If memory serves, Shell itself argued that we're looking at serious oil problems in the 2020s. Additionally, even if it turns out that we aren't in such bad shape there is still an upper limit sooner or later to what fuels exist.

...I Have to say that with regard specifically to the bit about Rainforests: simply throwing out one quote about how acres of forest grow back, is not a way to prove that logging is sustainable. You are dealing with a scientific subject, and as all too often happens these days, it seems someone(you) with little scientific training is again going public with opinions that have little basis in scientific fact, but will still reach and make sense to many people who also have very little scientific background. The same thing is happening with climate change in America. A bunch of people with little to no scientific training (talking heads) are interpreting a highly COMPLEX issue for the general public and coming up with an answer that; "we shouldn't worry". Bottom line, it is dangerous and it is foolish to think that you understand complex scientific issues... you don't. Also, predictive science is not the same as predictive international relations. You see, with science you are making a prediction based on overwhelming amounts of data and research and observation. With IR, you simply study history, and the present and attempt to make a call...which, I might add, is usually wrong.

Bottom line, rainforests WILL disappear if we don't stop their destruction, end of story. A regrown patch of trees on some farmland IS NOT a rainforest...it will take literally hundreds of years before it reaches a healthy point again...if it ever does. So I would say that you should remove the "MYTH" from the list. It aint no myth...

Actually, HURRICANEWARNING, I'm apt to agree with the writer of this article about the rainforests. I believe you would too, were you to live, as I do, in a tropical South American country. You literally can not chop down the jungle fast enough to keep it clear. I have lived as an ex-pat in Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, and Puerto Rico. In all those countries, you chop down the forest and it grows back so fast, you know the calculations made by white-coated scientists in labs back in the USA are way, way off. Talk to some of the beef farmers in Argentina about the struggles they have with keeping the pampas open for their cattle. Sit down and chat with the people in Venezuela who have trouble growing bananas and batata because they can't get rid of all the overbrush. I dare you to walk into a fifth or tenth-year forest and distinguish it from virgin territory.

The trouble is, in Western thought, we are taught to work forward from the premise that the way it is now is the way it should always, or could always, be. Uniformitarianism works brilliantly when applied to a North American deciduous forest, because they grow slowly and react poorly to stresses. In a tropical country, you throw a mango or banana on your patio and harvest the fruit two years later. Tropical countries are alive with an explosion of life, and life will not give up, no matter how hard you try to clear it.

Based on my thirty-plus years travelling the Amazon basin, working in scores of rainforest area, I can tell you that what is happening there is not perhaps something to be proud of at all times. But at the risk of sounding a bit ethnocentric, I tell you, there is little will in Latin American countries either to preserve the rainforest or, in fact, to destroy it. The heart-wrenching pictures of progress and destruction that make the daily news always fail to return in three years when the lazy good-for-nothings who stole money from the government to begin the project gave up and the jungle reclaimed its own.

What people who live in the USA and Europe fail to account for is that the rainforests exist in tropical areas because they are tropical. It is the tropical area that creates the condition necessary to nourish a rainforest. The same things that would kill plants and trees in a temperate area don't apply. Recently I had to leave my home for three months to travel to Asia. Before I left, as a precaution, I sprayed the entire property with RoundUp 1-Year chemical. When I got back, I could barely see the outlines of anything in my yard. I even had some fresh bananas! Yet some sour-faced environmentalist would have gravely told me that the house had been uninhabited for decades, I'm sure.

Seriously. Stop reading Greenpeace Chicken Little pronouncements and spend some time in the rainforest. There are still people groups out here that have never been seen by the eye of civilized man. The jungle is big, man. Relax. If anything, it's expanding.

Oh ya. Good one. I don't know how many times I've heard that craziness about "water sharing" doing something in the Middle East.

Wait. Exactly once... right here.

Why don't you just cut to the chase and quit avoiding the hugest and more paranoid apocalyptic madness that has ever done so much damage?

The "War" on "Terrorism".

Give me a break with your who-ever-heard-of and who-even-cares obscurities. We're losing the race for high speed rails?? That is somehow apocalyptic?? What do we even need high speed rails for anyway? To get the unemployed to the soup lines faster?

You tricked me into looking at a fairly lame article.

Damn. I was waiting for the logical end of the progression, global warming as myth, but I guess the fact that it's already here sort of ruins the sequence.

And the price of oil is bouncing up again as a the threat of a mere 2% reduction in supply from Libya proves the ragged edge of supply and demand.

Nope, no problem. The overpopulation will die off as the dictators strafe the demonstrators, and cholera kills the rest.

We'll be OK in our island fortress, though, Dr Pangloss...

This is a very weak article. The fact that a low-probability catastrophic event (nuclear terrorism) has not happened yet does not mean it isn't an important issue to monitor and prepare for.

As has already been pointed out, regrown forests are nothing like the old-growth rainforests they replace, having radically different and less diverse ecosystems.

The lack of understanding displayed by the author of the issues I personally have background doesn't bode well for the handling of issues I don't. The 'joke' about obese teens with nukes was also in very poor taste.

Shame on you for publishing, FP.

Just as there were people during the waning years of the 19th century who argued that a large-scale war in Europe was probably impossible, so I suspect Lind's comments about wmds probably reflect lack of sufficient imagination. It's not difficult to make a dirty bomb, though. More challenging is creating one which can't be traced to its point of origin. Once achieved, though, a state actor might have a large incentive to hit one high-profile target (an act which then gets blamed on someone else).

Having lived all over the U.S. as well as Europe, I have to say that the U.S. really could benefit from having a better transportation infrastructure. A handful of cities in the U.S. have decent underground transportation (and just 'decent') but other cities, for example Greenville, South Carolina, could greatly reduce its traffic congestion by building (jobs!) and maintaining (jobs!) an underground rail system. It's home to three major universities, so the safety of taking that many more drivers off the road is incalculable. But as for high-speed rail specifically, anyone who has ever lived and worked on the East Coast somewhere between Boston and Washington, D.C. will tell you how nice it would be to be able to take a high-speed train connecting Boston - New York - Philadelphia - Baltimore - D.C. instead of having to drive through the traffic of all five cities. Generally speaking, it's safer, cleaner, and - oh my gosh! - Americans might actually read more if they could take a train to work instead of having to sit in traffic for an hour (at least) to get to work in some place like D.C. The U.S. DOES have some catching up to do!

Anyone that doesn't have concerns over the fact that oil is at 100$ a barrel in the midst of the biggest recession since the 30's has to have their head examined.

The US is also a suburban mess in terms of its city and town infrastructure such that were one company, WalMart, to have its distribution network fail, there would be enormous amounts of Americans that would not have access to the most basic goods.

Also, some of these issues are really silly ones-- for anyone who is familiar with Hubbert or Ken Deffeyes, it's really silly to mix up concern with oil infrastructure-- the issue is not running out, it's getting to the light sweet stuff--with things like a nuclear bomb going off in an American city. While the latter would be horrendous and would cause catastrophe, it wouldn't amount to the collapse of world civilziation that 1000$ a barrel oil would mean. People in Moscow would still live fine if a nuke went off in San Fran, but with oil at 1000$, it's possible that all of the forests in Russia and Germany would be burned down in 3 years to provide basic heating.

Lind better hope that we never reach 1000$ a barrel oil, because that would be all it would take for this country to have a complete break down. And what would it take to get there? And here is the scenario people are worried about-- a bunch of bombs in the richest fields of oil in SA; the SA basically lying about their reserves, which they do and everyone knows about it; the Straits of Hormuz being shut down: a revolution in SA that ends up with leaders who don't want to pump at the current rate because they feel that oil is too precious to sell at current levels; a revolution in Russia that ends with oil infrastucture completely destroyed, etc.

See once you let it out of the bag that there may be oil shortages for the foreseeable future, oil becomes more valuable than anything including gold on the planet.

Sharing water may not bring about peace, but a lack of necessary resources can bring about war.