There is no miracle or religion needed to build a better mouse trap. People that gloom and doom over oil being used up are the same people that gloom and doom over anything else. Do you honestly think we’ll wake up one morning and the radio news man will say, “Well folks, that’s it. The last drop of oil has been consumed. We are now all officially buggered.”? I don’t.
Exacty One of the biggist problems, I believe, is evident in this thread’s replies, “Don’t worry be happy. The free market, and the miracles of science will take care of the future.” Will it? How can Houston’s economic means and way of life be sustained without the ability to fill the tank anytime you’d need to? It’s the market that’s driving cities’ like Houston’s low density urban sprawl. For the free market to work effieciently the information going into the system must be reliable. No one in the broder media or government is giving much thought to a future oil crunch. So not much research or funds are being focused on it. “Eveything will work out” is the attitude. In Texas the govener is planing super highways called the Texas Trans Coridor. These highways will be a quater mile wide with trucking lanes, auto lanes, and railroad lines. And through it all not a word has been asked as to wheater the future fuel supplies will be availabe to support such an investment. It’s just assumed that it’ll be available. Personally, I don’t see going back to a more simple life as doom and gloom. I do worry, though, that cities like Houston will become future concrete scab lands. Government and industry can’t solve a problem unless they first acknowledge its existence.
Here’s a picture of the oil platform density in the Gulf
As I said earlier, just because something can be done in the lab or in test doesn’t mean it will translate to the whole of the economy. All of the alternatives to oil are poor energy substitutes and more expensive. If you could buy all the gasoline you needed to drive from the suburbs to your job but the cost of that fuel was at least 50% of your families annual budget would you still be able to aford living there? As the age of cheap oil ends the relative cost of fuel to maintain living these way could cause a collaps in the housing market.
Like said, those thinks can work on a limited/smaller scale but they will not scale up to meet anywhere near the global demand for energy that now exists. I’ve leased my land to a company that’s going to install 400 feet tall wind generators. These generators are the most effecient form of renewable energy and it’s proponents claim the mid-west has enough wind to supply the US with electricity. It’s detractors claim it couldn’t and the number of turbines it’d take would severly mar the landscape. Even then this energy in not going to do for autos/trucks what gasoline/deseal does.
I’m in the oil business. I make my living by drilling and selling the stuff. These short term swings help/hurt our interest checks from mont to month but what counts is the year over year trends. And the trend is up. All energy experts in this debate (even though they differe on when production will finally peak) are in agreement about one thing, the era of cheap oil is over.
Enviromentalists are fighting wind energy, not big business.
But you were still able to lease your land to build those wind generators?
Is this a great pun or what?
No. It’s the truth. They don’t like them marring the views and they believe they kill too many birds even though more birds are kill by cats, flying into plate glass buildings, or by autos. Them and NIMBYs (not in my back yarders).
That’s right. As the saying goes you sue for anything but that doesn’t mean you’ll win the case…or even have a case.
But what you keep mistaking is that oil is only about energy. First off, it’s about liquid energy/fuel. Wind turbines, solar, coal, or nuclear will not drive your car. On average 60% of a barrel of oil is used for transportation fuel. The other 40% goes to products, everything from the asphalt roads you drive to the cups and stawing you pickup at the window from McDonald’s, to the elastic in your underware, to the carpet in you home. As I said earlier, at the current use of 86.1 million barrels per day that volume of oil would fill a swimming pool 82 feet by 6.5 feet by 63,488 miles long every year, or 5,600 olmypic pools per day. I don’t know how or what the global economy will use to replace this volume. There isn’t enough land to grow crops capable of replacing this volume.