37 Facts About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families

[NoOneMan]

33. As in my example, the apple hole is infinitely deep

As follows, the amount of energy it takes to harvest apple energy approaches infinity as the depth of the hole approaches infinity.

The basic concept is Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERORI).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested

Even if a resource is infinite (and oil is not), it doesn't make its availability to a society infinite at any given time.

100 years ago, you could put a straw in the ground and get oil out in certain areas. At that time, it took the energy found in 1 barrel of oil to produce 90 more barrels of energy.

Today we are burning bitumen sand (3:1) and drilling at the bottom of the ocean; the low hanging fruit has been picked. Our EROEI has dropped dramatically as far as oil production is concerned.

So the amount that is available to harvest (or being harvested) becomes irrelevant, as that is one part of a multi-faceted equation. Rather, we need to look at (vastly simplified):

(what is being harvested) - (energy it takes to harvest it) / (the average usage per capita * population level)

So what we know is that the average usage per human is skyrocketing, as is the population. Further, we know that the ERORI for oil production has dropped at least by a factor of 3 in the last 100 years (maybe 4). This leaves the amount of available energy per capita dwindling, explaining precisely why the industrial world is in a global economic decline (in both production and wealth).

This is a problem we cannot drill our way out of (because harvesting hydrocarbons will always take more energy the more your harvest), unless we magically innovate a method to convince the oil to rise to the surface of our lawns so Jeb can make a fortune and move to Beverly Hills.

Got it?