I congratulate all the contributors to this thread for keeping the entire conversation both civil and enlightening.
What is clear to me is there is a lack of agreement at our level of understanding; that lack of agreement is based on 'facts' being variable dependent on the bias of the writer (not poster, writer of the linked article, graph et. al).
In a perfect world we'd have an answer. I for one would like to believe we could put a man on the moon again, i.e., our scientist and R&D could come up with a viable replacement for oil. Quickly, oh, so quickly.
It's not going to happen. This is not the 1960's and the solution is, frankly more difficult than rocket science.
What we need is compromise,
pump the oil we can, as best we can - and find an alternative source of energy that works. Batteries isn't it - something must make the power to charge the battery. Solar isn't it, we can't rely on sunny days or cover miles of land. Ditto the wind. Ethanol, science and economics say it's not ready, or at least I for one do not want to make the trade off of me driving a mile while a family in Asia goes hungry because I bought his biomass. It might be the answer, but it's not ready.
CD asked a lot of valid questions, I'd like to add one to the mix -
Who is best to research and develop the next energy source, market driven capitalist or government? Biases aside, really? who?
As a contractor to government projects, if government is in charge of it we are in deep deep juju.
I'm hoping on Fusion and hydrogen
fuel cells, at best guess it's 30 years out and I won't live to see it. I hope I'm wrong on that one.