Petroleum and the future of civilization

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Sorry, Neil. The tar sands have a lot of syncrude but the logistics of mining it and meeting any global supply gap won’t be there. It’s hoped that the suply will be about 5 million barrels by 2030 from the current 1 million. energybulletin.net/7331.html
Oh well, at least we’ll have enough to keep heating our homes here in Canada. And if we burn enough of that stuff, we’ll eventually warm the whole planet up enough and we won’t need as much heating 😃
 
Others have suggested large tax-free prizes for the first person to invent a successful hydrogen engine/power system.

But we could as easily put up other huge prizes for … fusion power … for beaming power from collectors in space down to the Earth’s surface.

But these are plebian ideas.

The Wright Brothers, Sikorski, Marconi, Tesla, Wegener, Kildall … we need more geniuses to invent more and more useful things.
All these individuals have one thing in common. They helped to create the energy demand and problem the world will face - law of unintended consequences.

It’s a recognized fact or reality that the more technological a society becomes the more energy it consumes. Technology doesn’t created energy, it harvest and uses it.
 
Oh well, at least we’ll have enough to keep heating our homes here in Canada. And if we burn enough of that stuff, we’ll eventually warm the whole planet up enough and we won’t need as much heating 😃
Oh I don’t know…we might just invade you guys…too? 😛

Heck us American already get 12-15% of our natural gas from Canada even though it’s actually 50% of Canada’s production.
 
Oh I don’t know…we might just invade you guys…too? 😛

Heck us American already get 12-15% of our natural gas from Canada even though it’s actually 50% of Canada’s production.
Careful, if you annex Canada, you’ll have to let us all move to california
 
Careful, if you annex Canada, you’ll have to let us all move to california
and the downside would be???

interesting video
New Urbanism

Lecture on city planning contrasting the new urbanism model to current zoning codes:
1 youtube.com/watch?v=rwd4Lq0Xvgc
2 youtube.com/watch?v=8UXog-Q023g
3 youtube.com/watch?v=W1X5uVR5NxY
4 youtube.com/watch?v=ual7cCIuEK4
5 youtube.com/watch?v=iBOvsVntJ5c
6 youtube.com/watch?v=acVGFDV4mEw
7 youtube.com/watch?v=u0RINz9dMFM
8 youtube.com/watch?v=XAPo-gHE1kA
9 youtube.com/watch?v=-Y_LseRYCqs
 
Don’t worry you guys. We’ve got enough expensive oil in the tar sands up here in Canada to fill the supply gap, but at an expensive enough price to force peopel to start switching to some other source. That’ll give people time to adjust.
In time for the economic cascade.
 
All these individuals have one thing in common. They helped to create the energy demand and problem the world will face - law of unintended consequences.

It’s a recognized fact or reality that the more technological a society becomes the more energy it consumes. Technology doesn’t created energy, it harvest and uses it.
Oil is a commodity. No incentive to “invent” anything there. Helicopters, and such present opportunities to get your name on some branded thingee.

Except Wegener. He was a pure scientist and died very cold and very alone.

Tesla died broke, but did eventually have an all-electric sports car named after him.
 
What about those Segways? Can we use those when we run out of oil?

Or those little scooters kids have…
 
Nope, they don’t come in an SUV size model for the soccer moms.😉
Doug50, these are ingenious. I’ve worked in construction and have never seen the point of a For 350, except as psychological support for men whose male members aren’t large enough. I can carry ladders, concrete, gravel, and lumber in a small Toyota pickup. A bicycle pickup would an interesting challenge, though.
 
Doug50, these are ingenious. I’ve worked in construction and have never seen the point of a For 350, except as psychological support for men whose male members aren’t large enough. I can carry ladders, concrete, gravel, and lumber in a small Toyota pickup.
Try picking up, carrying and unrolling a 1500 lb round hay bale with one, and feeding it in the snow.
 
Doug50, these are ingenious. I’ve worked in construction and have never seen the point of a For 350, except as psychological support for men whose male members aren’t large enough. I can carry ladders, concrete, gravel, and lumber in a small Toyota pickup. A bicycle pickup would an interesting challenge, though.
How large of a trailer do you tow with the small Toyota?
 
Try picking up, carrying and unrolling a 1500 lb round hay bale with one, and feeding it in the snow.
How many suburbanites carry 1500 pound hay bales? When I see huge Ford F350s they usually have one ladder on them, or a couple of 2 x 4s, or a wheelbarrow. When I see them in a filling station fuming at paying $100.00 for a tank of gas, I’m amused, and grateful they are making me rich through my oil stocks, for now, at least.
 
Cute. But not helpful.
😉
Here’s a view from Los Angeles, describing two scenarios:

"Peak-oil will creep upon us, like crabs in the pot, the water temperature getting a little hotter, and a little hotter…we keep adapting…until a crisis point is reached…then, we’re toast. Gasoline supplies dry up and…make your own scenario. None of them will be very pretty.

Or, the Saudis will keep camouflaging their flagging production until they can’t hide it any longer, even with the cooperation of 1st world governments and mainstream media… Mexico’s Cantarell begins its steep decline, we can’t find any immediate new sources of oil…and, BOOM, no creeping catastrophe, rather, it hits us in the face like a piano from five floors up.

Either way, things are gonna get very, very ugly. I really don’t see how we avoid it now. It’s just a matter of time. Short time, really. Cantarell is in decline now. Informed opinion is that Saudi production is stagnant, in spite of quite frantic efforts by Aramco to drill new wells. The North Sea is declining at nearly 20% per year.

Even if first-world oil companies, somehow, find a way to make up part of the decline from the big producers, we’re still looking at something like 5-10% world oil production declines per year, in the very near future. That will be catastrophic right there. Let alone 20%. That’s the apocalypse.

We’re f****d, folks. And oil sands and oil shale are NOT going to save us. I wish it were not so. I love my affluent life in La-La land. But it can’t last. I see this town from downtown, a town that will be almost totally unable to function without fossil fuel for transportation, and I wonder what in HELL to do. What will any of us do?"
 
Peak oil, if it truly exists, would have been as relevant in 1940 as it is today.

Therefore, if peak oil is true, then we should have gone through all rather desperate measures back then.

BUT, human ingenuity kept discovering and kept inventing.

So, the peak oil scenario that would have projected (and perhaps was projected) back in 1940 … didn’t happen in 1960.

BUT, the validity of peak oil would have been equally VALID back then.

In retrospect, there was no reason to believe in peak oil back then. And there is no need to believe in peak oil now.

On top of which, even if peak oil is true, it just means we should redouble our efforts of develop more and better energy sources … more drilling for oil, more drilling for gas, more nuke, more LNG terminals (terrorist proof - thank you), prizes for fusion, prizes for a hydrogen engine and fuel generator/storage device.

Absolutely no need to stop increasing and multiplying.

And folks with no talent in the inventing & developing category should take to saying rosaries for those who DO have talent.

As it is now, folks with no talent want to STOP people who do have talent.
 
Fusion reactors are the key.
Absolutely no need to stop increasing and multiplying.

And folks with no talent in the inventing & developing category should take to saying rosaries for those who DO have talent.

As it is now, folks with no talent want to STOP people who do have talent.
 
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