They Died Before the Oil Ran Out

There is an open secret in the oil industry that dare not speak its name: peak oil.

Well, two did speak its name and gained no acclaim for it. One, M. King Hubbert, died years ago. The other and the most controversial, Matthew Simmons, died at his Maine summer home Aug. 8.

The peak oil idea is simple: Oil is a finite commodity, and one day we are going to use up all of it.

Hubbert, a geologist, began speculating on the effects of the gradual decline in worldwide production in the 1950s. He expressed this in a simple graph, which became known as “Hubbert’s pimple.”

He tended to draw the graph freehand, and it looked more like a Rubenesque breast than a pimple. It was so simple that he drew it over and over again to illustrate his points for journalists and politicians. Later, he would draw lines through the pimple to demonstrate where we had been and where we were going, based on the then-known reserves and rate of depletion. Full article at: Peak Oil