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Peak Oil will come, but the methods in which speculators and these Chicken Little scare mongers don't calculate is the demand stems as oil prices rise. Just as the hybrid explosion only hit once the price of oil made hybrids economically worthwhile at $4/gallon, so will the next technology. If the car companies pull their heads out of their ass and finally set up a plug-in hybrid, the average car will get 100mpg in a driving day. At $2/gal gas (and average driving distance per day), it takes 80,000 miles of driving before a hybrid will break even with their non-hybrid counterpart in money. Hardly anyone keeps a new car for 80k, so unless prices rock back up the math isn't there. At $4/gal it quickly jumps over it's conventional counterpart (forgot the calculation done, but I believe 30k).
This SIGNIFICANTLY changes the model for when oil will run out, and will alter the price per gallon as well. Only when the oil then increases beyond the next technology will we switch again.
Higher oil prices mean the other technologies can take over, until then there's no economic reason. As the Ragin' Cajun kept harping, it's the economy stupid. Until the economics make sense, screaming about the sky falling is only going to give everyone else headaches.
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"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas
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