In this scenario, EVs are just one method of converting from an oil based system to a natural gas and coal based system.

That would be for the very, very short term. In the longer term, we're talking wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, etc.

Oil prices have been rising since 2002 and if they continue on their current trajectory they will reach $300/ barrel in real terms (Jan 2013 $) by 2020

I don't think you can extrapolate like that. Because of PO-Lite we basically moved about 7 years ago from a consumer dominated regime, with very roughly $20 oil, to a supplier dominated regime, with very roughly $100 oil. That regime looks pretty stable: price declines will be prevented by supply cuts, and price rises will be prevented by consumption cuts (and a bit of extra production).

trains will be needed for longer trips.

If prices were to rise sharply, people would take fewer long trips (staycations), or they'd switch to crowded, higher efficiency cars. Also, long distance travel is a small percentage of overall personal fuel consumption - well below 20%.

Chevy Volts which according to the EPA get 62 MPGe

Is that really what the EPA assigns? I remember something much higher. In any case, that's a very unrealistic number, as it tries to convert electricity into "equivalent fuel". A Volt driver that drives the statistical average of 30 miles per day will use no fuel at all. The average Volt driver uses much less than 100 gallons of fuel to drive 11,000 miles - if they're careful they'll easily use less than 50 gallons.

$300/barrel seems high when considered against the cost of alternative fuels and energy conservation.

Well, US ethanol production is very roughly 14B gallons, and that's about 60 gallons per car. That's enough.

We can synthesize fuel from corn stalks and other cellulose. We can synthesize ethanol, gasoline, diesel or jet fuel from biomass cellulose, this has all been proven decades ago.

We can use the waste heat from power plants to make fuel synthesis more cost effective. The synthetic fuel is lower in sulfur, reduces oil imports and is CO2 neutral. This can all be done, but is not being done.

The second chart, which has no source attributed, relies entirely on extrapolating recent trends in immigration into the US. I believe that the extrapolation is wildly misleading.

While I have no detailed knowledge of US immigration, I don't suppose its dynamics* to be hugely different from immigration into Australia, where I live and where I am much more familiar with the trends. And the history of Australian migration is quite illuminating.

Until World War II, most migration to Australia was from Britain & Ireland. Australia maintained a White Australia Policy, designed to keep out the Asian hordes. There had been a bit of migration from continental Europe (mainly Germany & Italy), but not enough to disturb the pattern. The existing population of Australia had a reflexive opposition to immigration of any variety, but were willing to tolerate people who were like them.

World War II, and especially the close approach of the Japanese advance to Australia, gave the political establishment a massive scare and all political parties adopted the slogan of "populate or perish". It was entirely within the framework of White Australia, since it was based on an intensified fear of Asia.

And here is where it gets interesting. It wasn't long before the Australian Government found that there weren't enough migrants coming from Britain - even with the offer of an assisted passage (you could migrate from Britain for £10, provided you stayed a couple of years). So in the late 1940s, the Government went looking for people from elsewhere in Europe who could fit the bill. They first imported displaced people from Central & Eastern Europe, including the Baltic States. They were obviously "white" and could fit in. By the early 1950s, the supply of displaced people from Central & Eastern Europe had pretty well dried up and the Government turned to Southern Europe. First a lot of Greeks came, because they were labouring under a Right wing dictatorship. Then came the Italians, mostly from the South. We had entire villages from Calabria & Sicily move here. After the Greeks stopped coming in large numbers, the Yugoslavs starting arriving. By the end of the 1960s, Australia had large numbers of people from all over Europe.

During the 1960s, the White Australia Policy lost support and began to be watered down. It was officially abandoned in 1972. During the 1970s, other countries started being major sources of migration into Australia - starting with Turkey and Lebanon, then spreading to Vietnam and China. These days, while there is a steady moderate level of migration from Britain, most other places in Europe are supplying very few migrants, while the major migrant sources are from China, India and South-East Asia - and, so a lesser extent, refugees from West Asia and Africa. While migration into Australia has been at historically high levels in recent years, this has masked a fundamental change. New sources of migrants are supplanting older ones. And there is a reason for this.

When a country is at an extremely low level of development, it generates very few migrants - and what migrants it does generate come overwhelmingly from the privileged classes. The vast majority of people are living a traditional life on the land and have no vision further than that. As it develops, however, the people start to look around more and to migrate. Most migrate to the cities, unless there is some barrier in their way. Some, however, migrate to other countries, where they think they can build a better life for themselves. The choice of country is based on a mixture of economic opportunities and social compatibility - basically, the greater the economic opportunity, the more foreign the environment people are prepared to move to.

As the country urbanises, the flow of migrants speeds up, but eventually the countryside is emptied of under-employed peasants and migration dries up. This includes international migration, too, because when migrants stop flowing into the cities, a labour shortage emerges and economic opportunities open up at home. You will continue to get a degree of emigration, but it will be countered by immigration and the return of emigrants. We can see for example that, in recent years, Ireland and Italy have become recipients of immigration on a large scale for the first time - and have had to confront the challenges of multi-culturalism for themselves.

The urbanisation process in China & India still has some way to run, but it is already well advanced. Indeed, in China, due to the One Child Policy, it is quite far advanced. The population of working age will peak this year and begin shrinking. Across much of the rest of Asia, urbanisation is also well advanced.

The conclusion of the urbanisation process in Asia will have world-shaking results. First of all, it will lead to these countries ceasing to generate large numbers of emigrants. Secondly, it will lead to them becoming migration destinations. Indeed, there is already a minor tendency towards this, with Indonesia supplying workers to Malaysia, Burma supplying workers to Thailand, etc. When the factories of the Shanghai region, or the Pearl River Delta, however, start having trouble filling their vacancies, two things will happen. First, wages will go up. And second, the Chinese Government will start looking for immigrants. Both these things will cause major change in the world economy.

Rising wages in China will raise the floor for wages around the world. This will have a major effect in middle income countries (especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe), because the lesser degree of competition from lower wage countries will open up more opportunities at home. And the reversal of the migration flow from China will lead to massive competition for migrants from the remaining low-wage and developing countries. Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Nepal will obviously be sending more migrants to China than to anywhere else, while I predict there will also, in time, be a program of importation of guest workers from Africa.

What effect will all this have on the existing countries of immigration, like Australia and the US? It means that there will be fewer sources of immigrants and more competitors for them. Immigration will, by 2030, have decreased greatly, since there won't be nearly as many people wanting to move there. And, of course, if the US has a period of economic retrenchment in order to address its national debt, its attractiveness as a migration destination will be further diminished.

So the second chart will not come to pass. Not by a long way.

* By dynamics, I refer to the mechanisms driving the push and pull factors in migration. The precise origins of migrants into the two societies are determined by historical and geographical factors, but this is secondary.

I agree with that, mostly, though I would caution against over estimating those changes. For instance, the US mobility thing reminds me of an old joke:

"Somewhere in the country, every 30 seconds a woman gives birth.

And..

we've got to find her and stop her!"

On average, Americans move every 7 years, but that average disguises a minority which moves a lot, and a majority which does it not so much. Further, many of the moves are in the same neighborhood.

So, PO will make a difference, but it's impact is much smaller than most of the other factors, like housing costs and the value of one's time.