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[OnTheOtherHand]

2. ummm

IBTM?

I don't really understand the reasoning here.

"Fossil fuel" is a misleading term. It leads one to believe that crude oil is no longer produced by heat/pressure/chemical reactions deep within Earth.

Because fossils are no longer produced?!

It seems to me that the term leads one to believe that fossil fuel takes a long time to produce. How the overall production rate compares with our consumption rate is another question. Where fossil fuel is being produced, and how accessible the new fuel is for our consumption, are further questions.

At this very moment, crude oil is going into storage tanks at a rate higher than it is being refined.

I'll trust that that is true at the moment, but it isn't obvious how it connects to what you've said or to what you go on to say.

More exploration finds more oil, consistently.

That's true of loose change in my house, too, but the fact isn't very relevant to my financial planning. I'm not saying that oil exploration is irrelevant, just that a lot is missing from the argument.

The thing we should be working on isn't necessarily ENDING the use of "fossil fuels", but sequestering and storing the greenhouse gases produced by the burning of "fossil fuels".

I look at this differently, but not oppositely. If you're saying that we shouldn't worry about running out of fossil fuels, I more or less agree with that; what I think is likely to happen (under Business As Usual) is that the cost of extracting them will increase, and greenhouse gas emissions will increase concomitantly. Whether or not those predictions are true, I'm more worried about reining in GHG emissions than about conserving fossil fuels per se.

This would effectively extend the time needed to perfect alternative forms of energy and would be much more feasible economically.

Dunno about ending the use of fossil fuels, but I think it would be blithe to generalize that it is more feasible economically to sequester X tons of CO₂ than to avoid emitting it in the first place. I'm not a kneejerk opponent of sequestration efforts, but some of them are expensive and speculative; others are wishful. It seems to me that we could invest many billions of dollars in energy efficiency right now and be assured of a high return on our investment. For instance, too much of our low-income housing budget is going to energy companies to heat the air (that's before GHGs are considered), and too little into sealing cracks and improving insulation -- which would put people to work, too.