AR-News: (US NY) THERE ISN'TENOUGH OIL

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

FOR hundreds of millions of years, the remnants of dead animals and plants 
have been accumulating on the bottom of the earth's oceans. In some areas the 
stuff was absorbed into porous rock formations, cooked by the earth's core and 
transformed into the substance called oil. There it sat until 1859, when a 
former railroad conductor drilled the world's first oil well near Titusville, 
Pennsylvania. Since then, 50,000 more have been drilled, and the substance has 
transformed human civilization. 
But we're running out. Of the 2 trillion readily extractable barrels of oil 
that once lay under the earth's surface, humans have managed to find, pump and 
burn nearly a trillion. At current rates, Caltech physics professor David 
Goodstein argues in "Out Of Gas," we've only got enough to last till 2043 or so. 
Even according to the rosier estimates favored by some scientists, the end of 
the line will come before the end of this century. 
Of course, doomsayers made similar warnings during the oil shocks of the 
'70s, and their predictions were falsified when new discoveries outpaced usage. 
But things are different now, argues Goodstein. Working from calculations by 
geophysicist M. King Hubbert, he shows that oil production typically follows a 
bell-shaped pattern. In America, for instance, new discoveries led to a 
production surge in the early 20th century. But output peaked in 1970 - as Hubbert 
predicted 14 years earlier - and has been declining ever since. 
According to Goodstein's analysis, this bell-shaped pattern is now playing 
out internationally. New discoveries have been flat in recent years. And the 
author believes the world will likely hit the top of its production curve - the 
"Hubbert peak" - sometime in the next decade. 
After that, output will fall, even as demand from industrializing nations 
such as China skyrockets. In response to price shocks, many consumers will switch 
to natural gas. But that will provide only temporary relief: The Hubbert peak 
for gas is itself only a few decades away. 

full story:

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/books/18105.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040405/90fa0161/attachment.html