The End of Oil

[KC0KEK]

Fender benders could be potentially tragic.

That's already the case with hybrids. I've read that some public safety agencies are worried about their people getting zapped while extracting crash victims.

[phna]

coal burning power plants like iatan.

Yes, that is what I am betting too!

That good old dirty coal, plentiful in the US, can be used to more stringent environmental standards. Motley Fool had a whole article about this becoming reality too.

[HalcyonKC]

Check it out http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.j ... oil110.xml

I'm thinking the oil platform pictured in that article may have become infused with the power of jesus!  Or grayskull or something. 

[aknowledgeableperson]

Yes, that is what I am betting too!

That good old dirty coal, plentiful in the US, can be used to more stringent environmental standards. Motley Fool had a whole article about this becoming reality too.

SW Missouri and to a certain extent SE Kansas have large deposits of coal.  Trouble is the coal is very dirty.  If the technology is developed to burn this dirty coal clean the mining in these areas would see a big comeback along with the economy.

[KCMax]

And cars would do 0-60 in 1/2 a second. 

At least its enough energy for a flux capassiter.

[beautyfromashes]

That report was ridiculous!!!  It says that we have forty years of oil left but that is just the reserves that we have knowledge of.  It calls them "proven" reserves (they even put the quotations).  The thing is, we find new oil all the time and new ways to extract existing oil.  The new reserve found off the Gulf coast and production of oil sands would be two fairly recent examples.  We will NEVER run out of oil.

[KCMax]

I don't think we'll ever run out of oil, but it will become cost prohibitive eventually once it becomes harder and harder to reach and extract.

[phna]

That report was ridiculous!!!  It says that we have forty years of oil left but that is just the reserves that we have knowledge of.  It calls them "proven" reserves (they even put the quotations).  The thing is, we find new oil all the time and new ways to extract existing oil.  The new reserve found off the Gulf coast and production of oil sands would be two fairly recent examples.  We will NEVER run out of oil.

I though it said their are 40 years to the point that world consumption will outpace world production, not when the entire worlds reserves are depeleted, similarly the US outpaced its production peak in the early 70's. To be sure this is a significant point, and scarcity will result in high prices, rapid inflation and gas lines just like in the first Oil Crisis in the States.

[Beermo]

At least its enough energy for a flux capassiter.

[beautyfromashes]

To be sure this is a significant point, and scarcity will result in high prices, rapid inflation and gas lines just like in the first Oil Crisis in the States.

The oil crisis in the 1970's had nothing to do with scarcity of oil reserves on the earth, and inflation was actually one of the causes of high prices and shortages, not a result.

[phna]

SW Missouri and to a certain extent SE Kansas have large deposits of coal.  Trouble is the coal is very dirty.  If the technology is developed to burn this dirty coal clean the mining in these areas would see a big comeback along with the economy.

There is no IF, technology to burn dirty coal is what is possible. The Iatan (check my spelling)  Plants will have modern scrubbers that reduce emissions demonstrably when burning coal...

The oil crisis in the 1970's had nothing to do with scarcity of oil reserves on the earth

OPEC made a martyr of scarcity.

[aknowledgeableperson]

The oil crisis in the 1970's had nothing to do with scarcity of oil reserves on the earth, and inflation was actually one of the causes of high prices and shortages, not a result.

The oil crisis in the 70's was the result of OPEC flexing it's muscles in order to get higher prices for its product.  Till then the international oil companies determined the price at the wellhead (low).  Afterwards it was OPEC taking more responsibility in determining the price to be paid.

[Highlander]

There is no IF, technology to burn dirty coal is what is possible. The Iatan (check my spelling)  Plants will have modern scrubbers that reduce emissions demonstrably when burning coal...

It will take more than clean burning technology to make Mo-Kan coal economic.  It exists in thin seams that make its extraction expensive and thus cannot compete with coal coming from other places in the US.

[FangKC]

Yes, electric cars are not a simple fix since the electricity has to come from somewhere, and most of the electricity produced in this country comes from coal-fired plants.    The other problem is transmission of electricity from power plants to cars.   There is always a loss of electricity as it travels over power lines.  The longer the travel over power lines, the more loss. Most people don't want power plants in their neighborhood, which means they often get built in distant locations and have to send their energy long distances over electric lines, which means a loss of the some of the power generated in the first place.

Coal must also be transported long distances which requires energy.  Mass conversion to electric cars will drive up the demand for electricity,  which will mean higher electricity prices to run industry and our homes.  Prices of everything will go up. Since we generate electricity mostly from coal, this will result in the need to build more power plants, and dig and ship more coal. More open-pit mining.

Oil will come from other places and in other forms though.    Canada, and some northern US states, for example, have enough oil shale sands to provide energy for a long time.  However, crude oil prices have to go high enough to make the cost of extraction and processing comparable.  Coal can be turned into an oil-based fuel as well, but it's expensive.  Of course there are environmental problems because oil shale sands have to be extracted using large, open pit mining--much like coal.

Much of our remaining oil exists under the oceans, which cover the majority of the Earth.  To some extent, there is oil we have yet to find in more difficult and inaccessible areas of the planet.   Much of the proven reserves exist mostly on land or in coastal waters along the continental shelves.

Global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps may in fact prolong our discovery of new oil reserves, because oil will probably be discovered in places that were inaccessible before. No one really knows if there are oil reserves in Antartica for example.  There are probably reserves under the polar ice caps.  It wasn't a matter of extracting the oil from polar regions, which could probably be done, but in shipping it out in tankers that couldn't reach the reserves because ice blocking shipping channels.  Building pipelines across increasing unstable ice covers is also risky.  The problem with finding oil in Antartica is also the fact that the region has a very hostile climate, and there is a limited period of time each year when climate moderates enough for humans to do the work.

The problem with turning to coal, even with cleaner burning technology, is that coal is also mostly-extracted using open-pit mining.    The other dilemma is that many of the fast-growing nations like India and China will be adding more and more coal-powered generating plants. I think China is opening one new coal plant every week.   This contributes to global warming. The Chinese are also less environmentally-sensitive in the mining.

The other concern with switching to bio-fuels grown from crops is that with increasing demand for fuel, this might mean more and more cutting of virgin forests in places like South America to grow the crops. Brazil is already one of the biggest producers and consumers of ethanol produced from plant-based sources.  Brazil also has some the largest tracts of remaining virgin forests.  Continued ethanol-use in Brazil and elsewhere, and growth in demand, will increase pressure to convert these forests to farmland.

Adding millions of acres of farmland to the world economy and providing the crop yields necessary to sustain our energy and food needs also require fertilizer and pesticides, which are made from oil.  The fantastic crop yields we get from an acre of land in the US are almost solely because of use of synthetic fertilizers and manufactured chemicals.  Organic farming is much more expensive and still doesn't produce the yields required to be profitable on a mass scale that would be required.  The increasing price of food production could also make it more expensive to feed third-world nations.

These vast forests worldwide are essentially the lungs of the Earth.  They filter pollutants out of the air, and create oxygen that we breath.  They also help moderate temperatures.   Vast clear-cutting in these regions could also increase erosion and begin to fill rivers with silt.  A problem already seen in China.

We have to keep in mind that there are a couple billion humans in India and China that don't yet have cars, but that is changing quickly. Vast areas of India, Africa, and China still don't have electricity. So when those people go online, the demand for energy is going to really create intense pressure on energy markets.  The 300 million people in the USA are said to create 40 percent of the gases contributing to global warming.   Just imagine when the 2.5 billion residents of China and India reach fully-developed economies, regularly drive cars, and have electricity in their homes.  That's almost 9 times the number of people living in the USA.  By the time these economies reach maturation, the population of India and China will probably exceed 3 billion.

And that's not including Africa.

The obvious first step is conservation of existing energy use.  We haven't really begun to try that yet. It should be the first step.  It's cheaper to conserve fuel than to buy fuel, or generate power.

The second step is slowly converting over to the a vast array of different power-generating sources like nuclear energy, hydro-electric, solar, and wind.  France generates a majority of its electricity using nuclear energy.  Of course, that is problematic as well because it creates radioactive waste that has to be stored somewhere, and would probably increase the potential for nuclear proliferation among hostile nations.  Third-world nations without native oil reserves, or capital to purchase oil, are going to increasingly demand the capacity to produce electricity using nuclear energy.  Thus, the need for the USA to start quickly developing solar and wind energy to export as alternatives.

The world could probably reduced consumption of fossil fuels by 40 percent if everyone just started installing solar energy panels on their homes, and we started building passive energy collectors like solar and wind turbine farms in non-productive lands such as deserts and along our highways and interstates.  These lands are mostly publically-owned and unused now, and would be available without having to take land for that purpose using eminent domain, or the loss of productive farmland.  Busy interstate highways create some passive winds to drive wind turbines just from passing cars.  While it's not the greenest solution to power generation, it's mostly lost now and we should at least considering collecting some of it.  The USA needs to lead in developing cheap solar energy so that it can be made cheap enough to export to developing nations.

We will probably see the return of windmills to pump water on farms for livestock instead of relying solely on electricity for that.

Someday in the future, it may also be possible to make sidewalks, parking lots, streets and highways generate passive energy by imbedding some sort of nano-energy-collectors in the pavement.  Cities could contribute now by beginning to convert all street lighting to lamps that run on stored solar energy collected on each pole.  Arguably, roofing shingles might one day do the same thing.  Solar-collecting films are already being developed to apply to the sides of buildings, and embedded in glass window panels.

The problem of high-energy prices and dwindling resources may cause many in urban areas to return to old modes of transportation--like bicycles. The Chinese have been getting around on bikes for decades.  It may also solve many of our health problems like obesity and the increasing incidence of type-2 diabetes in adults and children.

Changing-energy trends may also create more dense cities where people can walk, ride bikes, and take mass transit, and share the benefits of connected housing.  When I lived in a high-rise apartment building in NYC, I rarely had to turn on my heat in winter because I was surrounded on five sides by apartments so I had only one cold wall.  I got passive sun exposure during the day, which also helped.  Sometimes I had to crack my window because it was too warm.

Many of us might also become troglodytes (yes, I love that word).   :P  Don't laugh though.  Underground homes are very energy-efficient, so we might see more and more people living in partially Earth-covered dwellings with one glass-sided southern exposure.  Earth-bound dwellings might also reduce the consumption of crude oil as well, since there would be less need for asphalt roof shingles, vinyl-siding, and housepaint for exterior walls.

Because of escalating food prices, and expense of energy to transport food large distances as we do now, we might also see more of us growing on own food on our property--maybe even on the top of our tightly-spaced troglodyte homes.    A return of the Victory Gardens.

The problem with hydrogen-power is simply the high cost of creating, transporting, and storing it.  Another problem that I've never seen addressed is the often-benign claim that it only produces water vapor exhaust as a by-product.  No one has ever considered the concept of billions of vehicles adding water vapor to our air every day in cities.   It makes one question whether humidity levels will also increase--making the air feel warmer and escalating the energy needed for air conditioning.

I also see us returning to the use of hydro-electric power, since it is a form of home-grown energy.  Granted, there are environmental problems in doing so since dams can affect ecosystems and wildlife.  These effects might be minimized though with innovative solutions that allow fish to pass the dam in engineered channels-like lock systems we use for river traffic.   We might also develop some type of slowly turning turbines that water would turn or could be used along coasts using the waves and surf movement. They would be engineered to move slow enough not to hurt fish.  However, putting dams on rivers does affect shallow spawning areas, so those might need to be artificially-replaced in other parts of the river basin.

In some cases, we might return to seeing goods shipped using rivers in those cases where they could be shipped down-river using natural current to push barges.  Shipping up-river would require energy.

[Highlander]

Whew, that satisfied my reading requirments for the evening.  A couple of things to think about Fang.

Antarctica is off limits to mineral extraction and oil and gas development.  That is a result of a treaty signed by those countries most proximal to the continent and those that have scientific research interest there (US included).  Having said that, there are large sedimentary basins in Antarctica so there probably is oil....not to mention off the coast on the shelf.  But what a hostile environment.

The world's continental shelves have been explored pretty heavily now.  The exception being the arctic shelves and, ironically, those parts of the US continental shelf that have been off limits to Oil and Gas exploration since I believe the 80's (essentially everywhere but the TX through Alabama gulf coast).

The deep ocean basins are generally not prospective for oil.  They are simply the wrong environment....young, volcanic in origin, lacking the sedimentary thicknesses necassary for generation and preservation of fossil fuels.

I don't have much faith in biofuels.  The energy used in the growing, harvesting, fertilizing, and collecting the feedstock and the energy used in the further refinement of that material into fuel makes them not the most efficient source of energy. 

[kcmetro]

Fang, I'm waiting for your book to come out.

The History and Significance of Everything....by Fang. 

[49r]

dang...we're all screwed.

[anniewarbucks]

I think that the government has a lot to do with the dwindling oil supply. They are artificialy covering up of the real reason why the gas prices are through the roof. When we had a halfway honest congress and president the gas prices never got above 1.50 per gallon. now the prices are oout of controll with gas prices looming at 3.50 per gallon. We can all point the finger at Mr. George Bush. Jr.

[bahua]

I think that the government has a lot to do with the dwindling oil supply. They are artificialy covering up of the real reason why the gas prices are through the roof. When we had a halfway honest congress and president the gas prices never got above 1.50 per gallon. now the prices are oout of controll with gas prices looming at 3.50 per gallon. We can all point the finger at Mr. George Bush. Jr.

FLAMEBAIT WARNING!

FYI, responding to this post, as devoid of logic as it may seem, will accomplish nothing. In fact that's all the poster wants. Don't fall into the trap.

[K.C.Highrise]

IMO I think the poster isn't all there.