Catopsilia said:
Thanks for the reply,protonthief.
I do not agree that these authors are making any mistakes.
The key factor is falling energy return on energy invested (EROI).It won't be very long before we find out.
Catopsilia,
One of the things I enjoy about forums such as this, is that it forces me to learn, forces me to study the details of a subject I previously knew little about. Thank you for that.
Your replies are frustratingly short on detail, so forgive me if I sometimes misunderstand what you are driving at.
It seems we agree that fossil fuels are not about to literally run out in the next 30 years, and it is an indisputable fact that fossil fuels are interchangeable, eg, coal-to-oil, despite Dimitrie's statement to the contrary.
I'm fairly sure we agree that the price of all fossil fuels, especially oil, will continue to rise and, given the inherent fragility of the capatilist world economy, this could trigger a world recession at any time.
Catopsilia said:
The key factor is falling energy return on energy invested (EROI).
Presumably you think this is a significant factor now, or at least will be in the near future, say in the next 20 years. This really just gets down to economics, how much does it cost to produce a barrel of oil from tar sands, or coal, or whatever. It is true that fossil-derived energy is required to extract tar sand oil, either from natural gas, or from the tar itself. Even so, evidently this is not a significant problem for the extraction of oil from the Canadian oil sands, or it would be uneconomic for Canada to be producing and exporting vast amounts of tar-sand-derived oil right now. According to Wikipedia, Canada and Venezuela EACH have tar sand reserves approximately equal to the world's total reserves of conventional crude oil, and we already know from present Canadian production that the oil thus produced is economic, despite the energy losses required for production. Tar sand reserves have been negligibly consumed so far, so issues due to falling EROI are unlikely to occur for at least 30 years, I would have thought.
Let's look at oil-from-coal. This is a really horrible process, wasting at least half of the energy contained in the coal, with appalling CO2 emissions to match. Horribly wasteful and dirty as the conversion process may be, South Africa demonstrates that the economics are workable, albeit more expensive than conventional crude oil. Of course, eventually we will run out of coal of sufficiently high quality to be useful, but not on the timescale of from now to 10 years or so that the 'peak oil' people speak of.
Shale oil appears to be generally uneconomic at the present time, though there are huge reserves worldwide that could produce (expensive) oil when other sources become sufficiently scarce. According to Wiki, the EROI of these known reserves varies from 2:1 to 16:1. Again, all the evidence that I can find says that we won’t ‘run out’ of oil (in this case shale oil) for quite some time yet, despite conventional oil production peaking and declining, but the cost of oil will progressively increase, because the alternative sources of oil are more expensive to produce. For anyone interested, it is fascinating to visit the remains of shale oil processing plants at Newnes and Glen Davis in NSW. This is an old technology, but it remains an expensive way to produce oil.
Maybe we actually agree with other. Because of alternative sources, oil is not about to 'run out' in the way that many 'peak oil' enthusiasts claim, but it will become more expensive, and we had better all get used to it. 
Catopsilia said:
It won't be very long before we find out.
How long is ‘won’t be very long’, and what exactly do you expect to find out?
