From Andrew Ferguson, Optimum Population Trust
Your correspondent John Feather is right to say that there have been many
mistakes about estimating oil resources in the past
(7 August, p 52).
However, geologists have become far more sophisticated in recent decades. The key to
energy prediction is the amount of energy that has to be put in, in order to get
a unit of energy out. The significance of the ratio becoming 1 to 1 hardly needs
to be spelt out.
Thus Colin Campbell, who predicts that oil is running out, is not simply “one
geologist”. His judgment is in the mainstream of geological thinking.
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
