I wonder if people felt the same when oil started to become popular in the late 1800s. The amount we use now, compared to then, would be completely unimaginable to them.
I’m not sure what the math for the energy harvesting method described in this thread ends up being exactly like, but it seems that in order for it to have an effect you’d need to have something like every human consuming, on average, as much energy as all of humanity currently consumes. That starts stretching the imagination.
The entire Earth's crust makes up less than 1% of the Earth's volume. The Earth's mantle makes up about 84%.
”In 1919, David White, chief geologist of the United States Geological Survey, wrote of US petroleum: "... the peak of production will soon be passed, possibly within 3 years."”
The abstract of White’s paper (and its paywalled conten) are at http://papers.sae.org/190011/. It says:
”American oil companies must protect the future by acquiring great and widespread foreign oil concessions.”
Is that prescient or did it drive policy?
It also says:
”Oil in vast amounts can be artificially made from the great oil-shale deposits of the West, but the processes and prices necessary to commercial success remain to be determined, and the task of building up an oil-shale industry sufficient to meet a considerable part of the demand is enormous, requiring several years.”