During covid times I heard many interesting conspiracy predictions such as the value is money will fall to zero, the whole society will collapse, the vaccine will kill 99% of the population etc. None of those things have happened yet, but can you add some other predicitons to the list?
Actually, long before covid hit, there were all sorts of predictions floating around. You know, things like the 2008 recession will cause the whole economy to collapse and then we’ll go straight to Mad Max style post-apocalyptic nightmare or 9/11 was supposed to start WW3. I can’t even remember all the predictions I’ve heard over the years, but I’m sure you can help me out. Oh, just remembered that someone said that paper and metal money will disappear completely by year xyz. At the time that date was like only a few years away, but now it’s more like 10 years ago or something. Still waiting for that one to come true…
We were supposed to have exhausted the earths oil resources 25 years ago.
No. We were supposed to have hit peak oil 25 years ago. That doesn’t mean all the oil goes bye-bye. It means the amount extracted, per year, no longer increases. There’d still be a shitload of oil every year. Just not quite as much as the previous year.
The fact there’s a finite supply guarantees this will eventually happen. It is not physically possible to endlessly increase the amount of oil extracted each year. And the oil we’re seeking out, in any given year, is what’s easiest to acquire. So the net energy of extracting the oil tends to go down, barring advancements in extraction technology.
This is mostly what averted the predicted peak. Offshore drilling made oceanic reserves viable. In the continental US, oil production peaked circa 1950. It went up and down for a while but has been on a straight decline since 1970. US oil production in general peaked in 1970 and similarly fell through the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. The line only shot back up because the industry made shale and tar sands a viable source.
A child would go, ‘aha, we found another source, I guess we’re safe forever.’ But the first seventeen bajillion barrels are gone. We’ve already drained a massive portion of all the oil that can even theoretically be produced. In a very real sense, America is running out of oil. We’re making up for it with oil substitutes, like petrochemical-saturated dirt. In practical terms, we’re still making more gasoline each year. The supply will never suddenly vanish.
But there’s only so much there.
Counting these resources is very tricky. You could just ask mining companies how much resources they have, but that number tends to increase as they drill more. See JORC code for more info.
Drilling is expensive, so the company won’t drill any more than they absolutely have to in order to convince the investors. This means that outside the measured mineral resources there’s usually a lot that is only indicated or inferred. Since, the confidence in those parts tends to be very low, the companies can’t really report those numbers as proper mineral resources. However, they can confidently report the measured and proved resources, so those are the numbers you’ll usually see in the news articles.