A while ago I wrote briefly on why the Singularity might not be near and my estimates badly off. I saw it linked the other day, and realized that pessimism seemed to be trendy lately, which meant I ought to work on why one might be optimistic instead: http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#counter-point
(Summary: long-sought AI goals have been recently achieved, global economic growth & political stability continues, and some resource crunches have turned into surpluses - all contrary to long-standing pessimistic forecasts.)
Some Googling suggests that this is based on a misreading of the US being a net refined oil products exporter, e.g., http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/us-is-net-energy-exporter-psych and http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-20/myth-us-will-soon-become-oil-exporter