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I think you misunderstood one point I had above.
Peak oil worries are about how fast we run out of oil and how soon.
Fast and soon being two different things.
Scenario 1: hit peak oil in 5 years, hit basically no oil in another 5 years.
Scenario 2: hit peak oil in 50 years, hit basically no oil in another 50 years.
Scenario 3: hit peak oil in 5 years, hit basically no oil in another 50 years.
Scenario 4 hit peak oil in 50 years, hit basically no oil in another 5 years.
Only scenario 1 worries me. And I think it is the least likely scenario.
I think #2 or #4 are more likely. I think oil reserves are effectively unlimited right now. Not easy oil reserves. But oil reserves plus some new technology. We already know of a bunch of marginal oil reserves like tar sands that are crappy but semi unlimited compared to current consumption rates.
I might be horribly off base in my assumptions. Willing to be corrected if I'm very wrong on those assumptions.
The fusion technology feels closer than 20 years. Ten years feels too optimistic. 30 years and something has gone horribly wrong in society or technology.
I'm pretty sure we are at Peak Oil right now. We've been on a long plateau since about ~2018 and certainly since 2022.
Pretty sure you're right about oil reserves, but you're missing the EROEI part: a lot of that oil requires a lot of energy to extract, meaning that we are effectively getting less net oil than we used to be because it takes more energy to get oil out of fracking or tar sands than it does out of gushers in Texas and PA. Of course if we have fusion this doesn't matter, but I have yet to see convincing evidence that we will ever have fusion.
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