Sectorgame

Peak Oil

Okay, this is kinda on the fringe of everyone's perception, we all know we're running out, but this guy and many like him are proclaiming the end of civilization as we know it in our lifetimes. The purpose of this thread is not to attack the United States or any other nation for conspicuous use petrochemicals It is to talk about whether you believe him and if you have heard of any replacements to oil.

Understand, for it to be a feasable replacement, it has to be cheap and efficient.

Example:
At the pumps right now 3 miles from my house regular, unleaded, 87 octane gas is $1.89. That $1.89 buys you the equivalent of ~600 hours of labor. IE. If you work a minimum wage job($5.15/hr) and you work an hour, that one hour of work can buy 1634 equivalent hours of energy. Gasoline is that efficient at storing energy.

Any replacement is going to have to be at least as efficient as that to be a feasable replacement.

Also, anything hydrogen associated is right out. It takes 1.3 units of hydrogen to get 1 unit of hydrogen through. Hydrogen fuel cells require 10 grams of platinum per unit for construction and operation; there are only ~7,000,000,000 grams of platinum in the entire planet, which is enough for about a years worth of production; HFCs only last about a year.

The only possible alternative, as I see it, is some form of ultra-high efficency electrical storage cell of some kind that stores copious amounts of electricity as electricity, not chemically. Chemical storage isn't good enough, it leaks and for the scale of storage I'm thinking of is entirely too heavy.

Well? Ideas, comments?

Naturally derived electical sources - i.e. solar, wind, wave power....possibly nuclear if some form of safe waste disposal can be achieved, ala firing into space.

IIRC there are already duel fuel cars being manufactured (may be europe only, think it's renault or citroen who do this), and electical cars are becoming increasingly viable.

The main drawback is, of course, speed and duration.... the problem is that pretty much no western society is willing to give up on the 'luxury' of breaking the speed limit etc, which is a problem. Hoepfully would be rectified by increasing oil prices, though.

And, some form of comprehensive public transport scheme would be required, both to reduce oild use in the short term, and also to ease the financial cost of a wholescale changeover to electical.

Also, it's worth noting that recycling will help - and be necessary - as plastics require oil. Hence, there should be legal requirements to force people to recycle. Also, continued investment in plastics should help counterbalance the economic effects of moving from petroleum and keep the oil-countries going (hopefully?)

Finally, the 'developed' nations should provide wholescale assistance to the 3rd world in switching over.... it'll cost a lot of money in the short term, but will be necessary.

Civilization will endure.

So we find a new way to make plastics, and we start on the hydrogen and electric cars that have been in R&D for years in the US, and probably in use in the rest of the world.

Worst comes to worst, we buy the patent for the water powered car from Ford and start making them.

Life After the Oil Crash

fighting everywhere if someone founds little amount oil civilization is in total chaos, goverments falls. era of destruction begins


once read book about it in net so it's not total reallty what happens but there is going to be hard times when oil market crash

The wheel will turn again, it's as simple as that. Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron age etc...

The fact is that Oil will not simply vanish, it is simply that oil in this form is the easiest to fractionally distill into other useful materials. However, plant oils are also useable. Rapeseed oil, in particular, is already slowly growing in use.

Now, I know that plant-based oils won't answer all our problems, and that running out of oil will probably result in several wars, simply because Humanity loves a good war.

I think the oil is running out, last year billions of gallons of water were pumped into the Texan wells just so that they could reach what oil was left (oil floats remember).

Look at it this way, in a Billion years, when Ants or Cockroaches are looking for oil, thanks to the human habit of congregating in huge numbers, they won't have nearly the problem we are

And my final disjointed opinion is that I fear for Alaska, does anyone honestly think that a few good intentioned rules are going to stop corporations when profits are on the line?

I'm with Flip on his points. We need alternative sources of energy... if we can find them.

And no, I don't think Alaska will survive them. There will be a few wars over this one, I bet.

World War 3.

Nuclear power is the way forward, just blast the waste into space and forget about it. Unless Aliens get mad about us polluting the universe

P.S.
People who protest about using nuclear energy are hypocrites. They are alive because they use energy, they get energy from food, the food gets energy from the Sun, the sunis a Nuclear reactor!

I don't protest using it, I just think blowing it into space is being shortsighted. What happen when we're capable on interstelar travel... how are we then going to deal with the nuclear waste?

Blow it into the sun, maybe?

Look at it this way, even if a company DID have a viable alternative to Oil, why release it now, when you can do so in 20 years time, when people are prepared to pay so much more for it.
And those that die, well, they were poor anyway.

Thanks alot. You're just like an0n, Flip.

Moonsword wrote:Blow it into the sun, maybe?

Seems easy enough, could they guide it like that?

(200th post)

It would be very expensive to do that actually if you want to do it right. You can't just jump the waste in space because:

A: Gravity of objects such as the Earth will pull it back down because it does not have enough velocity. Nuclear meteorites.

B: Solar wind from the sun would eventually sweep it all away to the outer reaches of the solar system. We'd be surrounded by it.

C: You can't dump it into the sun without a very fast way of getting it there before it melts and blows back in our faces 8 minutes later.

Moonsword wrote:Blow it into the sun, maybe?

The opposite - away from the sun. If you could develop a viable solar sail, you could send nuclear waste barges off into the great unknown,. or even just into a gas giant/