peak oil
i haven't checked the status of peak oil in a while. but it appeared in the news again recently. the prediction is oil production grows exponentially, plateaus chaotically, and falls off faster than it climbed. the problem is you can't tell if you're on the plateau until you're well into the decline. so when folks are saying peak oil was last year or will be 4-10 years from now, whatever. they're just guessing. looking at the production graphs... and sorta squinting a lot... i'm gonna make a prediction that's just as good as anyone else's. if you fit world oil production to a bell curve, we are already past the peak. am also going to predict the world will produce more oil in one year than it did in 2008. everyone panic right? heh. sure. why not? prices of everything will go up. and that'll make a whole lot of people unhappy. but it will mean we will (finally) make massive investments in new energy sources. and eventually the cost of energy will come back down. but it will take a while. i'm guessing 30 years to get back to where we are now. the problem is, there is no single energy source that's better than oil. or even has the potential to be. which means we'll need to develop multiple sources. which will slow things quite a bit. ah well. invest accordingly.