[quote=Nor-LA-SD-guy]
Well I think it would still take a few hundred years for the population to double from here,
[/quote]
Actually our doubling time has been shrinking and I believe it’s currently something on the order of 35 years… Scary.
OTOH, the UN population projections don’t currently predict population to continue increasing exponentionally – they actually project a leveling off and a slow decline starting around 2060, as I recall.
I’m actually currently reading the pulitzer-winnning book “The Prize” mentioned earlier. Great book. One thing you see again and again there is that “peak oil” scares have been occurring regularly since the 1800’s – no kidding.
Even in the 1930’s, with threat from Germany looming, England was reluctant to go to an oil-powered Navy. There was concern – “Gee, maybe the oil will run out and we’ll be stuck with useless ships. Perhaps we should just stay on coal.” Churchill overcame that resistance with great difficulty.
It seems to me, if oil went to say $300 a barrel, we’d forget our concerns about nuclear so fast it would make your head spin. France is what – 70% nuclear for their electricity?
So the question Arraya, might be, will we run out of oil before we can successfully build the needed nuclear plants?
“Oops, crap, we only needed 10MM more barrels to finish the last nuke plant but we just burned the last of it! How stupid of us!”.
I personally do not think that is a likely scenario.
