Oil Will Be Cheap And Plentiful For At Least 100 Years

[SMAC67]

The world hasn't ended, but civilisations have collapsed and disappeared. I'm sure we can all think of examples.

Perhaps someone with a training in Psychology could explain why humans never ever seem to learn from history?

It's a generational thing. Each generation thinks it invented "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll", so they repeat the mistakes of the previous generations. Having made the mistakes and had their fingers burnt they then change their behaviour. But then their kids and grand kids repeat the mistake because they have no memory of previous times. I believe it is called "generational memory". I would recommend "The Fourth Turning" by Strauss and Howe.

As for why those in power don't do anything. Well the ex-head of Saudi Aramco spelled it out simply, those in charge are old, and they will be dead before the problems really kick in. Therefore they are making hay whilst the sun shines to use an old expression. Partying like there is no tomorrow, because for them, life really is short.

[Kurt Barlow]

I usuallly like your comments Kurt, but this one illustrates that you maybe losing the argument.

The car running in orange peel may well be a scientific example of waht is posible and the use of orange peel so that it resonates with the public at large. It does not mean that the actual substance in the Orange peel that is used to power the car can not be made commercially. Who would have though that Brazil would be fueled by ethanol 10 years ago?

Hydrogen is an energy carrier rather than a viable fuel itself. If we gain a power source sufficent to facilitate large scale electroylysis of water to produce hydrogen it would be far more practical to then convert that Hydrogen into methanol or ethylene which are denser fuels and easy to store.

If I am losing the arguement - could you perhaps advise what is in the pipeline to address the embrittlement and compression problems associated with hydrogen?

[Game_Over]

Trouble is we have yet to even achieve a controlled and sustained fusion reaction for more than a few seconds let alone one which produces excess energy.

In this field fusion is a 'nuclear powered aircraft carrier' and we are still at the stage of trying to work out how to use sails

The Chinese reactor produced power and ran for 3 seconds I think.

In this field we are where the Wright Brothers were in 1903 when they flew for 12 seconds

Just over 50 years later a man orbited the Earth

The science is well understood, it is only a matter of solving the engineering problems

[voidal]

I don't disagree that we are part of the natural world, it is a good point. However, it is our inability to live in harmony with the rest of the natural world that will be our downfall.

We have opened Pandora's box since we invented the wheel. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Yes, we now have the convenience of cars, central heating, foreign holidays. I for one love the modern world. I certainly don't want to put the genie back in the bottle and go back to subsistence farming to get by. But I am, like most others, a hypocrite when it comes to these matters. The road we are on will ultimately lead to the ruin of humanity, and much faster than any natural disaster like a random falling asteroid or reawakening super volcano will.

From an evolutionary standpoint we have gone above and beyond what nature intended. We were meant to lead short brutal lives in the natural environment. But through genetic fluke and good luck (?) we bucked the system.

Is terminating our specie's existence hundreds, if not thousands, of generations before our natural sell by date a good enough reason for the infinitesimally small chance an intelligent life form will stop by the moon in the future and admire our long gone ingenuity?

Of course, I may be all wrong and we will solve many of our problems with new technology and reach for the stars as many believe it is our destiny to do so. God help anything living on nearby habitable planets if we do, cos we'll r@pe the sh1t out of those planets too if we get our greedy little hands on them.

Beautiful prose

Outstanding philosophy.

Can we pull it off? Surviving, evolving, being less selfish, being responsible etc etc

Reminds me of a book "total Eclipse" by the Science fiction writer John Brunner. ----- Basically all intelligent lifeorms that evolve have faults and have their own way of f***k*ng up their own planets and making themselves extinct.

Edited May 26, 2009 by voidal

[ralphmalph]

Hydrogen is an energy carrier rather than a viable fuel itself. If we gain a power source sufficent to facilitate large scale electroylysis of water to produce hydrogen it would be far more practical to then convert that Hydrogen into methanol or ethylene which are denser fuels and easy to store.

If I am losing the arguement - could you perhaps advise what is in the pipeline to address the embrittlement and compression problems associated with hydrogen?

Now you are back on track, much better than fanny McSperm fuels.

[SMAC67]

Now you have solved nuclear fusion and the energy problems for planet earth can you let me know how the teleporter is coming along Game Over, you must have solved that one by now? You are without doubt a genuis, and I salute you. I'll be nominating your gargantuan brain for a Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. Thank you, we can all sleep well tonight.

[Game_Over]

Hydrogen is an energy carrier rather than a viable fuel itself. If we gain a power source sufficent to facilitate large scale electroylysis of water to produce hydrogen it would be far more practical to then convert that Hydrogen into methanol or ethylene which are denser fuels and easy to store.

If I am losing the arguement - could you perhaps advise what is in the pipeline to address the embrittlement and compression problems associated with hydrogen?

How come Honda are producing and selling Hydrogen powered cars then?

Perhaps you should E-mail them and let them know Hydrogen is not a practical fuel

I'm sure their engineers would welcome your input

'Yeah the car was running fine, until some guy explained to us it is impractical then the engine just stopped and we haven't been able to get it working since'

[Game_Over]

Now you have solved nuclear fusion and the energy problems for planet earth can you let me know how the teleporter is coming along Game Over, you must have solved that one by now? You are without doubt a genuis, and I salute you. I'll be nominating your gargantuan brain for a Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. Thank you, we can all sleep well tonight.

Blah, blah, blah

If I could answer your questions I would win a nobel prize wouldn't I

Well someone IS going to solve these problems and WILL win a Nobel Prize

And when they do you will think of ME

[Game_Over]

I don't disagree that we are part of the natural world, it is a good point. However, it is our inability to live in harmony with the rest of the natural world that will be our downfall.

We have opened Pandora's box since we invented the wheel. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Yes, we now have the convenience of cars, central heating, foreign holidays. I for one love the modern world. I certainly don't want to put the genie back in the bottle and go back to subsistence farming to get by. But I am, like most others, a hypocrite when it comes to these matters. The road we are on will ultimately lead to the ruin of humanity, and much faster than any natural disaster like a random falling asteroid or reawakening super volcano will.

From an evolutionary standpoint we have gone above and beyond what nature intended. We were meant to lead short brutal lives in the natural environment. But through genetic fluke and good luck (?) we bucked the system.

Is terminating our specie's existence hundreds, if not thousands, of generations before our natural sell by date a good enough reason for the infinitesimally small chance an intelligent life form will stop by the moon in the future and admire our long gone ingenuity?

Of course, I may be all wrong and we will solve many of our problems with new technology and reach for the stars as many believe it is our destiny to do so. God help anything living on nearby habitable planets if we do, cos we'll r@pe the sh1t out of those planets too if we get our greedy little hands on them.

Just noticed this post, very interesting

[ralphmalph]

Now you have solved nuclear fusion and the energy problems for planet earth can you let me know how the teleporter is coming along Game Over, you must have solved that one by now? You are without doubt a genuis, and I salute you. I'll be nominating your gargantuan brain for a Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. Thank you, we can all sleep well tonight.

SMAC, there is no doubt in my mind that the Human civilisation will solve the fusion problem. It is just a question of time. Can we do it before the oil runs out is the question.

If the powers that be were serious about it they would, build massive solar power stations in the deserts of the world, use as much wind and hydro as posible. Convert all ships to nuclear power and ban air travel. Invest all of the savings into fusion research.

One thing though is for certain flying will not be cheap for a ver very long time into the future, anti gravity needs to be invented.

[SMAC67]

No teleporter then?

[Kurt Barlow]

How come Honda are producing and selling Hydrogen powered cars then?

Perhaps you should E-mail them and let them know Hydrogen is not a practical fuel

I'm sure their engineers would welcome your input

'Yeah the car was running fine, until some guy explained to us it is impractical then the engine just stopped and we haven't been able to get it working since'

It is not practical as a scaleable fuel. you are misrepresenting what I said - probably because you don't understand this issue.

66 units per year. I bet they could also market fanny batter fuel at those sales levels

Edited May 26, 2009 by Kurt Barlow

[Kurt Barlow]

SMAC, there is no doubt in my mind that the Human civilisation will solve the fusion problem. It is just a question of time. Can we do it before the oil runs out is the question.

If the powers that be were serious about it they would, build massive solar power stations in the deserts of the world, use as much wind and hydro as posible. Convert all ships to nuclear power and ban air travel. Invest all of the savings into fusion research.

One thing though is for certain flying will not be cheap for a ver very long time into the future, anti gravity needs to be invented.

Another challenge for Game Over

[keef]

You took a whole 30 seconds to solve the most pressing problem faced by human kind. Maybe you could spend another 30 seconds on a cure for cancer, hair replacement therapy, teleportation, warp drive, time travel, world hunger, and why on earth Simon Cowell exists?

I think you may find the future more than a little disturbing. So I suggest you put your head bak up your a**s, put your fingers in your ears, and start singing "lalalalalalalalala I can't hear you".

You won't be alone, the world's leaders are doing precisely that as we speak.

p.s. Better buy an X5 now then, whilst they are still cheap.......

Whether you're right or wrong this is a class reply. Respect ...

[GSV Gray Area]

I would like to propose a thought experiment it gos like this

Imagine tomorrow in the news and press you hear that a new way has been found to make "power"

cheap unlimited "power", its easy to do and it can be online in mouths, plugged straight into the power grid

and every one knows how to do it, its in the public domain to late to stop in now we have the web.

What do you think the consequences of this would be, other than cheaper bills?

would you bother to swich off you TV?

What kind of car would you?

and Shell Exon-M would would become of there stocks?

What would Iran do?

Do I like Oil and cole as power NO

but be careful what you wish for.

[SMAC67]

Anti-gravity should be easy peasy, I would imagine up to 45 seconds to solve that problem. Solving the problems inherent in nuclear fusion is extremely unlikely, regardless of how much time, effort and money we put into it. We could spend more time investing in other forms of energy, but at the end of the day it is all rather pointless. Since our current socio-economic situation is based on exponentially increasing energy usage no amount of wind, sun, or nuclear power is going to help. Hydrogen is a neat parlor trick but it is an irrelevance.

We have fossil fuels, and they are depleting rapidly. We need to use them whilst we have them to organise a world which is sustainable. It is possible, but highly unlikely since the majority of people think like Game Over.

We are simply going to hit the buffers and the subsequent transition is going to be rather painful.

As for leaving planet earth, we don't even have the capability of going to the moon now, so don't be thinking we will be popping over to Proxima Centauri any time soon. Star Trek is science fiction, we are never going to leave this planet, and the sooner we accept this, the sooner we may start looking after our home. Wishful thinking, but our only hope.

[Guest Steve Cook]

I don't disagree that we are part of the natural world, it is a good point. However, it is our inability to live in harmony with the rest of the natural world that will be our downfall.

We have opened Pandora's box since we invented the wheel. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Yes, we now have the convenience of cars, central heating, foreign holidays. I for one love the modern world. I certainly don't want to put the genie back in the bottle and go back to subsistence farming to get by. But I am, like most others, a hypocrite when it comes to these matters. The road we are on will ultimately lead to the ruin of humanity, and much faster than any natural disaster like a random falling asteroid or reawakening super volcano will.

From an evolutionary standpoint we have gone above and beyond what nature intended. We were meant to lead short brutal lives in the natural environment. But through genetic fluke and good luck (?) we bucked the system.

Is terminating our specie's existence hundreds, if not thousands, of generations before our natural sell by date a good enough reason for the infinitesimally small chance an intelligent life form will stop by the moon in the future and admire our long gone ingenuity?

Of course, I may be all wrong and we will solve many of our problems with new technology and reach for the stars as many believe it is our destiny to do so. God help anything living on nearby habitable planets if we do, cos we'll r@pe the sh1t out of those planets too if we get our greedy little hands on them.

Yes, we probably would.

But then, we are nothing special save for our preposterously large brains. What I am suggesting is that we are just doing what comes naturally to all of life. We eat, we sh*t, we make babies. We do it as maximally as we can until we hit whatever resource buffers are in effect. Indeed all life does this. It then oscillates around an equilibrium. Sometimes the oscillation is mild and long lived. Sometimes it is violent and short lived and we get extinction events. In our particular case, our brains that were originally evolved as the planet's ultimate modelling device for reasons of avoiding bad things happening to us without the often messy necessity of having to directly experience the bad thing, have evolutionarily allowed us to dream of planes, trains and auto-mobiles and what lies beyond the stars. For a brief, tantalising moment in the history of our species, these dreams have served to give us hope that we can escape the the physical and mental constraints of the clay from which we arose. However the call of our origins is strong and, for the most part, our dreams have proven to little more than serve those basic drives common to all life. Once we discovered how to exploit the one time draw-down of the stored solar energy of millennia there was no turning back. Our populations have exploded on the back of this massive influx of energy. We are painted into a corner.

Our dreams have outstripped our capacity to live them. The Earth is calling us back into the mud.

It's just such a terrible shame.

Edited May 27, 2009 by Steve Cook

[SMAC67]

Steve, spot on, just about sums it all up really, the Selfish Gene, to quote Richard Dawkins. I suspect that reaching such an equilibrium will be a tad painful. As you say, we have the foresight, we are just unable to act upon this knowledge, it is a shame.

[Guest Steve Cook]

Steve, spot on, just about sums it all up really, the Selfish Gene, to quote Richard Dawkins. I suspect that reaching such an equilibrium will be a tad painful. As you say, we have the foresight, we are just unable to act upon this knowledge, it is a shame.

I wish I could see another future for our industrial civilisation.

But, I can't.

I fear we will lose most of the knowledge we have gained over the last couple of centuries. For much of it will make little sense in an energy depleted world

The past is the future. And, quite probably, a degraded one at that.

Edited May 27, 2009 by Steve Cook

[General Congreve]

Once we discovered how to exploit the one time draw-down of the stored solar energy of millennia there was no turning back. Our populations have exploded on the back of this massive influx of energy. We are painted into a corner.

Our dreams have outstripped our capacity to live them. The Earth is calling us back into the mud.

It's just such a terrible shame.

Indeed it is, from the perspective of the human race anyway. I expect a lot of species we have marginalised and driven to extinction would have differing views.

However, from a selfish personal perspective, I am very happy to have had the good fortune to live in such a golden age of human achievement, even if we have mightily f4cked ourselves in the process!

Edited May 27, 2009 by General Congreve

[Guest Steve Cook]

Indeed it is, from the perspective of the human race anyway. I expect a lot of species we have marginalised and driven to extinction would have differing views.

However, from a selfish personal perspective, I am very happy to have had the good fortune to live in such a golden age of human achievement, even if we have mightily f4cked ourselves in the process!

I would personally rather I hadn't if our fate is to lose it.

Evolution, it seems, has a dark sense of humour and we are its cruellest joke.

Edited May 27, 2009 by Steve Cook

[General Congreve]

I would personally rather I hadn't if our fate is to lose it.

Evolution, it seems, has a dark sense of humour and we are its cruellest joke.

Come on Steve, you're banging away on a laptop just like me, you love the modern world and are therefore a big hypocrite just like the rest of us.

Being pragmatic, I don't believe the human race has any predetermined destiny that we will fail to fulfil by hastening our own demise. We are just animals that breath, eat, sleep and shit, like most other species, but just happen to have been pretty technologically innovative along the way. Our loss will not be a tragedy. All things come to pass.

[Guest Steve Cook]

Come on Steve, you're banging away on a laptop just like me, you love the modern world and are therefore a big hypocrite just like the rest of us.

Being pragmatic, I don't believe the human race has any predetermined destiny that we will fail to fulfil by hastening our own demise. We are just animals that breath, eat, sleep and shit, like most other species, but just happen to have been pretty technologically innovative along the way. Our loss will not be a tragedy. All things come to pass.

Oh yes I do indeed love the modern world. Or at least, I love the knowledge that the modern world has afforded us. Which is why it is such a shame we look likely to lose it.

I am an atheist. For me there is no meaning to existence save for that which we impose on it. The short and brutal existence that was the lot of our ancestors for much of the history of our species was probably only bearable as a consequence of the invention of religion. The ultimate, necessary self-protecting delusion if you like. What our modern world has allowed us, for a fleeting moment, is to dare to dream that we could become the architects of our own existence as a species.

That dream now looks to be over

Edited May 27, 2009 by Steve Cook

[Pindar]

Indeed - Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and makes up 2/18th of the mass of our oceans!

Just one wittle problem - on Earth its mostly tightly bound up with oxygen.

Do tell how you propose to economically 'extract' all that hydrogen?

Er, that was the point. The original post talks about extracting oil from tar sands. Hydrogen can be extracted from seawater but there's no net gain in energy.

[1929crash]

That dream now looks to be over

I disagree - game over's gone to bed!