When is peak oil? Plenty of ink has been spilled in service of predicting when, exactly, we’ll run out of oil. Some people say it has passed, others insist that because of advances in drilling technology, we’ll continue to find more.
Well, Rhett Allain asks another question over at his blog, Dot Physics: Assuming we had infinite access to oil, would we ever run out? Turns out the answer is, essentially, yes. And it will almost certainly happen this century. Maybe a better question would be, if we’ll have to transition from oil in the coming decades, why not make the switch sooner than later?