Board 8 > If every country increased their standard of living to US/Western Europe/Japan..

(+) Yeah! (+)

.. then the world's oil supply would be used up in 4 years.


At least, according to Gerard O'Neill in his 1976 book "The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space"

Was/Is this fact? DOes this mean that it'd be terrible for the global economy if every country stopped being impoverished?

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we've already hit peak oil, improved standard of living in third world countries or not, things are going to have to change soon

wow, just read up on this peak oil concept. Apparently that is why gas prices skyrocked in 04(that is when we hit it). Apparently we have until 2020 to figure SOMETHING out, because that is when the sharp decline in oil production will begin.

7 years.

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"Don't freeze up girl, you're looking quite a sight." - Adam Ant.
"Baby, can you dig your man? He's a righteous man." - Larry Underwood

Yeah, the US hit peak oil back in the 70s (IIRC). We used to have a lot of oil, but not anymore. I've heard predictions saying that peak oil worldwide would occur sometime between 2000-2050 (it could have already happened). I have also heard that we've already accessed most of the "easy" oil and we will need to rely on oil that is harder to access. That's been used as an explanation for oil prices, since if oil is harder to extract, then that means it costs more to extract. I think there's a more involved than that, but I don't know all that much about the energy industry.

You might like to watch Crude Awakening. Very interesting movie, you might like it.

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anything that is figured out is just going to be bought up by oil companies and never see the light of day again, the US is especially ****ed because our entire infrastructure is based on everyone using cars, unless you live in a major city you probably can't get by without using a car constantly

wow, just read up on this peak oil concept. Apparently that is why gas prices skyrocked in 04(that is when we hit it). Apparently we have until 2020 to figure SOMETHING out, because that is when the sharp decline in oil production will begin.

Hmm, I read articles from around 2007 that we would hit peak oil this year or in 2016, more specifically. I don't know if any recent articles say otherwise, though.

And no, we don't need to figure out anything. Remember, anyone who says anything about oil (even if it is concerns about peak oil and not about the environment) is a hippie treehugger who worships Al Gore and drives a Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius. Real Americans drive big SUVs around at 90 mph getting crap fuel economy.

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I'm all for destroying the environment, real american yo. but our current system isn't sustainable, if we don't start changing it in the next 20 years or so our grandchildren are going to be SO butt ****ed.

oh wait I care about the next generation, not a real american :(

we'll just have a lot of windmills and electric cars

Unless you are old enough to have grandchildren yourself, you will live to see the consequences of peak oil with your own eyes.

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From his looks Magus is Macho Man Randy Savage as an anime zombie. The black wind howls, and one of you will snap into a Slim Jim ooh yeeeah! -sonicblastpunch

I wonder how plentiful lithium is. I'd think that we could use a lot of it if we have all electric cars with current technology.

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we have enough helium 3 to power the entire earth for 1,000 years

ON THE MOON

THAT CAN'T BE USED FOR ENERGY WITHOUT NUCLEAR FISSION TECHNOLOGY WHICH IS PROBABLY AT LEAST 20 YEARS FROM HAPPENING

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Time to develop Minovsky Ultracompact Fusion Reactors IMHO

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"Don't freeze up girl, you're looking quite a sight." - Adam Ant.
"Baby, can you dig your man? He's a righteous man." - Larry Underwood

I should get back into OGame >_>

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From: Azp2k32 | #011
we have enough helium 3 to power the entire earth for 1,000 years

ON THE MOON

THAT CAN'T BE USED FOR ENERGY WITHOUT NUCLEAR FISSION TECHNOLOGY WHICH IS PROBABLY AT LEAST 20 YEARS FROM HAPPENING

Fission tech is already in. You mean Fusion, yes?

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From: KanzarisKelshen | #014
Fission tech is already in. You mean Fusion, yes?

I think he means we're 20 years away from helium 3 extraction.

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edwardsdv and swordz9 are basically the comedy heel tag team of this topic, why would people be taking them seriously?

KanzarisKelshen posted...
Fission tech is already in. You mean Fusion, yes?

Errr yeah.

Helium-3 extraction timeframe, moon-wise, I've got no idea on. All depends on how fast someone decides that setting up a god damn moon mining base is a good idea. I'm sure we have the technology already; it's more of a matter of cost and timeframe on the investment.

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Liquid Wind | Posted 1/24/2012 3:41:52 AM | message detail | quote
anything that is figured out is just going to be bought up by oil companies and never see the light of day again, the US is especially ****ed because our entire infrastructure is based on everyone using cars, unless you live in a major city you probably can't get by without using a car constantly

We really do need to improve our public transportation here, because that will go a long way in cutting back on our oil consumption. However, our government is so out of whack right now that it probably won't happen, especially given our debt troubles. Getting the money necessary to improve our public transportation would be difficult without something like higher gasoline taxes.

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honestly, the public transportation upgrade should have happened 40 years ago. Now it's going to cost WAY too much.

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"Don't freeze up girl, you're looking quite a sight." - Adam Ant.
"Baby, can you dig your man? He's a righteous man." - Larry Underwood

obviously we just have to put solar panels on literally everything


get your pet spayed or neutered and solar powered today

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O'neill in the book I mentioned in the original post mentions an interesting idea: Farm solar energy in space. Solar energy can be harvested all the time in space. You just fill up solar batteries or something and ship them to earth when they're charged.

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"Don't freeze up girl, you're looking quite a sight." - Adam Ant.
"Baby, can you dig your man? He's a righteous man." - Larry Underwood

honestly, the public transportation upgrade should have happened 40 years ago. Now it's going to cost WAY too much.

Interesting thing: lots of cities used to have some rail systems. Then, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Streetcar_Scandal

It's too bad, really. The system in Los Angeles seemed to work pretty well. Then again, compared to the freeways here, anything works well.

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Viktor Vaughn posted...
obviously we just have to put solar panels on literally everything


get your pet spayed or neutered and solar powered today

if I had the money I would build an island in international waters made from solar panels

I play too many video games

Yeah going electric will solve every problem... until we run out of coal
And then we can go nuclear... until we run out of plutonium
And then we can go solar... until we run out of whatever plastic crap you need to make solar panels
And then we can go wind... until the wind stops blowing

And then we're ****ed because we won't be able to parasail anymore

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_foolmo_
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the wind is forever

OmarsComin posted...
the wind is forever

http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/588331-final-fantasy-v/images/screen-6

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From his looks Magus is Macho Man Randy Savage as an anime zombie. The black wind howls, and one of you will snap into a Slim Jim ooh yeeeah! -sonicblastpunch

if someone breaks our wind crystal I will be ****ing pissed

I was thinking Chrono Trigger for some reason, but yeah FFV makes a lot more sense.

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_foolmo_
'I love you so much' - SineNomine

I'm the wind! whoosh!

You know the world is not really at risk of running out of oil ever; as oil starts running out it will become more and more expensive and more research will flow into other technologies. Already, gas is an economically feasible alternative. Basically, there is a 0% chance of coming to a moment where people are like "wait, oil, gas and coal are out, what now?" and prices suddenly spike heavily or something. That's not going to happen.

Whether it be solar, wind, hydro energy or something else, some renewable technology will arise and as it is perfected it will probably become a lot cheaper than oil is now.

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Not really based on the point of this topic but..

If every country increased their standard of living to US/Western Europe/Japan than wouldn't that breed dozen times more scientists that could further push research into alternative resources much farther and at a faster rate?

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I was fortunate enough to attend a talk given by G Warfield Hobbs on this subject.

The majority of predictions he was able to acquire put global peak oil production at some point in the near future, at a time-span short enough that we will likely live to see it. He also stressed that the west and japan have not significantly increased our demand for oil since the oil crisis during the Carter administration (this is true).

The increased demand for oil comes almost entirely from developing nations, such as China (The increase in demand is also the reason for the increase in price-me).

He was hopeful that improvements in recovery technology could yield trillions more barrels from oil fields previously thought to be depleted.

He stressed that one of the biggest challenges wasn't producing enough oil to meet global demand, but distributing all of it (global daily demand is enormous).

Then he made some arguments.
-Current US and global energy practices are unsustainable
---increasing standard of living globally will require energy
---current energy practices have lead, and will continue to lead to climate change.

-we could not maintain our standard of living if we had to rely exclusively on current renewable technologies

-the public and the us government have failed to fully grasp the consequences of climate change

-"Washington is paralyzed by conflicting agendas and an inability to compromise"- said in regard to oil companies, environmental groups, renewable energy scientists, the public interest, and others all having a dog in the fight.

The last point he was able to make before running out of time was advocating higher CAFE standards as something easy that the government could do to help energy problems. He claimed to have personally heard from auto company executives that they could produce more fuel efficient vehicles at no extra cost, but that americans prefer to buy the gas guzzlers, so they make them to be competitive.

Anyway, that's what I heard.

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

To directly answer your question, it may have been the case the known world oil supplies would have been depleted if the global per capita oil use matched the US. However, global oil supply far outstrips what are called proven reserves. For instance, 1970 estimates did not include oil shale, of which there is enough to match Saudi resources.

Fundamentally, yes, providing enough energy so that everyone could enjoy our standard of living is the largest engineering problem in the world today. Ultimately, the energy will have to be solar. geothermal is the only energy source we use that did not originate from the sun. To have a sustained energy supply, we cannot use more per year than what comes from the sun.

This is great news. Earth receives more energy from the sun in an hour than humanity currently uses in a year. The problem is to develop a capture method for this energy.

Remember also that every living creature relies on the sun's energy, and we can't monopolize it without mass extinctions. Ideally, we would have solar energy collection systems on all of our buildings and roads, and not ever on some kind of solar farm.

And that's the biggest problem facing the world today: overpopulation, leading to reduced habitat for other life forms. Energy is a comparably easy problem to solve.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

Finally, I am morally opposed to windmills as an energy source. Producing wind energy on any kind of meaningful scale uses vast tracts of land. That same land has more production potential from solar sources. Maintenance of these vast wind farms is both expensive and highly destructive of the surrounding environment. Also, humanity has not devised a more efficient method of slaughtering birds and bats than windmills.

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

well that killed the conversation

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

From: Gwindor | #033
To directly answer your question, it may have been the case the known world oil supplies would have been depleted if the global per capita oil use matched the US. However, global oil supply far outstrips what are called proven reserves. For instance, 1970 estimates did not include oil shale, of which there is enough to match Saudi resources.

Fundamentally, yes, providing enough energy so that everyone could enjoy our standard of living is the largest engineering problem in the world today. Ultimately, the energy will have to be solar. geothermal is the only energy source we use that did not originate from the sun. To have a sustained energy supply, we cannot use more per year than what comes from the sun.

This is great news. Earth receives more energy from the sun in an hour than humanity currently uses in a year. The problem is to develop a capture method for this energy.

Remember also that every living creature relies on the sun's energy, and we can't monopolize it without mass extinctions. Ideally, we would have solar energy collection systems on all of our buildings and roads, and not ever on some kind of solar farm.

And that's the biggest problem facing the world today: overpopulation, leading to reduced habitat for other life forms. Energy is a comparably easy problem to solve.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

Pretty sure you can't harvest that much energy without a sort of reverse Dyson Sphere. And pretty sure that you can't even harvest a percent of it efficiently without blotting out the skies with transports or machines. Solar energy isn't as cool as it sounds until you're on a different tech level than ours. We're gonna need fusion to get there.

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Crude Awakening

i see what was done there

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yawn

Actually, with existing technology, we could easily meet current energy needs with photovoltaics without using much land.

There are other technologies too. We can use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be used for electrical energy in a fuel cell at extremely high efficiencies.

I imagine some configuration of this device will have a plethora of uses in the near future.


Why isn't everything photovoltaics now? Because the panels are expensive. No one will use them as long as coal and oil are relatively inexpensive.

The panels they make at NREL that are the most efficient in the world. However, the researcher working on them deposited their layers a few atoms at a time, which you might imagine is a time consuming process. Less efficient panels are easier to make, but end up wasting a lot of materials. The biggest problem right now is that all panels require rare earth minerals. There are simply not enough materials on earth to make all the panels we would want.

But make no mistake. Harvesting solar energy directly is the future of humanity. It's just a matter of when.

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

Obviously. The issue is that it's a far future because it's so much cheaper to use something else.

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From: foolm0ron | #023
Yeah going electric will solve every problem... until we run out of coal
And then we can go nuclear... until we run out of plutonium
And then we can go solar... until we run out of whatever plastic crap you need to make solar panels
And then we can go wind... until the wind stops blowing

And then we're ****ed because we won't be able to parasail anymore

best

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