Whale Oil vs. Mineral Oil

This post suggests a number of interesting things about the economics of oil:

1. There is no precedent for depletion of a mineral resource. This is unbelievably surprising, given how long we've been extracting minerals. One might infer that this will add to the bumpy ride when oil runs out because we lack prior experience of running out of juice on this scale.


2. If one uses the history of whale oil as a proxy, price rises start at the inflection point of the production curve, i.e. when the *rate* of increase in production peaks. According to this, that point occured around 1970. Shortly after, the oil price started its upward trend as seen here. Of course the initial triggers were geo-political but the oil price has never recovered.


3. If the post is correct in saying that the demand for oil is extremely inelastic (i.e. price changes have a limited effect on demand), oil price hikes will have little effect on how much carbon we pump into the air. I have my doubts: surely ever higher oil prices will make alternative fuels increasingly viable economically, if not technically ? Or perhaps reserves will run out before we have technically viable alternatives to oil, which is a doomsday scenario.