It is quite amusing that apocalyptical predictions tend to have oil production decreasing from the date of such publication of such prediction, or thereabouts. No surprise as we are going to run out of exhaustable resource, but this is not what in fact alarmists should be worried about. For all the talk of "powering down" the economy and facing the coming shortages, we are still there, consuming more and more oil for transportation and gas for electricity generation. Yes - we are using non-renewable resource, but no - we have plenty of it and our greatest task is to use the energy efficiently, whilst slowly and with concerted effort re-orient the transportation away from oil (and electricity is a different matter altogether). Here is one form of hysteria from
http://www.dieoff.org/ from article in 1997:
Beyond 2005, the energy required to find and extract a barrel of oil will exceed the energy contained in the barrel
The report, written for oil industry insiders and priced at $32,000 per copy,
concludes that world oil production and supply probably will peak as soon as the
year 2000 and will decline to half the peak level by 2025. Large and permanent
increases in oil prices are predicted after the year 2005
2 comments:
A big part of me wants fossil fuels to end and expire in my country - in my despairing moments, I hallucinate that this might be the only solution to our long-lasting national lethargy and complete uninterest, absense of creativity, inspiration and total unproductivity!
Everyone relies on oil too much, why the hell do we need so much energy and it is all wasted in doing bad things anyway. Go back to the fields is all I say!
You speak the very truth dear creature, but we are bound by this curse, and to use efficiently we shall
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