What happens to mass transportation as oil production decreases? Most people at least will agree that oil production is already nearly at maximum capacity (and probably peaking somewhere between 2010 and 2030) and it is not difficulty to predict that in that not so distant future, prices for oil will steadily increase unless an alternative is found that is economically viable.
In some situations I can see alternatives, like using more nuclear energy or solar power for electricity production. I can even see the possibility of electric cars that run off these energy source.
But what happens to other vehicles such as helicopters, 747s, tanks, and fighter jets once the supplies drop off to a trickle? These vehicles consume massive amounts of fuel and it is difficult to imagine ever having a fully electric version of any of these. So will the airlines and many of the core military vehicles (fighter jets, tanks, etc) eventually become a relic of the past, unable to support itself without the necessary oil?
Or are there other alternatives that will keep these industries afloat? Are there ways to biologically or chemically produce oil that would be economically feasible?
Most likely electric or as Anthracite pointed out alternative fuels. Since everyone else would have the same lack of fuel the playing field would go to the countries who could afford to have small fisson reactors driving closed loop steam turbine powered tanks :). Or maybe steam-electrics as kinda a variation on present day deisel electric locomotives.
Of course you would have environmental groups screaming bloody murder about that long before a single tank rolled off the assembly line.
What other sources are there? If the cost is prohibitive with these alternative sources, then does that mean that airline tickets (for example) will be proportionally more expensive, i.e. if the alternative source costs 60$/barrel would my airline ticket double in cost? At that cost (or anything significantly more expensive than present day oil prices - approx $30/barrel), could the airlines maintain enough customers to remain profitable?
Think about it. A reserve that is 5 times the size of Saudi Arabia’s is still virtually untapped… and its in Canada. Not the Middle-East.
There is still lots of oil out there. As the price per barrel increases, it just becomes more and more feasible to get the more expensive stuff. Presumebly, in the long run as Oil becomes permanently more expensive (and in my uneducated opinion, I think we are talking decades here, not a few years) , consumption of oil should decrease for applications that can make the switch to other fuels, so there would be “even more” left for the application that can’t switch fuels.
Regardless, there are other alternative fuels like Natural Gas out of which there are vast reserves, I don’t think engines be it turbine or 2/4 cycle, will be stopping in our lifetimes.
BTW - Accipiter1, don’t assume that the cost of the airline ticket is just the fuel. Heck, if oil prices double, even the price of gasoline at the pump shouldn’t double. Other things go into the final selling price.
Airlines have fuel, salaries, food, maintanence, airport fees, insurance, lease fees for the aircraft, and several other things that all take a chunk out of your total ticket price. Fuel is only a portion of it.
Coal will last another 300 years at least. So if oil is exhausted u’ll have electrical power from coal or gas made from coal (its not so easy though and notso clean either)
A huge number of hydrocarbons can be processed into gasoline or jet fuel. It’s just a matter of expense and trouble. You could, for example, take corn, make ethanol out of it, and convert that to gasoline. I do not have my numbers in front of me, but I believe the corn->gasoline process is about $12-15 per gallon.
Wll actually, bernse, you and I talked about this same subject on April 12, 2001 here. I posted that the Athabasca tar sands, while neat, did not actually have as much oil as is claimed.
In 1964 (when I flew to Europe for the first time), a RT ticket to Paris or London cost about $500. In today’s prices that must be something like $4000. While you would pay under $1000 even in high season. And airlines were actually pretty profitable in those days unlike today. Of course, they flew far fewer flights and airports were not the torture chambers they have become. You could drive up to Philly International and park on the circle in front of the entrance. Well, in 1960 you could, probably not by '64. But far fewer people flew and far less often. Two car families were far rarer and the average car was driven about 10,000 miles a year. I recently read that in some state–must have been California–there are more cars than people and they go 20,000 miles a year. So life would change, but life would continue.
BTW, Scientific American had an article early this year that predicted world oil production would peak in 2008 and then go into gradual decline. A rational government would have long since begun planning for this and one way would be to very gradually force the price of oil up to give people an incentive to begin to adjust. In most of Europe, as well as Japan, oil typically costs more like $5/gal. I don’t fully understand if it was luck or planning, but I spent an entire career in which I never drove to work.