One thing I want to do is put together a piece on coal-to-liquid, talking about how much it would really cost, what it would require in terms of amount of coal per year, and how much gasoline this would actually replace. Also some of the many other issues - would we really have enough water in Wyoming to produce a huge amount of coal-to-liquid, or would we need to transport the coal to locations with sufficient water.

I talk more about the problem with economists in the article I wrote for actuaries Our Finite World: Implications for Actuaries"

One of the recommendations I make in that article is that actuaries begin to question economic models. Actuaries are not economists, but parts of their work are quite closely related to economics. Thus, actuaries should be in a better position to begin questioning what the economists are saying than most other professions.

I doubt that this is going to happen on any scale soon - economists must outnumber actuaries at least 100 to 1, and most actuaries are used to models that assume infinite growth.

<< My take on this professor was he was ignorant, arrogant and presumptuous (Brings to mind Rene Dubois statement that "Trend is not destiny.".)>>

Perhaps he has an MBA. I was told (at Stanford) that MBAs are "often wrong but never in doubt".