Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?: Scientific American
Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau—roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day—since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency—an energy cartel for oil consuming nations.
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Even with large supplies of coal and natural gas, the world faces a potential energy shortfall, one reason that the U.S. Department of Energy suggested in a 2005 report (pdf) that a "crash program" to cope with any decline in oil supplies be instituted. The report argued this program should start 20 years before peak global production to avoid "extreme economic hardship."
That's because it will take decades for any kind of energy transition to occur, as evidenced by past shifts such as from wood to coal or coal to oil.
In fact, King and Murray argue that global economic growth itself may be impossible without a concurrent growth in energy supply (that is, more abundant fossil fuels, to date). "We need to decouple economic growth from fossil-fuel dependence," King adds. "This is not happening due to industrial, infrastructural, political and human behavioral inertia.
* We are stuck in our ways."
* We are dragging the ball and chain of our more retarded into the future. Retrogradism is a disease...please donate to the scientists feverishly working to find the genetic basis for this grave disease...think of the chillens!