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Thanks for the link disproving the parent statement. 3rd hit: http://www.radford.edu/wkovarik/oil/ from which I quote:

“We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential.

I read an interesting article about how ethanol really can be similar to gas, parituclar in an engine designed for gas. http://www.radford.edu/wkovarik/papers/fuel.htm

It seems as if ethanol is actually a good fuel when an engine is tuned properly. It is used for racing already, most motorsports use pure ethanol as it has a higher octane rating which allows the production of more horsepower. If you tune and gear an engine properly you should easily be able to get similar mileage. The problem with flex fuel cars is that they are still tuned for their main source of fuel, traditional gas.

Ethonol also eliminates the need for a catalytic converter to eliminate engine knocking. If it can be produced using land which is inefficent for other agriculural uses such as west texas ranch land where hundres of acres are need per cow or argicultural byproducts such as corn cobs it is a great alternative to traditional petrolium based fuel. I never drank the corn based ethanol Koolaid, but an economical cellulosic based ethanol sounds very promising.

I had this in 1988 and so did Dave Barry who named it.

like this?

Use of solar panels goes way back. I still can't believe Ronald Reagan took down those panels that Carter installed on the White House as well as axing the solar research program - weakass politics.. :(

No, the long term outlook is big shortfalls, it's called "peak oil" and the only debate amongst credible scientists is when it occurs, not if. I'll give you a hint, the most optimistic estimates are for around 2035, with most realistic estimates coming in at about 2010. Unless you consider 20 years to be long term (I wouldn't) then it's not right to say the long term outlook is of a surplus.

Wrong. We are not running out of oil. People have been saying that for decades. What we are running out of is cheap oil that is relatively easy and inexpensive to extract. That's been the case for years. As technology improves we are able to extract oil from places we previously thought impossible or to expensive to be feasible. As the price of oil increases thereby increasing oil companies profits they are able to further invest into research and development to come up with new and improved ways to get to the oil reserves we know about but have previously been unable to tap. In addition, as the price increases it becomes possible to tap previous reserves that have not been heavily tapped because the return on investment wasn't there with prices being low. The Canadian Oil Sands are a great example.

The bottom line is that we are not running out of oil and will not run out of oil anytime soon. What we are running out of is the cheap and inexpensive oil that we are used to. However as technology advances and/or prices increase we will be increasingly be able to tap into reserves that were previously impossible or simply cost prohibitive to tap.

Look at the american and european figures near the bottom. See them grow!

How about leaded gasoline then.

They sold millions if not billions of gallons of it, made a fortune and employed many. Of course it's also the reason atmospheric lead levels are 400 times higher than they were 200 years ago.

Just because it's popular and makes money does not make it desirable.

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  1661 -- John Evelyn writes "Fumifugium, or the Inconvenience of the Aer and Smoake of London Dissipated" to propose remedies for London's air pollution problem. These include large public parks and lots of flowers. http://users.synflux.com.au/~ant/Evelyn/fumifug.ht ml http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/evelyn.htm
  
  "The immoderate use of, and indulgence to, sea-coale in the city of London exposes it to one of the fowlest inconveniences and reproaches that can possibly befall so noble and otherwise incomparable City... Whilst they are belching it forth their sooty jaws, the City of London resembles the face rather of Mount Aetna, the Court of Vulcan... or the suburbs of Hell [rather] than an assembly of rational creatures..."
  
  In his diary, Evelyn writes in 1684 that smoke was so severe "hardly could one see across the street, and this filling the lungs with its gross particles exceedingly obstructed the breast, so as one would scarce breathe."
  

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  In the Middle Ages London air was so polluted by smoke from coal fires that in 1273 Edward I passed a law banning coal burning in an attempt to curb smoke emissions. In 1306 a Londoner was tried and executed for breaking this law. Despite this, pollution was not checked, and on one occasion in 1578 Elizabeth I refused to enter London because there was so much smoke in the air. Smoke killed vegetation and ruined clothes, and the acid in it corroded buildings.
  

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Oh, they can can they? Or is this how it will be in the near future, you know, just after WMD has been finally found?

They decided to go with a GSM-based cell phone system, for example, even though it would please the US companies to go with the incompatible US standard. What does WMD (or lack thereof, rather) have to do with anything? This is all an argument about the "No War for Oil" BS. This has nothing to do with "No War for Kickbacks, and Phantom WMD" which incidentally I would agree with, though as usual hindsight is 20/20. You keep changing the argument, rather like SCO. What are you going to bring up next, minimum wage?

Yes, and Saddam could influence who the oil was sold to and in what currencies it was paid (euro)

I was talking about the oil companies, not Iraq. Every sale had to be approved by the UN, so ultimately it was they who were in control, not Iraq. Oil companies don't "make" oil, all they want is the cheapest supply of crude, either getting it out of the ground themselves when they can secure mineral rights, or buying crude from nations for as cheap as possible when they can't. I imagine the oil companies involved got sweet deals to reward them for going through the UN, otherwise they wouldn't bother. Half of the oil Iraq sold under the program was to US oil companies (some direct, some through intermediaries). That supplied 8% of US oil imports. So it wasn't a bad deal for them at all.

Iraq post-war with no more UN sanctions will have a lot more choices than they did under the sanctions. Do you actually think Iraqis are so stupid that they will give away long term mineral rights? They are not stupid, so there is no way that will happen, and the US will have little more influence there than it does in several other countries in the area. The fact that Iraqis have already influenced both the timeline and election plans is a good demonstration they know what they are doing.

According to most estimates, Iraq has more oil than Saudia-Arabia. Hard to tell after years of war and mismanagment.

What are you talking about? Go to the OPEC site and see for yourself. Of course it depends who you ask, but I have yet to see anyone say Iraq. Try to provide a link with more credibility than OPEC.