The people who think we're running out of oil sure look like fools right about now

In case you hadn't noticed, the price of gas has been plummeting in recent weeks. I filled up my tank on Tuesday for $41.75 (and that was with midgrade), which I don't think I've done since George W. Bush was in the White House.

Yep! The price of oil is down to $75 a barrel and it looks to only drop further. That's not good news for everyone, of course, as there are plenty of institutions and even whole countries (like Iran) who depend on high oil prices. Iran's national budget is based on the assumption that the price of oil will be $100 a barrel or higher. Kind of tough to pay the Russians for those nuclear reactors when the price of your most important commodity is sinking like a stone. But there is no one for whom this news is worse than the we're-running-out-of-oil crowd, which looks especially foolish when you realize that the primary reason prices are dropping is a huge increase in oil production by the United States. That is not because of Barack Obama, of course, although he'll try to take credit for it. It's because of shale development and fracking on private lands, and it's led David Harsyani, writing for Real Clear Politics, to throw down the gauntlet on the "peak oil" people. Not only are we not running out of oil, Harsyani declares . . . we never will:

So it's really not surprising that the national average for a gallon of gas has fallen to $2.77 this week -- in 10 states it was under $2.60 -- and analysts predict we're going to dip below the two-dollar mark soon. U.S. oil is down to $75 a barrel, a drop of more than $30 from the 52-week high.

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Meanwhile, the Institute for Energy Research estimates that we have enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity needs for around 575 years at current fuel demand and to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years or so -- because we have more gas than Russia, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia combined. With prices returning to ordinary levels and a few centuries' worth of fossil fuels on tap, this is a good time to remind ourselves that nearly every warning the left has peddled about an impending energy crisis over the past 30 to 40 years has turned out to be wrong. And none of them are more wrong than the Malthusian idea that says we're running out of oil. Each time there's a temporary spike in gas prices, science-centric liberals allow themselves a purely ideological indulgence, claiming -- as Krugman, Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren and countless others have -- that we're rapidly approaching a point when producers will hit the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum. Peak oil. With emerging demand, fossil fuels will become prohibitive. And unless we have our in solar panels in order, Armageddon is near. Tough day for Krugman, and richly deserved, as the New York Times's star left-wing polemicist has been caught once again confusing his ideological fantasies with facts and data. Krugman is like many liberals in that he tends to look at the dynamics of a given moment and take them as absolute affirmation of his world view in toto. What's happening now would not be quite so bad for them if it was driven by a drop in demand as Americans heed liberal pleas for reduced use. But oil consumption is higher than ever, especially now that China's economy is maturing. So what's happening? We're finding huge new deposits and exploiting them. Did you know that the United States is not far from becoming the world's biggest producer of oil? It's true, and it's happening because a) the private sector is leading the way despite government hostility; and b) the people who really matter aren't listening to cranks like Krugman:

Also worth remembering is how spectacularly wrong some recent predictions of doom turned out to be. This is shooting fish in a barrel, but here is Paul Krugman in December 2010, declaring that "peak oil has arrived." "What the commodity markets are telling us," Mr. Krugman averred, "is that we're living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story." Far from being a bystander, America has been the main oil-market innovator. Such doomsaying is that much more embarrassing because warnings of peak oil are nearly as old as the oil industry. In his book "The Quest," Mr. Yergin records that in 1885 the state geologist of Pennsylvania warned that "the amazing exhibition of oil" was "a temporary and vanishing phenomenon -- one which young men will live to see come to its natural end." Given this 130-year record of predictive failure, why does the end-of-oil myth persist? Part of it is that peak oil is more wish than prediction -- a desire to see the end of fossil fuels to serve a larger political agenda. It is also a way of scaring governments into pouring money into alternative energy sources that can't compete with oil and natural gas without subsidies and mandates. Predicting disaster can also be a profitable business and a path to speech-making celebrity.

Early in the Obama presidency, Energy Secretary Steven Chu was openly rooting for U.S. fuel costs to soar like those in Europe, because that would force us all to conserve, and the liberal dream is that ordinary people put a lid on all that consumin' out there. What happens instead is that we consume as much as our prosperous lifestyle dictates and the demand spurs innovation and productivity on the part of those for whom the need to supply energy is an opportunity. It works great if politicians stay out of the way. Now the one thing we can't say with certainty, of course, is just how much oil there actually is. The proposition of the doomsayers has always been that it took millions of years for fossils to transform into oil, and we're now using it up so fast that nature can't possibly replace it fast enough. Theoretically, that's true by definition, but the problem is that we're constantly discovering massive new resources that push the date we theoretically run out much farther out in the future. The bottom line is that we are not running out of oil any time soon, if ever, and that undermines the left-wing case for alternative energy subsidies and, of course, much of the global warming nonsense. Every time liberals insist we're approaching "peak oil," subsequent events reveal them to be the fools they are. So keep consumin' out there! Not only is there plenty, but it helps build American industry and drives the left crazy. I guess this guy's idea didn't turn out to be all that prescient: