The exponential function and peak oil/human population

<div align="center">Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy</div>

"It is clear, particularly in the case of coal, that we have ample reserves.... We have an abundance of coal in the ground. Simply stated, the crux of the problem is how to get it out of the ground and use it in environmentally acceptable ways and on an economically competitive basis... At current levels of output and recovery these reserves can be expected to last more than 500 years.14

Here is one of the most dangerous statements in the literature. It is dangerous because news media and the energy companies pick up the idea that "United States coal will last 500 years" while the media and the energy companies forget or ignore the important caveat with which the sentence began, "At current levels of output . . ." The right-hand column of Table IX shows that at zero rate of growth of consumption even the low estimate of the U.S. coal resource "will last over 500 years." However, it is absolutely clear that the government does not plan to hold coal production constant "at current levels of output."


You can watch the video here. It is pretty poor compared to the dvd seminar I watched but it gets the point across.

Video

Website for the transcript
http://globalpublicmedia.com/node/461