The Peak of The Oil Lies - 3

Oh up us for heaven's sake

In this series the issue is whether there is any such thing as "peak oil", a time when we reach the point where we have used up one half of the finite resource called petroleum.

It seems to be common sense that any finite resource that is not renewable will eventually be exhausted.

That is what the book "Peak Everything" by Richard Heinberg is all about, the inherent limit of finite resources, including fossil fuels, as the graph above indicates.

Thus the argument that renewable resources are a safer bet.

The fossil fuel industry has been spending a lot of money to get us to believe that we need not concern ourselves about running out of oil.

Never mind that even if it were true it would still present civilization with calamity as was discussed in the recent post "Embryonic Look At Civilization's Future - 5."

There are observers who do not accept the fossil fuel industry's protestations about peak oil:

When people read about a long-term forecast of world oil supply--say, out to 2030--they often believe that the forecasters are merely incorporating our knowledge of existing fields and figuring out how much oil can be extracted from them over the forecast period. Nothing could be further from the truth. Much of the forecast supply has not yet been discovered or has no demonstrated technology which can extract or produce it economically. In other words, such forecasts are merely guesses based on the slimmest of evidence.

(C.S. Monitior). That is contrary to what we hear lately in the McTell News where there is no mention of the dangers civilization faces whether peak oil is true or whether it is false.

It is a Catch 22 situation, because if we have enough to continue to use fossil fuels and warm the Earth up another 4 degrees there will be hell to pay.

But if we reach peak oil where what civilization needs to keep functioning is not available at affordable prices, there will be hell to pay as well.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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