Warning: Peak Uranium in 10 Years (and Peak Squirrel, Too!)

Ah, the booger pickers at the Oil Drum have been really festive lately. It's as if they've found religion again: no more fluff puff posts trademark of the past several months - stories like "A World Without Money" that were the signature trend in a world of deflated oil prices, and deflated egos.

This morning they cooked another stolid stool: Peak Uranium(!), in ten years! This, like peak gas (is America still going to have a gas crisis this decade?), has been a staple among the peak crowd - has been for years. Among the more extremist of the peak movement, there's a belief - an agglomeration, of sorts - of a "peak everything," where everything from oil to coal to uranium will collide into a perfect storm within decades; creating the "perfect peak," a "peak of everything" as they call it. This apocalyptic vision has been a religious staple among certain peakers, particularly the hardcore or extremist peaker, who believe all support elements of modernized society will collapse due to depletion of fossil fuels and resources, reverting us to a 19th century lifestyle, or transforming us into Mad Max savages.

The Oil Drum, like many in the peak movement, have made an assortment of bad calls in recent history, despite the use researched material and noted graphs. As Mathew Simmons, "the King of Peak," says himself: "Data always beats theory. Compare data to theory three times and come to a conclusion." The Drum boyz blew the call on the impending American gas crisis (it was going to occur this decade), downplaying any potential shale or other unconventional sources of gas could contribute; blew their oil forecast last year, stating oil would "never drop below $100 a barrel", would embark on a death march to $200+, and ignored evidence of an oil glut (info. on this will be posted soon); they've been incessant in their belief of peak natural gas occuring in the near future (have these dudes seen how much gas Russia, Iran, Qatar and Turkmenistan have?); and they're reusing another failed ploy, the immenence of peak uranium occurring - soon.

This is ridiculous. First, have they checked how much uranium is in the world? Have these Stone Age neanderthals ever heard of reprocessing nuclear waste? For some information, check out the world's largest reserves of uranium (in tons):

Australia
1,462,0000

Kazakhstan
961,000

Russia
641,000

South Africa
512,000

Canada
497,000

United States
399,000

Brazil
310,000

And the largest producers as of 2007:

Canada
11,148

Australia
10,131

Kazakhstan
7,808

Russia
4,015

Niger
2,976

Overall, 48,544 tons of uranium were mined in 2007.

It's time to ease up to some John Lennon in the face of this apocalyptic drum beat. In the meantime, the Drum boyz better pay attention to another startling statistic, one that occured last year. The peak and decline of peak oil fandom, which has risen and fallen in tandem to oil prices.

- Brewskie