The Race: Oil And Innovation The end of oil and the evolution of technology to compensate

[morosophos 0]

Oil is a tremendous commodity. The few oil barons who have dominion over the entire earth's oil supply are making exorbitant amounts of money at the expense of the rest of the world's population. As the scarcity of oil rises, so does the price of oil. The capitalist system is such that the oil goes to the highest bidder; that is, if China is willing to pay $70 a barrel whereas the United States is willing only to pay $65, then the oil company is most benefitted by selling the oil to China. Other nations, who need oil as well, are forced to offer greater sums than they had previously offered. For instance, the United States may respond by offering $71 a barrel. In this way, the prices of oil is bid-up by the countries of the world.The response to this oil situation for many automobile manufacturers has been to produce more fuel-efficient cars, such as hybrid cars. Even ethanol and grease-powered engines have become more popular recently. However, what are the ultimate implications of the technological adaptation?From an economic point of view, the automobile manufacturers are recognising the market and taking advantage of the situation. Not to say that this is immoral in any way, because the trend for companies to use a given situation to their advantage creatively is called innovation or progress. Consumers of these products won't have to endure the present oil crisis as harshly as many others. However, only a part of the population in any country will possess these products, and there will be a large number who drive only gasoline-powered engines and use only gasoline-powered equipment. The demand for oil nationwide, therefore, will still exist. If the same predicament holds true for each country on the planet, then the oil problem continues.From an ecological point of view, the alternatively fueled equipment and vehicles is good for the planet. Burned gasoline emits pollutants including chlorofluorocarbons, which deplete the ozone layer. Because a smaller amount of petrol is used?if any?in the newer products, the ecological conditions would seem like they would be much better than if everyone were to continue petrol consumption at a constant, unwavering rate.However, we must consider the impact if oil were to completely run-out worldwide. In this case, the world would have no choice but to convert to newer, cleaner technologies if it wanted to maintain the same living conditions and luxeries it had before. Not only would oil demand fall, it would be annihilated. Of course, the easiest way to get oil off the planet is to use it up completely. The sooner oil is gone, the sooner the planet is clean.Feedback?

[mikes242 0]

The Oil is running out you can see the despiration gripping the economies who depend on it most. Global WAR. The US war on terror is a war for what oil is left to extract. Cut back on the oil products. The free market economic model is DEMAND DRIVEN. No demand = no market. I ride my bike everywhere within 15 -20 miles of my home. And I'm proud to say I've parked my pickup 3 years ago. I am able to reduce overall consumption by 1,114 gallons per year and I've never been is such good shape. Go me!! lol

Edited August 12, 2006 by mikes242 (see edit history)

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Oil is not almost gone, guys. The high prices are caused by the importing nations knowing they can demand whatever price they like from the World's Superpower (sic), the oil companies knowing they can raise their prices in accordance to supply and demand, and the government knowing they can tax the living **** out of the oil companies, knowing they will get a pretty penny and expecting, for some reason, that it will convince the oil companies to lower their prices.

[gaurdro 0]

Burned gasoline emits pollutants including chlorofluorocarbons

I'm sorry to say this is false. while burning any carbon based fuel does emmit substances considered as pollutants. no carbon fuels, especially gasoline and other hydrocarbons, contain chlorine or flourine so there is no way that a gas burning car could emit this class(chlorofluorocarbon) of compound.

the race of things doesn't actually benefit the environment. the ethanol fuels emit 10% less carbon emmissions but creating them produces 40% more emissions than petroleum. the "natural oil" burning diesel vehicles are still burning a huge amount of carbon but with more phosphorous, which creates phosphoric acid. this acid is worse than sulfic and sulfurous acids because they interfere with several hormones that plants use to regulate growth. a widespread phosphoric acid rain would give us trees that grow one foot up and attempt to grow a hundred feet of roots(which emit carbon dioxide and methane; two green house gases).

even "clean" power sources aren't at all. hydrogen fuel only emits water(another greenhouse gas) but takes five times(in contained, usable energy) the amount of fuel in oil. we don't have a good system for separating water, which takes a huge amount of energy anyway. we instead get hydrogen from huge hydrocarbon chains that we can successfully partially burn leaving some hydrogen, some water, and a whole lot of carbon oxides.

electric cars just pass the buck. we don't have very much of our power grid off the oil drip so when you fill up the battery your not really gaining an efficiency but producing the emissions at one local not just where you're driving.

not to mention all the money, time and energy(mostly from oil) wasted on these fruitlessly dependent alternatives. what we need is a thrust to nuclear technology. fission isn't clean but fusion is and we are very close to getting it to work. it does sound like science fiction but trust me, as a physics major planning to conduct research into fusion technology, that it is possible and will make a truly clean fuel. taking only hydrogen(which can be produced with the clean energy) and producing only the inert gas helium. when we get really good at it we may be able to fuse all the way to iron. extracting 98% of the energy from hydrogen atoms. this includes the energy used running the machines to keep the reactors running and the energy used to split water.

i think we will burn through all the oil, coal, natural gas, tar sand, oil shale, etc. before we have a working alternative completely seperated from fossil fuels. it's that we, the united states, use more electricity than china and more oil that china and russia combined. but we have only a quarter the population of china. hmm doesn't seem right does it.