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

[Lul Thyme]

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

Originally posted by MOBIUS
'Peak Oil' is only 5-15 years away according to Oil industry analysts or their critics. Either way, the Peak is inevitable. So what happens when we hit the downward slope?

Invade another oil producing country?

By Peak Oil I assume you mean something global.
How would invading a country help anyway?
You think the global immediatly exploitable oil reserves are going to be gone in 5-15 years?
Try to find one source that's even close to that estimate, just for fun.

[JohnT]

Try to find one credible source that's even close to that estimate, just for fun.

Corrected.

[Flubber]

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

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


By Peak Oil I assume you mean something global.
How would invading a country help anyway?
You think the global immediatly exploitable oil reserves are going to be gone in 5-15 years?
Try to find one source that's even close to that estimate, just for fun.

They won't. Even if you assunme energy demand increasing at say at the highest of credible predictions, you can't drain all the fields we know about in 10 years and they are finding new stuff all the time. EnCana hit a field off Brazil just this year and there are lots of proespective places off of Africa. PLus, every year they are able to drill wells in deeper and deeper water which (given the proportion of ocean to land on this planet) means lots of new opportunities

That Shell thing was exciting. On the natural gas side, similar things are happening with new technologies seeing production being planned for zones that were abandoned 20 years ago as depeleted or uneconomic.

[Tattila the Hun]

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

I like the look of windmills.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

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.

you telling me that you cannot build zillions of miles of solar panels in the worlds deserts (such as the sahara) to supply the world with cheap solar power? People can even install it in limited amounts on their houses.

for cars, go hydrogen. the only byproduct is water.

[JohnT]

But what about the fragile, unique desert ecosystems that you're now destroying with those panels?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
for cars, go hydrogen. the only byproduct is water.

Where do you get the hydrogen from? You could equally go electric, but if you need other energy sources to create the electricity or hydrogen then all you are doing is shifting the location of the creation of pollution.


Also, some would consider covering the Sahara with solar panels a destruction of the landscape (not me, but those with an ounce of puritan blood would, just as people complain about drilling in the ANWAR).

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia


you telling me that you cannot build zillions of miles of solar panels in the worlds deserts (such as the sahara) to supply the world with cheap solar power? People can even install it in limited amounts on their houses.

Electricity does not transport well beyond ~1000 km. And solar power is not cheap with the current state of the industry.

[Dis]

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

Originally posted by MOBIUS
'Peak Oil' is only 5-15 years away according to Oil industry analysts or their critics. Either way, the Peak is inevitable. So what happens when we hit the downward slope?

Invade another oil producing country?

to invasion

[Dis]

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.

production is high when demand is lowest? Not here in the desert buddy. 4:00 PM is peak power time for my region.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun


I like the look of windmills.

especially in civ4.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia


you telling me that you cannot build zillions of miles of solar panels in the worlds deserts (such as the sahara) to supply the world with cheap solar power? People can even install it in limited amounts on their houses.

for cars, go hydrogen. the only byproduct is water.

You just proved you understand nothing about the topic.
Hydrogen is not an energy source.
Many places still have fossil fuel plants to provide electricity.
In places like those, switching to hydrogen cars accomplishes just about nothing.

Krazyhorse mentionned one problem with your solar panels, distance.

I will mention an even bigger one.
Storage.
What do you do at night?
Electricity is not feasibly stored over any big scale.

I'm not saying there are not solutions.
Some solutions exists each with different problems, requiring different types of compromises.

But if you think a simple solution exist just around the bend that will solve all the problems, you are just dreaming.

[Odin]

I don't Like the extreme "we're going back to the pre-industrial days" Peak Oil theories. I do think Peak Oil will cause a major recession, possibly even a depresssion, as the price of oil increases, untill alternatives become fully developed so to be at a reasonable price. Key thing is that we won't run completely out of "natural" oil for a long, long time, and will still have the stuff made artificially from coal, so it is not a question fo not having any, it is a question of the ecconomic effects of rising oil prices. as the oil becomes harder and more expensive to extract.

[Odin]

The main effect of Peak Oil will be the total reorganization of Suburbia. The current sprawl will be replaced by a web-like network of dense settlement huddled around a nationwide mass transit system connecting all the inner city cores, which themselves will have a reversal of the "white flight" of the 50's and 60's.

[JohnT]

The current sprawl will be replaced by a web-like network of dense settlement huddled around a nationwide mass transit system connecting all the inner city cores, which themselves will have a reversal of the "white flight" of the 50's and 60's.

What country do you live in?