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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread
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To: Keith Feral who wrote (8096)2/5/2007 10:57:12 AM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 15987
 
I think there is an unlimited supply of oil from oil sands, liquified coal, oil shale, and all kinds of alternatives to crude.

Well not unlimited, but perhaps large enough that it pushed worries about "peak oil" back quite a bit. If it pushes it back in to the next century it probably doesn't make sense to try to deal with it now. We won't know what the economy or available technologies will be like a hundred or even 50 years from now.

A lot of the "peak oil" people start with something like "you don't think oil is limitless do you?". If you say it isn't limitless, then they say something like "then you agree, you just disagree about the timing", if you say "it is limitless" then they use that to try to portray you as unreasonable.

But buying the idea that there is some limit (even after including things like oil sands, oil shale, liquefied coal etc.) doesn't mean that you think that peak production will be reached soon, or that we will have some massive energy crash because the other ways to get oil (listed above and in your post) or alternatives to oil won't be ready.

I can see the possibility of much more expensive oil and economic consequences from it, but I think the idea of a massive world wide economic/energy crash is unlikely. In my opinion the arguments that it will happen rest on very shaky foundations.
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