OrangeEmpire
The White Debonair
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2005
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The only thing that's really in contest now is when it will happen, not if. The most optimisic appraisals, such as those issued by United States Geological Survey give us between fifty and a hundred years. Cambridge Energy Research Associates give us until roughly 2020. Less optimistic experts believe it's already happened or will happen in the next five to ten years. And that's the arrival of world peak oil, the point at which oil production will max out globally. After that, it will fall. Demand, however, will not fall. It will rise and keep rising, especially as India and China, with over a billion people each, become industrialized. This is not pleasant to contemplate.
If you think gas is expensive now... This will make the energy crises of 1973 look like a cake walk. And this time there'l be no way out.
What is worse, no other energy source is nearly efficient enough to overtake fossil fuels as a reliable alternative. Many, such as hydrogen actually use more energy to produce than they themselves produce. Wind power and solar power are light years away from being able to pick up even a portion of the slack. Conversion to coal power will be phantasmagorically expensive, dirty and prolong the inevitable by twenty years tops before coal too is estimated to run out. Nuclear power requires rare and expensive uranium, and then there's the problem of disposal of left over waste and the odd Chernobyl taking place. The willingness, or lack thereof of people and governments to face this coming crisis, be it tomorrow or in a century, is what may make us or break us. In the meantime, oil production will focus increasingly on world trouble spots, and further violence and warfare over control over these will increase.
The consequences of unmitigated oil peak are apocalyptic, and if the pessimists are right, might be just around the corner. Imagine gasoline becoming twice as expensive, five times as expensive, ten times as expensive. And so does everything made with the use of fossil fuels. Which means just about everything. Not to mention shipping and handling costs. The efficiency of food production becomes what it was decades or even centuries ago. And there goes the world's capacity to feed its population. The great depression will be a caviar and ivory backscratcher party by comparison. Air travel is the first to become essentially a rare privelige for the elite. Soon it's back to the future as cars become something only the rich can afford, or else kept and pooled by whole communities. Ultimately, it may be back to pre-industrial ways of living. I've seen estimates of a global maximum population of maybe one to two billion people.
A solution to the greenhouse gas problem to be sure as we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the air. This is not as good as it sounds. Green plants, plankton and algae that have grown to overabundant proportions in response to existing levels would be able to suck all the carbon dioxide out of the air, precipitating a new ice age. Just what you need when cheap heat has run out.
Thoughts?
If you think gas is expensive now... This will make the energy crises of 1973 look like a cake walk. And this time there'l be no way out.
What is worse, no other energy source is nearly efficient enough to overtake fossil fuels as a reliable alternative. Many, such as hydrogen actually use more energy to produce than they themselves produce. Wind power and solar power are light years away from being able to pick up even a portion of the slack. Conversion to coal power will be phantasmagorically expensive, dirty and prolong the inevitable by twenty years tops before coal too is estimated to run out. Nuclear power requires rare and expensive uranium, and then there's the problem of disposal of left over waste and the odd Chernobyl taking place. The willingness, or lack thereof of people and governments to face this coming crisis, be it tomorrow or in a century, is what may make us or break us. In the meantime, oil production will focus increasingly on world trouble spots, and further violence and warfare over control over these will increase.
The consequences of unmitigated oil peak are apocalyptic, and if the pessimists are right, might be just around the corner. Imagine gasoline becoming twice as expensive, five times as expensive, ten times as expensive. And so does everything made with the use of fossil fuels. Which means just about everything. Not to mention shipping and handling costs. The efficiency of food production becomes what it was decades or even centuries ago. And there goes the world's capacity to feed its population. The great depression will be a caviar and ivory backscratcher party by comparison. Air travel is the first to become essentially a rare privelige for the elite. Soon it's back to the future as cars become something only the rich can afford, or else kept and pooled by whole communities. Ultimately, it may be back to pre-industrial ways of living. I've seen estimates of a global maximum population of maybe one to two billion people.
A solution to the greenhouse gas problem to be sure as we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the air. This is not as good as it sounds. Green plants, plankton and algae that have grown to overabundant proportions in response to existing levels would be able to suck all the carbon dioxide out of the air, precipitating a new ice age. Just what you need when cheap heat has run out.
Thoughts?
).
