At 7:45pm three friends and I crossed the finish line for the Seattle to Portland bicycle ride. 206 miles from the University of Washington to downtown Portland. It was a great experience that I don’t plan to repeat any time soon.
Pictured in the photo (from left to right) Jim McConville, Bret Goff, Bret Backman and me.
Fossil fuels may have been used as early as 100-200 AD by the Romans. However widespread use of fossil fuel (coal) did not become widely used until the 1700s. In the late 1880s, fossil fuel began being used to create electricity. This also marked the beginning of the “peak coal” (later to be peak oil) hysteria. So far, for better or worse, we have not run out of either coal or oil despite countless predictions to the contrary.
In 1914 the US Bureau of Mines predicted that American oil reserves would last ten years. In 1939 the Department of Interior gave us thirteen years. Twelve years later, they extended their estimate by another thirteen years. In the 1970’s President Jimmy Carter announced that the world’s oil reserves would be depleted within one decade. Funny thing is, in 1970 there were 550 billion barrels of known oil reserves. Between 1970 and 1990 the world used over 600 billion barrels of oil and today’s know reserves are 900 billion (not counting an estimated six trillion barrels of oil trapped in tar sands, tar shale and oil shale).
How many examples of end of the world prophecies not coming true do we need before we stop believing new claims that the world is ending? Will oil continue to rise in price as oil reserves become more expensive to exploit? Certainly. Will it cause the demise of humanity? Certainly not.
“On what principal is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”
–Matt Ridley (author of The Rational Optimist)