How long more will normal life on earth be possible?

Question

Our oil reserves are depleting fast and how long more can the economies and normal life last when oil reserves run dry? What can we use after this? Go back to wood/charcoal? Then all the trees will be cut down before regrowths are achieved and cause a major reduction in oxygen supplies. Nuclear energy is still very dangerous to handle and risky. Solar energy is seasonal and not all day long. Wind power is marginal energy, not always there to charge up huge banks of batteries. Marine wave power is not sufficient and depends on the tides. Countries with high mountains and hydro electric power will be saved from this doom as long as there is water in the lakes and reservoirs to run them. Maybe we all go back to the good old horse and buggy days again in no time at all.

Answer 1

You call this NORMAL?????
Remember, a big problem before the automobile was horse droppings. The 'good ol' days' were never all that good! Fortunately, there ARE answers. Clean ethanol fuels, wind, solar, and geothermal energy are all viable, as is wave power generation. That doesn't even touch the more esoteric power supplies like aether and zero point power. This is not the end. It is not even the end of the beginning.

But the system as it is will indeed collapse soon. I don't give it 6 months. (I DO hope I'm wrong!)

Answer 2

No problem, nature will answer it with the four horsemen of the apocalypse, war, pestilence, famine and plague, they will ride when nations with resources are attacked by nations without. this is happening now, very low key, as the USA converts food crops to fuel crops, and those nations that have been assailing the USA at one level or another but dependent on our food shipments, find our sympathy and patience worn out, and they try and figure out how to convert their dwindling oil reserves to food. Some, like Iran, have decided a nuclear arsenal to blackmail other nations is the key, the clock is ticking, just a matter of time before some third world nation that gets ahold of nukes uses them, and has to be similarily wiped off the map. Fast growing willows and wood chip or grass cellouse ethanol is being developed, as is freshwater/saltwater ionic (electric) discharge. There is no one single alternative energy source, but they all, in combination, suited to individual needs, can drastically reduce the need of fossil fuels. THE PROBLEM is big government wants big corporations to recieve all the tax dollar supported alternative energy schemes. which is why people who have been running on their own biofuels have been targeted by government taxation agencies and fined so heavily as to remove any financial advantage of being enviromentally friendly. They ban individual homeowners from small scale solar, hydro or wind power that is readily avaialable, but endorse massive projects benefitting local utillities and billionaire investment groups. And then there are the NIMBYs like rep. Dole who doesn't want oil rigs despoiling her ocean view, and dem Kennedy who opposes and offshore wind project for the same reason (air currents go out to sea in am and inland in pm, "visual blight" is the chief objection of tidal/current projects as well). Pres. Nixon warned America to free itself of foreign energy dependence, Carter did a lot of hand wringing, blocking projects for enviromental reasons, and then resided over the worse energy crisis and price hikes (all just bogus excused greed) ever seen, until recently. Now Bush but both dems and reps who need big energy/utility election funds, are doing nothing but sponsoring programs to benefit same corporations at our expense. Man made global warming is just another rip off of taxpayers and government handout to big corporations. WE are getting screwed, WAKE UP PEOPLE!

Answer 3

Normal life does not require Oil. People lived normal lives for thousands of years before we learned to use Oil. After it runs low, we will either invent new ways of doing the same things that now require oil or we will regress to living like we did before Oil. Something like the Amish.

Answer 4

until the water supply runs out we are ok. with it we can produce enough energy through neuclear power (all the plants are about 50 years old, if we tried we could build much better ones). thats assuming that globlal warming doesn't kill all of us first.

Answer 5

Maybe 5 years.

Answer 6

cool however the 1st 2 are incorrect. sorry. there have been lots of helicopters in We have been infantrymen, which occurred to be an astonishing action picture. and sunlight hours savings grow to be made to save electrical energy, save skill.

Answer 7

about 10 to 13 years probably so we'll have to alert by then

Answer 8

3-4 days most likely, i am a scientist

Answer 9

No more than one hundred years.

Answer 10

Until God destroys the earth and their is a new Heaven and a new earth.