>
>I have a few minutes, so I'll just summarize:
>
>1) of course fossil fuels are a finite resource (though some argue
>otherwise). But rather than arguing that point, I'll just focus on the
>points that the "peak oil" proponents tend to ignore.
>
>[This peak oil theory is a cousin of the Malthus/Ricardo theory of 200
>years ago or so. It's _natural_ limits to growth which is going to
>kill us, not capitalism or the hegemonic political bloc...]
>
>2) there is a lot of room to "mine" these resources more efficiently,
>so that more of the finite resources can be extracted as a percentage
>of what's there.
>
>3) more importantly, there's a lot of room to use these resources more
>efficiently, so that less of them of are needed per constant dollar of
>GDP. For example, the greater use of hybrid engines in cars would
>increase the efficiency of gasoline use. (I don't think fuel cells do
>the trick here.)
>
>4) there are substitutes for fossil fuels and there's a lot of room to
>use them.
>
>5) persistently rising prices for fossil fuels (relative to average
>prices) encourages the use of the "room" in (2), (3), and (4) by
>profit-seeking businesses. This is probably not enough to pull off a
>solution, but there's always government, which brings us to...
>
>6) there's a gigantic _political_ barrier to fully using the "room" in
>(2), (3), and (4), as exemplified by the Bush adminstration.
>
>
>
It's interesting that almost all these arguments were used in the 1970s
to debunk Hubbert's claim that U. S. oil production would peak in the
mid-70s and then decline. Geologists' statistical models--which
supposedly ignore all of these sociopolitical factors--quite nicely
predicted the decline (and continuing decline) of U. S. oil production.
The Hubbert model has also been used to accurately predict patterns of
oil production in a number of other countries. Let me put it this way:
if I have to choose between a statistical model well-verified by data
and neo-classical economic arguments about how price increases for a
commodity will promote technological wonders, I'm going with the data.
Miles