHG and other climate forcing agents as being far cheaper than the consequences of climate change.