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-- World is running out of oil: Your way of life in crisis
World is running out of oil: Your way of life in crisis
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| THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream The Oil Shock is here and way of life in the West is about to be radically transformed: �Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years, so too the suburban way of life has become embedded in the American consciousness. Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life. With brutal honesty and a touch of irony, The End of Suburbia explores the American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply. World Oil Peak and the inevitable decline of fossil fuels are upon us now, some scientists and policy makers argue in this documentary. The consequences of inaction in the face of this global crisis are enormous. What does Oil Peak mean for North America? As energy prices skyrocket in the coming years, how will the populations of suburbia react to the collapse of their dream? Are today's suburbs destined to become the slums of tomorrow? And what can be done NOW, individually and collectively, to avoid The End of Suburbia ? Duration: 78 minutes� |
there's also a number of good articles on this topic at www.dieoff.org...there's also graphs and stuff there
It's not really that the american way of life is the biggest problem. America is a wealthy country that can easily invest into better energy sources. When oil prices go up a lot, people will start driving fuel cell suvs, and they'll get power from nuclear and renewable energy sources. It will probably be more expensive in the beginning, but ultimately the american way of life wil stay the same.
The real problem are the third world countries, because they don't have nearly enough money to transform their industries into a form that's independent on oil consumption, and they most certainly don't have the technology to build nuclear or renewable power plants.
Perhaps we should look even beyond investing in fuel cells for cars, and nuclear energy, but into all that interesting experimental physics stuff that i've read so much about on these boards... I know nothing about physics but isnt there theories out there that suggest that harnessing the power of a teaspoon full of 'dark matter', or whatever it is, is enough to boil the worlds oceans..
Screw oil, lets get some of that stuff happening.. none of this 'fuel cell' driven cars.. imagine dark matter cars.. now that's horsepower 
Yes, yes...we're running out of oil...we've heard this before...
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Are We Out of Gas Yet? The continuing "oil crisis" crisis Ronald Bailey Once again, the gauge on our national economy is dropping dangerously to the red. So swears a spate of books and articles in the past few years, reviving '70s-era fears of impending oil catastrophe. The once-invaluable, now highly political, Scientific American ran an article in March 1998 declaring "The End of Cheap Oil." Fred Pearce similarly declared in a July 1999 New Scientist article, "Dry Future," that "the world is probably only two years off peak oil production, after which decline is inevitable." In his 2001 book Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage, Princeton University Professor Kenneth Deffeyes found "that world oil production will peak in this decade�and there isn't anything we can do to stop it. While long-term solutions exist in the form of conservation and alternative energy sources, they probably cannot�and almost certainly will not�be enacted in time to evade a short-term catastrophe." More recently, in January Caltech physics Professor David Goodstein upped the ante in his book, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil, warning that the peak of world production is imminent and that "we can, all too easily, envision a dying civilization, the landscape littered with the rusting hulks of SUVs." There is a choirmaster to this chorus of oily doom: the late geophysicist M. King Hubbert. In 1956 Hubbert (correctly) predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Like Hubbert, current doomsayers reach their grim conclusions of impending octane depletion by using estimates of the world's recoverable reserves of oil and comparing them with estimates of rates of future use. From this they derive predictions of when the demand for oil will outstrip the supply, and most suggest that dry pumps will greet us before the end of this decade. Once the peak is reached, oil doomsters foresee skyrocketing prices leading to economic ruin and social and environmental collapse. One reviewer of Goodstein's book despaired, "If he's right, I'm sorry for my kids. And I'm especially sorry for theirs." But we've heard it all before. "These kinds of doom and gloom energy predictions become popular every 10 years or so," says Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a Massachusetts consulting firm. "In this case there's very little original research and everybody is citing the same handful of articles. It's an example of how the herd instinct drives the psychology of scientific consensus." Lynch's new study "The New Pessimism about Petroleum Resources," pokes holes in forecasts of imminent oil doom. Lynch points out that the supply of oil is determined not only by geologic factors, but also by political, economic, and technological ones. It's true that oil discoveries peaked in 1982, but Lynch argues that's because of politics, not geology. "The big factor in the decline in oil discoveries is that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran all nationalized their oil industries in the 1970s. Plus Iraq and Iran went to war and essentially stopped exploring for more oil," explains Lynch. "They have so much oil, why would they bother looking for more?" He adds dryly that Scientific American doomster Colin Campbell has been predicting that the peak of oil production is three to four years away for the past 15 years. The fact is, we don't really know how much oil is left. "Available supply" is not merely a geological fact. It depends on technology and economics as well. But we do have some good guesses out there. Henry Linden, a professor of energy and power engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, just published an estimate of eight trillion barrels of oil, gas, and oil sand reserves in the Oil and Gas Journal. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates of worldwide conventional oil resources range from 2.248 trillion barrels to 3.896 trillion barrels. Annual global oil production these days is 24.5 billion barrels. At the current rate of production, oil supplies would last at least 90 years. Taking into consideration various scenarios for future energy use and based on those USGS estimates, the Energy Information Administration sees oil production peaking anywhere from 2030 to 2075. Hardly an imminent crisis. Someday, of course, oil production really will peak, either for geologic or economic reasons, or most likely a combination of both. Instead of a catastrophe, Lynch expects a relatively smooth transition to new energy sources. And history bears out his optimism. Oil crisis mongers make the mistake of thinking that "markets are so myopic that they cannot foresee future supply trends; that markets won't realize when a resource is running out." If demand for oil begins to outstrip the supply, prices will rise, signaling companies and consumers to use less, develop new technologies, switch to other fuels, increase their insulation, and so forth. "Demand for energy is going to move away from heavy hydrocarbons," Lynch predicts. "Coal is first, oil is next." He expects that our old hydrocarbon friends will be replaced in our affection by natural gas, nuclear, and other forms of energy as those technologies improve. "It will be much like the transition in the 20th century from coal to oil in the residential heating and transportation sectors or like the transition from horses to cars," he says. The Oil Age will end, not with a horrific screech leading to a destructive crash, but with a barely perceptible, well-lubricated, smoothly braked halt, one that is merely a prelude to moving smoothly and rapidly forward again. |
Another sob story for dolphin loving tree huggers and such.
It's a good thing no one is worried about homlessness, disease and starvation.
Re: World is running out of oil: Your way of life in crisis
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| Originally posted by josh4 |
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| Originally posted by ogvh5150 It's a good thing no one is worried about homlessness, disease and starvation. |
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| Originally posted by Dupz Perhaps we should look even beyond investing in fuel cells for cars, and nuclear energy, but into all that interesting experimental physics stuff that i've read so much about on these boards... I know nothing about physics but isnt there theories out there that suggest that harnessing the power of a teaspoon full of 'dark matter', or whatever it is, is enough to boil the worlds oceans.. Screw oil, lets get some of that stuff happening.. none of this 'fuel cell' driven cars.. imagine dark matter cars.. now that's horsepower |
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| Originally posted by trancaholic I think that you're talking about anti-matter (as dark matter is not really confirmed to exist)? I heard a talk by a physics professor on this alternative fuel, and he ended up with saying that if you pooled all the anti-matter ever created by humans into an anti-matter driven car, then it could travel around 5000 km before coming to a halt. So it will be quite a while before we can boil away the oceans. On the other hand, warm fusion as a viable source of energy is not that far off. In another talk I attended I was presented to a curve of the efficiency of warm fusion, and - assuming that current trends continue - we should be able to get more energy out of warm fusion than we put in in about 30 years time. Hopefully oil, nuclear fusion, and renewable energy sources will be able to sustain us until then. And hopefully the money needed for basic research in physics will be allotted. |
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| Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 It's not really that the american way of life is the biggest problem. America is a wealthy country that can easily invest into better energy sources. When oil prices go up a lot, people will start driving fuel cell suvs, and they'll get power from nuclear and renewable energy sources. It will probably be more expensive in the beginning, but ultimately the american way of life wil stay the same. The real problem are the third world countries, because they don't have nearly enough money to transform their industries into a form that's independent on oil consumption, and they most certainly don't have the technology to build nuclear or renewable power plants. |
My opinion from a year ago remains unchanged:
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...t=&pagenumber=2
What has changed is that my nifty supply and demand graph that I used for my explanation has since gone the way of the dodo 
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X Those things will neither be confronted, nor remedied. There's just no profit in helping the less fortunate. We all know that's what it's about, the bottom line. I just know that our Universe has been around for billions of years before we were ever even in the making, and that besides the simple elementary particles that constitute our relatively frail human bodies, there has to be something in regards to a soul - which transcends this material existence. I'll just say now that I'm not about to let a life expectancy of less than a hundred year's time corrupt whatever it is in me that persuades me to believe that there is more to it than this miserable, wretched, physical existence. Yeah, it sure makes life so much easier, but I'm still not about to sell out. Sorry, but I couldn't hold that back. /liberal-hippy spiritually-enlightened speech |
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| Originally posted by Orko whats the diff between warm and cold fusion? |
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| Originally posted by trancaholic Hopefully oil, nuclear fusion, and renewable energy sources will be able to sustain us until then. And hopefully the money needed for basic research in physics will be allotted. |
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| Originally posted by occrider My opinion from a year ago remains unchanged: http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...t=&pagenumber=2 What has changed is that my nifty supply and demand graph that I used for my explanation has since gone the way of the dodo . |
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