What will we do when the oil starts to run out?

[Dinner]

There is a "peak oil" since oil is a finite resources, however, any decline in production is going to be very, very gradual and won't happen for a long time. We still have something like 80% of the Earth's surface to search for oil plus we haven't started looking for very deep sources of oil on land so there is a lot of room for more oil to be out there.

What will happen is the cheap and easy oil to recover will run out and we'll have to go to more and more romote locations to get our oil and the price will rise because of that extra cost.

[JohnT]

At the rate of the test plot, the 160 acres of land should produce about 15,000,000 barrels of oil.

[Snowflake]

What will we do when the oil starts to run out?

We'll sell the one barrel of oil that we've been saving in our backyard for 100 years and get rich.

Ok seriously, Oerdin is right. When a resource gets to be more scarce its price will go up more and more people will be encouraged to switch to its alternatives. Isn't it true that we can now already see more hibrid cars?

[Lawrence of Arabia]

see, thats bad that shell has discovered that, because that means more pollution. it would be better if they dont discover that and we switch to ecofriendly stuff.

[MikeH]

What's Eco Friendly?

Wind massacres birds, hyro damns flood huge areas, solar is only practical in sunny regions and you have the problem that production is highest when demand is lowest.

Nothing's particularly Eco Friendly, just have to weigh up which negative environmental effects you are going to cause.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


That sounds incredible! Go Shell

Can Colorado be the next mega oil producer?

oil shale isn't light sweet crude, so perhaps not for a while.

[Arrian]

The birds thing is somewhat true, but I'd say that Wind Power is clearly cleaner than the others. I'm not sure how viable it is, however, as a major contributor (as opposed to simply supplementing power supplies and a fairly small %).

-Arrian

[MikeH]

You also have to despoil vast areas (normally very pretty ones) with windmills.

[Arrian]

True, but to me that's less damaging that soil & groundwater contaminated with petroleum derivatives (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes... etc) or coal tar.

-Arrian

[Saras]

You also pollute a lot while building the turbines themselves

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by MikeH
What's Eco Friendly?

Wind massacres birds, hyro damns flood huge areas, solar is only practical in sunny regions and you have the problem that production is highest when demand is lowest.

Nothing's particularly Eco Friendly, just have to weigh up which negative environmental effects you are going to cause.

nuclear is the most eco freindly

JM

[Apocalypse]

About wind....I think it's pretty retarded that people are concerned about the birds. They are birds and they **** on your car. Save water resources from cleaning the car and just kill all the birds. The birds must die.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


nuclear is the most eco freindly

JM

A proven fact. The smallest environmental impact per power creation. Just make sure you bury the stuff and encase it in a ****load of leaded glass.

[Arrian]

Two things:

1) Birds - birds fly into glass windows all the time & die. We use glass windows.

2) Nuclear power - the problem, of course, is the risk (however small) of catastrophic failure (meltdown) coupled with the difficulty of adequately containing the waste. There is a mess in Washington State that I don't think we have any idea how to clean up...

Other than those two things, yeah, it's great.

-Arrian

[Jon Miller]

the big problem with nuclear is that if it is mismanaged, there can be significant problems

the problems in washington state come from mismanagement at hanford

JM