An apology to all future generations: Sorry we used up your oil...

  • Thread starter Zardoz
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If you're not very old, you've been robbed.

If you're in your twenties, or you're younger, your future has been stolen from you. You and your children, and especially your grandchildren, are going to live very different lives from those of us who have come before you, and "different" is not going to mean "better".

We graybeards out here have taken from you vast quantities of that precious commodity that our modern industrialized technological civilization has been built upon: Oil. We've pulled it out from under your feet, run off with it, and burned it up, using it to fuel our spoiled, pampered, excessive way of life. We've squandered it like there was no tomorrow. We didn't care because we calculated that there was plenty to go around among us for the duration of our lives. We knew that when it finally started getting really scarce, it wouldn't be our problem, because we'd be dead.

Problem is, you won't be dead. You'll be very much alive, and you're going to be the ones who will have to figure out how to get by with a steadily-declining supply of the miraculous stuff. You'll have to deal with the fantastic price increases that we're only now seeing the very beginnings of. You're going to see what happens when the stuff your world has been built upon becomes the most precious commodity on earth.

I'm reluctant to post this link, because when you go through the article and try to pick it apart point-by-point and discount what this guy is saying about what the dwindling oil supply will really mean, you won't have much luck. He makes a lot of very valid points, and when you put them all together, the scope of the problem is truly dizzying in its vastness:

The Oil Crash and You

Note what he says about the "500,000 products" made from oil, the lack of fuel for all means of moving people and products (and airliners in particular), and the effects on food production. Scroll through the whole thing. Its a very comprehensive look at how much the plentiful supply of cheap petroleum has meant to us.

That's how important it has been to us all, and yet we seem determined to not leave much of it for you and your offspring. We're still in deep denial about what is coming. We're burning it up faster than ever. Incredible as it seems, global oil usage is still increasing. Here's a little stat for you to think about when you're trying to get to sleep tonight: Global oil consumption is now at an all-time high of 84 million barrels a day (yes, PER DAY), a 3.5% increase over last year! The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that, at the current rate of increase, demand will rise to 103 million barrels a day by 2015.

"Peak Oil"

That's the phrase used to descibe the time when global oil production peaks out, and starts its inevitable permanent decline. "Peak Oil" is the day we hit the top of the production curve and begin to slide down the other side. Dr. M. King Huppert predicted when that would happen back in the '50s. He basically said that it would happen right about...now:

The Huppert Peak for World Oil

The U.S. Department of Energy sponsored a study about this, and the so-called "Hirsch Report" is the result. Here's a synopsis:

Hirsch Report Synopsis

And here's the whole thing:

The Hirsch Report

You should take a look at the "Executive Summary", the "Wild Cards", and the "Summary and Concluding Remarks", at least.

Its not a matter of whether or not it will happen. The only question is when it will actually occur. George W. Bush said it himself last March: "In terms of world supply, I think if you look at all the statistics, demand is outracing supply, and supplies are getting tight." The hard fact is that in the not-too-distant future, we simply aren't going to have enough oil available to meet our needs. Nobody disputes this. This isn't like the global warming debate. This really is a no-brainer.

The only "debate" is whether or not the permanent shortage will begin in a few decades, or just a few years, or if, in fact, it has already begun and we are about to start seeing the real effects of it. There are many expert opinions about when it will happen, with the most pessimistic saying we're in it now or it will start next year, and the most optimistic saying demand will be met through 2025.

All those estimates, however, depend upon the accuracy of oil reserve statistics, and it turns out we know a lot less about what's really left than we thought we did. In fact, its really starting to look like many oil-producing nations (members of OPEC, the Organization of Oil-Producing Countries) have been blowing smoke about their oil reserves, so they could keep production up and make more money in the short term. Take a look at this chart:

spuriousoilrevisions5cw.jpg


"The table's green areas show where countries reported that their oil stocks were "not declining", even though oil was being taken out, steadily emptying the wells.The red areas show where countries spectacularly increased the reported quantities of oil in stock, so that OPEC would recognize them as bigger suppliers and allow them to export more, increasing revenues."

Huge sudden increases in reserves, and the lack of any decline, even though they've been pumping like crazy. The "never-emptying reserves" phenomenon. Magic? Not hardly. Try outright lying, instead.

Saudi Arabia - The cushion could be a rock

The conventional wisdom has always been that mighty Saudi Arabia, custodians of 25% of the world's so-called "proven" oil reserves, was a near-inexhaustible source of increased oil production that we could depend on to make up any shortfalls in supply. Well, maybe it isn't. Maybe the Saudis are completely maxed out right now, and their capacity is already beginning to taper off. Here's the story of what Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker who consults with the Bush Administration, says about what may really be going on in The Kingdom:

Al-Jazeera story on Simmons

Simmons article

This guy agrees with him:

He seconds the motion

If they're right, and the Saudis can't pick up the slack, then we're at the top of the worldwide production bell curve right now.

I posted these in the global warming thread a while back. They're good as fuel for thought:

Hope

More hope

Total disaster

Let's hope the first two are right.

Again, on behalf of all of us responsible for this, I apologize. As a native-born American, I have plenty to be sorry for, don't I? Take a look at this:

oilconsumption2vw.jpg


We Yanks are addicted to the stuff. We don't actually shoot it into our veins, but we sure act like we do. We just can't get enough of it. We're going to miss it more than anybody else, aren't we? This is going to be a very tough habit to kick. Things could get ugly.

And right on cue, we start seeing this sort of thing:

Oh, great. A whole new movie genre

Don't laugh about the twenty-dollar-a-gallon gas. My sister just got back from Turkey. Gas is eight bucks a gallon there already.

I have a 15-year-old son. I haven't broken the news to him yet about what life is going be like for him when he's in his thirties and forties. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just let him enjoy the ride for as long as he can. He'll be getting the message soon enough...
 
By the time running out of oil becomes a threat we will find different power sources. Cars running on hydrogen, extracted from water using electrolyse with electricity generated by huge solar plants and windmills.... or maybe a little nuclear reactor in every car sold. :D
 
smellysocks12
By the time running out of oil becomes a threat we will find different power sources. Cars running on hydrogen, extracted from water using electrolyse with electricity generated by huge solar plants and windmills.... or maybe a little nuclear reactor in every car sold. :D

The major shift to alternative resources will probably really be taken seriously once it's too late and too expensive.

Imagine civilization reverting back to no electricity, plastic, and commuting for a good 10 years before that shift to alternative resources actually has an impact on the majority of the world. If we get our act together before panicking, we'd probably have healthier humans due to the alternative modes of transportation such as walking or biking and less miniscule radioactive exposure to electricity meaning less cancer, globalisation comes to a halt (although not a good thing for developing countries) and allows the US to maintain itself, and no TV and computers and phones leaving humans to become more personal.

The downsides, however, far outweighs the upside but as far as I know, our current way of life is all I know and this may have to be a welcome change for every single westernized human if we should keep from choking at each others necks.
 
My dad keeps telling me that:
"When you're 40, your daughter will come up to you and ask, 'Daddy, why do I have to go fight the Chineese for the oil in the Middle East?' and you better have a good answer for her."

My Dad is a little crazy.
 
s0nny80y
The major shift to alternative resources will probably really be taken seriously once it's too late and too expensive.
If you leave it up to the government. Private industry is pretty good about making quick, drastic changes when it needs to.

Imagine civilization reverting back to no electricity, plastic, and commuting for a good 10 years before that shift to alternative resources actually has an impact on the majority of the world. If we get our act together before panicking, we'd probably have healthier humans due to the alternative modes of transportation such as walking or biking and less miniscule radioactive exposure to electricity meaning less cancer, globalisation comes to a halt (although not a good thing for developing countries) and allows the US to maintain itself, and no TV and computers and phones leaving humans to become more personal.

The downsides, however, far outweighs the upside but as far as I know, our current way of life is all I know and this may have to be a welcome change for every single westernized human if we should keep from choking at each others necks.
I now have no clue what you’re getting at – are you saying it’s a good thing we’ll be running out of oil, or a bad thing? Your first post would indicate that we’re screwing ourselves over, but this post sounds like you’re all for turning the clock back a few thousand years.

Anyway, let me just get this out of the way: Oil isn’t the crux of our livelihoods. About twenty feet from this house are several solar arrays that power this entire house – we are totally disconnected from “the grid”. If all the oil in the world suddenly ran dry this second, the demand for solar power would be absolutely phenomenal, and the prices would drop to crazy-low amounts. If we can run this house off of solar power, I don’t see why a good deal more of the world wouldn’t be able to too. Frankly, running out of “energy sources” is the least of my worries, because we have plenty of bright people on this Earth to figure that out and make it happen, and we have the markets that can adjust accordingly. There are simply too many ramifications to losing electricity altogether for anybody to actually let it happen.

In fact, let me say that I actually look forward to seeing what kind of neat trickery humankind develops in the coming decades. 👍
 
Sage
...There are simply too many ramifications to losing electricity altogether for anybody to actually let it happen.

Generating electricity without oil will be tough, but it will be the easiest of the problems we'll have to face. The real problem will be replacing the liquid fuels (jet fuel in particular), fertilizers, and all those hard products that are made from oil.

Now you're talking "daunting tasks"...
 
Zardoz
Generating electricity without oil will be tough, but it will be the easiest of the problems we'll have to face. The real problem will be replacing the liquid fuels (jet fuel in particular), fertilizers, and all those hard products that are made from oil.

Now you're talking "daunting tasks"...
Nuclear Power is clean, effecient, safe and very reliable. Too bad it's very misunderstood here in our country. It's often made fun of, like in the recent commercial for some cellular phone service and the Simpson's.

France generates 80 percent of their country's electrical power from nuclear power. Why can't our country do the same? Hippies. That's one reason why. Plus, nobody wants a nuclear power plant built in their town.
 
Solid Lifters
...France generates 80 percent of their country's electrical power from nuclear power...

According to this, its mostly a matter of attitude:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

Also, the French have made the wise decision to standardize the design of most of their plants. Most are clones of many others.

Not us. We've always custom-designed every unit, meaning that we broke new ground on virtually every one. Big mistake. It added to the cost, complexity, and operational problems greatly.
 
It's not Nuclear power I'm afraid of, it's the people taking care of it that bother me. Especially if they are only in it for the money.
 
This is a much bigger problem than most people realise and is the Doomsday Scenario most likely to give human civilisation serious problems in our lifetimes.

It's not the energy production that is the most serious difficulty but the oil-dependant materials lost that can take the legs out from under industrial society.

I posted something about this quite a while ago but it failed to generate much in the way of intelligent response so it's good to see the topic making the table once again 👍.

Of course, another event that will take place shortly is the inversion of the earth's magnetic field (it's already started so it shouldn't be long now). Swapping the North and South magnetic poles doesn't sound too bad until you realise that what that entails is the almost complete degradation of our 'shields' - we're not too far away from Microwave World when the sun kicks a few flares our way (there was a slightly exagerated demo in "The Core" of what will happen to the planet when the radiation channeling magnetism fails and we get clobbered by some pretty plasma jets).
 
VIPFREAK
It's not Nuclear power I'm afraid of, it's the people taking care of it that bother me. Especially if they are only in it for the money.
I agree. Nuclear power can be efficent and clean, kept within strict safety and running guidelines. As soon as some goon tries to save money cutting a corner, thats when it becomes much more dangerous.
 
I wont care I will be dead ! Muhaaaaaaaahahahahaahahahahaahahahaha bwaaahahahahahaha !




HA !
 
sukerkin
Of course, another event that will take place shortly is the inversion of the earth's magnetic field (it's already started so it shouldn't be long now). Swapping the North and South magnetic poles doesn't sound too bad until you realise that what that entails is the almost complete degradation of our 'shields' - we're not too far away from Microwave World when the sun kicks a few flares our way (there was a slightly exagerated demo in "The Core" of what will happen to the planet when the radiation channeling magnetism fails and we get clobbered by some pretty plasma jets).

Whoa whoa...new note...can someone confirm this? (Hint: Famine)

I just want to make sure that this is happening since of the magnitude of something like this; how on earth can this happen?
 
something always comes along to put a kink in things... just by the time i can afford to have fun we'll all be killing eachother for gas. damn it.

well, i might as well get a jump on things then... i think i'll move to the desert, buy a dune buggy, mount a .50 cal and start dressing weird...
 
Yes - sorry, future generations, that we utilised the resources available to us at the time in order to bring you into existence and create a world for you to live in and made the basis in our research for your future, emissionless survival, when what we should have done is ration the oil so that everyone was miserable and no-one could get anywhere significant and passed this on to you with all technological advancement stifled.
 
Famine
Yes - sorry, future generations, that we utilised the resources available to us at the time in order to bring you into existence and create a world for you to live in and made the basis in our research for your future, emissionless survival, when what we should have done is ration the oil so that everyone was miserable and no-one could get anywhere significant and passed this on to you with all technological advancement stifled.

Oh, so we're expending 84 million barrels a day on "research", huh? If we don't consume at that rate, all technological advancement would be stifled, and we would all be "miserable"?

Is this some sort of joke?
 
Exactly what I thought when I read the first post.

Zardoz
Oh, so we're expending 84 million barrels a day on "research", huh?

Errr, whu?

Out of interest, what is it you want us to do with the oil?
 
Erh... right... we've put oil to good use... in a zillion consumer products we don't necessarily need but we incongruously want.

It's ridiculuous to think that civilization would collapse without oil. With organic oil sources for fuel, plastics (!!!) and other products available (not as cheap as mineral, but available), it's possible to maintain the same level of technology after the crush.

Of course, not all of us will be as rich as our parents... more of us will be farmers and laborers. :(

The real danger is the lack of energy to fuel scientific and technological innovation. Advances in many fields of science and technology depend on a surplus of energy and materials which can be spared by society. The real danger is the possible stagnation of technological development.
 
Famine makes a good point. Even though we are heading to a global crisis, those that came before us didnt really do anything wrong. If you have something you need, do you not use it so that someone else may use it a few days later? This isnt a plane crash in the rocky mountians with only a few candy bars for food. We have been refining oil to futher our industrial side which furthers technology and such. If we stoped using it way back when and just horded it what would that have served? we just wouldnt have had any oil in 1950 but that doesnt mean we would have all that much more now. Back in 1950 we wernt refining as much and we didnt have as great a need. As our population as grown by leaps and bounds we have had to refine more and more to keep progressing as a nation. There is no point to slow down production in order to save for the future. In order to make a big enough difference to matter the cut back would have had to be so big life would have stoped as it was. To say that we really made a mistake for doing what came naturaly is silly. We are doing a lot now to find other forms of energy and I dont think we are going to have any big problems in the future. Hybrid technology is progressing very fast, the stuff coming from japan even faster as they got a jump on it. by the time we start running out of oil so bad that it makes a big enough difference we will have other technological options and life will continue on.
 
What about thermal depolymerization? I remember hearing a lot about this during all the mad cow stuff because it would effeciently break down the prions and then I heard about it again about a year ago as a way to create more oil. There is currently a working plant in Carthage, Missouri taking the waste from a ConAgra Butterball Turkey plant and turning the excess turkey parts into 500 barrels of oil a day.

I know it is fairly new and currently low output, but if you had one of these plants in place of every garbage dump in the world, maybe even multiples for larger cities, would it be possible to at least create a decent supply of oil? It has constantly become more productive and can probably be very succesful in the future.
 
This topic is absurd. Hundreds of years ago people might have said the same thing about salt. My guess is that we'll find a good substitute for oil. But that's not necessarily the only way we can solve the problem.

As many have pointed out, electricity can be gotten in other ways. So I wouldn't worry about the lights going out. Cars can run on electricity too, so I wouldn't worry about cars so much.

Air travel might get more expensive... might. Fuel isn't a big portion of the cost of a plane trip now - so I'm guessing air travel will still be affordable. But billions will be poured into finding an alternative solution for air travel.

I'm REALLY not worried about the future of space travel - as solid rocket fuel is not highly dependent on oil.

We already have substitute technology for plastic (though it is more expensive at the moment). And fertilizer? Give me a break. All they have to do is find this thread - that's all the fertilizer they need.


Here's what will happen.

As oil supplies start getting low we'll start drilling other places. As we do that the price will go up and up as we tap harder and harder to reach oil. Eventually the price will go up far enough to make alternatives look pretty nice (electric cars, solar panels, nuclear power, etc). That creates a big drop in demand for oil, which allows the remainder of oil reserves (that are now more expensive) to be used only in the areas that really really need it. I expect that oil will still be available hundreds (that's right, with an s) of years from now. It'll just be higher priced and almost nothing will use it.
 
danoff
This topic is absurd.

So we actually don't need the 84,000,000 barrels a day we're sucking up now, and the Chinese are going to politely stop industrializing and cut back their steadily-increasing appetite for it?

We'll all join hands and agree to wean ourselves off oil reasonably and logically?

The oil-industry experts of the world are wrong and you're right? The Hirsch Report is all horse manure? Amazing.

(Oh, by the way, you seem to know about a jet-fuel substitute that nobody else is aware of. Please enlighten us on how the air travel industry will even exist in the future.)
 
Zardoz
So we actually don't need the 84,000,000 barrels a day we're sucking up now, and the Chinese are going to politely stop industrializing and cut back their steadily-increasing appetite for it?

If we need it, why whinge that we use it?
 
Zardoz
So we actually don't need the 84,000,000 barrels a day we're sucking up now, and the Chinese are going to politely stop industrializing and cut back their steadily-increasing appetite for it?

We'll all join hands and agree to wean ourselves off oil reasonably and logically?

The oil-industry experts of the world are wrong and you're right? The Hirsch Report is all horse manure? Amazing.

(Oh, by the way, you seem to know about a jet-fuel substitute that nobody else is aware of. Please enlighten us on how the air travel industry will even exist in the future.)


You seem to have no foresight whatsoever. It honestly amazes me how you can look at history and still think that humanity will stagnate - that somehow we were just lucky to stumble on to this miracle substance called oil which enables all of human progress. You don't seem to understand that it isn't oil that enables all of our advances, that it's the human brain that enables these things - and that's not something we're running out of.

What good is oil by itself? No good at all. It sits there, a pile of goo doing nothing. It wasn't until people started getting creative with it (and lots of other substances that just sit there) that we started to really develop technology. You seem to vehemently hate any viable alternatives to oil - when those should be the things you love the most.

You should be cheering as oil prices go up. You should be wanting us to burn oil faster, and run out sooner. You should be the first person hoping for a world without oil - since you're so unbelievably worried about the possibility that humans are causing global warming. Instead, you seem to think of oil as something that we should preserve. You seem to think that oil is too precious to use.

Let me tell you something. Given the supplies of oil that we have left, oil is worth whatever it's trading for right now on the commodities market. All the stuff that you're so worried about happening is taken into account in the price of oil. When oil actually does start to become more scarce (which is what you're afraid of) the price of oil will go up and we'll start using it as you'd want us to use it now - only the for the most important things.

Does it surprise you when new technology is invented? You seem to be unaware not only of the possibility, but of the certainty that new technology will constantly be coming along. I fully expect an oil substitute to come along and make all your worries dissapear, though you should be hoping that that doesn't happen - because it may not cure your pollution worries.

Better than an oil substitute would be a slow moving from oil to other technologies. Which is exactly what is going to happen (and is already happening).


So we actually don't need the 84,000,000 barrels a day we're sucking up now, and the Chinese are going to politely stop industrializing and cut back their steadily-increasing appetite for it?

No, we don't actually need the 84 million barrels a day we're putting to good use. We want 84 million barrles a day. When that oil becomes too expensive we'll start wanting less of it. Understand? The Chinese are facing the same issue everyone else is. They'll have to move to other technology as well.

Your doomsday scenario will not come about. I don't see how it's really even possible for that scenario to come about. I hate to dissapoint you but over the next 50-100 years there is going to be a nice slow transition off of oil as it becomes more expensive. It will impact some areas more than others, but it won't be drastic. People will not panic, and new technology will constantly be coming out.... always... inevitably.
 
Allow me to provide a few numbers to the discussion.

If you eliminate gasoline, electiricty generation, and home heating from oil consumption (since all of those things can be replaced today by alternatives). You'd eliminate 60% of all oil consumption.
 
danoff
...Your doomsday scenario will not come about. I don't see how it's really even possible for that scenario to come about. I hate to dissapoint you but over the next 50-100 years there is going to be a nice slow transition off of oil as it becomes more expensive. It will impact some areas more than others, but it won't be drastic. People will not panic, and new technology will constantly be coming out.... always... inevitably.

"My" scenario? You think this is my idea? Huh? What?

Forget me. Look at what Hirsch has to say:

"The bell curve has a sharp crest, and you can't see it coming."

"Robert L. Hirsch is a senior energy program advisor for SAIC. ( http://www.saic.com/ ) Previous employment includes senior positions at the Energy Research and Development Administration, ARCO, Exxon, EPRI, APTI and Rand. He is a past chairman of the Board on Energy and Environmental Systems at the National Academies. He has a PhD in engineering and physics from the University of Illinois."

Please cite your research that proves Hirsch is wrong. Please explain how we are going to have a "nice, slow transition" when oil production actually falls off a cliff when the fields start going dry.

Please cite somebody other than yourself.
 
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