So I have been looking back in to the 'curves' involved in Fossile Fuel discovery and extraction- the last time I ventured into this topic was 10 years ago.

It seems like there is good evidence that we have seen in the past 5 years the 'peak' of proven reserve discovery. This is to say, we have found probably all the major deposites that are to be found, and probably about 80% of the total extractable fossile fuel has been located. The other 20% may be hiding out in the one or two small areas that have not been fully covered by geological survey. We may find several hundred billion more barrels here and there, but for the most part its all acocunted for.

In fact, the recent small fluctuations upwards in estimated total proven reserves seem to be more related to accounting procedures, which tend to be far more inflationary than not. For example, in the past two years, a lot of the OPEC countries reported gains, uniformly, in proven reserves (despite no major discovery reported in any OPEC country). The reported gains are largely explained by the fact that OPEC changed its proceures to tie production to a percentage of proven reserves. So of course, do the math. Also, companies tend to inflate estimates (invest in us! We have rights to proven reserves much larger than the competition).

So its probably safe to assume at this point that we are not going to discover any really big puddles of oil. We CAN reasonably assume that extraction techniques will allow dirtier and dirtier oil to be made profitable, and that will probably make up for inflationary estimates at least, and probably add a small amount to our reserves.

'Shale' oil and 'Tar sands' are probably never going to be a winning proposition.

Now, so lets assume that we have reached our peak. By what I have read, we have used around 50-60% of the oil discovered, and we have used most of that amount in the last 20 years... So in the last 110 years of oil-driven industry, we have used over half of the oil on the planet, and we have used about half of that 50% in the last 20 years. And we can expect higher usage in the next 10, and no reason to believe we won't see accelerating usage in the 10 after that...

So reason would suggest that we have somewhere between 20 and 30 years of oil left in the ground before we hit the 'OIL wall'.

(if you use the hubbart hypothesis of tying production to availability/discovery, some people suggest that we will actually see the peak of production sometime this decade and a *rapid* decline of production over the next half century)

Okay. So this is just the info I have. I'd like to hear otherwise.

I'd like to hear otherwise because IMHO, Nuclear is the ONLY possible scalable technology out there, and the PBR is the best thing I have seen. But what I am concerned about is that in order to transfer off fossil fuel and on to nuclear AND to account for rising energy demand, I read recently that it would take 1 reactor a day for 20 years.

If the real deadline is 20 years or shortly thereafter, then there is just no way we are going to meet that curve.

And of course, it would also require a hydrogen economy to transfer cars to.

Now, after oil there is always Coal, which could probably keep us moving for another few decades, but the environmental consequences of burning that much coal are.... apocalyptic by even the standards set by the global-warming deniers.

Natural gas might fill the gap, but from what I understand, by some estimates, we run out of NG nearly about the time we run out of oil...

Anyways, So Tom, Gary: what do you thing our chances are of scaling up? Geologists on the board: what are your expert opinions about when we run out? The numbers I', looking at are not that groovy.

Davin :.