Debunking fuel conservation myths...

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by Kal-El

There's more than enough fossil fuels to last another century and probably a lot longer even without conservation. Don't let environmentalists tell you different.

I have no idea where you get your information from but every single piece of data - not supposition but data - that I have ever found tells a much different, darker story. The best analysts in the world, from Royal Dutch Shell to Saudi ARAMCO to other major players in the industry, all agree on 2 things:

1) There is, at most, 40 to 50 years of affordable oil left if we drill and pump every single drop. Affordable means that even though there will still be some oil left it will be so hard to get to and so difficult to refine and offer such little usable return that it will not be cost effective to do so.

2) That we have achieved Peak Oil, meaning that no more oil will ever be pumped out of the Earth per day than is being pumped right now. This means that there is a known limited time supply, and 3 big groups are soon to be competing for it economically: The U.S., China and India. The only things holding gasoline at its current low price are our military and clandestine operations throughout the Middle East and other places, and that neither China nor India has enough cars on the road yet to have large requirements (which will soon change, first in China).

When you combine this information with the fact that we have just 40-70 years left of other resources such as aluminum and steel, and that the unpolluted fresh water sources that remain simply cannot sustain the Earth's human population for very long, you see that the future is indeed fraught with challenges. We can plan now and face these challenges head on with knowledge, sacrifice and solidarity, or we can race to the finish and crash and burn as we hit the wall.