Does Mr. Obama Know?

"If he tells the truth (if he knows it) now he'll be crucified, but at what point will he be crucified for concealing the truth?"

Nobody expects miracles, but everybody does.
It doesn't matter how he will do it, it matters that he will.
Or that he will try to.
When you have to choose between two, and you already know that one of them won't be able, you choose the other hoping that...

"Does Mr. O know that global oil production appears to have peaked at around 85 million barrels a day, with poor prospects of ever getting beyond that?"
If he does, or he doesn't he cannot change it.
What he tries to do, and everybody should try to do, is finding alternative ways.
If not, the change of life style, of energy consummation will come by itself.
Can you, as a President of USA, just say: "We are obviously in a transitional period between the old profligate energy economy and the new economy of relative scarcity. " and "We have no idea how disorderly this transition will be, but there is certainly potential for tremendous instability in daily life"...
I think he can't, because it would be like saying: there is no way out that I know or nothing I could eventually do.
Pack your stuff and wait for a decent future, if it will ever come...
Can an elected President say that?
Can an elected President just say, the situation is bad, I am sorry, there is not much to do...

That is not what people want to hear, that is not what they voted for.
And he will do what people want him to do.
Saying half truth and half lies, trying his best (or what he thinks is his best) and hope.
Just like 100% of the World.