Predictions vary, but one day the oil will run out

In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush declared that the U.S. is a nation

In 1956, Hubbert made a bold prediction. Oil production in the Lower 48 states, he said, would peak in the early 1970s and decline forever after. He proved, if anything, slightly too optimistic: the actual peak occurred in 1970.

More recently, Kenneth Deffeyes, a retired geophysics professor from Princeton University, has applied the same analysis to the world as a whole. In a lecture at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union two years ago (now expanded into a book,