I sat down to read my Popular Science magazine in May, as I always do, so I could see what will not be successful or will not ever fly, and I came across an article which was a little out
I sat down to read my Popular Science magazine in May, as I always do, so I
could see what will not be successful or will not ever fly, and I came across
an article which was a little out of character for that publication. It was
entitled, “Are we really running out of oil?”Considering the publication
and the subject matter, I discounted it immediately. However, there were two
items which caught my attention. First of all, the graphs used to portray the
future supply and demand curves had been taken from the Oil and Gas Journal,
one of the two premier publications in that industry. They do not publish data
from a non-reputable sources.
The article also quoted an individual
geologist named Joseph Riva. I had no idea who he was, but I decided to check
on the Internet. What I found was disturbing.
Mr. Riva has been an oil
geologist for many years. He had served, while working at the Library of
Congress, as a non-partisan advisor to both houses of Congress on matters of
oil and gas. He was also the individual chosen by Encyclopedia Britannica to
author their articles on fossil fuels. In other words, the guy knows what he is
talking about. His prediction was that oil demand and supply curves will cross
by 2010 with dire consequences in pricing and availability of supply. This is
not a problem with all potential oil supplies. It is a problem with easily
extracted cheap oil supplies.
This is not far away, and much closer than I
had ever heard before, so I decided to look further. At a Web site entitled
“The Coming Oil Crisis,” I found a ton of data even more disturbing. Written by
other oil geologists, with similar credentials, article after article explained
why present public estimates of oil reserves are not accurate. These articles
had been published in Scientific American World Oil, The Oil and Gas Journal,
and in one case was the presentation that had been made to the House of Commons
in England. Most of their predictions were sooner than 2010 and some as early
as 2003, but all assumed no Middle East political problems. Any upheaval there
and all bets were off.
I conclude that we are about to face a very
difficult problem about which we can do very little here on Kaua’i. The general
consensus is the tripling of the price of oil and the real potential of supply
disruptions. The problem has the potential for such dire consequences that I
considered not even talking about it.
But one of the articles, written by
a woman working for the U.S. Geological Survey, said the worst thing we can do
about this is not talk about it. I have to agree. You can’t fix a problem you
do not face.
I suspect most people will not believe this because they will
not want to. I sure don’t, but please read the literature out there. Our best
hope is to plan for this, if we still have the time.
BILL
COWERN
Lawai
