Oil shock - are we running out of oil?

[Luke Skywalker]

It seems that we are passing peak-oil production on a global scale, and soon prices are going to hit the roof.

Society as a whole is built up on oil:

- Food - agriculture - machines, tractors, transporation, fertilizer, all use OIL.
Price of food will skyrocket if there is an oil problem. World population is kept artificially high due to petroleum.

- Plastics - all made from oil, lots of products will skyrocket too.

- Transporation and heat - costs will skyrocket.

Any upset on world supply of oil can trigger a world depression because we are so dependent on oil for everything as a society and it's just going to blow in our faces unless some change is made.

Any comments - do you believe a coming oil shock is just hype or is really an accident waiting to happen, or is starting to happen?

 

[Docs]

Little behind the times aren't we?
- For years, we've had calls of 'restricted oil from the Middle East'.
- How about those untapped reserves up in the Arctic, and in the United States
- Alternate fuel technologies?

I can't even begin to explain it, because it's too large, but this has been a recent development over what...10 years? Oh god, we're gonna run out of oil in [insert 22xx date here]. Shyt...I was wrong, it's [23xx]

Ignore it. It'll consume your mind and turn you into a feminist

 

[Stuntmann]

Oil is at short supply everywhere but the United States. Our great nation has a great army and great political connections to get us oil cheap. There is nothing to worry about.

 

[comic_relief]

I choose to not think about things that are not directly in my control.

"If you want to change the world, first change yourself."

comic_relief

 

[Play the Game]

Google Oil shale, and you can sleep easy for another 100 years.

 

[penkitten]

aren't researchers trying to figure out how to slowly replace oil and gas with other natural products that are better on the environment already?

 

[Bible_Belt]

Yeah, penkitten, they are, but so far the problem has been how much petroleum we burn trying to produce non fossil fuel energy. Someone said on here that it uses 3/4 of a gallon of gas to make one gallon of ethanol. Hydrogen is similar in that it burns a ridiculous amount of oil trying to create and transfer the hydrogen before it is burned. Oil shale is also similar; it takes too much energgy to extract the oil.

The peak oil theories have been around for a while. There's also a competing conspiracy theory that says the amount of oil is actually unlimited; they say it seeps up from the center of the Earth or something:
http://www.vialls.com/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html
They say that your conspiracy is a conspiracy. It's all tin foil hat stuff.

 

[redspicyflag]

i wish we'd harness the power of the sun.
I mean it's right there and is limitless

 

[penkitten]

i wish we'd harness the power of the sun.
I mean it's right there and is limitless

wouldnt that be like making mostly everything solar powered?

 

[Bible_Belt]

The limits on solar now are the batteries and storage of the evergy. In the Caribbean, water heaters tend to be solar, and they work well.

Some of the tin foil hat sites about aliens say that their stuff runs off magnets. That would be neat.

Speaking of what if, space and time are supposed to be the same thing, spacetime. The common simile is that spacetime is like a blanket. It can bend. In theory, then, faster than like travel would be possible by just folding the blanket of spacetime. If the distance is not there, then the travel does not violate the speed of light speed limit on travel by anything with mass. If it would work on a smaller scale, then we could have what would function like teleportation systems. Bend spacetime at your will, and you could make New York City a few feet away from Los Angeles for long enough for you to walk next door. Talk about saving some oil!

 

[penkitten]

where did my post go??
where i had said that ...
eventually sometime the sun will also burn out just like any other star, but not likely in our lifetimes.

 

[Stuntmann]

Can you even imagine how many times people have fvcked by that time?

 

[Teflon_Mcgee]

Nuclear energy?

Other than having enough material to reach critical mass, ther is no reason why everything couldn't be powered on electricy and nuclear energy.

Less than half a pound of the right material could power a car for 100 years.

Or you could keep the nuclear stuff in the power plants and just power everything from the electricty it produces.

The supply of high quality energy is limitless.

 

[Luke Skywalker]

Yeah, penkitten, they are, but so far the problem has been how much petroleum we burn trying to produce non fossil fuel energy. Someone said on here that it uses 3/4 of a gallon of gas to make one gallon of ethanol. Hydrogen is similar in that it burns a ridiculous amount of oil trying to create and transfer the hydrogen before it is burned. Oil shale is also similar; it takes too much energgy to extract the oil.

The peak oil theories have been around for a while. There's also a competing conspiracy theory that says the amount of oil is actually unlimited; they say it seeps up from the center of the Earth or something:
http://www.vialls.com/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html
They say that your conspiracy is a conspiracy. It's all tin foil hat stuff.

Interesting spin - the conspiracy theory that this is an elist propaganda to artificially drive up prices.

Another website here http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm

seems to with that prediction and go into further detail.

I also went to another website I think a government source, but there is no indication of any dramatic increases of the price of gas set for later this year.

Well, if this is an elaborate plot to keep oil prices high, then that would be the most hopeful news.

So now we have the new theory that oil is as a renewable resource as formed from the earth's core in unlimited quantities AS OPPOSED to the prevailing science that oil is produced from decaying pre-historical animals and vegetation (which is limited and non-renewable as the process to make oil occurred over eons of time? I dont know, I find it hard to believe thought. How would oil be produced if it's unlimited? It just comes from the earth's core out of nowhere? You dont have unlimited pre-historical fossils (main ingrediant in oil), so it would have to be limited at some point.

I'm sorry, but I think the peak-oil theory seems to be more credible.

 

[ValleyDJing]

I don't care.

 

[Centaurion]

Uhm...I don't have the figures in my head, but today when an oil field reaches a certain prosent (30-60%), it is considered to be "dry" because we don't have the technology to bring out the remainder of the oil and it is closed down. Basically there are sh!tloads of oil-fields out there that have anything between 30-60% of their oil remaining. When we develop new technology, those oil-fields can be reopened.

Don't worry about oil shortage. The most pessimistic study I've seen says we'll run out oil if we keep using todays technology and usage in 50 years. Those are som big IFs. Also, in 50 years you'll be 70+ - already with a foot in the grave. Nothing to worry about.

 

[just so suave]

no need for anyone to worry, we only have to wait a million years and we'll have the same amount of oil we had 40 years ago until then we'll have to live on cutbacks, be like cavemen

 

[pinegirl7]

I choose to not think about things that are not directly in my control.

I suggest you don't vote, since you probably feel that is not directly in your control as well.

 

[speakeasy]

Nuclear energy?

Other than having enough material to reach critical mass, ther is no reason why everything couldn't be powered on electricy and nuclear energy.

Less than half a pound of the right material could power a car for 100 years.

Or you could keep the nuclear stuff in the power plants and just power everything from the electricty it produces.

The supply of high quality energy is limitless.

Supplies of Uranium to power nuclear reactions are not limitless. Yes, we can even run out of nuclear energy. There's no source or energy that is limitless. Even the sun will burn itself out eventually after all it's energy has been spent. That is after it supernovas and turns the eath into a giant rotiserrie.

 

[Teflon_Mcgee]

Supplies of Uranium to power nuclear reactions are not limitless. Yes, we can even run out of nuclear energy. There's no source or energy that is limitless. Even the sun will burn itself out eventually after all it's energy has been spent. That is after it supernovas and turns the eath into a giant rotiserrie.

For our purposes, energy is limitless. First law of thermodynamics. It just degrades into lower forms.

By the time we ran out of nuclear energy the world would propable be very different from some other natural disaster (including things like the dying sun or asteroids), war, or plauge that energy would be the last of our worries.

On top of that, it's theorized that there are four levels of energy that can be harnessed. It took man millions of years to harness the energy of the atom and it might take a million more to harness the energy of the universe (the highest level).

But at the rate technology advances there is no reason to think we would run out of nuclear material before we either face bigger issues (human extinction or planetary destruction) or find better technology.

Of course life would get real crappy for a while if we do run out of oil before having alternative sources available.

I for one am going to have an entirely (energy) self-sufficient house that can stay off the grid. Transportation on the other hand raises concern.