non-oil so, what's waiting in the wings to replace oil? well, nothing. there's no source of energy that's as good as oil in all 4 categories i outlined in my last post. natural gas is nearly as good. there's not as much. and it's not as dense. we have lots of coal. but it's return is lower. it's very dirty. and not very dense. we have lots of sunshine. but its return is bad. it's not all that clean when you count disposing of storage batteries. and its density is terrible. we have lots of wind. it's clean. its return is marginal at best. its product is electricity which, like solar, has terribly low density. hydro, geothermal, tides, ocean currents, waves are very similar to wind. bio fuels sound great. but there's not very much arable land left after what we need for food. hydrogen is not a source of energy. it could be a nice clean, dense way to store electrical energy. but that will drive the return of our electrical sources down even farther. blech. there are other possibilities. like shale oil, oil sands, slate oil, methane ice, etc. high risk bets at best. nuclear? there really isn't all that much uranium in the world. which means we're talking about breeder reactors. or possibly extracting fissionable stuff from coal ash. fear of accidents and terrorists drives the return into the cellar. and again the product for the most part is electricity. so. it really looks like the fuck you energy belongs to whoever controls the middle east oil.  ¶ 1:28 PM