when our world finally runs out of oil…
Be afraid, be very afraid of the imminent day when Peak Oil becomes a reality. That’s the message of the new special on NatGeo TV which shows what would happen if all petroleum under the ground suddenly dried up. Say goodbye to reliable energy delivery, global commerce, fresh food in supermarkets, cars, civil rule, and the $4 a gallon gasoline that got us all riled up not too long ago would seem dirt cheap by comparison. We would face a world where everyone must become a farmer, blackouts are common, food would be scarce, hospitals would quickly run low on vital supplies, and famines would kill millions of people across the globe. While this is a rather hyperbolic scenario, it does a good job of illustrating how dependent we are on petroleum and how the end of fossil fuel extraction could spell a terrifying economic depression. And that’s precisely the point…
Now, as already noted, a trillion barrels of oil wouldn’t suddenly vanish into thin air overnight. Instead, it would be harder and more expensive to extract as time went on. After a while, we’d need to resort to extracting oil out of shale and sands. More and more diesel and flex fuel cars would need to hit the road, running on alternative fuels and gasoline diluted with more and more ethanol to keep prices at the pump manageable. Eventually, a fleet of fully functioning electric cars would be necessary to offset the growing prices of gas. Plastics would also become more and more expensive, and recycling would become a must. But one day, the last few drops of commercially viable oil would make their way to the surface and a third of today’s energy needs wouldn’t be available to us anymore. Six months to a year after that, the last barrel of oil from strategic reserves would be used up. We have to be ready for the day that petroleum is no longer king so the switchover is as painless as possible and while our current fossil fuel of choice is done for the next 65 to 100 millions years, the world can just keep on going without missing a beat.
And this is exactly what many environmental advocates want. Rather than try to kill all industry, as a number of vocal right wing pundits love to declare at every opportunity, what they’re really trying to do is to make sure the modern business world doesn’t get hung up on fossil fuels and realizes that there’s going to be a future when today’s essential commodities will become scarce, so the sooner we have viable alternatives on the market, the longer oil supplies will last and the easier the big transition will be. And how could it possibly hurt us to go greenward and to adopt more and more solar, biofuels, tide power and nuclear technology, perhaps a fusion reactor or two when they’re up and running? The only things we would lose are our short-sightedness and a game plan the end game of which ultimately leads in a depletion of a vital resource.
Fusion. When I was in college in the late fifties/early sixties, fusion power generation was impossible. “It would take a controlled rection in a container that was millions of degrees. And at this time we can’t even attain 40,000 degrees.” Twenty years later I happened to open the morning paper and read that “scientists at the JPL or Berkeley or some sucn had attained millions of degrees in a controlled environment.” I thought of a famous scientist from a couple hundred years back who stated, “We can never know what the stars are made of.” It was pitifully few years between his assured pronouncement and the advent of spectroscopy. Never say never again.
You pit rational public policy against personal interest. They can be as easily reconciled as the contest between science and religion. Science advances, religion retreats, fighting a furious rear guard action all the way. You are surprised? This has been the story of history for over 500 years, it will continue long past us.
I believe there is still dispute as to the origin of oil. You say it will take some tens of millions of years to “brew” some more; others say it is being created right now within the Earth’s crust. Until we get this sorted out, it is premature to speak of it becoming totally depleted, isn’t it?
…except you have the solution built in with the problem. As the price of oil goes up, necessity will drive people to find new sources of energy (not government programs) the winners will be the cheapest way to get the most energy. We only use oil now because it is dirt cheep and we get a ton of energy out of it. In fact even today we get less and less net energy out of a barrel of oil then 50 years ago (i.e. the energy we can get from oil minus the energy it took to find,distill etc the oil), as this will continue to increase for the foreseeable future (again assuming peak oil theory is actually correct and again assuming oil reserve estimations are correct) driving prices up and the market will fill in the gaps as the pressure mounts and people seek new solutions.
Let the money find the solution, it will work just fine, all government can do is make our current energy supply more expensive and pick future energy winners and losers, not on what is the best or cheapest, but who has the best lobbying power in washington (thank you ADM, GE, etc) and based on a lot of assumptions that may or may not end up being factual.
I believe there is still dispute as to the origin of oil.
Not really. The idea that oil isn’t plant or animal matter compressed for eons used to be popular once upon a time, but it’s untested and most of the evidence provided for this hypothesis is extremely weak or fails to explain biological markers in oil. There’s been a slight resurgence during the Peak Oil panic as oil prices soared over $100 a barrel, but it died within a month or two after geologists pointed out that there wasn’t anything new or compelling coming out of the abiogenic camp.
We’ve been using petroleum for well over a century and we know quite a bit about it, mainly that it comes from primeval algae and zooplankton which decomposed under a lot of pressure in hot, airless subterranean chambers, breaking down into kerogen, then into hydrocarbons.
Let the money find the solution, it will work just fine…
Franklin, as you pointed out, there are a lot of companies with a lot of lobbying power which can squeeze the government to provide sweetheart deals for them. This is one of the biggest things holding back many alternative energies now. Instead of trying to adapt them as a future business strategy, today’s energy syndicates lobby for more and more tax cuts and tax incentives which suit them and by the time the money has been doled out, there’s little left to help small alternative energy startups with R&D.
This is the potential danger. Oil companies headed by stubborn CEOs who might go for the abiogenic theory of oil formation when the supply is rapidly shrinking to justify their tax holidays, could pressure the government into funding a sinking ship all the way to the bottom while alternative energies get the short end of the stick.
when our world finally runs out of oil…? That’s a long time! Maybe when our sun in stage of red giant consumes entirely earth. Oil and natural gas are abundant primordial materials, not “fossil fuel” sic. Petroleum comes from earth’s mantle.
It’s interesting to note what said Sir Fred Hoyle:
“The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.”
When our world finally runs out of oil…? That’s a long time!
Actually, the world will run out of oil in about a century in the best case scenario. More likely, we’ll consume the last barrel of oil within the lifetime of Generation Y. Sure, the fact that we should have about about a trillion barrels left seems like a lot, but we use tens of millions of barrels every day and the demand is growing.
Petroleum comes from earth’s mantle.
Before you declare that petroleum has abiotic origins, you may want to check out the link to the study in my previous reply here which shows that that’s just not the case. I would think that if oil was truly a product of the mantle, we should be able to replicate its chemistry and create a synthetic analog like we have with diamonds, so if people who believe that oil is a geological product rather than a biological one would create petroleum in a lab and present that as evidence.
It’s interesting to note what said Sir Fred Hoyle…
As for Hoyle’s quote about the formation of petroleum, let’s put it in its proper context. Hoyle’s area of expertise was astronomy and he was an expert in space exploration. When it came to other areas of scientific inquiry, he was often spectacularly wrong, especially when it came to biology and abiogenesis. Just because someone earned a PhD doesn’t mean he or she is an expert in all sciences.
Oil form from biological detritus? Just if a miracle occur.
That’s not a problem – it’s an impossibility
Not only scientists as Sir Fred Hoyle but:
Marcelin Berthelot
Dimitr Mendeleev
Nikolay Kudryavtsev
Sir Robert Robinson
Thomas Gold
Vladimir Kutcherov
and many others…
Just because you say that it’s impossible for oil to come from organic sources, throw out a bunch of names of scientists who made these pronouncements more than half a century ago and adamantly insist on it, doesn’t prove your case. You can’t refute any modern body of knowledge with what was considered to be unsupported ideas circa 1960 without bringing in new, compelling evidence.
All your list of names proves is that scientists about halt a century ago speaking well out of their depth supported an idea that didn’t pan out. In my previous reply to these comments, I provided a link to a study which refutes all of their assertions, taking on each scientist and his work argument by argument. I suggest you take a look.
Let me explain something to you or anybody reading oil was put there for a reason as a lubricant and coolant. The amount we’re using right now will have reprecussion and now this spill is adding insult to injury. We will pay for forcing ourselves upon mother earth.
I totally agree with Nadine01. OIL IS THE BLOOD OF THE EARTH!!! The life is being sucked right out of the earth!! How much longer can this continue! I pray that God, who is the ONLY source of all things great and small, will have mercy on us and give us an opportunity to change our ways that does not require loss of human life, pain and suffering, or a damaged or depleted eco system.
Oil is not just for energy & fuel, it’s used to create practically everything in modern society: plastics, pharmceuticals, medicines, metal refining, roads, pesticides, fertilizers, building materials, waxes – you name it, it’s in there somewhere
Sure, we can find alternatives for fuel/energy & maybe a few listed above, but not all, especially PLASTICS – look around you, you’ll find it hard to spot something that doesn’t use plastic somewhere.
When the oil runs out, our society will be rolling back to an age before the industrial revolution – It’ll be a nightmare
The only true renewable source of energy is the sun. If the government doesn’t start subsidizing the solar industry soon, we are going to literally revert back to the medieval ages. SC has a fantastic point:
” Sure, we can find alternatives for fuel/energy & maybe a few listed above, but not all, especially PLASTICS – look around you, you’ll find it hard to spot something that doesn’t use plastic somewhere. ”
Even if we do find a solution for power generation, the raw material for pretty much every product the civilized world uses will be GONE. Utterly gone.
Sure we don’t exactly know how long we have till the reserves are gone, but does it matter? Are we really going to chance squandering something that can’t be replaced and that we so heavily rely on? Are we really going to burn up every last drop we find so we can drive our giant SUV’s around just a bit longer?
We HAVE to switch RIGHT NOW to alternative energy sources. Screw these politicians with there risk vs. reward stuff. We need to switch to alternative power generation techniques if we have any hope of raw materials left over that are used for medicine, plastic, food, metal production, glass, synthetics, etc. for future generations. If you can sit around comfortably thinking you will not see the day we suck the last barrel of conventional oil out of the ground, I pity you. You are a nitwit.
You want to know what a world without oil will be like? Lame. And really, really sucky. I had better start brushing up on my medieval farming techniques….
Oil, natural gas and coal are hydrocarbons and of course abiotic in origin. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics prohibits spontaneous oil formation at low pressure and temperature. Hydrocarbons are primordial materials trapped during accretion process of the Earth. Biomarkers present in oil are just parts of microrganisms that feed oil and die into oil and promotes misconception that oil would be biogenic (sic).
Sir Fred Hoyle is correct when states:
“The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.”
See below refutation to Geoffrey P. Glasby:
http://oilismastery.blogspot.com/2008/08/refutation-of-geoffrey-p-glasby.html
If want know more about abiotic hydrocarbons try this:
http://origeminorganicadopetroleo.blogspot.com/2011/02/normal-0-21-false-false-false-pt-br-x.html
All the above presumes we stay put.
Hydrogen powered space planes will be a reality. Once the current firework technology of space is superseded then will will:
a: start on the solar system
b: expand into the galaxy
c: colonise the universe
A much bigger potential problem than the oil running out creeping up will be the ability to live forever!!!
I watched a humorous panel show where the panel had to agree or disagree with a proposal from an expert. One suggested that the first human to live a 1000 had already been born. Like everyone else I thought ‘ who is this guy with a very long beard? what a silly idea’. His proposal though was well thought through and presented, and as the head of research institute on the topic he knew what he was talking about. A quick search on the net found out he was genuine. I no longer think it is a silly idea. In fact I think it will be the saving of the human race. It means one will be a able to start a 1000 year journey through space and be thee at the other end. Assuming of course faster than light travel is not possible, something now under debate.
So, am I worried about the oil running out. No, because will will move onwards and outwards.
Technology as we know it has existed for a bit over 200 years, which in the time of the human race on this planet is mere blink in time.
My only regret. I will not be one of those living forever so will not see the only thing we have to worry about, the end of time.