Without fossil fuels and Nuclear, how are we going to cope with Peak OIl?

Question

Every year, the world uses one cubic mile of oil. To replace this fuel source you would need to:
Build 104 coal-fired power stations every year for 50 years,or
Build 4 Three Gorges dams every year for 50 yrs, or
Build 52 Nuclear power plants every year for 50 yrs,(not possible as there is already a Uranium shortage),or
Build and install 32,850 wind turbines every year for 50 yrs, or
Build and install 91,250,000 Solar panels every year for 50 yrs.
All to replace one years oil supply!
With eminent sceintists like Dr. Bently from the University of Reading study group telling us oil will start declining from around 2012-20, what are we going to do? Why isn't the Government talking about this instead of Global Warming? Shouldn't we be gettting busy doing something about it now? What will happen when farmland that is only useful with oil-based fertilisers can't be used to grow food anymore?

I got my figures from the IEEE Spectrum website, who complied the data in such a way as for ordinary mortals such as I to understand. The piont, for those who missed it, is that we have no other fuel source as rich as oil, and any alternatives to oil are actually derivitives of oil, not replacements. Think about it, when the stuff starts getting rarer, we're in trouble if we don't act now.

IEEE is the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, and the guys who wrote 'Joules, BTU's, Quads - Let's call the whole thing off,' perceived that people get confused when experts talk about energy, hence the analogy above.

By the way, untapped reserves doesn't mean available reserves, besides, why use a first class fuel like gas to make low grade oil? Talk about turning gold into lead! Gas is finite too.

Fusion, yes please, but the only place Helium 3 is available in enough quanitity is the moon. Try again everyone.

Answer 1

I understand your fears as I am worried about this world as well. There are some tactics that are used by huge companies all over the world and it has to do with ensuring their own fortunes. Those huge companies make billions of dollars and the people who run them obviously don't want that to stop. So not only do they keep spending money on their wasteful and destructive processes, they also spend lots of money to make sure that any other products that might cut into those profits, even if it might be an amazing breakthrough, never make it big. Example: we have had the technology to run engines off of ethanol for at least the past 50 years. In fact, I think the one of the first engines was built to run off of ethanol/vegetable oil. But since you can't patent a corn plant and ethanol doesn't require as much oil, big powerfull companies will do what they can to make sure that those products don't get heard about, hence ensuring their profits. This is a problem because the companies that are doing this are so big that they pretty much have control over congress. If not through conflict of interest, through bribes and payoffs. It's not that farfetched to think that a company that's bigger than the goverment could bribe politicians. It's happening and at our cost. "How does this all tie into the question?" you might ask. The entire previous rambling was just to show that we have and we have had the ability to live with a much lower dependency on fossil fuels. Just like we have and have had the ability to cure cancers and other diseases, but when a company makes billions off of a product nothing, not even the majority of the population, will get in their way. So I guess the question is not how are we going to cope without oil, but how are we going to get the world out of the grip of oil.

Answer 2

The government needs to start funding research into stable nuclear fusion in a big way, and they need to start now.

Nuclear fusion offers almost limitless cheap energy, produced from the fusion of radioactive hydrogen nuclei and the only waste products are water and helium. It will be expensive to get going, but once up and running nuclear fusion power stations will be very cheap to run, since under the right conditions the fusion reaction can be self sustaining.

It is certainly a long term solution rather than a short term one, but the sooner the government prioritises the research and gets some serious money going into it, the sooner a method of containing and exploiting nuclear fusion can be found.

In my view its the only solution to future fuel shortages, and also the only way to prevent runaway global warming for that matter.

Answer 3

There is enough oil in Iraq, SA, Canada, Iran, to keep the world going for decades. They have over 80% of the world 'UNTAPPED' reserves.

Greatest Oil Reserves by Country, 2006
Rank Country Proved reserves
(billion barrels)
1. Saudi Arabia 264.3
2. Canada 178.8
3. Iran 132.5
4. Iraq 115.0
5. Kuwait 101.5
6. United Arab Emirates 97.8
7. Venezuela 79.7
8. Russia 60.0
9. Libya 39.1
10. Nigeria 35.9
11. United States 21.4
12. China 18.3
13. Qatar 15.2
14. Mexico 12.9
15. Algeria 11.4
16. Brazil 11.2
17. Kazakhstan 9.0
18. Norway 7.7
19. Azerbaijan 7.0
20. India 5.8


Hence the conflicts, all the green stuff is just a back stop in case the master plan does not work. There is also a far amount in Russia and Alaska. Oil is there but access is not.

NOTE - where the US is , despite being the worlds biggest user, it does not have the worlds biggest supply. The solution is not hard to work out.

I hear what you are saying about building alternatives now, but this will not happen to any great scale, whilst there is oil to fought over, which is the easier option to the likes of Bush. Gore will go for peace and build.

EXTRA (look at last link) if you compare proven reserves against what the world has consumed to date, the world has used just 18% of it. Of the remaining 82% some of it will be fought over, other parts will be too costly to extract.

Answer 4

Researchers and space enthusiasts see Helium-3 as the perfect fuel source: extremely potent, non-polluting, with virtually no radioactive by-product. Proponents claim it is the fuel ofthe 21st century. The trouble is, hardly any of it is found on Earth. But there is plenty of it on the moon.

Cosmochemist and geochemist Ouyang Ziyuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is now in charge of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has already stated on many occasions that one of the main goals of the program would be the mining of helium-3, from where "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world."

Answer 5

Right now, government energy policy is being set by the oil and coal companies--which should answer part of your question.

Otherwise--we do neeed to worry about global warming--because the effects of that are going to hit long before we run out of fossil fuels. Also, a shift to alternative enrgy will solve both problems.

There are several viable ways of dealing with both potential shortages of fossil fuels and global warming. We have the technology now to get 30% (minimum) of our energy from solar power--if it were implemented on a wide scale. Right now, efforts along those lines have proved that--but again, policy iniitiatives to encourage conversion to solar (and other alternative enrgy) are being blocked by special interests.

Another way to deal with this is to reconfigure how we use energy. Estimates vary--but anywhere from 30-50% of our energy use is simply waste (also--that's money out of consumers' pockets). Housing designs are energy inefficient. And especially in the US, our transportation system is geard almost exclusively to cars. Consumers in most cases don't have realistic public transist alternatives. Again--that is a direct result of public policy failures--driven by special interests with the goal (deplorably successful) todeny American consumers any real alternative to driving.

Now add it up--if we switch 30% of our energy production to renewable energy and reduce per capita usage by 30%, you've already solved 60% of the problem with technology that we have available right now--all we need to do is implement it (gradually, of course) over the next 20-25 years. And there are plenty of possibilities to handle the other 40%--those do need a good bit of research at this point. But you get the idea: this is a problem we can solve.

Answer 6

I think economics are going to answer your question for us.

It's not like oil is going to run out one day.

It just gets more and more expensive to get a barrel of oil out of the ground.
As it gets more expensive, our economy changes, and adapts to that: Petrol prices rise, so your next car is going to be more economical.
Electricity prices rise, making solar power more competitive.
Transportation costs rise, making locally produced things cheaper.

Personally I believe a lot will be won be efficiency. Example: Suppose I burn 100 litres of oil a week, just to get to work.
Extracting and transporting that oil takes, say, another 50 litres.
Tomorrow I will buy a more fuel efficient car and I work at home 1 day of the week.
I then use only 60 litres of oil to do the same work. That 60 litres cost 30 litres to be brought to my doorstep.
By consuming 40 litres less, I have actually saved 60 litres.
Not bad for a weeks work :)


Ok, so it's not like one day we wake up and there's no more oil and everybody runs around wondering what to do.
As we adapt to higher oil prices, we are already softening the 'landing' for when it is no longer economical to extract oil from the ground.

Answer 7

What do you think the two lateset "conflicts" Iraq, Afghanistan are about... Oil, Iraq has it the pipeline goes through Afghanistan..

Answer 8

You are comparing non renewable sources to renewable sources and doing poorly at the math and biology to boot.

Stay in school. Don't have children. PLEASE!