The Oil Drum

Well, realists realize that these problems are at the very least centuries in the future, and more likely millenia.

It depends on which problems you're referring to.

Peak oil? Definitely less than centuries, much less millennia. Current oil demand levels would consume over 3T barrels in the next century, which is about the sum of petroleum believed to exist, including tar sands and oil shales.

Peak energy? Centuries or millennia. Solar irradiation onto the earth's surface is more than ten thousand times the world's current power consumption (link). Converting that to electricity (~30% efficient) and placing solar cells only on infrastructure (~3% area for US-like country) still gives a thousand-fold increase in available energy, without even leaving the planet.

Of course, there's only so much energy available in the solar system - the sun only produces a finite amount of radiance - so there are theoretical limits to growth of energy consumption here. But those theoretical limits are so enormously large that they're utterly irrelevant right now.

So we need to be a little careful with terms. Oil supply? Bound to peak soonish. Energy supply? Functionally limited only by ingenuity and capital.

Conflating those two is not useful.