Even the New York Times and Wall Street Journal admits the validity of peak oil - but you call it a "fringe theory."

Nice blog by the way "Markets protecting the environment" - let me guess, your other blog is called "Foxes protecting the henhouse?"

I would define "peak oil" not as the proposition that oil production has already peaked but rather as the proposition that it some day will. If you accept that definition, the proposition is not "fringe" but rather indisputable.

OK, so the question of just when is something we certainly can dispute.

There are so many problems with fossil fuels - not the least of which is market manipulation, foreign and domestic - that even if peaking was 100 years away we need to embark immediately on a "Manhattan Project" for renewable liquid fuels to replace it.

The best answer is cellulosic ethanol made from gasified waste - feedstock is voluminous and universally available. The process is efficient, cheap, clean, and it would solve or reduce many environmental problems (landfills, sewage, rice straw disposal, greenhouse gases, smog, oil spills, etc.). All ethanol can be gradually phased in to replace gasoline through blending and more flex-fuel conversions to existing vehicle models (as is occuring in Brazil).

The technology exists but investment has to wait for state regulations (like California AB 1090) to realign themselves to the opportunity. If you are a Californian, please support AB 1090.

Nice post. Once again, we see in comments that the fascists (er, I mean 'greens') want to "own" environmental goodness and we'd better do it their way or else. Only one fly in that ointment: the vagaries of human behavior and the unknowns of incentives in complex systems.

Peak oil sounds like a re-tread of Paul Ehrlich's perennially wrong chicken-little prognosications. I studied geology in the early '80s (at a good school too). At the time, it was drilled into my head that oil could not be found in certain types of rock formations. Until a few years after I graduated... it was. Go figure. We cannot comprehend the ultimate peak of human ingenuity. All else is just a grim and grey version of hubris.

Wow, it's the web's favorite fascist, Dead Fisch!

Peak Oil is not just a theory but a theory with a fatal flaw.
The fatal flaw being that "we are running out of oil" as opposed to "we are running out of $30/bbl oil." We've run out of $5/bbl and $10/bbl oil and looks pretty likely for $20/bbl oil as well. Big deal.

Any theory that's never been correct should be seriously questioned and certainly not used for much. Hubert used the 'peak oil' theory four times--once for domestic petroleum, one for domestic Nat.Gas. once for international oil and once for intnl. Natural gas. Only his domestic oil 'prediction' was correct--but for an entirely different reason. We didn't run out of oil--we found cheaper sources elsewhere,in large measure through technology.

When Hubert's theory finally dies a deserved death, the Greens will just find another excuse to force their world view on the rest of us...

pro solution pill