Obviously you can't have more reserves, than what you have in the ground. ...
That is certainly true if you are measuring the reserves in barrels, but in post 204, you were offering a methodology to determine when we would run out of oil, speaking of years remaining. You said:
"...If you divide the known estimated reserves (a highly inflated number for geo-political and business reasons) and divide it with today's demand (a number that would surely grow, if there was available oil) you get 40+ years..."
That math is flawless, but does not imply that no oil will be pumped out of the ground in40+ or even in 400+ years from now. This still true even if one makes the following two clearly false assumptions:
(1) No new oil is discovered.
and
(2) No new extraction methods are developed.
Clearly, less oil will be pumped from the ground after sometime as oil is finite. Perhaps this "peak oil year" is 2007, perhaps not. Certainly not if both (1) & (2) are very false instead of only a little false.
But as I have stated in prior posts there will NEVER come a year when the proven reserves are not approximately enough to sustain between 8 and 16 years* more of the current consumption. Thus, the reserves, expressed in years of supply are never, even in distant the future, significantly different than they were 70 years ago.
The objective of my recent posts was to get you to understand that
your post 204 methodology for estimating when we will run out of oil is non-sense. I showed this dramatically by applying your methodology to era 1920, as it predicted we ran out of oil before the start of WWII. Hence, it is clearly a non-sense methodology.
As oil becomes more expensive, other energy sources will be substituted for it, even for use as mobile fuel. Alcohol is already used in cars in Brazil about about as much as gasoline is. - Even the "gas" in Brazil is ~20% alcohol! (When alcohol is abundant, this percentage, set by government, goes as high as 25% and when it in short supply it drops to 15%. About 80% of all cars sold now can run on any mixture, but almost all use 100% alcohol as it is both cheaper and more powerful, but alcohol gives ~20% smaller range between fill ups.) In a few years, more than 90% of the car fuel used in Brazil will be alcohol! (Assuming that it is still the cheapest fuel.)
Part of the misunderstanding is you think in terms of barrels in the ground, not years of proven (or estimated) supply, that your erroneous methodology calculates. A worse error is implicitly assuming demand will not decrease as the price rises. Your whole post 204 methodology is non-sense because of these two mistakes.
The world will never run out of oil, but there will be some very serious economic consequences of its price rise, as it becomes harder to find.
It is tragic the way GWB is tricking the US public with the alcohol from corn program - a great cost to the US taxpayer. (Including the both higher cost of food, and reduced exports of corn effecting the value of the dollar, increasing inflation, etc. as well as the direct tax cost of all the various subsidies given to the already rich.) GWB may be able to displace 20% of the gas used in cars by 2020 (or whatever), but the oil consumption requirements of the US will still be steadily increasing as corn based alcohol, grown in cold Iowa etc. requires more (or at least nearly as much) oil energy as it can provide alcohol energy.
That taxpayer expense could be much better used. - It is part of the reason why the dollar will collapse soon (less than a decade now). The whole alcohol-from-corn program is a trick to get wealth to the few from the many without reducing the Saudi shipments of oil to US. The beneficiaries of this trick are very grateful campaign contributors and after GWB is out of office his speech fees, which they will gladly pay, will set new records.
----------------------
*As clearly explained twice now in prior post the number of years that proven reserves will last does not depend upon the amount of oil still in the ground, but upon economic factors (interets rates and price of oil). It depends on the oil price indirectly as that is what determines the rate of consumption. As oil gets harder (more expensive) to find the consumption will fall, but because people will still have cars that need gas, etc. the reduction of consumption will cause hardships /suffering and the associated slowing of GDP will be another factor contributing to the eventual "run on the dollar" and the global depression. The corn to alcohol money should be making electric public transport etc. “Bring back the street car,” etc. should be GWB’s push, but the Saudis and other big campaign contributors would not give to Republican party if that happened.
If it does not come for at least 5 years, this global depression will be a blessing for China because they will not need to pay as much for oil as if the US and EU were economically sound. The rapidly growing wealth of the Chinese middle class and the need to send finished goods to the raw material and food stocks suppliers of China (like Brazil) will keep the Chinese factories "humming at capacity" with zero sales to the US.
Brazil’s agricultural and iron ore exports are already causing a huge flux of foreign currency into Brazil (along with investors wanting to sell dollars and buy a currency with rising value). This is making the Brazilian currency very strong - too strong for Brazil’s manufactures to export. "De-industrialization" is the current "buzz word" in every financial paper. Thus, manufactures in Brazil are going thru a painful period, while the farms and suppliers of raw materials prosper. I.e. like it or not, Brazil is adapting to be a major consumer of Chinese factory goods, sent in payment for the raw materials and food stock China increasingly needs as almost a million people leave the rural areas (farmers mainly) for jobs in the city EVERY MONTH.
Brazil is already an exporter of both alcohol and oil, some to Asia. San Marthino, a Brazilian sugar and alcohol company I own 2500 shares of, just signed a 30 year contract to supply 30% of its alcohol produced to Mitsubishi. A joint Brazilian / Japanese company, formed late last year, is building a fleet of alcohol tankers to ship alcohol to Asia - etc. When the US voters finally realized how badly they have been screwed by GWB, Brazil may not have any cheap alcohol left to sell to US, even if the dollar has not collapsed.
