[quote=harvey]There is no doubt that we are consuming fossil fuels at a rate orders of magnitude faster than the earth ever produced them.
The market can adjust to short-term supply and demand changes, but in the long-term we will run out.
Nobody really knows how far out long-term is. It could be a few decades, it could be a few centuries.[/quote]
FWIW the problem isn’t one of running out, the problem is how much will it cost to extract and get the resource to market. Personally I’d bet society will have no choice but to face the reality of the problem in decades, based upon the burn rate and the fact that:
A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material – that’s 196,000 pounds – is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles
