I think his oil knowledge is probably pretty good, but his pulled-out-of-his-behind theories on the coming collapse are probably 100% wrong.

I love how he says stone-bronze-iron-steel was a natural progression. You know iron is INCREDIBLY more difficult to discover and work with than bronze? Of course it had advantages which made it a better long-term solution. But I bet there were guys looking at it going "Man, it is so much harder to produce than bronze, but bronze is done for (since his iron sword can kill any guy with a bronze one) that pretty soon iron will be the only thing worth having, but only a tiny few will have it!"

People don't just roll over and die when a problem arises. Supposedly there are a tremendous number of nifty inventions sitting around because plain old oil-based technology does it [whatever it might be] cheaper. Phase out oil, and suddenly people are looking at those inventions with new eyes.

Talking about nuclear power plants, he said "making and transporting the concrete and steel, mining and transporting the uranium (itself available in ever lower concentrations), disposing of waste and, eventually, decommissioning" all require oil-based power. No they don't. Making concrete involves grinding rock into powder. No reason that has to use oil, you could do it with an electric motor and produce the electricity from ANY source. Transport? Biodiesel is available and could become WAY more available if people really wanted to start producing it. Or Bush's favorite, Hydrogen! Make the hydrogen from water, which takes energy, but again it can be from any source. Mining, again, run your diesel stuff on biodiesel or get electric equipment. I don't see how disposing of the waste (unless you just look at it as the opposite of mining and transport) is oil-based at all. Decommissioning, again, what does that have to do with oil? Plus sooner or later if we really get serious about nuclear power we'll have fusion plants which won't run on uranium anyway.

Increasing the price of oil will put a damper on many industries and could cause a depression, but it increases the pot of money that'll be handed to the next person who can invent a cheap way to get energy. I have faith in human innovation. I just hope it's a little more environmentally friendly energy source .

[edit] Oh and hasn't the price of oil ohhhhh almost doubled or something lately? Sure, there's lots of stuff about industry "feeling the pinch" or whatever, but I wouldn't exactly compare today with the great depression.