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Where did all that oil come from? Where did it all go?
Scientists predicted more than seventy years ago that the end of underground oil extraction would occur during the twenty first century. However, they greatly underestimated the total amount of underground reserves. Unfortunately, they also greatly underestimated the “burn capacity” of the human race. These two compensating errors effectively cancel each other out, so their timing prediction is still valid.
What then? What would we use for lubrication in our machines? How about feed stock for plastics manufacturing? Will future earth residents wonder how we could have been so short-sited as to burn it all up in one big frenzy?
How about the idea that it is continuously being created? Ah, creationism in a different form. Yes, the processes that created the big reserves in the first place are still functioning – but at what rate? And what carbon biomass is being converted? How about all those deserts that have been created in the last ten thousand years by human activity? How will they contribute carbon biomass?
Clearly, rapid and radical education offers the best chance to change this situation.
Wise use of the remaining reserves is absolutely critical to the survival of civilization.
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