Actuary Gail Tverberg returns to provide an update on where we are in the global energy story. Her outlook is not rosy: she doesn’t not see a path for society to transition to an affordable, plentiful substitute to petroleum as a transportation fuel. The physics as well as the funding do not pencil out, at least with today’s known technologies. Without such a solution in hand, the world finds itself now mired in a scenario where there really is no long-term workable range for the price of oil. It’s either “too high” and demand suffers, or “too low” and producers can’t afford to extract it. The acceptable middle ground has disappeared: When on the rising side of the Hubbert curve, everybody has good wage level and everybody can feed themselves. You can build new oil wells and everything works out fine. But what happens as you get past the […]