What Will Really Happen When We Run Out Of Oil A take from someone who has waste a lot of time reading on this

[glenstein 0]

I'm no expert on energy issues. What basic knowledge I have stems from my doing tons upon tons of research just to ensure that I beat someone else in a school debate on the subject. But that planted enough of a foundation for me to stay interested and read further and to sound reasonably informed about this issue. So I will be throwing my hat into the ring that has been started here about "what will happen", and hopefully I have one of the more interesting takes on it.

 

First, the major pressure from this issue is going to be within our lifetime and depending on different predictions, perhaps even within the decade. The problems with oil shortages are real and really frightening, and for some of the doomsday scenarios, you should google the term "peak oil".

 

Peak Oil is not when oil runs out. It's when oil production begins to slow down. Every economy in the world is based on growth. More population, more companies, more cars, more oil. We are still pumping out more oil and pumping it out faster to accommodate all these expansions. But, we will hit a peak in oil production, called "peak oil". Some say this will happen around 2030, some say 2008, some say it is already here, but most seem to agree it is at least a few decades off.

 

But the problems don't start when we run out of oil. They start when we reach Peak Oil. As the economy continues to expand, more power is needed and more cars hit the road. But suddenly, there is less oil available to meet rising demands. You know the rules of supply and demand, so it should be easy to see that after peak oil, the price of gas, oil, gas-based electricity, etc. will skyrocket.

 

Because oil touches virtually every facet of our economy, all sectors and all goods will have much higher prices and everything is going to get much harder economically. Most every product has a transportation cost factored into its price and all those prices will go way up, our economy will slow and things will get awful.

 

Unless, that is, our American politicians invoke some drastic changes to the way our economy (our cars and our power plants) generate power-- revolutionary and within the next 6 ... days. Honestly it would have to happen immediately or else it's already very late. But I doubt we are actually going to invoke any major changes until we've actually directly felt the effects.

 

But when that happens, we will be compelled to invoke changes and they will. With cars, there wont be one simple answer. There will actually be a combination of different types of fuel that cars will be running on that will all take up their own percentage of the cars on the road. Some will be biodiesel. But we could never power all cars on biodiesel because there simply isn't enough farmland. That which exists is needed for food and depending on the crop we use to get the oil (probably various but most likely soy), we probably wouldn't have enough acerage in the entire united states of america to power our cars. I say "probably" because I tried to do this calculation myself, and there is a very good chance I was off. But still, even if we converted half to 80% of all of our country over to farming for biodiesel, there just wouldn't be enough.

 

What's more, this would create problems around the world because if third world countries see a stronger market for their crops as fuel than as food they may be compelled to sell it instead of offer it to their own populace. Maybe. But those would probably be rare and isolated scenarios.

 

So biodiesel will be developed but it will only produce a small fraction of our cars.

 

Also, we are obviously going to still have to use oil in our next generation of cars, but mpg standards on regular cars will be way more strict and they will have to pollute much much less than they presently do. There will need to be laws requiring that only a certain amount can be sold that have low mileages and that as years go on less and less will be allowed. These, though much more expensive because of insane fuel costs, will still be one of the major cornerstones of the car fleet, even as it gets factored out of existence.

 

There will also be hydrogen powered (fuel cell) cars. But there will be even less of these then biodiesel because they would be extremely inconvenient. Hydrogen atoms are small (small as they get!) and can leak straight through perfectly airtight containers.

 

People fantasize about a hydrogen economy but realizing one would take a major major, major overhaul to our existing infrastructure. We can't put hydrogen in the old underground oil and gas pipelines stretching across our country without replacing tons of existing oil equipment. Presumably things like pressure gages, computer systems, and other materials used for oil would have to be replaced.

 

Also, per unit volume, hydrogen packs less power than oil or gas. A hydrogen fuel tank on a car would be many many times larger than a gas tank for the same distance, unless you were keeping the hydrogen stored at several thousand psi or as liquid hydrogen, then (if I remember correctly) it's closer to 2x the size for a tank, but that is unrealistically expensive and insane. Paying to keep hydrogen at such high pressure or at such low temperatures is just that much more expensive. Per unit weight hydrogen is great. The same weight of gasoline holds much less punch than the same weight hydrogen. But our economy functions by volume. By gallons of gas, by barrels of oil. Practically, the size of our fuel tanks, transportation and management of a fuel all primarily revolve around the volume of it and not the weight of it.

 

Adding to that, if we are to use giant fuel trucks to deliver hydrogen around the country like we do gas, we would need 20 times the amount of fuel trucks on the road to maintain everything.

 

All hydrogen would have to be created (where would you harvest it? It's the most simple element there is so it always mixes with something else). Around the world today, most hydrogen is produced by breaking down a fossil fuel, a hydrocarbon with hydrogen inside it like coal, oil, etc. 96% percent of hydrogen is produced by fossil fuels in the present day, and so having hydrogen cars wouldn't help us get off of oil. At least, that is the talking point everyone like to use, but if we transitioned over to hydrogen obviously that would change. The most famous example is electrolysis, where you basically fry water with electricity and it breaks the water back into hydrogen and oxygen. Obviously, there would be new plants that would do this and separate out the hydrogen and then send it around our country. Unless it gets produced right at the station where people would fill up with hydrogen. Then the car would just do the opposite combine the hydrogen back with oxygen to make water + electricity, which allows the car to run.

 

But for a while at least, these will be weak cars (can only go so far), and it will be inconvenient to get the fuel. And it would take a massive amount of electricity just to produce all this hydrogen (something on the level of doubling the amount of power plants in the country just for the hydrogen cars alone, if they were to power the car fleet). Where will this electricity come from? But still, the hydrogen fuel cell car will have to be a reality, but it will be a small portion of our cars.

 

Probably the single largest contingent of cars are going to be hybrid cars, which will run mostly on electricity or biodiesel or hydrogen (still electric), but there will be gas when it is needed. If our consumers would stop being idiots and demand 300 horsepower cars, a lot less gas would be necessary and hybrid cars would have an easier time becoming widespread. They are already here today, they have the muscle when needed but will rely mostly on electricity and drastically reduce the need for oil. Even though they use gas they will be a major, major contingent of the nation's car fleet and will greatly help reduce demand and ease the pain of high costs of oil.

 

Then there is the straight up pure electric car. Not a fuel cell car, but just a battery powered car. On many levels these will suck. They have weak engines and can only like 93 miles on one "load" of electricity. Not much but it's actually more than millions of people need to drive in a day. They will take hours to recharge so if you forgot to plug it in (yes, plug it in) overnight, you are out of luck the next morning. Batteries would have to be entirely replaced about every 20,000 miles and we would have to find creative ways to drive less. But they will not use fossil fuels and once the cars penetrate the market (which they will) they will become about the same price as any other car, but with a much, much, oh-so-much cheaper bill when it comes to fueling up. They will actually be a huge help though, much more than biodiesel.

 

But the electricity has to come from somewhere, whether we just use it for electrolysis for fuel cells or for straight battery powered electric cars. Nuclear power will have to be phased out entirely. If you factored government subsidies, waste management, plant maintenance back into the cost of nuclear power it would actually be very high. Nuclear power is not our future, no inexpensive solution for removing waste exists (but the fears that the plant will blow up are an exaggeration, they are very safe despite what people will tell you). Also for political reasons, if we are smart, we aren't going to use nuclear power. Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons are brother and sister, and from one technology, the other technology can and will be accessed.

 

Also, for the towering destruction of pollution caused by Coal Plants (also a fossil fuel which we will run out of in 200 years, a long time but shorter than we think), Coal will be out. So no coal, no oil and no nuclear for our power plants. What, then? Natural renewable sources. The strongest of these will likely be wind which is abundant and already penetrating the electricity market present day and expanding at a ridiculous pace (the industry grows by an insane 33% a year). Wind is going to catch up on its own accord, even without the urgent intervention that will be needed, so it should develop more quickly than solar power. But there will be plenty of each on a massive scale.

 

Also, geothermal energy (drilling down in the earth for undergrount heat), on the western half of our country around California and Nevada and several over places, is already used as a viable power source, and there is tons of it. Hawaii, which already gets 25% of all its power from geothermal thanks to the volcanic activity could expand further. Geothermal, wind, and solar will all produce the new electricity which will be the backbone of the car industry.

 

So, what saves us from the oil shortage? A combination of a few things happening at once. But the short answer would be: electricity.

 

Thats my view, and if you look at sources to check me on my assertions, you should see that most every claim above is backed up by a source which you can find on the internet.

Edited January 27, 2007 by glenstein (see edit history)

[PurPleKuSh 0]

Have you forgotten ethanol? Corn makes excellent gas, as a matter of fact brazil has converted most of their cars and stations into ethanol. Its pretty enviroment friendly and its about just as effeisiant as oil. You can still reach high speeds and runs cars perfectly. Just fermant the corn oil into ethanol and it will run a car perfectly...and from what i understand its fairly cheap just a little time consuming..i think it would be the best way to go

[glenstein 0]

Have you forgotten ethanol? Corn makes excellent gas, as a matter of fact brazil has converted most of their cars and stations into ethanol. Its pretty enviroment friendly and its about just as effeisiant as oil. You can still reach high speeds and runs cars perfectly. Just fermant the corn oil into ethanol and it will run a car perfectly...and from what i understand its fairly cheap just a little time consuming..i think it would be the best way to go

First I should note that ethanol only produces slightly less CO2 than natural gas, and involves hazardous chemicals which get into the surrounding environment besides. So there is an argument to be made that ethanol's environmental impact is equal to or worse than that of natural gas.

Ethanol is only even talked about because it, uniquely enough, has a lobbying industry and a bit of a too-intimate relationship with all those dirty things we associate with the political underworld. The largest ethanol producer (whose name escapes me EDIT:Name is ADM) gets more than 33% of its income from government grants/purchases/other money.

Also, ethanol is very natural gas intensive to make. Natural gas is used to heat the mashed corn used to make ethanol and to dry the distillers grains co product. Rising gas costs have been shown to have a huge impact on ethanol profitability. And, perhaps most importantly of all, some studies are claiming that ethanol, on the whole, even if profitable does not yield a net gain in energy. That is, supposing ethanol fuel were used to power every part of the ethanol production, you would actually lose more ethanol than you would produce! There are serious questions around it and the talk in newspapers and politics seems to have more to do with an ethanol/corn lobbying presence than it's legitimacy.

Lastly, an ethanol supply has the same issues biodiesel has- we would not have nearly enough farmland to use it viably. If every acre of corn in this country were used solely for ethanol, at best we could produce 12% of our nations fuel. I'll actually leave a link for this: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

There were other reasons relating to efficiency (apparently people notice MPG drops on their cars when they use ethanol) but there was a web of reasons for why I left ethanol out. I had some notes on ethanol.. if I can find them I'll post a bit more.

Edit: Here is an actual source on the ethanol lobbying industry:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Edit: Another article that more fully explains the lobbying and government relations of Archer Daniels Midland, the largest ethanol company:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

The whole industry is corrupt and politicized, so I didn't touch it in my original post.
Edited January 27, 2007 by glenstein (see edit history)

[dundun2007 0]

Yeah this is a really good subject and i wish people would pay more attention to the growing fact that there is not an unlimited supply of oil in the world and the fight for it is getting worse and worse. I have heard rumors that people have made cars that get over 150 mpg, and when they show their ideas to the car companies they get their patent bought out by the oil companies and their ideas hidden so the oil industry can keep making money. This is all just rumors but i can come to think that its actually quite believable, our country will do anything to become powerful and wealthy even if it hurts the people and the environment doing so.

[Unregistered 012 0]

Well first off there are so many other things that you can use to fuel cars. Ethanol which is from corn. And if you are from Indiana you should know that we have plenty of that. But if there were no other sources to fuel cars, i guess panic and world mayhem would break loose. Cause everybody would have to get off their lazy @$$'s and walk or ride a bike. lol. I basically walk everywhere i go, if im going to a friends house i walk. But if im going to a store that is far away or to visit relatives far away then of course i use a car. but i prefer to walk cause its good for you and keeps you in shape.

Edited January 28, 2007 by savagemonkeyz14 (see edit history)

[DjLuki 0]

i saw we start using horses again like the old times and cahriots! and plus, it will not do any damage to earth, it wont mess up our planet and we'll get some good weather for once. but im sure some scientists are probbably going to come up with some kind of new oil.

[Watermonkey 0]

I'm no expert on energy issues. What basic knowledge I have stems from my doing tons upon tons of research just to ensure that I beat someone else in a school debate on the subject. But that planted enough of a foundation for me to stay interested and read further and to sound reasonably informed about this issue. So I will be throwing my hat into the ring that has been started here about "what will happen", and hopefully I have one of the more interesting takes on it.

 

First, the major pressure from this issue is going to be within our lifetime and depending on different predictions, perhaps even within the decade. The problems with oil shortages are real and really frightening, and for some of the doomsday scenarios, you should google the term "peak oil".

Some rather interesting reading comes when you add the word "myth" to the above search.

 

Peak Oil is not when oil runs out. It's when oil production begins to slow down. Every economy in the world is based on growth. More population, more companies, more cars, more oil. We are still pumping out more oil and pumping it out faster to accommodate all these expansions. But, we will hit a peak in oil production, called "peak oil". Some say this will happen around 2030, some say 2008, some say it is already here, but most seem to agree it is at least a few decades off.

 

But the problems don't start when we run out of oil. They start when we reach Peak Oil. As the economy continues to expand, more power is needed and more cars hit the road. But suddenly, there is less oil available to meet rising demands. You know the rules of supply and demand, so it should be easy to see that after peak oil, the price of gas, oil, gas-based electricity, etc. will skyrocket.

The rule of supply and demand doesn't appear to be valid here as our country's petroleum reserves are at historic highs, last year there were no serious hurricanes, our demand is low, yet gas is still very very high, especially in the northwest US. If supply/demand isn't setting prices, what is? The fact no new refineries have been built in over a decade doesn't help but dig a little deeper...

 

Because oil touches virtually every facet of our economy, all sectors and all goods will have much higher prices and everything is going to get much harder economically. Most every product has a transportation cost factored into its price and all those prices will go way up, our economy will slow and things will get awful.

 

Unless, that is, our American politicians invoke some drastic changes to the way our economy (our cars and our power plants) generate power-- revolutionary and within the next 6 ... days. Honestly it would have to happen immediately or else it's already very late. But I doubt we are actually going to invoke any major changes until we've actually directly felt the effects.

Don't hold your breath. Politicians aren't known for doing what's best for the people, they're hired to work for the global corporations.

 

But when that happens, we will be compelled to invoke changes and they will. With cars, there wont be one simple answer. There will actually be a combination of different types of fuel that cars will be running on that will all take up their own percentage of the cars on the road. Some will be biodiesel. But we could never power all cars on biodiesel because there simply isn't enough farmland. That which exists is needed for food and depending on the crop we use to get the oil (probably various but most likely soy), we probably wouldn't have enough acerage in the entire united states of america to power our cars. I say "probably" because I tried to do this calculation myself, and there is a very good chance I was off. But still, even if we converted half to 80% of all of our country over to farming for biodiesel, there just wouldn't be enough.

Complicated issue, but when or if the farming of hemp is legalized again, it'll help solve the bio-diesel problem. The hemp seed is, I believe, over 95% oil, the plant needs little or no fertilizer and grows pretty much anywhere with irrigation, and it can be used for clothing, paper, and a myriad of other things on top of oil from its seeds.

 

What's more, this would create problems around the world because if third world countries see a stronger market for their crops as fuel than as food they may be compelled to sell it instead of offer it to their own populace. Maybe. But those would probably be rare and isolated scenarios.

Don't bank on it. Have you seen the price of corn lately? Hope you don't like corn, because you won't be able to afford it pretty soon.

 

So biodiesel will be developed but it will only produce a small fraction of our cars.

Bio-diesel is many many years away from being a viable fuel (100%) replacement due to it's high pour point. The fuel gels(freezes), depending upon the type of oil used, at very high temps (up to about 43 degrees F if memory serves) and for those of us who don't live in the tropics, that'd shut us down in the winter. That's why, in the northern latitudes in the winter, a 5-10% mix is as high as we can go. In the summer we can run B100 (100% biodiesel) but we're back to the old problem of burning nasty dirty mineral diesel in the cooler months. If the EPA would let up a little, diesel cars are where the future should lie. Many of them will go twice or more as far as a similar gasoline car on one gallon of fuel!

 

Also, we are obviously going to still have to use oil in our next generation of cars, but mpg standards on regular cars will be way more strict and they will have to pollute much much less than they presently do. There will need to be laws requiring that only a certain amount can be sold that have low mileages and that as years go on less and less will be allowed. These, though much more expensive because of insane fuel costs, will still be one of the major cornerstones of the car fleet, even as it gets factored out of existence.

There isn't much less they can pollute at this point. In some cities the air coming out of the tailpipe of a new car is actually cleaner and better to breathe than the air the car sucks in to its air filter!

 

There will also be hydrogen powered (fuel cell) cars. But there will be even less of these then biodiesel because they would be extremely inconvenient. Hydrogen atoms are small (small as they get!) and can leak straight through perfectly airtight containers.

Have you seen Honda's home fuel cell charging station? http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Pretty cool, huh? Put up a medium sized solar array on your roof and drive this little cutie to work and back every day. While you're at it, say goodbye to those annoying power outages. Honda's fuel cell powers not only your car, but your whole house as well! God I love that company.

 

People fantasize about a hydrogen economy but realizing one would take a major major, major overhaul to our existing infrastructure. We can't put hydrogen in the old underground oil and gas pipelines stretching across our country without replacing tons of existing oil equipment. Presumably things like pressure gages, computer systems, and other materials used for oil would have to be replaced.

 

Also, per unit volume, hydrogen packs less power than oil or gas. A hydrogen fuel tank on a car would be many many times larger than a gas tank for the same distance, unless you were keeping the hydrogen stored at several thousand psi or as liquid hydrogen, then (if I remember correctly) it's closer to 2x the size for a tank, but that is unrealistically expensive and insane. Paying to keep hydrogen at such high pressure or at such low temperatures is just that much more expensive. Per unit weight hydrogen is great. The same weight of gasoline holds much less punch than the same weight hydrogen. But our economy functions by volume. By gallons of gas, by barrels of oil. Practically, the size of our fuel tanks, transportation and management of a fuel all primarily revolve around the volume of it and not the weight of it.

 

Adding to that, if we are to use giant fuel trucks to deliver hydrogen around the country like we do gas, we would need 20 times the amount of fuel trucks on the road to maintain everything.

 

All hydrogen would have to be created (where would you harvest it? It's the most simple element there is so it always mixes with something else). Around the world today, most hydrogen is produced by breaking down a fossil fuel, a hydrocarbon with hydrogen inside it like coal, oil, etc. 96% percent of hydrogen is produced by fossil fuels in the present day, and so having hydrogen cars wouldn't help us get off of oil. At least, that is the talking point everyone like to use, but if we transitioned over to hydrogen obviously that would change. The most famous example is electrolysis, where you basically fry water with electricity and it breaks the water back into hydrogen and oxygen. Obviously, there would be new plants that would do this and separate out the hydrogen and then send it around our country. Unless it gets produced right at the station where people would fill up with hydrogen. Then the car would just do the opposite combine the hydrogen back with oxygen to make water + electricity, which allows the car to run.

 

But for a while at least, these will be weak cars (can only go so far), and it will be inconvenient to get the fuel. And it would take a massive amount of electricity just to produce all this hydrogen (something on the level of doubling the amount of power plants in the country just for the hydrogen cars alone, if they were to power the car fleet). Where will this electricity come from? But still, the hydrogen fuel cell car will have to be a reality, but it will be a small portion of our cars.

 

Probably the single largest contingent of cars are going to be hybrid cars, which will run mostly on electricity or biodiesel or hydrogen (still electric), but there will be gas when it is needed. If our consumers would stop being idiots and demand 300 horsepower cars, a lot less gas would be necessary and hybrid cars would have an easier time becoming widespread. They are already here today, they have the muscle when needed but will rely mostly on electricity and drastically reduce the need for oil. Even though they use gas they will be a major, major contingent of the nation's car fleet and will greatly help reduce demand and ease the pain of high costs of oil.

It's human nature to enjoy the thrill of raw power. I doubt you'll see any change in that aspect of humanity any time soon.

 

Then there is the straight up pure electric car. Not a fuel cell car, but just a battery powered car. On many levels these will suck. They have weak engines and can only like 93 miles on one "load" of electricity. Not much but it's actually more than millions of people need to drive in a day. They will take [b]hours[/b] to recharge so if you forgot to plug it in (yes, plug it in) overnight, you are out of luck the next morning. Batteries would have to be entirely [b]replaced[/b] about every 20,000 miles and we would have to find creative ways to drive less. But they will not use fossil fuels and once the cars penetrate the market (which they will) they will become about the same price as any other car, but with a much, much, oh-so-much cheaper bill when it comes to fueling up. They will actually be a huge help though, much more than biodiesel.

You seem to fail to realize that "fuel cells" are, in fact, just fancy batteries with no limit on their usable lifespan. You can recharge most batteries a hundred to a thousand times. You can recharge a fuel-cell (H2) an unlimited number of times. That's a simplistic explaination, for more detail do a search. I did: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ There are more and none of them I've read is 100% accurate, but you'll get a good idea if you read at least that one. Also, electric cars consume massive amounts of fossile fuels. Unless you produce electricity from the air, sun, or water/gravity.

 

But the electricity has to come from somewhere, whether we just use it for electrolysis for fuel cells or for straight battery powered electric cars. Nuclear power will have to be phased out entirely. If you factored government subsidies, waste management, plant maintenance back into the cost of nuclear power it would actually be very high. Nuclear power is not our future, no inexpensive solution for removing waste exists (but the fears that the plant will blow up are an exaggeration, they are very safe despite what people will tell you). Also for political reasons, if we are smart, we aren't going to use nuclear power. Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons are brother and sister, and from one technology, the other technology can and will be accessed.

I'm not ready just yet to give up on nuclear energy. Don't dismiss it so easily. Technology in this field is advancing rapidly and I believe in the near future there'll be discovered a way to easily erase all the spent plutonium or uranium rods thus removing one of the three main things that make electricity produced in this way unattractive: Expense of the power plant, disposal of the radioactive waste, and potential for an accident or terrorist attack ala Chernobyl. Also, research continues on fusion which involves no waste and it won't always be just another good idea with no solution. Addendum: Actually the latest method of disposal for depleted uranium is to incorporate it into projectiles and litter the middle east and Africa with it causing massive radiation poisoning of our troops and the planet.

 

Also, for the towering destruction of pollution caused by Coal Plants (also a fossil fuel which we will run out of in 200 years, a long time but shorter than we think), Coal will be out. So no coal, no oil and no nuclear for our power plants. What, then? Natural renewable sources. The strongest of these will likely be wind which is abundant and already penetrating the electricity market present day and expanding at a ridiculous pace (the industry grows by an insane 33% a year). Wind is going to catch up on its own accord, even without the urgent intervention that will be needed, so it should develop more quickly than solar power. But there will be plenty of each on a massive scale.Also, geothermal energy (drilling down in the earth for undergrount heat), on the western half of our country around California and Nevada and several over places, is already used as a viable power source, and there is tons of it. Hawaii, which already gets 25% of all its power from geothermal thanks to the volcanic activity could expand further. Geothermal, wind, and solar will all produce the new electricity which will be the backbone of the car industry.

Geothermal energy is really big in northern NV, but it'll probably never be a major source of power. I look forward to the day it's commonly incorporated in the building of rural homes to help save energy.

 

So, what saves us from the oil shortage? A combination of a few things happening at once. But the short answer would be: electricity. Thats my view, and if you look at sources to check me on my assertions, you should see that most every claim above is backed up by a source which you can find on the internet.

An overall well thought-out and nicely researched topic so I'm not going to tear it apart, mostly because I'm feeling lazy, but not because your arguments are bullet-proof. I just want to take exception to a few things and anything else, you've made a choice which side of the debate to stand based on widely available knowledge, but is it the truth? No, I'm not asking you if you're lying, I just noticed that some of your "facts" have "counter-facts" available out there as well. First off, oil is one of the most politicized issues out there, so be careful not to buy the propaganda about "peak oil". Consider that "peak oil" (that point at which all the easy-to-get sweet light crude is exhausted) might be a myth or urban legend. Consider the possibility that what you think you know about oil coming from dinosaurs (organic decayed material i.e. "fossil fuel") is false. It's actually mineral-based, not organic according to some sources including the Russian study at gasresources.net/. Consider that if an oil well dries up, all you have to do is let it sit for ten years and come back and turn the pumps back on and voila! Texas Tea, Black Gold... The wells refill themselves (many sources for this easily searchable). Impossible? Well, let's just say Shell and Exxon BP and others don't want you to know about their dirty little secrets. They wouldn't be able to rake in massive record breaking profits if you didn't believe they were past "peak oil" and all the worlds oil was locked up in shale or prohibitively expensive to extract.

 

Notice from truefusion:

There's a limit as to how many QUOTE bbcodes you can use. Once you reach the limit of 10, please use CODE bbecodes. Thanks.

Edited February 6, 2007 by Watermonkey (see edit history)

[adriantc 0]

You've only tried to answer a small part of the question... What will happen with the cars when the oil runs out? But I'm sure there will be far greater problems then having a car on oil when there is no oil left in the world. Everything we have today is made (at least partially) out of oil...Everything that has plastic in it, even food it made out of oil. I think you only need the fingers from one hand to count the parts of industry that don't need oil to function. Things will change when we will run out of oil... And it's not only cars, even the most basic stuff will have to change... So cars maybe just the beginning, our whole life style will have to change, to adapt to a world without oil.

I've heard that in 40 years will run of out of oil... That may happen even faster. I think it will be a disaster for world's economy specially for the countries that relay on oil as their main source of income. Richer countries like Dubai have realized that when the oil runs out they will have a serious money trouble... That is why some of them are turning their eyes on tourism.

Anyway the oil problem is far larger then we can possibly imagine. Fuel Cell cars, hybrid cars are very possible. But you can't power a whole industry on electricity alone... Electricity simple does not provide enough power to keep machines running and that is not because you can't produce so much power but because you can't transport that much in an effective way. Besides even if an effective alternative to oil is found, a few decades will pass before the whole industry will be able to adapt and make the switch. Not to mention the money that will have to be invested...

So you see our life will be so much different when the oil runs out. I'm afraid it won't be a very peaceful transition from a oil based global economy to something else. Tides will turn for those countries that ruled the world by controlling the oil flow... like the USA. Just a few days ago Bush said in it's speech that America needs to double it's oil reserve. I'm sure the crisis will end with a new world order. The world, in my opinion, is going to have a very wild ride once the oil runs out.

[DaEmOnFiRe 0]

Im not an expert on energy resources and their usage, therefore my views on this matter are simple. Basically, i think when oil runs out, we'll either mainly use nuclear energy or solar energy. The best thing about nuclear energy is that it is extremely efficient. The down side is it produces a hazardous waste, which eventually will take up alot of space. The more likely alternative energy resource is solar energy. Although it doesn't have the effiency of nuclear energy, it is much more safe to use.I know what i said was very vague and this topic can be discussed in muhc wider detail, but thats all i know on the topic.

[osknockout 0]

Hmm... you're assuming that oil cannot be manually produced of course when you say "what will happen when there's no more oil?" Most probably governments will try some desperate attempt to create it synthetically while switching to any other hydrocarbon sources they can find. And if THAT doesn't provide a ready solution, we'd probably fall into a temporary Dark Age leaving countries like Brazil (which I hear uses mostly ethanol grown from its own fields) and the OPEC countries which will have hoarded their last resources still properly functioning.

So cars maybe just the beginning, our whole life style will have to change, to adapt to a world without oil.

I think that change is already underway. In the past few years, we've seen the rise of hybrid cars to markets - sure few people buy them, but the number's surely growing each year - and the lack of infinite oil has already entered the public mind. I think it's safe to say that we're just expecting a lifestyle change.
But on the good side, Exxon-Mobil will finally have shot its profits to the abyss.

Besides even if an effective alternative to oil is found, a few decades will pass before the whole industry will be able to adapt and make the switch. Not to mention the money that will have to be invested...

Actually, I think we tend to surprise ourselves when we're desperate. I mean, hey, if we went from splitting the atom to making the A-bomb in 13 years, how fast do you think finding a relatively efficient new source of energy will be? Not to mention how much money each nation would put into new energy and vehicle/industry-modification/replacement programs. I'd say it'd be around 8 years MAX to replace all these automobiles and industries so they could use the new energy source.

Consider the possibility that what you think you know about oil coming from dinosaurs (organic decayed material ie. "fossile fuel") is false. It's actually mineral-based, not organic. Consider that if an oil well dries up, all you have to do is let it sit for ten years and come back and turn the pumps back on and voila! Texas Tea, Black Gold... The wells refill themselves.

Woah... wait, what's your source for this? And if it is actually mineral based, there surely are a limited number of these types of minerals in some areas, so it can't keep refilling every 10 years, right?

[Plenoptic 0]

But for a while at least, these will be weak cars (can only go so far), and it will be inconvenient to get the fuel. And it would take a massive amount of electricity just to produce all this hydrogen (something on the level of doubling the amount of power plants in the country just for the hydrogen cars alone, if they were to power the car fleet). Where will this electricity come from? But still, the hydrogen fuel cell car will have to be a reality, but it will be a small portion of our cars.

Hydrogen cars aren't necessarily weak. Right now Honda has under development their Hydrogen Fuel Cell car that can go about 270 miles on their two tanks in their car. Yes the tanks are about twice the capacity of a standard 18 gallon tank in a car today, but that doesn't mean it will slow it down. They can make the car more lightweight in other ways and have fast acceleration. They have plenty of plans and progress on making Hydrogen into a separate renewable resource by using solar power of some sort (haven't researched the solar power really). They can get up to about 93 miles per hour which is about as fast as you need to go. There aren't very many places that have a speed limit over 90mph other than the highway in Germany. It takes time but the future is near. Right now, yes hydrogen is being taken from natural gas, they have tanks that you can actually hook up to gas supply at your house which then can be used to power the car and the house itself at the hydrogen pump.

[glenstein 0]

First, to Watermonkey: thanks for the thoughtful and interesting reply. Definitely the best response so far and maybe this can get the thread going somewhere. That said, I definitely see an element of one-upmanship and "I know more than you" in your post, which is fine, but a little distracting. I'll answer what I can..

 

Some rather interesting reading comes when you add the word "myth" to the above search.

Peak Oil is more properly known as Hubbert's Curve and there is no myth about it. People debate how widespread the effect will be, or when it will actually come, but Hubbert's Curve anything but a myth. On a country by country basis, around the world many countries have already passed their peak production! It's just that on the whole, all countries together, we haven't yet hit peak oil. Marion King Hubbert used his model to predict that the U.S. as a country would hit their peak in production in 1970, and then start declining. He was right about this. The U.S. has been producing steadily less oil within its own borers since 1970.

 

For your viewing pleasure, here is a chart on this..

Believe me I'm not making this up. Peak Oil is real and has been proven true in our own country. The facts are around and a while back I had them all neatly organized in a binder, though it's been less organized since.

 

I'll edit and add to this post in a moment.

 

The rule of supply and demand doesn't appear to be valid here as our country's petroleum reserves are at historic highs, last year there were no serious hurricanes, our demand is low, yet gas is still very very high, especially in the northwest US. If supply/demand isn't setting prices, what is? The fact no new refineries have been built in over a decade doesn't help but dig a little deeper.

Um... I don't understand what you are talking about here., That's a strategic reserve to power our country in case of emergency, which would last us about 57 days. If and when that emergency happens those reserves may keep prices lower than they otherwise would have been, but prices will still be through the roof. I guess I don't see why you think that will stop the price of oil from shooting into the stratosphere. Sure it will help... for 57 days. But it won't stop prices from shooting high once global peak oil comes.

 

Complicated issue, but when or if the farming of hemp is legalized again, it'll help solve the bio-diesel problem. The hemp seed is, I believe, over 95% oil, the plant needs little or no fertilizer and grows pretty much anywhere with irrigation, and it can be used for clothing, paper, and a myriad of other things on top of oil from its seeds.[/i]

Don't bank on it. Have you seen the price of corn lately? Hope you don't like corn, because you won't be able to afford it pretty soon.

Corn growers actually very strongly disagree with this, and to an extent they are right. From one such site defending ethanol:

Myth: Ethanol production wastes corn that could be used for food.

 

Fact: In 2001, U.S. farmers produced 9.5 billion bushels of corn and only 600 million bushels are currently used in ethanol production. Fact is, there's no shortage of corn, and the ethanol market could expand significantly without negatively impacting its availability. Besides, ethanol production uses field corn, most of which is fed to livestock, not humans. Only the starch portion of the corn kernel is used to produce ethanol. The vitamins, minerals, proteins and fiber are converted to other products such as sweeteners, corn oil and high-value livestock feed, which helps livestock producers add to the overall food supply.

Prices of corn could just as likely be driven down by the fact that so much more is being purchased, which I don't know for a fact but strikes me as equally plausible. But corn prices do fluctuate and when they do, that (combined with changes gas prices) are said to be the biggest two factors impacting income for ethanol companies and thus, the viability of ethanol as an energy.

 

Bio-diesel is many many years away from being a viable fuel (100%) replacement due to it's high pour point. The fuel gels(freezes), depending upon the type of oil used, at very high temps (up to about 43 degrees F if memory serves) and for those of us who don't live in the tropics, that'd shut us down in the winter. That's why, in the northern latitudes in the winter, a 5-10% mix is as high as we can go. In the summer we can run B100 (100% biodiesel) but we're back to the old problem of burning nasty dirty mineral diesel in the cooler months. If the EPA would let up a little, diesel cars are where the future should lie. Many of them will go twice or more as far as a similar gasoline car on one gallon of fuel!

Believe me, I spent plenty of time back when I was debating trying to find every flaw in biodiesel, so I'm aware. But many years away? There are solutions to that right now.

 

Yes, it is true that it can gel, but like many kinks with many energies, these are being responded to. There are additives that have been developed that people can use to significantly improve biodiesel resistance to cold (bringing the pour point well below 0 degrees fahrenheit). Also, battery powered heat pads to heat up the car's fuel in the winter are being marketed for about $100. You can pour hot tap water over the fuel injectors, fuel pump and fuel filter which often gets rid of clogs to let the car start and would likely become a trick of the trade for the people who would run into the gelling problem. And some people see getting a second fuel tank with a more standard diesel fuel as a solution to get the car to start, which sounds sensible enough.

 

All in all, there are many, many tricks one can use that already solve this issue.

 

You seem to fail to realize that "fuel cells" are, in fact, just fancy batteries with no limit on their usable lifespan. You can recharge most batteries a hundred to a thousand times. You can recharge a fuel-cell (H2) an unlimited number of times. That's a simplistic explaination, for more detail do a search. I did: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ There are more and none of them I've read is 100% accurate, but you'll get a good idea if you read at least that one. Also, electric cars consume massive amounts of fossile fuels. Unless you produce electricity from the air, sun, or water/gravity.

It's points like these where you are "correcting" me about something that I explicitly acknowledged in my post that is a bit confusing. Let's start with "electric cars consume massive amounts of fossil fuels". Didn't you read like the final paragraph of my post? I know you did, but you probably just went paragraph by paragraph with your response. It is true, the electricity has to come from somewhere. I said it should be produced by wind power, as well as solar and geothermal. So, it looks like you are correcting me about something I set aside time, in the same post, to answer and write about.

 

And "fail to realize"? Come on. I know what fuel cells are and I know what batteries are. In fact I explicitly distinguished between the two with this sentence: "Then there is the straight up pure electric car. Not a fuel cell car, but just a battery powered car." Both of those will be a reality, and acknowledging that we will have battery powered cars does not mean I have to forgo any and all of my knowledge about fuel cell cars. They are essentially both electric, but fuel cells bring a whole new collection of issues to the table that battery powered electric cars don't have to face. So they should be separated. I talk about fuel cell cars (meaning hydrogen powered and based on a hydrogen economy) a lot in my first post. They have major issues keeping them from permeating the energy market (check my first post for more on that), thus battery powered cars are, it seems to me, be more widespread more quickly.

 

And then you confidently assess my stance, like a mother overviewing the thought process of an ill-informed child...

.... so I'm not going to tear it apart, mostly because I'm feeling lazy, but not because your arguments are bullet-proof. I just want to take exception to a few things and anything else, you've made a choice which side of the debate to stand based on widely available knowledge, but is it the truth? No, I'm not asking you if you're lying, I just noticed that some of your "facts" have "counter-facts" available out there as well. First off, oil is one of the most politicized issues out there, so be careful not to buy the propoganda about "peak oil".

Tempered and civil, but I don't think I fact of mine was "off" in any fundamental way. Then after helping poor old ill informed me, you trot out this amazing piece of fiction:

 

Consider that "peak oil" (that point at which all the easy-to-get sweet light crude is exhausted) is a myth or urban legend. Consider the possibility that what you think you know about oil coming from dinosaurs (organic decayed material ie. "fossile fuel") is false. It's actually mineral-based, not organic. Consider that if an oil well dries up, all you have to do is let it sit for ten years and come back and turn the pumps back on and voila! Texas Tea, Black Gold... The wells refill themselves. Impossible? Well, let's just say Shell and Exxon BP and others don't want you to know about their dirty little secerets. .

I've heard this claim before but it is outrageous and really, really, requires a source. It would revolutionize everything we know about fossil fuels. But simply put, it's false. So its a really bad position to criticize me from. I encourage you to do the research and tear every fact of mine down, I won't mind, it would be an important learning experience for me and I'd walk away more informed. I'm up for it. But if your info is anything like that above, maybe I'm not the one who needs to do more research.

 

Also, if I had "picked a side" in the debate I probably wouldn't have mentioned several things, including:

- The nuclear power rumor that every plant is on the verge of exploding. A flagrant exaggeration. Which I mentioned.

- That biodiesel is not the savior people claim it will be

- That the hydrogen economy has major issues

 

Anyone on my "side" probably wouldn't say those things. It was kind of eye opening to me when I researched all this, to look back at the political crowd I had trusted so much who made those arguments. The green party, for instance, I find much less credible on the issue of nuclear power because they keep arguing how unsafe it is. I didn't pick sides. I learned.

 

A lot of times accusations fly around that someone "picked a side" on an issue, when they merely were using better judgment than one of the said "sides". Global warming and evolution are other examples where, rather than one side being part of some equal and opposite dispute where everything is equal and each side has their flaws and their strengths, it turns out rather than being politicized that one side is simply, objectively right.

 

All my jibes are in the spirit of debate and becoming more informed...

 

g.

Edited March 30, 2007 by glenstein (see edit history)

[glenstein 0]

Im not an expert on energy resources and their usage, therefore my views on this matter are simple. Basically, i think when oil runs out, we'll either mainly use nuclear energy or solar energy. The best thing about nuclear energy is that it is extremely efficient. The down side is it produces a hazardous waste, which eventually will take up alot of space. The more likely alternative energy resource is solar energy. Although it doesn't have the effiency of nuclear energy, it is much more safe to use.
I know what i said was very vague and this topic can be discussed in muhc wider detail, but thats all i know on the topic.

Interesting. But efficiency has a different meaning for different energies. Most of the time efficiency implies that something is going to waste by being less efficient. With gas, efficiency is huge because of pollution and the very small supply of energy.

But with renewable energy, like nuclear and solar, efficiency has a very different meaning. Renewable = infinite energy, how important is efficiency when converting an infinite source? Well with nuclear power more efficiency means less waste. Means you get to sell more energy while spending the same amount maintaining a power plant. Efficiency can also mean how much energy we get for X dollars.

So even though wind power might let a ton of energy slip through its... uh.. blades, for the small amount it actually converts, it's apples and oranges because wind "efficiency" doesn't have the same consequences as nuclear efficiency. Hell, if some new energy were developed that had 0.0000000000000001% "efficiency" in converting from its source but still unleashed a massive amount of power, it wouldn't matter. You wouldn't be able to compare this new super-energy to, say, nuclear power and say "well nuclear power is more efficient" because that wouldn't make sense.

[glenstein 0]

Watermonkey's post was lost, but I happened to have a copy because I was typing up a response in a text file, so here it is:

 

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

By, "picking a side of the debate", I meant that you've chosen to believe the propaganda and quote the mainstream. That's fine, as long as you know there's another side to the argument. See the above-mentioned url and read the whole article as I did. There are a hundred more just like that story if you dig further. I'm tired of hearing the mainstream mantra. Did you notice the oil industry profits last year? They're raping us! And they're using that tired old excuse "Oh, well, oil is harder and more expensive to come by these days." to keep the masses buying their products. The oil companies' massive record-breaking profits are not a function of their product being hard to come by but, rather, the opposite. Not only is it easy to come by, but the world's oil reserve estimates continue to grow rather than shrink. You don't think there's a conspiracy here? It's right in front of you! It's probably the most blatant obvious conspiracy so far this century! How could anyone miss it? What is it about reserves you don't comprehend? This country is riddled with "tank farms" which contain, you guessed it, TANKS. These tanks are either full or empty of petroleum products, some have gasoline in them, some have kerosene, some even have raw crude oil. I'm not referring to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when I say as a result of a warm winter, mild hurricane season, and fat supply; our gasoline should cost under a buck a gallon right now. The only reason it doesn't is they've sold the public a big steamy pile of crap as a tasty cream pie! All you have to do is smell, look, feel, and if it's really necessary, taste it to understand what it really is!

 

I don't mean to be offensive, but all someone needs to do to "know the facts" is veg out in front of the TV every night around 5 and let the talking heads spoon feed it to you. I suppose if you really want to "work" at it you could "research" the same talking points from the same tired old sources. But all you've done is work for the same propaganda you could get for free in front of the boob-tube. You've got a choice: Research official propaganda in reading published reports from Shell or whomever, or see what other researchers who are not paid by the oil companies are saying. That's just one of many ways at reaching to truth. If you're wondering why oil isn't being produced in this country as much as it used to be, so am I. I'd be willing to bet there's a lot more here than people realize and the corps want to keep it for a rainy day. Take a drive through Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas the other states nearby. There are capped oil wells all over the place. Are they full or are they empty? There's no need to cap an empty well...

So Hubbert's Peak is now just a mainstream myth? Due to your flatly wrong, shot in the dark, characterizations of me as some tool who has no idea what I'm saying and your blatant ignorance of my previous post on Hubbert's peak which you don't address and which refutes everything you are saying, the earnest good will is gone.

 

What's ironic is that buying into "propaganda" explains your position almost exactly.

 

Your link, archived on a discout vitamins web page, points to a 6 1/2 year old story from the WSJ about the Eugene Island 330 oil field.

 

The Eugene Island oil field is a favorite example from non-credible rumor mills like Worldnetdaily of a supposed self replenishing oil well, but in reality it's been debunked for years and even your own article, despite being highly biased and suggestive, acknowledges that the field is not a case of proven and settled fact.

 

And no, there aren't hundreds more like them. If challenged maybe you could come up with a dozen or a few dozen, all from dubious sources. Eugene Island was memorable for how unexpected and atypical it was.

 

Lots of research was done to explain that field that put it back in context which I'm sure you don't actually know about. Turns out it was in an unstable region where oil from a nearby field merely migrated into the Eugene 330 oil field. Nothing more. An ecologist sums up the research on this field:

 

According to David S. Holland, et al., in Search and Discovery, the reservoir is characterized by

 

1. Structural features dominated by growth faults, salt domes, and salt-related faulting.

2. Thick accumulations of predominantly deltaic deposits of alternating sand and shale.

3. Young reservoirs (less than 2.5 m.y. old) with migrated hydrocarbons whose origins are in deeper, organic-rich marine shales.

4. Rapidly changing stratigraphy, due to deposition and subsequent reworking.

5. Numerous oil and gas fields with stacked reservoirs, long hydrocarbon columns, and high producing rates. (9)

 

While it is true that the estimated oil reserves of Eugene have increased, the numbers are not extraordinary. The authors note that “From 1978 to 1988, these operations, activities, and natural factors [including better exploration and recovery technology] have increased ultimate recoverable reserves from 225 million bbl to 307 million bbl of hydrocarbon liquids and from 950 bcf to 1.65 tcf of gas.” Other estimates now put the estimate of total recoverable oil as high as 400 Mb.

 

None of this is especially unusual for a North American oil field: most fields report reserve growth over time as a consequence of Securities and Exchange Commission reporting rules that require reserves to be booked yearly according to what portion of the resource is actually able to be extracted with current equipment in place. As more wells are drilled into the same reservoir, the reserves “grow.” Then, as they are pumped out, reserves decline and production rates dwindle. No magic there.

 

Production from Eugene Island had achieved 20,000 barrels per day by 1989; by 1992 it had slipped to 15,000 b/d, but recovered to reach a peak of 30,000 b/d in 1996. Production from the reservoir has dropped steadily since then.

In other words, it's behaving like any other oil well and oil wells don't just spontaneously replenish themselves if you leave them alone for ten years.

 

You are simply content to believe oil just creates itself in randomly self-regenerating deposits around the world. Just like you are happily ready to dredge out old debunked and misinterpreted myths about the Eugene Island field and convince yourself that not only is it true, but that every oil field in the world is just like that also and that anyone who believes otherwise has bought into a mainstream myth.

 

And this is the foundation for your belief that there is a grand conspiracy to hide the infinite sources of gas? And not only that but to have the audacity to tell me that I'm just buying into some MSM myth and that all my sources are just biased (but your debunked sources of course are beyond doubt).

 

Just for fun, lets sift through the vacuous and unverifiable speculation for your only other challengeable claim:

 

The oil companies' massive record-breaking profits are not a function of their product being hard to come by but, rather, the opposite. Not only is it easy to come by, but the world's oil reserve estimates continue to grow rather than shrink.

If you actually knew anything about estimated reserves, you would know that that is a highly political, highly contradictory affair with dozens of claims from dozens of institutions. A good pdf (link) on this issue concludes:

Until a flexible, consistent and comprehensive system is widely adopted, great care needs to be exercised in interpreting numbers which purport to describe reserves of oil and gas.

Also, you'd know that "technical", independent estimations that don't come from oil companies are showing shrinking estimates on energy reserves (source). You might know that increases in "estimates" were drastically affected by arbitrary declarations from OPEC countries in the 1980, rejected by the scientific community (check the "Oil Reserves" entry on wikipedia for that).

 

Now, the actual change in world oil reserve estimates in the past five years:

Most of the countries there, and most of the countries in possession of oil for that matter are the OPEC countries, which are notorious for arbitrarily adding to their crude oil estimates without explanation, generally so they can up their production quotas and sell more because production quotas rise with a raise in estimated reserves (this is mentioned in the source). Their claims generally aren't accepted as reliable.

 

Then there is Canada, whose increase was from the discovery of the Athabasca Tar Sands. But those were a discovery, still no case of oil appearing again in old wells.

 

So where are these increased estimates of yours? Nowhere. They aren't real. You made them up.

 

You would also know that aside from estimated reserves, PROVEN reserves continue to go down. And no one disputes this.

 

You might know that trends in discovery of new oil fields are declining.

 

And here is a collection of estimations on future oil productions from a dozen+ major institutions:

 

Notice they have something in common? Decline, decline decline. And that doesn't go away because some stammering, pompous fool reads a 6 1/2 year old debunked news article.

Edited January 30, 2007 by glenstein (see edit history)

[Watermonkey 0]

Notice they have something in common? Decline, decline decline. And that doesn't go away because some stammering, pompous fool reads a 6 1/2 year old debunked news article.

You're obviously very invested in your position in this debate (noun: A formal discussion on a particular topic in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward.) but, unfortunately, you're also very emotionally vested as well. This is for the benefit of the audience that may wander by and take notice so they'll be informed enough to either do further research or make a rational, educated, informed opinion for themselves after considering both sides. By resorting to a personal attack/insult, you've removed all credibility from your side of the argument and shown yourself to be someone who has spent so much time researching one topic you've apparently lost the ability to accept that you might possibly be wrong. I've currently spent all of an hour combined on my side and, while, that's not nearly enough to go up against months of research, it's all I could muster at the time because I've got better things to do. I'll attempt to invest more time and research in the topic, but this will end here if I don't get a retraction from you for your last sentence in the above post and a humble apology.