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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?
MSFT 474.52+0.5%3:25 PM EST

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To: PMS Witch who wrote (40061)3/28/2000 6:48:00 PM
From: Valley Girl  Read Replies (2) of 74651
 
OT (Oil):

The US's reserve-to-production ratio is a scant 12 years. Estimates of the remaining domestic reserves show quantities that wouldn't run the USA for month.

The world-wide R/P ratio is 41 years. Although it's been steady at around 40 for the past few years, the figure underestimates future demand increases. Of course, it also doesn't count potential new discoveries and technologies that have increased the ability to extract oil from existing fields.

The picture for natural gas is worse still. Aggressive movement away from more sustainable alternatives such as nuclear power has expanded demand faster than reserves and lowered the R/P ratio from 100+ years to just 60ish.

My source is the excellent BP World Energy report, available at BP's web site.

One way or another, we can't count on running civilization on oil for another 100 years. Within the lifetimes of our children we will have to shift fixed-point power generation to nuclear power and renewables, shift personal transportation to something much more efficient such as fuel-cell-powered electrics, move cargo over long distances by train and not by truck, and of course conserve as much as possible. We need to save petroleum to continue operating aircraft and to use as a feedstock for our chemical and plastics industries. In short, you don't have to believe in global warming to recognise that continued dependence on fossil fuels is a serious long-term problem.

Of course we won't do any of this; we'll squander our planet's treasure-trove of stored energy until it becomes painfully obvious what we need to do, then, with oil at $60/barrel triggering a global recession and far less remaining for the other purposes than we should have saved, we'll finally summon the courage to shout down the misguided anti-nuclear luddites and the equally-misguided petroleum wasters and do the right thing.

We should be using this as an opportunity to engage the public on an issue that's ordinarily difficult to build political support for. O, where is the politician with the courage to use greedy Arabs as a stalking horse for an aggressive programme to reduce fossil dependency?

VG (formerly employed at a major petroleum company)
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