All a bit trite, Chris. Your simplistic analysis of needing a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil is cute but way off the mark. You are extrapolating to a highly improbable extreme. Unless I am mistaken, it takes a whole lot of other inputs to produce a barrel of oil and if the price of oil goes up then more of those inputs can be made to produce that barrel.

I am more interested in the apparent consistency deficit between the two major schools of catastrophic theory. On one hand the Global Warming Wallahs (the CO2 Flux Clan) are telling us that reduced hydrocarbon emissions must be imposed, by force if neccessary, to save the planet. And on the other hand the peak oil people are telling us that hydrocarbons and most of the economic activity behind it, will be history by 2030.

That would seem to be a pretty good argument for ignoring Kyoto altogether because hydrocarbon emissions are about to collapse. Isn't that what the eurospivs wanted anyway? Or did they just want to have their cake and eat it too?

First a correction:
M King Hubbert wrote in the journal Science in 1949 that there would be a peak of oil production. In 1956 he published his famous paper which predicted a peak of oil production in the 48 states of the USA. He was a little off but close enough. USA production peaked in 1970/1971 and has been declining ever since. (I believe 2004 production was about equal to 1950 i.e. substantially down)

From a geological point of view there should be no dispute that oil wells peak, oil fields peak and world oil will peak. There is a nice table published every year by BP (in Excel format) that presents world oil production broken into 54 regions. As of 2003 29 of the 54 regrions were past peak.

Thus far in 2005 we have seen two of the 4 largest fields in the world pass peak. First: Cantarell in Mexico and then this month (November) Burgan's peak was announced by Kuwait. The biggest of all - Ghawar in Saudi Arabia - is rumored to be in big trouble with HUGE quantities of water being pumped in to keep the flow. So much so that more than 30% of what comes out of the ground is now water.

Will we run out? Not soon. Not ever (there will always be a few barrels around). Will we need to find other sources of energy. Yes. and fairly soon. Remember we still have coal, oil shale and tar sands. Abundant quantities of all three but it WILL BE COSTLY in both money and the amount of energy used to produce oil out of these sources.

Economically - We will conserve like crazy and don't be surprised
if we see cycles like the recent one in the USA where the price of gasoline goes way up and then drops by a third as people change their driving and other habits.

The USA uses so much oil/energy per capita that they (we) could cut consumption in half and still use more per person than Japan.

tbc - maybe

Chris, when you break open a donut you will find a lot of little holes. So there is not only the big hole but the donut has a lot of little holes, thousands of them.
I see there is one person so far who has concentrated on the hole and broken through to what you are supposed to be writing about.
I am sorry I took you literally and am concentrating on the donut and not the bloody great hole in the groundbreaking argument you are trying to make.
What is the argument please you are trying to make as donuts come from the USA and Lamingtons are Australian. Now am I supposed to be concentrating on the coconut in my lamington or the chocolate. What has donuts got to do with oil? Donuts are cooked in peanut or safflower oil.

Oh Perseus, peak oil does not mean that hydrocarbon emissions (carbon emissions) are about to collapse. “Remember we still have coal, oil shale and tar sands”, says jiMNy.

So those who care about global warming are the “CO2 flux clan”! Your extremist terminology undoes your credibility, no two ways about it.

Chris, things are going to change radically long long long before oil becomes totally uneconomic (your “expend a whole barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil” scenario).

Oil prices don’t need to rise very much at all for really bad things to start to happen, such as the prices of just about all food and basic commodities rising to the extent that many people really can’t make ends meet, essential foodstuffs not being transported to outlets, businesses collapsing, and inflation setting in so that the dollar devalues at just the same time as essentials become a lot more expensive.

And alternative energy sources just aren’t going to cut it. As you say, oil is the supreme example of compact energy. And we use it on such a massive scale, so any alternative, or all alternatives put together, are going to have to be absolutely massive in their production.

George Monbiot has done the calculations for biofuel production from the highest yielding crops such as rape and oilpalm. The extent of production needed to come anywhere near substituting current fossil fuel consumption would be of such a scale that it would need to replace an enormous portion of the world’s food crops, thus leading to massive starvation.

So while the point at which oil becomes totally uneconomic may be many years away yet, and actual peak oil also a fair way off, I reckon we are right now on the cusp of enormous changes, as rising prices start to bight.

Hmmmm...

Time to butt back in.

Yes, it's trite. Childish even.

But I made it simple so you could understand it.

If I want to illustrate a point in the style of Dr Zhivago, or The King's New Suit of Clothes, I'll pick the latter every time.

As for the race between oil depletion and global warming, we will be facing sporadic crop yields without the benefit of our faithful Genie.... cheap and easy oil. We might be doubly damned.

Anyone know how to turn a plasma screen into a ploughshare? Make soup out of a Raoul Merton? Fertiliser from a set-top-box?

Just joshing. 3/10 for comments.

Homework: go back and read it again.