You have an overly-simplistic view of things. There have been many predictions that oil was about to run out. They have ALL been wrong. And not just a little bit wrong–wildly wrong.
There has not been any new oilfield discoveries in the last decade and even further back than that. The last ditch effort seems to be in the North poll. The industry is now fracturing to get the last drop.
To relieve me of my doom and gloom please prove me wrong & just saying I am wrong doesn’t give me the relief I need. Rolaids helps but some real data could cure me of my pessimism.
You my friend can cure me, provide some numbers, link, data and this old man will be very grateful; may even get a good nights sleep (:-
You appear to underestimate the power of markets. The Simon–Ehrlich wager is a good place to start when investigating this.
Now, if you read the link, you’ll see that this is an imperfect example, but, in general, as commodities rise in price, two things happen - people have an incentive to find more of it (because it is becoming more valuable to sell) and people have an incentive to use less of it (because it is becoming more expensive).
What does that tell us about what will likely happen as we ‘run out of oil’?
Well, exploration and production companies will work harder to find more oil. They will look in places we haven’t looked before. They will revisit old wells and apply new technologies to get more of the resource out of the ground.
At the same time, alternatives to oil will look more attractive to both consumers and producers. People will turn away from an expensive commodity and utilize a different one. At the same time, producers will look to natural gas and nuclear and hydro as their value raises in comparison to very expensive oil. It seems like electricity is the most likely alternative, but there are other possibilities. We are already seeing that at a smallish scale, but that can be expected to ramp up considerably as we ‘run out of oil’.
This will have the effect of making oil alternatives more expensive (because people are using more of it) and will make oil less expensive (as less people demand it).
These forces work against each other constantly, raising and lowering prices as new discoveries are made, new technologies are introduced and people’s preferences change. This is why, over a long time period and adjusted for inflation, commodity prices are pretty flat.
A big spanner in the works to all this speculation is the global climate. If the negative externalities of oil use are not given a price, the price of oil will be (is) artificially low. And oil use will continue well past the time when the harmful effects of oil should be reduced without public policy that prices in those externalities. That’s why I support carbon pricing mechanisms. There are real costs associated with carbon fuel use and those costs should be reflected in their price to consumers. And I think some sort of ‘global carbon tax’ will be put in place at some point. It just makes sense. (I also think rare earth materials used in batteries and solar panels should have their negative environmental externalities priced in)
Someone smart once said that we didn’t end the stone age because we ran out of stone.
We won’t ‘run out of oil’. We will move past it as superior alternatives become competitive. And that will be driven by economics and public policy, not because we don’t have any more.
Except, most of the uranium in nuclear bombs is essentially ore-grade, not very suitable for reactor use. The bombs use a plutonium-implosion trigger that sets off a fusion reaction that creates fission in the uranium jacket merely by dint of its intense neutron flux. There really is not enough reactor-quality material in all the bombs to make cannibalizing them worthwhile.
Again, several problems here. First, you have to have a pretty good energy source to split the water: hydrogen is not very energy dense either by mass or by volume, so you are going to have to be making mesopotamian shit-tons of it constantly if your vision is life-as-we-know-it. Second, hydrogen is a real pain in the ass to handle and keep confined. It just plain leaks out of whatever to put it in, being that it is so small as atoms go. Even propane is easier to work with. And finally, if you are splitting out shit-tons of hydrogen fuel, what about the other half? Do you just vent to oxygen out into the air? If you are adding shit-tons of oxygen to the atmosphere, at some point I think you can expect problems. Things will rust faster, fires will be worse, people will not live as long. Oxygen is some pretty nasty, corrosive stuff.
As you know I am a newbe on this subject but is there a way to use Ammonia as a fuel ?
*
**Ammonia **or azane is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH3. It is a colourless gas with a characteristic pungent smell. Ammonia contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to food and fertilizers. Ammonia, either directly or indirectly, is also a building block for the synthesis of many pharmaceuticals and is used in many commercial cleaning products. Although in wide use, ammonia is both caustic and hazardous.
The global industrial production of ammonia for 2012 was anticipated to be 198,000,000 tonnes (195,000,000 long tons; 218,000,000 short tons),[10] a 35% increase over the estimated 2006 global output of 146,500,000 tonnes (144,200,000 long tons; 161,500,000 short tons).[11]*
I know this molecule in its current form is not a fuel but could we twick it a bit to make it a fuel?
I totally agree with you. There will be transition phase from fossil fuels to ???
It is that transition period that concerns me. We also must keep in mind that we get a lot of other products out of oil other than as a fuel. I believe plastics are made from oil & I am sure there are other products derived from oil as well.
The fact is oil is finite and hopefully the human race is not
If you totally agree with me, please stop saying we are running out of oil.
Anyway, as noted, there are any number of alternatives that are potentially viable. And they will ALL be part of the future. We don’t just use oil today. We use a lot of different technologies and fuels. The same will be true in the future.
As I mentioned earlier, it seems to me that electricity will be the primary source of energy in the future. That means we will need better batteries and cleaner sources of electricity.
We will still use oil to make some products while other products will use other sources for their production such as plants.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for in this thread. This is all speculation and there will not be any one answer.
Plus, your fundamental assumption (we are running out of oil) is incorrect.
We need to start looking at these alternatives before the panic button is pushed. That is all I am concerned about
[quote=“phreesh, post:47, topic:726256”]
*As I mentioned earlier, it seems to me that electricity will be the primary source of energy in the future. That means we will need better batteries and cleaner sources of electricity…[/*QUOTE]
I totally agree but electricity does not grow out of the ground like corn. It is produced by a number of ways and it is those methods that need to be commercialized.
[quote=“phreesh, post:47, topic:726256”]
*We will still use oil to make some products while other products will use other sources for their production such as plants…[/*QUOTE]
Again, oil is “finite”
That is the point of this thread, to get folks thinking about this and looking for alternatives before the panic button is pushed
You must be kidding, oil is finite and as long as we use it it’s quantity will decrease until there is none left. :smack:
The metals and minerals that make up solar panels/wind turbines/hydro damns are also finite. If we build enough of them, we will run out the things that make them up. Oil is as finite as those things.
If you wish to get pedantic, oil and gas are renewable over a long enough time span. They come from vegetable matter that decomposes over millions of years. Oil is being made right now. Albeit very, very slowly.
If you read and agreed with my post on the economics of energy production, we have plenty of oil. We will NEVER run out of oil. Why would anyone continue to make cars that run on a fuel that costs a million dollars a gallon?
With regard to alternative fuels, there is a laundry list of approaches that are being pursued globally:
[ul]
[li]Tidal[/li][li]Hydrogen[/li][li]Compressed air[/li][li]PV solar[/li][li]solar heat[/li][li]hydro[/li][li]small scale hydr[/li][li]geothermal[/li][li]district heating[/li][li]deep water cooling[/li][li]cogeneration[/li][li]biomass[/li][li]nuclear[/li][li]fusion[/li][li]and on and on[/li][/ul]
And those are just ‘technology fixes’. There is an equal number of public policy decisions that are being researched that will have as big if not bigger impacts on energy consumption such as city planning, energy efficiency, carbon pricing and fuel efficiency measures.
Nobody is blind to the need for change. People are working on this. Thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. And the global supply of oil is only one factor that needs to be considered. And by no means the most important one.
Nearing retirement age and I want to learn to ride a motorcycle while I still can. I want to bike cross country and see what little pristine countryside my country has left.
What the fracking does is add enormous amounts more oil to the potential pool. Think about it. Those “known reserves” numbers essentially are areas of the globe already checked for oil, with some fudging to estimate how much is recoverable in total. It does not account for areas that can be fracked, and it also leaves out :
Antarctica. The north polar region. The oceans. Large stretches of Africa, Siberia, China, probably chunks of Brazil…essentially, something like 70% of the entire globe has never even been checked for oil.
Oh, sure, it wouldn’t be easy to get oil out of many of the placed I just named. But it’s possible - Antarctica and the poles you’d need like enclosed indoor rigs or something, for example, which is totally doable.
Some estimates I’ve seen of true total recoverable hydrocarbons say we won’t run out before we’ve released enough CO2 to make the planet have the surface temperature of Venus.
I have no idea from where you get that notion, but that’s some mightily garbled information right there. A significant number of the approx. 2000 drilling rigs currently working worldwide are employed specifically in exploration, i.e. in searching for new oil and gas fields. There are new discoveries almost every day:
…although none of them, admittedly, are at the north “poll”.
Perhaps what you are thinking of is the reserves replacement ratio, which has indeed been falling over the past few years (outside the US):
Now, I agree with you that at current consumption rates, oil will eventually become uneconomic for certain uses. but in only 20 years? Almost certainly not.
Also, what’s up with this weird symbol you keep adding to the end of your posts: (:-
I wish you and yours a great ride across what little pristine countryside there is left. But please bring a flat fixer with you.
(:-
You are not the first poster to complain about the (:-
It is intended to mean, here’s looking at you
If it offends you I will quite using it in this thread
(:-
What’s in a barrel of oil-?
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/gasoline/whats_in_barrel_oil.html
You did not mention heavy oil (Venezuela has larger deposits of this than Saudi Arabia). and oil shalesif we can tap these, we will have enough oil for centuries.
Smoking pot while posting can give you that felling of everlasting eternity. Tomorrow the sky will clear and the light of reality will shine through
unyil then do take care
After reading this thread I don’t think that it’s ralph124c that’s on the pipe.
A number of people here have tried to explain to you that the “panic” button isn’t as close as you think but you appear too willing to dismiss them.
Ah, another OMG!! Peak Oil! thread. Wonderful. 
So, what is your evidence we won’t have enough oil for centuries? You claim fracking is scrapping the bottom of the barrel, but you show no evidence that is the case. You claim we are on the verge of running out, but what evidence do you have that this is the case? BTW, this subject has been debated tons of time on this board. If you want to do a search on Peak Oil in GD you will find literally hundreds of threads.
As to ‘what’s next’, well, that’s the $100 trillion dollar question, ain’t it? If anyone knows what’s actually next they will be richer than the gods when the dust settles. Personally, I think it will be hydrogen fuel cell technology (or some sort of fuel cell), since it’s similar to the current paradigm wrt performance envelopes and filling stations. Perhaps we have magically graphine membranes that take hydrogen right from the air (or methane) to power our fuel cell vehicles, or maybe we’ll go to the local hydrogen/methane fuel station to fill up once a week. Or, maybe there will be magical batteries that will act as both battery and capacitor with super dense quantum pony power or something. What I do know is we will have plenty of oil to take us to the new paradigm, whatever it is, and that having lots of oil will be the least of our worries, since IMHO the real driving factor for using oil (or not using it) is going to be global climate change, not Peak Oil™ frantic worry-age.
Funny thing about dams; when you slow a river down, all the silt falls out. After a while, your dam is a waterfall, with no reservoir behind it. Rivers move immense amounts of material, up to and including boulders. Also, young fish have a difficult time getting downstream when the river is impounded, as they have to swim all of the way instead of being carried by the current. Then there is the carnage caused by the turbines of the generators.
Dams do not appear to be a long term solution.