@Caleb James DeLisle @Scott Well I do believe in it because I am familiar with a number called ROI (Return on Investment), and EROI (energy return on investment).

In the early days of oil production, oil existed in reservoirs under pressure, poke a hole in the ground and oil would erupt from it. This was the early stages of the Saudi Arabian Ghawar field. In that time EROI was on the order of 50-100:1.

As these reservoirs began to exhaust and loose pressure at first it became necessary to pump oil out of them. Then it became necessary to inject water to force remaining oil out, and over time the ratio of water to oil recovered.

Now remaining oil we have left is largely in two forms, shale oil and tar sands. There are problems with both of these. They both require much more energy input to get a unit out, now our EROI is on the order of 2-3:1 not the 50:1 or so it was initially, worse yet, shale oil contains mostly light distillates like naptha and octane, natural gasoline, but not heavier distillates necessary for diesel and jet fuel that our food production and distribution rely on.

Tar sands by contrast mostly heavy distillates, tar, bitumen, useful for making asphalt, bunker oil, but again not diesel.

Venezuela for example, largest oil fields on Earth, plenty to go around, problem is they're all tar sands, bitumen and tar, and unlike Canadian tar sands which are surface level, can be strip mined, these are a mile deep and require injection of steam and/or naptha to get them liquid enough to be pumped out, even at that perhaps 10% of those reserves are recoverable, and even those that can be recovered are only useful for asphalt and bunker oil.

It's not about how many hydrocarbons remain in the planet, it's about those which are economically recoverable and which have the molecular weights in demand. Those are in short supply, and without those no food product, we can not produce enough food for eight billion people with oxen and oxen drawn plows.

So you can not believe in this until food becomes prohibitively expensive and by that time industry won't be sufficient to recover, or you can work on addressing the issue now. Personally, I like to eat.