February 11, 2004

Need Something Else To Worry About?

How about THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!

Okay, I'm being melodramatic. The issue is about the upcoming scarcity of oil. You know how when a keg is near to being tapped, the beer pours out slower, and you have to do more work by pumping the keg to get it? Some experts think we're approaching this point with oil. The idea is that the world oil producers have or will soon hit the peak of global oil production. Any oil extracted after that point will need a steadily increasing amount of work (and money) to do so. In a span of a few decades, oil will no longer be an economically viable fuel source.

Considering that the world is dependent on oil for everything from powering cars to food production, and that there's currently no alternative fuel source that can meet a fraction of the world's energy demands, one may say this is good cause to worry about THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!

So is this a real problem or the product of the overactive imaginations of energy conservationists? I've been reading articles on the Net for the past hour and I think it's the former, although there's a lot of debate on the date that we'll hit the peak capacity (date ranges from "already happened" to "20-30+ years from now)

You can start looking into the issue with this article from The Christian Science Monitor.

More sources: 2 3 4

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