Mark wrote:
Look, the Romans denuded the forests of Europe and North Africa for
wood to make charcoal. When Europeans ran out of wood, they used
coal. When coal became too expensive to mine and transport, oil came
to the fore. The known world was ruled by charcoal, industrial
revolution was run by coal, space was conquered during the reign of
oil.

We have 200 years worth of (known) oil in the U.S., 400 years worth
of coal, and way beyond both of those in natural gas. It is way
premature to get all exercised about "running out."


i've got nothing against USING oil but we don't have enough to WASTE
it.

There is not 200 years worth of recoverable oil.

we were talking about oil, not coal or gas... there are already good
alternatives to coal and gas, use coal and gas all you want, no
problem

There is no good alternative to oil for transportation that we have
yet...., it should not be wasted.


"Estimated U.S. oil shale reserves total an astonishing 1.5 trillion barrels
of oil - or more than five times the
stated reserves of Saudi Arabia."

Oil Shale Reserves
http://dailyreckoning.com/oil-shale-...#ixzz1penlmFCg

"Currently, the United States consumes 19.6 million barrels per day, of
oil..."
http://maps.unomaha.edu/peterson/fun...nsumption.html

Now I know that maths is hard, but follow along:

1,500,000,000,000 bbl of shale oil / 20,000,000 bbl/day = 75,000 days
75,000 days / 365 days/yr = 205.479 years

That's just for shale oil.

I agree with you about minimizing waste, but definitions of "waste" vary. I
view driving 85 instead of 55 as better use of my productive time while
others (you?) would claim I was wasting gasoline!