Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

petroleum engineer. In 1956, Hubbert presented a far-reaching talk to the American Petroleum Institute, making a disturbing prediction that was universally derided by his colleagues at the time. He predicted that U.S. oil reserves were being depleted so rapidly that soon 50 percent of the oil would be taken out of the ground, triggering an irreversible era of decline that would set in between 1965 and 1971. He saw that the total amount of oil in the United States could be plotted as a bell-shaped curve, and that we were then near the top of that curve. From then on, things could only go downhill, he predicted. This meant that oil would become increasingly difficult to extract, hence the unthinkable would happen: the United States would begin importing oil.
    His prediction seemed rash, even outlandish and irresponsible, since the United States was still pumping an enormous amount of oil from Texas and elsewhere in this country. But oil engineers are not laughing anymore. Hubbert’s prediction was right on the button. By 1970, U.S. oil production peaked at 10.2 million barrels a day and then fell. It has never recovered. Today, the United States imports 59 percent of its oil. In fact, if you compare a graph of Hubbert’s estimates made decades ago with a graph of actual U.S. oil production through 2005, the two curves are almost identical.
    Now the fundamental question facing oil engineers is: Are we at the top of Hubbert’s peak in world oil reserves? Back in 1956, Hubbert also predicted that global oil production would peak in about fifty years. He could be right again. When our children look back at this era, will they view fossil fuels the same way we view whale oil today, as an unfortunate relic of the distant past?
    I have lectured many times in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East, speaking about science, energy, and the future. On one hand, Saudi Arabia has 267 billion barrels of oil, so this country seems to be floating ona huge underground lake of crude oil. Traveling throughout Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, I could see an exorbitant waste of energy, with huge fountains gushing in the middle of the desert, creating mammoth artificial ponds and lakes. In Dubai, there is even an indoor ski slope with thousands of tons of artificial snow, in utter defiance of the sweltering heat outside.
    But now the oil ministers are worried. Behind all the rhetoric of “proven oil reserves,” which are supposed to reassure us that we will have plenty of oil for decades to come, there is the realization that many of these authoritative oil figures are a deceptive form of make-believe. “Proven oil reserves” sounds soothingly authoritative and definitive, until you realize that the reserves are often the creation of a local oil minister’s wishful thinking and political pressure.
    Speaking to the experts in energy, I could see that a rough consensus is emerging: we are either at the top of Hubbert’s peak for world oil production, or are perhaps a decade away from that fateful point. This means that in the near future, we may be entering a period of irreversible decline.
    Of course, we will never totally run out of oil. New pockets are being found all the time. But the cost of extracting and refining these will gradually skyrocket. For example, Canada has huge tar sands deposits, enough to supply the world’s oil for decades to come, but it is not cost-effective to extract and refine it. The United States probably has enough coal reserves to last 300 years, but there are legal restrictions, and the cost of extracting all the particulate and gaseous pollutants is onerous.
    Furthermore, oil continues to be found in politically volatile regions of the world, contributing to foreign instability. Oil prices, when graphed over the decades, are like a roller-coaster ride, peaking at an astonishing $140 per barrel in 2008 (and more than $4 per gallon at the gas pump) and then plunging due to the great recession. Although there are wild swings, due to political unrest, speculation, rumors, etc., one thing is clear: the average price of oil will continue to rise over the long term.
    This will have profound implications for the world economy. The rapid rise of modern civilization in the twentieth century has been fueled by two things: cheap oil and Moore’s law. With energy prices rising, this puts pressure on the world’s food supply as well as on the control of pollution. As novelist Jerry Pournelle has