DesuMaiden: I don't worry about "peak oil." Here's what I've seen since I joined this forum,
1. The folks on here used to say that shale would never work out. But it did work out.
2. They said Canadian tar sands wouldn't work out. That the EROEI was all backwards. I don't even hear anyone use around use that phrase anymore -- "energy returned on energy invested." The tar sands did, in fact, work out.
3. They said global warming would get hotter -- it didn't, the temps have stayed the same.
They said the price of oil would go up and up -- it didn't, it's stayed the same, and headed down now.
4. They said EV's would never work out. They did, in fact, work out.
5. They said Mitt Romney was an idiot for worrying about Russia. They were wrong, Romney was right.
6. They said it would be okay if we just leave Iraq -- it wasn't okay, now we have to go back.
Now the US is poised to be the biggest energy giant in the world, beyond Saudi Arabia, beyond Russia. Who could have ever thought that would happen, that would have been crazy talk back when I joined this forum.
People on this forum used to laugh at "drill baby, drill." They said there was no oil to drill. But look at this now, we're #1 in oil and nat gas and we've got a million bpd in biofuels too. We've got old Elon Musk revolutionizing EVs, and battery technology, and solar panels that can go on every roof in the US.
It sorta seems to be "working out," it sort of seems like they did "figure something out." Other than ebola and Russians and American teenagers trying to run off to join ISIS -- where is the doom?
The future seems to just keep marching on whether we like it or not. There are driverless cars now. You can buy a robot now, that will mow your lawn and scrub your floors and clean your pool. We've got space shuttle drones now. The navy has laser weapons. And big jet-sized drones that take off and land on those carriers.
The army has robots with legs that can run fast as a cheetah.
We FINALLY now have the Dick Tracy phones in wrist watches. Not that I'm going to buy an Apple product.
Or you can walk around with your "google glasses" on, recording your whole day to video or just augmenting your reality with Google providing useful information and services based upon what you are seeing in the real world.
What's next, flying Jetsons cars? All the "cool future" stuff seems to be coming true. There are robots that do surgery now, with a surgeon at the controls but next step will be all software.
On and on like that. Where's the doom?