Another way to think about oil though, Is using an idea known as peak oil.
And this is based on the observation that the rate
of extracting oil from some oil field like the state of Texas, for
example, tends to follow what's called a Gaussian or a bell curve.
This is an empirical relation, this is an observation.
Gee, it kind of looks like this,
it could look different, the rate of extraction could look different.
But what tends to happen is you have sort of a ramping up period
as the infrastructure is getting put into place.
And then the rate of growth tends to sort of taper off, and
then it starts to sort of come back down.
So what this means is that,
the implication of this is that the peak comes when the oil is
only half gone as opposed to over here we are looking at the last drop.
Here, we are thinking about where the peak should be and
if you have demand that is growing sort of exponentially.
Where the shortage is going to happen is sort of at that peak.
So looking at the amount of oil that is thought to exist on Earth today,
and the history of the oil extraction rate so far, we can use this theory
to come up with some estimate of when the peak rate of oil extraction will be.
And we're right about close to the peak now.
The traditional fossil fuel inventories of oil are about 200 gigatons.
And we've already extracted about 100 gigatons of that.
So, we're about halfway there.
So, peak oil would say that this is the time,
when oil is going to start getting more scarce.
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