World after oil

[HONEST AL]

Anyone catch that programme last night on Virgin (234 I think)On the lines of "The world after people" it showed how the world would slowly grind to a halt as the oil ran out.Really cheered me up it did.


WERE ALL DOOOOMNED

[Albannach]

it showed how the world would slowly grind to a halt as the oil ran out.

It won't.

[GBV8]

Well, there's enough fossil fuels to keep us/me going for the rest of my lifetime so after that I don't give a flyin f*ck what happens.

Enough time to worry about it when I'm dead.

[irskint]

it showed how the world would slowly grind to a halt as the oil ran out.

lack of lubrication causes 90% of all premature wear.

[popuptoaster]

I think the main issue is the OTHER stuff they use oil for rather than fuel, things like plastic and medicines. As for there being enough to last our lifetimes, there may well be, but how low does it have to get before the the emergency services and the military decides they had better stop us lot using it in case THEY need it.

I used to work for a drugs compnay and because the gulf war was on and we made medical packs for soldiers, when the fuel ran low for a few weeks we got priority passes so we could get to work, basically we could jump the queue at the petrol station near our warehouse.

I can see that sort of thing becoming a regular thing as levels get lower or it gets more expensive.

[Sancho]

Let me explain my point of view. We will run out of oil at 'some point'. We don't actually need oil for anything, we have plenty of alternative ways of creating everything that we make from oil. The only reason we still use oil is because it's cheap. As it begins to run out, it will become more expensive and the alternatives will appear relatively cheaper and become more popular. Then we will stop using oil.

No need to start stockpiling guns and crackers yet, I think the end may not be nigh after all.

[Albannach]

Coal used to power almost everything, then oil, now gas, next Hydrogen?

[Rustinho]

The oil won't "run out", in the same way that coal, etc, won't either. It will gradually become more expensive to get out of the ground as it gets more difficult to get out of the ground. Improving technology will get some more out and the cycle will continue.

By the time it becomes prohibitively expensive to use fossil fuels, technology will provide us with something else to provide our needs. It has happened throughout the history of mankind (eg trees fueled the bronze age - I think it was wood they burnt to smelt bronze anyway - and coal fuelled the iron age up to and beyond the industrial revolution and so on).

Don't forget that things like nuclear power is produced from a finite resource too (the uranium comes from mines!).

How could mankind have ever predicted what the future held for them back in the stone age? How much have computers improved in the last 30 or 40 years? It took less than 70 years to progress from the first powered human flight to landing on the moon.

We can hardly begin to imagine what the next 100 or 200 years might bring us. Mining asteroids? Cold fusion? Judwak's magnets? The mind boggles...

[schrodingers-cat]

The oil won't "run out", in the same way that coal, etc, won't either. It will gradually become more expensive to get out of the ground as it gets more difficult to get out of the ground. Improving technology will get some more out and the cycle will continue.

By the time it becomes prohibitively expensive to use fossil fuels, technology will provide us with something else to provide our needs. It has happened throughout the history of mankind (eg trees fueled the bronze age - I think it was wood they burnt to smelt bronze anyway - and coal fuelled the iron age up to and beyond the industrial revolution and so on).

Don't forget that things like nuclear power is produced from a finite resource too (the uranium comes from mines!).

How could mankind have ever predicted what the future held for them back in the stone age? How much have computers improved in the last 30 or 40 years? It took less than 70 years to progress from the first powered human flight to landing on the moon.

We can hardly begin to imagine what the next 100 or 200 years might bring us. Mining asteroids? Cold fusion? Judwak's magnets? The mind boggles...

Dont forget extinction

[popuptoaster]

I thin k you guysr are being over optomistic about what science can do in a short time, even a lot of the pro environment scientists now are saying we need to builod nuclear fired power stations to get us over the 100 to 150 year gap between the oil running out and us having a viable alternative power source.

the use of oil and coal has artificially accelerated the population growth of the planet and it CANT be sustained without an equivelant power source.

As a planet we already farm pretty much ALL the farmable land, so the existing land has to yield more food per acre which is being achieved with pesticides, fertilizer and genetic modification, ALL of those thing rely heavily on oil.

its not just your fuel thats gonna get expensive, even basic food will rise in price for countries like ours that cant support themselves, i dont know if people realise, but we also currently import nearly all our gas supply and about 30% of our electricity.

You think the countries that supply us will sell us power they need for themselves? America already suffers brownouts when it gets hot and they all switch on the AC and thats while fuel is still cheap.

there nowhere to grow bio fuels that wont take food from some peoples mouths, hydroigen production requires a lot of electricity and its difficult to store and transport as its tiny molecules can even seep through steel tanks and escape, about the best idea so far is growing fuel from algea as it produces the most power from the least land area, but you still need somewhere sunny to grow it, and lots of water, and waters not an infinite resource either.


Oh and as mention, nukes run on uranium, well thats rue, but the moder stations can run on the watse fuel from the older ones, plus although uranium is harder to find, its SO much more powerfull per gramme that its pretty much gonna last us way beyond our needs.

[biosurf]

I'm all for rendering chavs.

Seems to be a limitless resource.

[Sancho]

I thin k you guysr are being over optomistic about what science can do in a short time..........Oh and as mention, nukes run on uranium, well thats rue, but the moder stations can run on the watse fuel from the older ones, plus although uranium is harder to find, its SO much more powerfull per gramme that its pretty much gonna last us way beyond our needs.

So, we're not being optimistic at all, as we have nuclear to fall back on?

[popuptoaster]

i meant that saying,

"we'll be fine, they'll invent something else before oil runs out"

is a bit of a dangerous attitude, when the guys doing the inventing are saying we are at least 100 years away from a viable replacement energy source and that even with all the dangers and anti nuke feeling we should be building nuclear plants NOW so that they are ready to take over when the fossil fuel is to rare and expensive to use for power.

[Sancho]

i meant that saying,

"we'll be fine, they'll invent something else before oil runs out"

is a bit of a dangerous attitude, when the guys doing the inventing are saying we are at least 100 years away from a viable replacement energy source and that even with all the dangers and anti nuke feeling we should be building nuclear plants NOW so that they are ready to take over when the fossil fuel is to rare and expensive to use for power.

Oh right, but they have already invented loads of stuff. When the oil starts getting harder to get to, we'll just switch. I know it's not quite that simple, but I'll not be losing any sleep over running out of fuel.

[popuptoaster]

your not getting the point, yes they have invented lots of stuff, but NONE of it can be used to replace oil on the sort of scale we need.

for instance, if america swopped ALL its food production over to biofuels for a whole year, they could still only grow 10% of what they would need for that year AND they would have no food to eat.


electric cars need charging, cant charge them if theres no fuel in the power stations currently only 2% of UK electricity comes from renemwable sources, so once the fossil fuel is gone or to expensive to use, either everyone only gets 2% of the power you use, or more likely all the power goes to the hospitals, police and army.

Hydogen power is another problem, its easy to make, but you need lots of electricity. see above.

solar panels dont work very well in this country, ask anyone who has them on the roof of a camper, you need a fairly sunny day just to run one TV.


yes there are lots of prototypes out there, but nothing that can cure the probelm currently.

Im not a greeny, i love my big trucks and V8's, but im not burying me head in the sand either, currently rebuilding our RV so it can run "off the grid" for long periods. we may never need it, but sure as hell someone will at some point, its old and simple with no computers in it and basic american engineering so it will run for years, at the very least it'll be worth something, for when paper money is worth nothing and the ZOMBIE APOLCALYPSE comes.