Global Warming Not To Be As Bad As Feared

World oil and gas supplies are heading for a “production crunch” sometime between 2010 and 2020 when they cannot meet supply, because global reserves are 80 per cent smaller than had been thought … One side-effect of having lower oil reserves might be that the worst predictions of climate change would be forestalled – because there would be less fuel to burn, and therefore less carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas, produced.

Global oil production will probably reach a peak sometime during this decade. After the peak, the world’s production of crude oil will fall, never to rise again. The world will not run out of energy, but developing alternative energy sources on a large scale will take at least 10 years. In the meantime, there will be chaos in the oil industry, in governments, and in national economies. What will happen to the rest of us? In a sense, the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s were a laboratory test. We were the lab rats. You might remember it.