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Take a look at a graph of coal production. Coal use grows at an exponential pace.

A quick search shows the graphs linked to below. Coal use is grows exponentially but only becomes significant around 1850. Coal production in the 18th C was minimal in comparison to that extracted and used in 1850, and close to insignificant to today.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/201...
http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-Fos...

The comparison to volcanos was not coal production in the year 2000 but coal production in the year 1850.

Coal production before 1850 was in the 30-50 million tons / year. Today it is 8,000 - 10,000 tons / year.

Coal production was approximately 0.003 of what it is today. So you can see that it is comparable to volcanic activity.

http://www.indexmundi.com/ener...

As usual the bigger picture is revealed if you change the time span.

ZeroHedge.com (Sensationalist but the true bits are quite interesting and after about a year or two, whatever crazy thing they're going on about shows up on "The Economist.")

NakedCapitalism.com (It doesn't SHOUT at you the way ZeroHedge does, but it's informative).

ricefarmer.blogspot.com (A sane news aggregation site with occasional realistic commentary. As usual, reality puts people off).

ClubOrlov.com (Interesting guy. Grew up in Russia during the collapse. Comments on our ongoing slo mo collapse).

http://ourfiniteworld.com/ (A happy little blog about resource depletion and its implications. Packed with facts and numbers. Do not approach without a working calculator). Don't expect to be happy at what you finally figure out for yourself either.

Wow dude, that reads like some serious hard-ball propaganda. You really don't like Iran do you?

Jesus, where to start. The economic sanctions have hurt them, but the economy isn't in shambles. They still have A LOT of oil. And as long as someone buys it, the sanctions don't do much to that. I mean, China is buying the oil, a fungible resource. It's #2 in OPEC. Honestly, US shale oil from fraking is probably hurting them more than the sanctions.

You'll see it is already checkmate on Iran.

Wow, that's some serious fluff you've got going on there. Checkmate.

the rest of the middle east which mostly hates them will get nukes about five minutes later

Where the hell does this come from? Is the USA going to give nukes to the Saudis? To Jordan? To Iraq!? oh hell no.

And we've already (very foolishly) given at least a couple nukes to Israel.

The Iranians have overdosed on their "great satan" propaganda.

You realize that the "great-satan" guy Ahmadinnerplate doesn't have any power right? He's a spokesperson for the nation. And he got voted out in 2013 and replaced by a more moderate guy.

Imagine a different world. A world where Iran wasn't going out of its way to be a dick head.

That'd probably involve a world where the CIA and Britian and didn't overthrow their government and install a puppet-dictator in a blatant oil-grab. Blowback is a bitch isn't it?

They could be an industrial power in the middle east. The Germany or Japan of the region.

Of the region? "The region" is EARTH, and our neighbors are CHINA, who makes everything. Welcome to globalization. It's been going on for a while.

A minor oil exporter

Wut? Sure, they used to be #3 back in 2011, but they're still #7 in 2014. Right above UAE.

And what did they get in return for [trying to be a nuclear power]?

Power. The threat of power. The compromise from the the western powers at the negotiating table when it comes to Iranian power. And I believe they're working on nuclear sovereignty like their neighbors Pakistan and India.

why do it? Besides fetal lead poisoning leading to chemically induced retardation

Wow dude, wtf?

history... colonialism... so what?

It wasn't actually colonialism. Iran was established and civilized during the colonial period. The major historical event that someone else has obviously told you about before was in the 50
s and after 30 years they took back their country. It's that revolution is the reason that the USA is being dicks to Iran. Both sides are holding grudges for pretty bad shit in the past.

What relevance does that have on 2015?

Yeah, I'd say more recent events like the USA unilaterally invading and occupying their neighbor would be a more relevant issue affecting the political landscape. 300,000 dead civvies is not something you just overlook.

The Iranians should be trying to make friends with the US.

Says the US nationalist. It would end sanctions though, that's a plus. I'm REALLY not too sure about that whole military security thing. Imagine if Ukraine had nukes.

Really, there's a legitimate argument here that Iran's nuclear program hasn't been a good idea in the long run, even when you consider the political power that comes with being nuclear armed. But you're just so over the top and blinded to the reality of the situation that I had to say something. Ease up on the kool-aid or you might get fooled into thinking the next pointless war is going to pay itself off in 3 months.

After the oil runs out, there won't be any money. Details here. Warning -- it's a harrowing read.

Largely BS in my opinion - the article is based on the assumption that large scale energy production will cease almost entirely (no electricity, no fuel to transport goods, no gas to cook with, etc). This seems pretty unlikely to me - it's entirely possible that energy will become more expensive, but not world-endingly so - we already know we can produce energy from nuclear reactions for a reasonably low price - not "too cheap to meter", but still not insanely expensive. So since we've got a reasonable supply of energy from nuclear power, the problem becomes storing that energy to replace the oil infrastructure; and we know we can do that - you can use electricity to crack water into hydrogen, produce methane and heavier organics from that. It's not that efficient, but it's certainly doable, and it *will* be done if there is no more oil left.

What is more of a concern is an "energy gap" - a period of time between oil becoming scarce and replacement technologies being built. New power stations take many years to commission, for example. This is far more likely than a long term problem.

After the oil runs out, there won't be any money. Details here. Warning -- it's a harrowing read.

Yup. Things predicted on blogs always happen.

After the oil runs out, there won't be any money. Details here. Warning -- it's a harrowing read.

Do you have a source for that? I was able to find this and world energy per capita is certainly going up. I also found this for the U.S. but it shows a rather recent peak that could be more related to the financial crisis than a real long term trend. In any event, why would a decline in per capita energy use indicate a decline in civilization rather than just increased efficiency?

Any saving is not being passed on to the consumer...

Really? Then why are US natural gas prices much lower than prices elsewhere in the world, and have fallen by about 50% since the early 2000's?

The long run problem here is that natural gas prices are highly volatile. Prices are super cheap right now because of a big increase in supply while demand doesn't change much and storage costs are big. Prices may stay low for a few years, but nobody knows what will happen later. If we ramp up electricity production through natural gas though, that will increase demand driving up prices again. When natural gas prices go back up, that could be rough on consumers.

Here's a graph highlighting gas prices over the past 40 years.

Here's a page documenting how some of the forecasts from the US EIA have worked out. These big agencies aren't very on the ball, if we had oil production levels like the IEA forecast a decade ago we'd be paying $2/gal in the US now.