Approximately how many years do we have left before we are out of fossil fuels? What will commercial airlines do when we’re out? NASA? NASCAR?
I don’t think NASA uses very much fossil fuel - other than the 8 gallons per mile transporters (IIRC)
For the rest, I think it depends on how willing we all are to keep using it, and at what price. The outcry on this MB about US petrol prices soaring to a tiny fraction of that paid in the rest of the world might suggest that people would reduce their consumption - doesn’t seem to be happening though.
It may sound trite, but estimates of available fuel are based on what is economically viable to recover - which could mean your fuel prices increasing again.
Russell
Doesn’t NASA use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (or some derivation thereof) in their rockets? If we run out of those, we’ll have more to worry about than the lack of gasoline! 
'NeckCAR? Who cares?
It’s going to be a long time before oil reserves are exhausted. By the time they are, we’ll be using renewable fuels such as methane methanol and ethanol. We could also use hydrogen fuel cells like the Shuttle. (No, they don’t have a Honda generator in back! :D) A couple of years ago I saw a news spot about a car powered by fuel cells. The car was speedy enough to cruise the freeways, but the fuel cells cost about $50,000 to make that much power. When it comes to the crunch, we’ll develop the needed infrastructure (refueling stations, etc.) and mass-produced fuel cells will be less expensive. I think we’ll also see more synthetic fuels in the interim.
How long will the oil last? I heard on NPR that Saudi Arabia has at least 100 years’ of oil in the ground.
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
I remember during the 70’s energy crisis that “experts” estimated that we’d run out of fossil fuels by 2010.
What I’d like to know the feasibility of is this:
[list=1][li]At mostly sunny coastlines, build electrolosis stations that could use solar cells to extract hydrogen from the sea water and bottle it in small cylinder bottles, ala propane.[/li][li]Redesign automobiles to burn hydrogen from these bottles instead of fossil fuels. Also redesign cars so the hydrogen isn’t an explosion risk in case of accidents.[/li][li]For refueling, just go to you local hydrogen station, exchange your empty for a full cylinder, just like propane for camp vehicles.[/list=1][/li]I’m sure at first this would be more expensive, but I think the price would eventually be equivalent to gasoline. The exhaust would be “clean”, returning immediately to the environment as the same substance. And the power of the engine would be equivalent to gasoline-powered ones, not wimpy like solar and electric car prototypes.
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
I’ve no idea if I’m remembering this correctly, but I seem to remember reading an article that said the risk of explosion in a tank of H could be greatly reduced by filling the tank with a metal “honey comb” structure; like the old Hexcell snow skis, or something similar to the corregations in cardboard. I think the idea was that in case of a rupture the honey comb would slow the release of H and you wouldn’t have another Hindenburg. I don’t remember the size of the honey comb cells.
Has anyone else heard of this?
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
Johnny L.A.: I don’t know about hydrogen fuel cells, but the honeycomb structure already exists in some gasoline fuel cells and gasoline cans. (BTW - You bet your sweet ass I’m a turtle! Haven’t heard that since college days; I even used to have a membership card) Even though I work in the oil industry, I think our best bet for the future is electric cars.
radar ralf
Aha. Then I must have remembered incorrectly. Now that you mention it, I think the article I read, lo these many years ago, was refering to gasoline; not hydrogen.
(BTW: I have a whole stack of Turtle cards. :))
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
The March 1998 issue of Scientific American was devoted to various questions about fossil fuels including this article:
Unfortunately, the article is not reprinted on their web site, so you’ll have to find it in the library if you’re interested.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
As of 5 or 10 years ago, oil reserves were increasing faster than we were pumping oil out, because of rapid advances in oil-finding techologies. I don’t know if this situation was expected to continue.
If traditional petroleum ever gets expensive enough, it will become economical to exploit similar resources that are currently more expensive than petroleum. The oil shales of the Wyoming-Utah-Colorado border are are supposed to contain more energy than all the oil ever pumped out of the ground world-wide. The sand tars of northern Alberta are supposed to contain more oil than Saudi Arabia ever did. Both these resources are being exploited in only a very minor way, because extracting and refining the oil is more expensive than with petroleum. Perhaps, if oil ever reaches $40 or $50 a barrel, these sources will become competitive.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
I worked for an oil company in a former life (not in any capacity that involved actual oil, mind you - I worked in the Corporate Financial division making lots of neat charts and graphs).
Back then folks were in a bit of hysteria over the fact that our supply of proven reserves only represented about fifteen years’ worth of consumption. People were worried that we’d run out of oil after that. One of our executives calmly told me that proven reserves are always about fifteen years’ worth of consumption, because you only go out looking for more reserves when you get below that point - IE, it isn’t cost-effective to spend money looking for more crude supplies when you’ve already located that much.
Thanks for all of the input. So, it sounds like we have plenty of oil to keep going for a long, long time. Do you think we will see any regularly used alternatives in our lifetimes, or will these developments be put on hold until the oil supply is dangerously low?