PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND THE REGULATOR
There are other messages in Figure 7.6. By looking more closely at
the data we see that world-shaking events such as wars, skyrocketing
energy prices, and depression had little effect on the overall trends.
More visible may be the effect of strikes. In the coal industry, for example,
such actions result in short-term deviations, but the previous
trend is quickly resumed.
Another observation is that there is no relationship between the utilization
and the reserves of a primary energy source. It seems that the
market moves away from a certain primary energy source long before it
becomes exhausted, at least at the world level. And vice-versa; despite
the ominous predictions made in the 1950s that oil would dry up in
twenty years, oil use continued growing unhindered and more oil was
found as needed. Oil reserves will probably never be exhausted because
of the timely introduction of other energy sources. Well established substitution
processes with long time constants are of a fundamental nature
and cannot be reversed by “lesser” reasons such as depletion of reserves.
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Figure 7.6 also indicates that natural gas will replace oil progressively
to reach a zenith in the 2020s and become more important
worldwide than oil was in the 1970s. Supplying a major fraction of the
world’s energy needs by gas will require much more gas than today’s
proven reserves, but one need not worry about it; important natural gas
fields are likely to be found. Searches for “dry” gas have started relatively
recently. Gas is a more probable find than oil the deeper one goes
underground, due to the thermal gradient of the earth’s crust. Ultimately,
if during the gas era the discovery of new gas fields does not
keep up with demand, for whatever reason, oil or coal may be artificially
processed to produce the amount of gas lacking. Synthetic
gaseous fuels such as methanol could easily be used in cars during the
twenty-first century.
The forecast of the takeover by natural gas was first made in 1974 at
a time when experts disagreed with such a notion. 14 Half a generation
later the environmentalists converged on the conclusion that natural gas
was “the miracle energy source for the future.” In 1990, George H.
Lawrence, president of the American Gas Association, was quoted as
predicting that gas consumption nationwide would “rise by one-third
over the next twenty years.” 15 I do not know what methodology he used
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