Yet these threats seem to be dwarfed, in Mr Yergin's analysis, by global warming.
But Yergin assembles the pieces and provides us mere mortals with a clear view.
As Yergin reminds us, oil output is 60% higher today than it was in the 1970s.
But Daniel Yergin, the energy expert and author of "The Quest, " sees things differently.
That's not to say it will be easy to produce that much oil, Yergin says.
Yergin's company, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, has done a field-by-field analysis of oil deposits around the world.
The facts came straight from Yergin's own mouth at the recent Forbes Global CEO Conference in Hong Kong.
Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates says that affects a big chunk of the nation's energy supply.
Yergin, who's studied the long history of the industry, notes that predictions in the past have been premature.
Daniel Yergin is chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an IHS company.
Mr. Yergin says the U.S. would be hard pressed not to export gas to hungry allies such as Japan.
Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Heather Matzke-Hamlin and Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin sold shares in August.
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The funniest thing--and I saw this happen--is that many people who ask Yergin this question are disappointed with his answer.
Yergin's prediction of cheaper oil prices is noteworthy because he doesn't dispute any of the alarming facts cited in my opening paragraph.
Yergin says he's always asked when oil will run out for good.
But for now, at least Mr. Yergin has helped turn contrarian insights from the past couple of years into geopolitical conventional wisdom.
Most of the climate science that Mr Yergin describes, with an appealing fondness and respect for its obsessive practitioners, happened in America too.
Daniel Yergin received the Pulitzer Prize for The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, published in an updated edition in 2009.
Yergin says Americans are just now waking up to China's growing appetite for oil, as illustrated by the Chinese company CNOOC's aborted bid for Unocal.
"There are ample supplies beneath the surface of the planet to have significant growth in oil supply for quite a number of years, " Yergin says.
Mr. Yergin is chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World" (Penguin, 2011).
Whether you believe oil is nearing its peak, as Simmons does, or decades away from it, like Yergin, Paul says it is important to consider alternative sources of energy.
That is a lot to worry about, and Mr Yergin's book, which includes almost 100 pages on the history of climate science and politics, should be required reading for all those in warming denial.
Mr. YERGIN: Ten years ago the thought that would happen in a Chinese oil market could possibly have had an impact on what motorists in America pay at the gasoline pump would have seemed just unrealistic.
Mr. YERGIN: This is the fifth time that we've run out of oil, and the last time we ran out of oil was in the 1970s, and since then, we've increased production by about 60 percent.
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