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It is good to see end-of-the-world issues get some attention. If "organized mass-murder" can be prevented by increasing the "quality of life" of the desperate, then all we have to do is keep growing the economy worldwide. "Smart growth", of course. If we want exponential growth to continue forever on a finite sphere, we'll have to be smart. Oh, wait. This is important: http://www.dieoff.org/ This is interesting: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=4 0432&highlight=linkola This is brutal: http://www.geocities.com/mahabala_awake/baron.html

Yongquist's book excerpt on shale is here: http://dieoff.org/page132.htm Even if Yongquist is wrong, and there is a minimal net energy gain in oil shale, I'm betting that the aquifaction system and the transportation and the refining process will eat severely into that modest energy gain (which your link claims) effectively making shale exploration an exercise in futility.

• Short ski resort stocks in fringe areas.
• Short insurance companies since hurricanes will tend to be more prevasive
• Short northern europe in general since the gulf stream will cool the area
  
  
• Buy energy stocks as more energy will be required to cool and heat with more temperature extremes
• Buy Wind, Wave, Solar, Nuclear energy stocks as the public will eventually demand more emphasis on non-green house gas sources.

My friend, you have experienced "the tragedy of the commons" see, http://dieoff.org/page95.htm/

The core issue of bandwith and SPAM is the cost of damage done by a minority of hogs.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154005&cid=129 17603

My opinion?

The 21st century will disappear from history. In 500 yearstime they will know more about Italy of 1505 than the USA of 2005. Why? the records of Italy will still exist.

The entire digital info system is based on the free ride of petroleum. Petroleum will basically disappear from society fairly soon, (either it will simply deplete, or will become too expensive to drill it out) and everything made of plastic and anything requiring high energy density to acquire (like digging up precious metals) will be largely (but not completely) curtailed. The result is most of what we call "our culture" will be lost soon after the Collapse ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154005&cid=129 17603 ) and will be largely ignored from a lack of manpower ( http://www.dieoff.org/ ).

It's a truly stunning prospect - our civilisation will, with the possible exception of a few basic texts that can be copied to paper, will simply disappear. It will be seen as a dark age - not from a lack of people writing (as it was in 490 CE) but from a lack of putting things into a survivable substrate.

RS

Shyeeeah... riiiiight... Dude: we stand a much better chance finding ourselves in a weird reduced form of solar based medievalism in a 100 years than your Trans-Humanist fantasy nonsense.

We're facing a global DIEOFF:

http://www.dieoff.org/

and Chuckie here thinks we're going to live in space and push buttons for a living. Talk about living in a fantasy world.

RS

Well, let's see - computers used to take up entire rooms and eat thousands of watts of juice to get very little done.

Now, they eat up less per computer, and each computer does some insane order of magnitude more work, BUT: there are jillions more computers.

Reducing the power consumption per unit only matters if you have a fixed number of units. As the third world comes online, (and whats left of Moore's Law continues its march for the next few decades) it won't matter that much how little each unit consumes when there is some vastly larger magnitude of numbers of units out there suckin' juice off the mother teat grid.

Our household has 4 (working) computers, soon there will be five (when I get the powerbook working again). If EVERY household had four or five working computers all over the world over the next ten years, reducing the power consumption even by half per machine over the same amount of time wouldn't stave off the inevitable power crunch.

The result?

As things stand now: CATASTROPHE.

For more on this looming disaster, this Vug Under The Rug, go here:

DIE OFF

It's going to take a lot more than recycling, hybrids, and low power computing to avoid the disaster.

RS

Even if you dont believe Peak oil and think its a big zionist evil plot to get rich and theres infinite oil under the mantle/earth core. There are some good links/articles on what the world would be like

M A D M A X - the reality game show with 6 billion contestants.

ie read http://www.dieoff.org/

economic development is always bad

Yes, it is.

If everyone in the world were altruistic, the kind of sharing proposed by the grandparent might work. Unfortunately, the more likely situation is a Tragedy of the Commons ordeal, because those who don't directly pay for a resource tend to a) overuse it (see the problems with health insurance and socialized medicine) and b) value it less.

So I am going to tell the grandparent that his or her idea is impossible, because that's the way human nature works.

I don't understand: WHAT exactly will Iceland be exporting that will make all of them billionaires? Saudi Arabia is rich not because it USES oil, but because it EXPORTS oil. Exporting hydrogen is stupid. exporting electricity is impractical. What they can export (for a limited time) is technical expertise and technology. That will only last until the quickest reverse engineer takes and improves on the process. The United states, Canada, Russia, and other countries of that size will NEVER run out of available energy: they have a magnitude of the same resources that Iceland has.

Ummmm, no.

They can export Hydrogen. Why? Because Iceland is mostly a rocky desolate volcano witha cold surface, and it is surrounded by a few thousand miles of the North Atlantic Ocean. The Volcano they call "home" provides the entire country with free electricity i nthe form of Geothermal energy. They are barely tapping the energy of the place. All they need do is exploit the geothermal energy to crack te water and make hydrogen, and then sell it to the Americans.

Bingo. Instant Billionaires.

The USA does have extensive geothermal sites - Yellowstone park is a perfect example. but if you turned that into a water cracking plant, every Greenie would come out of the woodwork and decry the loss of Yogi's wilderness. There are some other sites that have decent geothermal: Hawaii, Parts of CA and NV. But NV has no water, and where CA has geothermal is nowhere near the water.

Iceland has both. In spades.

It's really pretty simple math, really. Also: Iceland has a BIG incentive: their present main industry is fishing. As the fish stocks dwindle, they will need a new industry to pick up the slack. Cracking water will do nicely.

Your notes re: the regs and patents is valuable, but beside the point. An even greater point beyond all that is the fact that there are too many god damn people and if we reduced population, none of this would be a problem. But that is also besides the point of the discussion.

Go to DIEOFF.ORG for details.

RS

Iceland plans to become the first oil-free country by 2050.

Best of luck to them: lots of people out there are saying that we're going to reach peak oil (the point at which supply of oil can no longer meet demand) much sooner - in which case, Iceland and, well, every other country won't have any choice but to be almost entirely oil free by 2050.

If only every country was at least this forward thinking and we didn't all take energy for granted.

Here's a few references: 1 2 3 4 5 or just Google for peak oil.

You surely wouldn't play if your family was hungry and unsheltered. That money could be better spent elsewhere.

The fundemental problem with feeding the poor is that they end up having even more babies and then you require even more food to feed them. This would be OK if the Earth wasn't basically an island in space meaning it's not infinite. This means when you do things that boost the population you just defer the suffering and death to a future generation which will be even larger than this one and that implies more suffering and death than if you were to let people starve today.

If you think birth control and education is the answer, where the track record of success? I'd love to see evidence that this is working to make the human population fit sustanedly on this planet.

more

The problem with the "feed everybody" approach to charity and compassion is that when everybody is well fed they have more babies until the population outgrows any conceivable resource base.

Come to think of it the population has outgrown any conceivable resource base.

http://dieoff.org/

Guess I'll be off to the soup kitchen to serve some poor.

50 years from now, you'll find it pretty hard to access any format without electricity...

just some thoughts ..

where is the all but inevitable end of modern medicine's quest for practical immortality and the conquering of disease going to lead? ..

The David Suzuki Foundation refers to estimates based on ecological foot-printing http://dieoff.org/page110.htm and others ..
that somewhere between 4 & 5 planets would be required to provide just an "average" north american lifestyle to the current world population .. which if extrapolated .. means that in the current world .. 3 to 4 out of every 6 people need to be eliminated in order for the remaining 1 to 3 individual to have it ..

just what do you think the average person is going to represent to someone who possesses such technology .. but someone breathing eating and drinking .. "their" air food and water .. if you think the earth is valuable and important to human life now .. just wait till someone possesses this technology .. that is if someone does not already possess this technology .. such as the ability to turn off the aging gene (Monsanto ??)

so let's introduce and end to disease and the ability to provide "practical" physical immortality into the mix .. and where do you think we are headed? .. especially with the Genome the "tree of life" available for the development of genetic weapons ..

which by the way would certainly appear to be the reason that man was kicked out of the garden of eden .. not sin .. as portrayed by the the organized churches .. and as such the belief of most average Christians .. sin was the precursor .. but preventing access to the "Tree of Life" and immortality was the reason the "Gods" kicked man out of the garden ..

NKJ Genesis 3
22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"

which though some what off topic .. leads me to another challenge to the average Christian world ..

as the garden of eden is portrayed as an actual location on the earth .. as opposed to say the whole of the earth .. i would like anyone .. especially someone who advocate a literal interpretation of the bible as being necessary .. to take me to the garden of eden so i can witness the cherubim and the flaming sword for myself ..

NKJ Genesis 3
24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. (no mention of what guards the west entrance??)

and if you are good and truly religiously minded .. not offense intended .. but a scientifically minded religious person .. would seem to be the epitome of oxymora .. how can you support healing and immortality by any other means than by faith .. which is the essence of almost all current religions and essential to Christianity .. which defines faith i might add as:

NKJ Hebrews 11
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.(a very good definition for my money)

especially given that by my interpretation of the book .. science is nothing but a new universal language .. read: global language .. and that science is nothing less than attempting the deconstruction/understanding of the Divine

... One day, we'll be able to do something else than driving our cars through traffic jams
yeah, we'll be doing something else: pedalling. Way too many predictions [if you ignore Bush administration] that we won't have gas to run these intelligent cars within 10 to 15 years.
oilcrash
Scheide
Hubbert
END OF CHEAP OIL
a Reading List
It is getting so hard to care about all this happy-hype car talk about how cool the future cars are going to be. Detroit and Washington may be in denial...let'em rot; just plan to take care of you and yours!

and slightly OT...[to the tune of the "Rawhide" theme:]
Roland, Roland, Roland,
Keep them stories Roland.
All our gas is stolen. Bush Lied!..."

Oh, see what you started! Now I'm gonna get modded down.

Can I have a play on that slippery slope once you're done with it?

This may seem like a slippery slope fallacy, but it is indeed based on solid evidence. Analysis of historical climates indicates that climate changes are indeed very sudden.

source
source
source
source

But hey... we can wait untill our society has been crushed by global climate change before we take off our blinders.

Where do I get the distinct impression that she means that she likes this in much the same way as this?

Visit http://www.hubbertpeak.com/ or, http://dieoff.org/42Countries/42Countries.htm for some brief but interesting overviews. Talk a grain of salt with you and open mind.

However you don't need to be an Economist to know that as Iraq stabalises and it will eventually oil product will ramp back up again under US supervision and the price at your "pump" will come back down.

As for the remarks on China. China's economy isn't as susceptable to the woes of the World economy because its currency and markets still are not as exsposed as many other economies. Although this is changing slowly, with their accession to the WTO http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/ch ina_e.htm

and changes to the position of thier currency,
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/ 0,4386,275733,00.html

Its fairly safe to say that China will play this game carefully because they understand the risks of exposing their economy.

Is this enough facts for you to take this spin of what appears to be a reasonably logical theory. I don't think the author meant to do more than postulate a theory. Probably the best I've heard about the situation to date.

Hey even the Chinese news media a reporting a dependency on crude oil imports...

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/11/con tent_289499.htm

For more info go and google with things like Chine , WTO, G7, yuan, currecny exchange etc etc.

Confident?
Secure?
Empowered?

I think I'm browsing different web sites that the test subjects.

Sometimes the translation commands seem to go out of sync, and faces turn to jelly.

And if MPEG does to lineart what JPEG does, get it the fu@k outta my South Park =)

Regardless...Too much of our lives are wasted and our minds crippled and enslaved by that damn box. Forcing digital down our throats is patent fascism, an artificial short-lived prop to trade and GDP to expand a machine which isolates ourselves from each other hypnotised with fake news, indoctrinational history, and "spectator" sports.

It's a religion.

I've decided to just run a cash register and be poor. It was good enough for my grandfather.

Oh, but your grandfather lived in a world with a much smaller human population. Why? Because it used to be a manditory requirement of the survive of the human race to have vast numbers of children since so many of them would die before having their own children. People are genetically programed to overpopulate just to keep in place. What went wrong is that the so-called green revolution meant that most children would live not die. Then the most natural impulses create a population that is dependent on fossil fuels to keep going but fossil fuels won't keep going. Even if they just get so hard to come by that the production levels off the babies keep coming so somethings got to break down.

I think I am beginning to see your point, but I'm afraid it still seems somewhat unclear.

Personally, I don't entirely think that humanity's refusal to switch to "alternative sources" is entirely based on economics.
I would, however, cocede that economics is a huge factor in making that choice.

I Think that maybe that the reason that we have not switched is because of the constraints placed upon us by "common sense", where common sense is a kind of awareness in a state of inertia.

To put it more plainly -
Perhaps our intelligence tells us that an energy crises is eminant.
And yet, we find this difficult to accept, because we have been enculturated into a society that is heavily reliant on spending a geologies petrochemical legacy.

We should be preparing for the plausable worst-case scenario , but we our "inertia of awareness" factor doesn't want to accept that the lifestyle we possess can change radically and swiftly.

Thus, our collective world-view, enshrined as common-sense is at least as much of a preventitive factor as is the economical element, when it comes to our choices of energy sources.

We should focus on stopping all the new coal fired power plants that are scheduled to come on line over the next 30 years from starting.

Clue: The people of the earth consumed 28 billion barrels of in one year while discovering only 8.5 billion barrels of oil to replace it.

Nobody's going to stop any coal fired plants from being opened.

Looking at it a different way, the human race is about two million years old give or take. In the early 1800s there were only about 800 million people alive. Now we are approaching seven billion. Industrialization powered by oil caused this massive population increase. When the oil is only one half used up we are going to see "downsizing" as in massive die-off.

None of the green energy sources can provide the reliable energy that modern society demands. While this one will at least be very predictable, it will only be able to generate power when the tides are right, and that has no relation to peak power usage times. Sometimes the timing will be right, but the rest is wasted.


This is something that needs to be underscored; what is even worse is the magnitude to which green energy sources fall short. It's a myth; it's outright LIES at worst. Hydrogen is not an energy source, as many people - even professionals who should know better. Oil is effectively free energy, millions of years of solar power stored up and scooped off the ground - and it is going to take a HUGE investment in nuclear infrastructure to catch up.

Solar is an excellent possibility; however, research into efficient solar cells is lagging, and the energy efficiency of those cells is questionable. It doesn't do much good if you're producing cells using oil, and the cells take more energy to make than they will return over their lifetime.

That's also the problem with oil in the first place - there is more oil than will every be extracted from the earth. The problem is that the amount of energy to extract the oil is increasing, and once oil becomes an energy storage mechanism, and not an energy source, we are in big big trouble.

The unfortunately alarmist sites Die Off and the link in my signature are excellent sources for data backing up these claims - many of those studies are in fact funded for by congress.

"Green" energy sources are an interesting experiment but they WILL NOT solve the upcoming crisis from a shortening oil supply. The solution is to apply taxes to petroleum now and get that money into base research into solar cells, nuclear power, space based solar colletion, and other possibilities that offer energy densities that are a reasonable replacement for what we have now.

If you have energy, you have everything. Without energy, you have nothing.

Some report with some numbers on food.

http://dieoff.org/

"Animals have the ability to continously procreate until all resources are consumed, however, most don't."

BullShiznit. Animals do not limit themselves, they are limited their environment. Resources are not the only factor. Predators, disease, birth rate, death rate, territorial insticts, and many other factors play a part. Please see http://dieoff.org/page80.htm for a concrete example of what happens when a species is introduced into an environment where resources are the only limiting factor. This is the classic example that I guaruntee will be brought up, should you take a university level environmental studies class.

The growth of animal populations can be predicted: http://www.sosmath.com/diffeq/first/application/po pulation/population.html. Accuracy varies on how many of the environmental factors that will limit population growth are known, and whether the known factors are the most important.

Even humans do not consciously maintain a population that will not exceed resources. Other factors limit human populations, such as food, water, disease, all of the limitations on animals - plus economics, birth control, and numerous other societal factors. But now we're getting into Sociology 101 - lets get back to Environmental Studies 101...

"Would machines follow this same type or universal standard of population control or would they just envelope every item they could?"

Would machines follow the same universal standard of population control? Yes. That universal standard is that they will continue to reproduce until some environmental factor limits them. Resources, predators, death rate, birth rate, etc. So if the machines were very robust, lasted a long time, had a high reproduction rate, could eat anything, could migrate long distances, and had no predators - then its grey goo for us.

This seems a rather unlikely scenario to me. Could grey goo be a serious problem when the conditions are right? I would say its likely that someday, somewhere, grey goo will be a problem. And then they'll send out some guy in a truck to spray machine poison, and things will get back to normal.

We're not above this.

It's a joke, I get it.

Having said that, it's America and the other developed countries that are raping the planet right now.

The problems we are causing are too numerous for me to list, but we need to stop!
This website has the right idea, but I can't see many of us volunteering for it, at least not until a Peak Oil Depression sets in.

Which brings up the question:
What would our lives be like today if Bussard's advice had been taken-and Bussard was correct?

We'd probably have a few, working fusion reactors in place right now. The market for oil would be rather different-simply because there would be a clear, migration path away from oil. Anti-war sentiment in the US would be different-in part because there would be lots of local interests lobbying to get a piece of the rebuilding US infrastructure. I expect that current debt levels would be substantially lower for the US than they are now.

Right now, we have a very, big geopolitical game being played that involved oil, India and China. India and China both appear to perceive access to middle eastern oil as being crucial to their immediate development plans. Would this be the case if there was another energy source on the horizon?

The prophets of doom have some real ammunition. Would they still have that ammunition in a world with fusion energy?

Most people don't seem to be aware of the fact that coal power plants are more radioactive than nuclear power plants.

It is also now possible to design nuclear power plants so that they fail safe, unlike the poorly designed plant at Chernobyl.

Safety-driven memes are difficult to counter, but once we run out of options perhaps we'll do what we must.

dieoff.org - This site offers a lot of useful references, and a thought provoking synopsis about oil production and how transition to declining energy availability signals a transition in civilization as we know it. The associated mailing list is also informative.

dieoff.org - This site offers a lot of useful references, and a thought provoking synopsis about oil production and how transition to declining energy availability signals a transition in civilization as we know it. The associated mailing list is also informative.

I do get annoyed by peakoil scaremongerers who ignore the fact that people continue making new finds around the world - even in bizarre places where we've never even thought of looking before, such as granite basement rock (????... ok, someone explain to me how that one works ;) And yet, look at Vietnam, and all of its granite fields like White Tiger...).

Here is what ExxonMobil has to say about the matter. Hardly scaremongering.

Add to the mix the fact that some oil companies have been overestimating their oil reserves, and you have a looming problem that is notscaremongering. Are we adapting (using our oil resources more wisely/conserving)? Not really.

The total fleet fuel economy peaked in 1987 at 26.2 mpg when light trucks made up a mere 28.1 percent of the market. By 2001 with light trucks making up 46.7 percent of the market total fleet fuel economy fell to 24.4 mpg.

The standards for all light trucks manufactured is set at 21.0 mpg for MY 2005, 21.6 mpg for MY 2006, and 22.2 mpg for MY 2007. This rule is effective May 5, 2003.

BTW, none of theses views are from "liberal environmentalist caremongerers" (whoever the heck they are.)

Cheers- raga

and we know that we always keep finding and extracting more than we would have predicted.

Maybe more than predicted, but less every year since 1962! (see graph)

I said that in another discussion. but it is worth repeating here in a more appropriate topic.

Several years ago, there was this article in Scientific American that stated conventional wisdom said that oil supplies will be steady and shortage would only happen in half a century or so, and by then there will be alternative sources. They gave several convincing arguments that the shortage would happen within a decade.

Here is a link to the article, The End of Cheap oil by Colin J. Campbell and Jean Laherrere, March 1998.

This web site, Hubbert's Peak seems to be dedicated to the same premise.

I picked this volume up after researching the issue myself over the web. There is an excellent Scientific American article on this issue from 1998 that serves to provide a similar view from the perspective of another geologist. I highly recommend it.
After reading these materials in early January of this year, as I watched oil prices rise higher and higher, I couldn't help but think about what I read!
The other interesting thing about this book is that it points out how petroleum provides us with benefits far beyond keeping our cars running. Plastics? Herbicides? Fungicides? CD-Rs? Certain medicines? All are dependent on keeping the oil flowing.

Yup.

We are all paying thru the nose at the pump now for gas.

Like the assumption that reconstruction contracts and defense work would jumpstart the economy, the cheap oil dream did not pan out at all. Put it up there on the board with Iraqis welcoming the US forces with flowers. A year now, and it is a worst nightmare scenario.

That is what you get when you are driven by sheer ideology, and do not listen to others raising red flags along the way.

Back to oil: Iraq war is sure one factor, but perhaps not the only one.

Several years ago, there was this article in Scientific American that stated conventional wisdom said that oil supplies will be steady and shortage would only happen in half a century or so, and by then there will be alternative sources. They gave several convincing arguments that the shortage would happen within a decade.

Here is a link to the article, The End of Cheap oil by Colin J. Campbell and Jean Laherrere, March 1998. This web site, Hubbert's Peak seems to be dedicated to the same premise.

So, the future is somewhat bleak, if this sharp spike is really the ushuring of that prediction, and not just an anomaly reaction to the war in Iraq.

also note: Shell Oil just got busted heavy for over reporting what they swore up and down was their reserve, and I bet some of the other companies do it too. You just are not going to get any truth or action out of the big power/energy monopolies, and you have no control over how/when/why and what it will cost in the future to stay dependent on those companies for all your energy needs. It IS a valid consideration. You CAN mitigate future events personally though, by taking action yourself. To me, waiting for this "other guy" to do it, or big government/big business to "do" something is not practical, when I can "do" my own right now, at least to some extent, and to a practical extent. And "energy" doesn't exist in a vacuum all by itself,like "just oil/gas" or whatever, it's interconnected, all the various forms, and price increases on one side tend to make the others go up as well, broadly speaking. Like how many people know that the huge demand coming up on the north american natural gas supply by 1500 new natgas powered electric peaker plants will directly cause much higher food prices? That's because fertiliser is made from that stuff. It's a direct hidden energy cost everyone will be paying,because we all eat, but most people won't know they "why" part of it, and won't consider it as part of their monthly "utility" bill. Same as middle eastern oil is never all completely priced at the pump or in your fuel oil bill or in your electric rate, a big part over the years has gone into HUGE military expenditures related to our continued involvement in the middle east(oil is the major reason of course), and that comes out of your income tax, but you don't see it as an "energy bill".

Anyway, glad someone else has seen the dieoff.org site and read the olduvai gorge paper, it's pretty good, as is the rest of the site. Several evenings sobering reading there.

When the costs of commuting outway the benefits, it will change.

Perhaps a 4x price hike isn't enough - how about being unable to get gasoline, except for a rationed amount? Going to be so keen on commuting then? This is not just likely, but probable in the very near future.

The reason a video feed is needed is so the guy with the money can watch you, in case that's not apparent. There are few things that will ever change, and that's one of them, here in North America. I'm Canadian and pay much more for gasoline than Americans - about $1/l, if I paid
$4-5/l, it would be insane to commute. For what it's worth, I think it's insane now.

YMMV.

Don't worry, there will be a huge die-back after the end of the availability of cheap oil. I've just noticed that the second site has removed its Articles section temporarily. It still has a good selection of links however.

Most people are not aware of how limited oil reserves may be.

After we get 24 hour recording with GPS, the next step is... what? Remotely accessible by law enforcement? Perhaps video recording as well?

OBD-III, which will appear in ALL north (american) cars has this functionalty in it. I will never own a car that allows remote monitoring. Anyone who is concerned about this should have a long hard look at what is upcoming under the guise of "emissions" standards. Driving is not a optional anymore - judgements in Canada reflect that, and if I have to go back to a 1950 carbeurated corvette, I will.

Not that it's going to matter in 25 years anyway.

It will happen more often, and it will eventually become permanent, unless we get a renewable resource to replace fossil fuels.

..."the first Moore's law is endangered, not because the semiconductor industry cannot build new generation of chips, but because we will not be able to provide them with enough power."

Hell, the way we're burning through oil, powering computers should be the last of our problems.

It's not because we're short on gas, it's because of the oil cartels.

The flaw is that oil is not our only source of energy! Coal and natural gas can easily make up the energy differences and will last us quite some time still

Dieoff.org covers this in a lot of depth. The problem is that oil is a very, very high quality of energy that is easily transportable and extracted from the earth at a massive energy profit. The issue with coal is that large scale extraction may or may not be possible for an extended period without oil running the machines. Solar and other renewable resources just don't have the energy density or quality to even approach replacing oil. You'd need solar panels the size of earth orbiting the sun.

Largescale hydro and other projects can slow down the problem, but we really need something like fusion power to replace oil. It is a difficult problem that politicians do not want to address right now.

Perhaps a more -realistic- way of looking at it is that in the 1st world, we will not see the full impact of oil scarcity for a long time due to our advanced military capacity. There is no alternative to oil, and we will do what is required to guaranteed access in the short term.

If a cheap replacement for oil is not found (be it energy from the quantum vaccuum; fusion in a bottle; magic beans), we are in very dire straights. Enjoy the oil why it lasts. Before you jump on my post take the time to read some of the references on the Dieoff site - many of them are funded by the petrochemical industry and the US congress.