Trashing Peak Oil

In 1956, M. King Hubert made a bold and now-famous prediction. He predicted that oil production in the lower 48 states would peak in the early 1970s and decline steadily from that point on. In the years since that decline began — right on schedule in 1970 — there have been many attempts to apply Hubert’s reasoning to the overall global oil supply, in order to determine when we will reach the peak that will mark the beginning of the end for global petroleum use.

According to Kenneth Deffeyes, a former professor of geophysics at Princeton University, we’re going to hit the peak sooner rather than later, and worldwide oil production will have fallen 90% by 2019.

Obviously, one factor that will mitigate against hitting the peak is finding new sources of oil:

Part of the controversy lies in the fact that to know what fraction of the world