[PenultimateManStanding]

I'm in a discussion of this in another forum and I seem to recall a statistic that suggested that a quarter of all the petroleum ever used was since the year 2000. But I can't find any data on that. Does anyone have a link to confirm if this is true? The person I'm discussing this with is Conn Iggulden, the author of The Emperor series of books about Julius Caesar. He admits that human population growth is exponential and I'm saying that energy use from fossil fuels is also exponential and that the extraction and usage engine is sputtering and about to collapse.

[Twilight]

It's close to being true, all you have to do is pull up a recent ASPO newsletter showing ~1000 Gb used, and take your pick of ASPO, EIA, IEA, BP, trade journal, whatever figures for annual global oil consumption during this period. Varying with source and whether you count the first six months of this year, you will come up with a figure around 1/5.

[Zardoz]

When you study this chart a little, it does appear that Twilight's 1/5 figure looks to be correct.

Startling, isn't it? We're an incredibly stupid lot. We deserve all the bad things that are going to happen to us.

[eastbay]

PMS,

You can add further that if the peak in world oil production is about now, then around 1/5 of the remaining worlds oil will likely be used in the next six or seven years as well.

In this manner of explanation, anyone with a basic understanding of math can see that therefore everything will collapse in a few decades.