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qmotus comments on Lesswrong 2016 Survey - Less Wrong
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I am sure we can. Peak oil said we'd run out of oil Real Soon Now, full stop. The cost of oil has been rising since early XX century, as you point out, that's not what peak oil was all about.
Again, we have confusion of technology and scale. The average cost of oil extraction is higher than it used to be. But that cost varies, considerably. If you are trying to rebuild you don't need much oil, so you only use the cheapest oilfields (e.g. the Saudi ones) and don't try to pave over the North Sea with oil rigs or set them up all over the Arctic.
Peak oil refers to the moment when the production of oil has reached a maximum and after which it declines. It doesn't say that we'll run out of it soon, just that production will slow down. If consumption increases at the same time, it'll lead to scarcity.
Well, that probably depends on how much damage has been done. If civilization literally had to be rebuilt from scratch, I'd wager that a very significant portion of that cheap oil would have to be used.
Oh, yes it does.