So what would happen to our planet in the long term if the World’s fossil fuels supply completely and 100% dried up tomorrow?
No I do not think this will happen, I do not believe in the peak oil theory.
I realize that in the short term this would be an unmitigated and unprecedented disaster to the world economy and make life VERY hard on most people even causing massive loss of life.
Most cars off the road
No air travel
No shipping
No commercial trade
Massive Food shortages
Limited or no crop harvesting
I believe the impacts are enormous and the ensuing disaster would be on a scale 1000 times the magnitude of anything ever seen on Earth. In fact, it is quite possibly this would be the worst case disaster scenario this side of a zombie apocalypse.
But is there any chance that the World/Planet/Humankind could be better for it in the long term? Can you imagine a better world for our children if this happened?
Forgetting the obvious positive environmental impact. What about the advancement of technology forced upon us by this disaster. Solar, Wind, Nuclear? Maybe new discoveries never even dreamed of. Humans are awfully resourceful but am I naive to think we would recover just fine 25 or 50 years from now?
Would we survive as a civilization long enough to even get to this point?
Would be REALLY be thrown back and regress to the stone age?
What do you think the world would look like in 10, 50 and 100 years if Fossil Fuel supplies dried up tomorrow?
The Earth? Hard to say, but I think there would be biological ramifications to no fossil fuels anywhere on earth though…and then, you have what humanity would do in the last throes of panic when armed with nuclear weapons and stark terror. Wouldn’t be good. However, for humanity? I doubt we’d survive, certainly not very many of us would.
Massive, perhaps extinction level death for humanity. Oh, maybe some folks who are still hunters and gatherers would survive in but bush, but just about everyone else would die horribly.
It would take magic on par with Dies the Fire for it to happen.
Assuming any humans survived it would be back to the joys of hunting and gathering…and that would be in a world wracked by whatever death throes humanity would go through before the final plunge into darkness. I think that nuclear holocaust isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
Not a chance in hell could any of those be ramped up to work for us if you took away ALL of the worlds fossil fuels tomorrow. You need fossil fuels to build any of those things and to keep them running. No coal, no natural gas, no oil, etc etc? We’d all be dead once the food ran out. It would be Dies the Fire, except our nukes would still work and panic crazed people would certainly resort to that.
Zero percent chance of that. I think that it’s not all that likely that ANY humans would survive what would happen in such a sudden collapse.
I guess it depends on better for whom. Humanity would be up shit creek, collapse of civilizations, and a population die off that makes the black death seem like a summer cold. Many fewer humans wiith much lower industrialization might be better overall for the planet, however, pre-coal the best source of energy was wood, so there may be deforestation on an even wider scale than today.
Not on-topic perhaps, but petroleum has far more uses, e.g. as raw material for plastics, than just burning for energy. This is one of the reasons I get annoyed at right-wing Denialists (Hi, Sam!) who argue “It’s all going to get burned eventually anyway, so let’s burn it all ASAP.”
You have a cite for Sam Stone EVER saying anything remotely like that? :dubious:
As to what I assume your point is, we don’t need petroleum to make things like plastics…it’s just easier and cheaper to use it as feed stock. However, if ALL of the fossil fuels suddenly disappeared it would be moot.
We’d shift to nuclear, and electric powered vehicles. Other than huge expense and some downtime while the plants were built and brought online and charging infrastructure was created, the developed countries would have little issue with transportation. Breeder reactors would be back on the table to reduce fuel exploration costs, and folks might be willing to consider nuclear powered vehicles for some applications where electrical doesn’t cut it.
A bigger, long-term problem if there were ZERO fossile fuels left might be plastics – they also require petroleum (in small amounts) to make, as do a number of phameceuticals and other products. But those needs could be met with a fraction of what we use for transport.
I don’t understand “I don’t believe in peak oil,” though. You believe our oil reserves are literally unlimited?
How would we shift? How would you build new power plants? How would you build the factories to build the electrically powered vehicles to replace the dead ones strewn all over the country? How would you get the raw materials (from places like China) TOO build those vehicles? How would you feed people until you could magically do any of this stuff?
Without fossil fuels we’ll use wind, water, solar, bio-fuels, and nuclear energy. Everything will be more expensive, we’ll revert to a more agrarian culture if nuclear energy isn’t a resounding success. We’d be better off just using up the oil and leaving the gas and coal to ease the transition.
No I believe it is manufactured by oil fairies and is endless… ENDLESS I TELL YOU! :eek:
Seriously though, peak oil does not mean unlimited. Peak oil theory states that we have passed the point where production and availability is in terminal decline.
Given that green and nuclear sources are already developed, present and operational coupled with an assumption that we would lose X percentage of the population I would posit that we would have enough energy sources left and people to man them.
Perhaps we lose 3 billion people in the coming years, but I just do not think it would take longer than 25-50 years to rebuild a new civilization that could not only survive but thrive without fossil fuels.
Perhaps a world with 2-3 billion people would be a better world?
There is a big difference between we will run out of fossil fuels in the next 50 years vs running out in the next week. In the first case we have time to prepare and a scenario like you describe is possible. In the scenario proposed we don’t have the resources we need to make the infrastructure you propose or even prevent the collapse of civilization.
I actually don’t think that there will be major wars, as waging war costs resources we don’t have and defeating another country doesn’t make much sense if you can’t afford to make the trip over there to plunder their resources. I could only see a nuclear war if it was just a last act of suicidal frustration, but I don’t think anyone who actually had launch codes would behave that way. I expect mankind to survive (we are nothing if not adapable) but at a much reduced population, a early industrial tech level, and a local warlord level of government.
How would you feed them? How would they get to work to man the nuclear, wind, solar and geothermal plants? How would you logistically support them? How would you shift the grid to contract it to be only around them? How would you defend them and maintain them?
Again, this is totally unrealistic. If you got rid of all fossil fuels tomorrow…every scrap in the world…our entire infrastructure would collapse. No food. No ability to transport supplies and resources. Much of the power grid down, so much of our high tech communications would be down. No planes, trains or automobiles. No large ships to carry our stuff from nation to nation. Millions starving and panic stricken.
Even assuming that there is some nuclear power plant or solar or wind farm out there that just happens to be at at a large agricultural farm, that just happens to be converted to use electricity for all their machines, and just happens to be right next to a vast parts replacement center and manufacture center that is also converted to run completely on electricity, and just happens to have a national guard armory with dedicated soldiers ready to do whatever it takes to preserve this unlikely bastion of our old technology for the future, you’d have millions of panicked people streaming to the area in search of shelter and food…you going to kill them all?
You are wildly overestimating the numbers of survivors. I’m thinking that maybe a few 10’s of thousands scattered throughout the world within a 100 years…at best. At worst, zero.
While I disagree with you, I am fascinated by this statement. How many humans would be left on the planet in say the first 5 years? To me that is the critical time when things could be done to stem the tide so to speak.
Yes; I could find, were it worth my while, a cite that Sam said something remotely like that! I can also find a cite where Sam advocated exaggeration to make posts “more colorful.”
I agree that in the short-term there would be an unspeakable level of death and destruction, mostly caused by famine, the loss of advanced medical care, and social conflict. People in cities and those who are too elderly or infirm to be self-sufficient would suffer the most. The population might dip well below one billion people.
I am confused as to why people (above) say there would be “no food.” Humanity was able to feed hundreds of millions without the use of industrialized agriculture. There would certainly be less food. More importantly, our ability to move food to where it is needed would be catastrophically hampered.
However, after the initial social conflict subsided and humanity returned to an agricultural lifestyle, the population would stabilize between 1 and 2 billion. Humans were able to sustain a population of 1 billion before the industrial revolution (approx 1800 AD). There is no reason to believe it could not return to or exceed this level again.
Which parts do you disagree with…and can you give a reason why you disagree and answer some of the questions I’ve asked?
As for how many humans, my WAG is maybe a couple million left by 5 years. You’d get a huge initial die off as logistics collapsed in every industrialized nation on earth. During that collapse, you’d probably get some lashing out from the military, but it would be limited…no gas for the tanks or planes after all. But things like nuclear subs would still work, and ICBMs as well.
But some folks would survive…there would be some people able to find a place that has food, shelter and power for a time. The thing is, you’d have a huge contraction there as well, because you wouldn’t be able to farm the same way they do now…it would be back to almost a manual process, or maybe someone could cobble together some sort of electrical motors and retool some farm equipment. But then you’d have problems with seed and fertilizers, and regardless you wouldn’t have the logistics to do more than feed your little community.
However, there are all those guns out there…hundreds of millions of them. And starving and desperate people. Plus all sorts of other toys the military has that could be used and don’t require fossil fuels to use. Then you’d have the next contraction…those bastions of civilization would either fall to violence, or they would start to run out of parts and have things break down. Maybe they could loot what they need from the surrounding areas for a while, but for how long? And even that’s a maybe, as, again, there are all those guns out there. Then, there is disease (sanitation systems gone, ability to manufacture or distribute vaccines or medication gone, health care system completely broken down and scattered, etc etc).
In any case, by a hundred years I’d guess most if not all of those hold out bastions would be gone, and whatever survivors there would be would have to have re-adapted to some sort of highly sheltered (from outside contact) and manual agriculture, or hunting and gathering. How many people do YOU think COULD do that today, even in the 3rd world? My guess is…not very many, even given ideal circumstances. Certainly you aren’t going to see our civilization muddle through such an event.
It’s going to be a hard time if all the fossil fuels go at once. We still have water transportation, and bicycles, but it will take several generations to restock the number of draft animals needed for transportation and plowing fields. So half the earth’s population goes pretty quickly from lack of food and medicine. After that it’s just a matter of how cooperative we can be.
Our modern agriculture relies completely on mechanization and technology. Completely. So, how do you harvest the food that’s already planted? How do you get new seed and fertilizer next year to plant a new crop? How do you PLANT a new crop? By hand? Same with harvesting it? Processing it? Sure, our ancestors did that…at population levels far lower than today.
Ok, some folks could and would plant their own gardens. And then what? There would be literally millions (billions) of starving humans looking for food after the first couple of weeks…think you’ll be able to grow that garden in peace?
There would be a huge contraction. It would be so sudden that no one could plan for something on this scale. THere would be no ability to logistically shift even things like troops from the military bases to some site that the government decided to try and protect and rebuild from. The government itself couldn’t reconstitute because they would be trapped in the cities (no Air Force One, since no gas for the plane…or the helicopter for Marine One…or the cars) because all the cars on the road would be stuck there in a huge snarl of vehicles, few of which are all electric.
I can also find a cite where Sam advocated exaggeration to make posts “more colorful.” 