I Am Very Tall

Energy concerns

Despite a sort of passing interest, I haven't really followed the energy markets all that much. I'm basically aware of the fact that oil keeps going up and is currently touching rates unseen since the '70s, and that's about it.

An e-mail from Arthur and a few articles have started juicing up my interest. The current meme that's interesting me is whether or not we're looking at a "peak oil" situation. That, according to wikipedia, would be:

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, an energy crisis may develop because the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically.

There are two questions that are up in the air at the moment. The first is if we are actually reaching peak oil. The second is if that's actually a problem, or if it's more of a Malthusian issue that can be dismissed due to mankind's ability to innovate its way out of resource constraints.

To keep the length of this post down, I'll address my thoughts on those two questions in separate posts.