Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has an informative article about the world’s finite supply of oil and the strategic implications of Iraq’s oil.

This is the same crew that publish the Doomsday Clock, giving their assessment of nuclear danger. The current time is seven minutes to midnight.

Anyway, a quote from the oil article to get you thinking:

Petroleum reserves are limited. Petroleum is not a renewable resource and production cannot continue to increase indefinitely. A day of reckoning will come sometime in the future. The point at which production can no longer keep up with increasing demand will mean a radical and painful readjustment globally to everyday life.

In spite of that indisputable fact, people behave as if the global petroleum supply is unending. Predictions of the exhaustion of oil reserves seem to have lost all credibility. The public assumes that inexpensive oil will be available essentially forever. The idea that petroleum resources are finite and that petroleum production might peak in the near future seems to have vanished from all discussions of energy policy in Congress, in the press, and even among public interest groups.