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A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

2006, Economics  -   29 Comments
7.89
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Ratings: 7.89/10 from 18 users.

A Crude Awakening - The Oil CrashBasil Gelpke and Ray McCormack's nonfiction treatise Crude Awakening joins Maxed Out, An Inconvenient Truth, and other recent documentaries devoted to unearthing and exploring forces that are untying the connective threads of contemporary society. The subject at hand is crude oil - specifically, the depletion of petroleum from the Earth, in an era when consumption threatens to exceed supply.

The overtone of the film is speculative but admonitory; Gelpke and McCormack suggest that if western society fails to reinvent itself altogether (via such innovations as hydrogen-powered autos, and a decreased reliance on fiscally unsound Middle Eastern nations), economic cataclysm is not simply likely but inevitable.

To underscore this point, the filmmakers contrast obscenely naïve shorts from the 1950s that promise depthless oil supplies, with contemporary warnings from geologists who suggest that the bottom of the well is close at hand. McCormack and Gelpke also interview such subjects as former OPEC secretary general Fadhil Chalabi and Bush advisor Roger E. Ebel.

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29 Comments / User Reviews

  1. Kris

    Take into account the Saudis produce 25% of the worlds oil and it's theorised that they have been lying how much they have left (offshore rigging proof of this). The globe has been scanned, no new oil fields apart from Antarctica, which is a fantasy unless the polar ice caps melt a lot. Take into account growth of china, india and other 3rd world countries dependency on oil. You're looking at it hitting bad by 2020, really bad 2030. Any other alternative is a fantasy. Take a hydrogen car. Hydrogen uses oil to be produced with the refinery, 7 gallons of oil in each tyre, all the working parts come from factories that depend on oil to run. Without oil, the whole infrastructure of the entire planet collapses, it's completely irreplacable. Watch this and the collapse, they both piece it together. Science is saying that a bell curve theory is physics. The population of the planet would need to go down to about 1 billion to be sustained without oil. This will be the apocalypse, scientific fact. The only other chance of it not, is if something else happens 1st like world war. 40 years left of oil is if we tap antarctica, which is looking impossible to do. Everyone needs to start learning to live off the land to get through this, like they did in cuba.

    1. realistboy

      Wrong, wrong, wrong... your comments forgot technological innovation in the form for horizontal rigs...rigs that go deeper, and are more efficient at taking out oil... sure it's more expensive to get the oil versus in the past... but we are not running out of oil... look at what's happening in oil...today... 2015... some predicted there would be chaos now! nope nope. never forget technological innovation to always come to the rescue.

  2. cris cristopherson

    so, I am supposed to buy your dvd... printed on, encased in and shipped with, you guessed it, petroleum byproducts! How bout this; I will save the world a little bit of crude oil right now by not buying this dvd.

  3. Michael Wade Lee

    there's enough oil to last over a hundred years, we only have used a portion, we will run out eventually. It's like "an inconvenient truth" a bunch of B.S.

    1. Kyrre Stuen Kronquist

      Not true. The quality of crude is decreasing and the energy needed for extracting and distilling it is increasing. If the rise in demand keeps at today's rate, we have about 40 years left. If my international uni book on geology is to be believed. So most of us will still be alive to complain.

    2. Alec Mowat

      There's a lot of oil left. There isn't a lot of high quality, cheap oil left.

    3. capdanks30

      STUPID,....try to listen ? They didn't say we are out of oil.They said we are out of good quality ,easy to refine cheap oil.

    4. William Donahue

      so what do you suppose we should do say in 60-70 years then when the oil is almost gone?

  4. KsDevil

    Oil will eventually become so costly, we will not be able to run our machines with it. We will have to make different machines to perform different work using a different energy source. We have used hydrocarbons for so long, it is difficult to think beyond anything else.
    We may see how addicted we are when energy companies decided to mine the moons of Saturn for their rich hydrocarbons because there isn't enough matter on Earth to make biofuels to keep up with the mad demands.
    Or we could just let nature chop out 70% of the population and revert to a primative agrarian planet.

    1. realistboy

      not true... look at what's happening to oil now... too much supply!

  5. Michael

    The next phase of energy will be with cold fusion or low energy nuclear reaction technology. Currently there is an energy catalyst (ECAT) made by Italian scientist Rossi and Forcardi, this pressurized device produces 33 to 1 steam energy using light water, powder nickel and classified activator ingredient. This technology will be used on making megawatt power plants, but this could be used in our houses and cars. For example, a turbine could be used with this device to allow cars to run thousand of miles or even planes. With nickel and hydrogen abundant, this will be a game changer. No more wars for energy, no more suffering from lack electricity and heat, and a significant change to our current fossil fuel economy. This is being studied by NASA, and I hope the technology that has been suppressed in the United States will be publicize with ongoing technology juggernaut.

  6. John Snow

    Synthetic oil is not a choice... it cant do all of what real oil does, and it takes more energy to make than it even creates... so yeah.... No.

  7. daver

    I've heard some talks of a synthetic oil but don't know enough to really talk about it. Also Jason is correct that Oil is used for SOOOO many things and really is the reason our population has boomed so much. From the end of WWII the government pushed and pushed cheap oil into housing, food, commercial, transportation and everything it could possibly be used for. I mean why not, it was an amazingly cheap source of energy! The problem is when you build a society dependent on cheap oil for economic growth, once oil becomes too expensive or non existent your economy shrinks drastically!

    small example, for everyone 1 calorie of food you intake, approx 10 calories of oil were used in the creation, shipping, storage, etc of that food. When oil becomes too expensive to for such a drastic ratio of energy to consumption, our non local food and small business will be the first to feel the hit.

    1. mikeKorea

      You've enlightened a lot of people. Here is another: all those plastic water bottles - double whammy. It takes about 1/3 cup of oil to manufacture one bottle, then of course there is the issue of where to we put all those used bottles.

      I recall seeing a program back in the early 70s about Japan super heating trash to recover the oil. Never heard anything about it again, but I think at that time it was a very expensive process. Perhaps it is time to look in to past ideas as well as new ones.

  8. Jason

    First off, I never listen to anyone who talks about "marshal" law - it's MARTIAL law, Einstein. Look it up. When you understand the words you use then maybe your opinion will be worth something, okay, Chris?

    Secondly for all the "alternatives" you folks are suggesting as alternatives to oil none of them are true substitutes for oil. What oil does for us goes beyond just gasoline. We use it in nearly every product we make in one capacity or another. You cannot use a "Sun by product" to make a container like you can use a petroleum by-product. You folks are missing the big picture. Oil allows us to do things we cannot do with it otherwise. If we run out - and we will someday - it will be a nightmare. We've talked about alternatives to oil for 30 years now - go back to Nixon and listen to him talk about the US having to rid itself of it's foreign oil dependency - and nothing has changed in that time. Why? Because it's very effective for what it is used for. And we'd be in a heap of trouble with out. Don't kid yourselves.

  9. gto

    the next fuel in the next 20 to 30 years is much cheaper! sea water..

    they forgot nuclear fusion technology in their alternative energy technology

    1. Chuck

      Maybe they forgot to mention that because that technology does not exist yet........just saying.

  10. griffin

    what about huge solar panels above the oceans! This might reduce temperature as well. if all the energy is absorbed by the panels then the oceans can release more heat!
    what about some type of device to harness wave actions on and off shore. movement is needed and the wave energy can be placed on some type of lateral generator. as in - it slides back and forth to make its freq/cycle

    i would say that biodisel will become the major fuel for the future. e-85... some vechiles are already using it.

    personally i think we are all going back to horse and cart.

    its a dog eat dog world out there and the u.s.a has the biggest teeth to my knowledge!

  11. john

    solar, radiant and geothermal is the way to go. the goverment up here in canada is running a huge scheme to get people to fit solar pannels on the roof of their homes.

  12. Ron

    I think solar will be our great hope. The efficiencies are the restriction though there are some companies that are about to obtain a potential of 30% efficiency from what the sun sends us. The costs are becoming competitive and maybe in 3-5 years we are there. If oil was priced properly maybe solar would be competitive already.

    The irony... the very rich oil producing countries of today will probably have the money to spend and create the technolgies while the west and the oil dependant nations use debt to sustain their ignorance.

  13. WTC7

    I'd double your 2 cents

  14. Chris

    The US will move on an alternative source of energy when we can find a way to make a buck from it and sell it to the world just like we did with oil. Its that or the powers that be want this problem to escalate to the point that marshal law needs to be implemented. Thats my 2 cents

  15. WTC7

    Really good documentary. A chilling, but very realistic, perspective ahead of human kind.

    It's amazing that so little is being done in terms of coming up with more efficient use of alternative sources of energy, so amazing that one has to put the finger on the forehead and ask - why?

    The possible answers could be that we are either so stupid and dulled into good and comfortable life and think the oil will never end (which can't be true) or that somebody, for some obscure reason, is putting a rod into the wheel of research of use of these alternative sources.

    I would recommend watching this.

  16. PHILIP VAN DER MUDE

    create the problem then sell you a solution , confuse and conquer of a trusting rrained humanity , a slave worker system passed down since the time of PHAROHS hidden in many eco sytems ...

    city or civil based ideas are the problem not the solution

  17. Courtney

    Audio's not working properly, or at all.

    1. Vlatko

      Put your headphones on @Courtney.

  18. Oil Depletion

    Hi , I'm trying to gather more valuable informationon Oil depletion , if you are going to post more information on the subject, please let me know.

  19. Jay Schilling

    From the trailors that I have seen on you-tube, I think it is a great idea for a documentary. I recently presented an argument to my college class, supporting the idea of using used vegetable oil as a substitute for diesel. The more digging I did, the more interested I got. Finally, I came across your trailor and I absolutely loved it. I am still working on my undergraduate degree and my course work has steered me in other directions for the time being, but my love of the subject has not faded. I am very interested in seeing the finished product of the documentary and potentially a career in helping the situation. I was hoping you could send me infomation of a release date of the documentary and any other info. that would spark my interest.
    I really appreciate the time you are all taking to make the documentary and "open everybody's eyes" to the truth. Any information you could give me would be greatly appreciated and never forgotten.
    Thank you very much.
    Jay Schilling