what R some of the things that might happen past peak oil?

Question

Will large nations like the United States end up breaking up?How far technologically speaking we might go backwards.What other things may come to pass besides?

Answer 1

This has been studied for a long time.. in conjunction with many different limited resources.. (I actually took a course on this subject in 1980 in a masters engineering course)

What happens is that petroleum costs will gyrate.. up and down ... but generally drift upward..as resources get scarce.
Eventually as costs escalate alternative energy sources come online.. ( many of those we already have but they are too expensive to be phased in as alternatives right now..)
As the new come online to meet the demands they temper the price increases (thus the gyration).

Take oil shale.. we have lots of reserves of it.. but it cost $1-2 to pump a barrel of oil from the ground in the Middle East (and maybe another $5 to transport it ) but it costs $25 to 50 a bbl to convert oil shale to usable petroleum..

We have been attempting to get usable petroleum from oil shale for MANY years.. one of the reasons in 1975-1985 chemical engineering was such a popular engineering discipline was "alternative energy" industries were hiring a lot of them including oil shale and oil from coal, etc. but as petroleum prices moderated in the early 80s the "alternative energy" industry failed and a glut of engineers resulted.

What this means.. to the economy, politics, etc.. it may be a factor in the political change but I really doubt if we will "go backwards" technologically or politically.

Admittedly more wars may be fought over oil. Oil was the major reason Germany invaded North Africa in WWII and the lack of natural resources were the reason Japan tried to take over all of the Pacific..

Hey, did you know that in the 1930s they thought they only had a few years of oil left?

Answer 2

I don't think large nations will break up. But there will be economic problems. We will rely more on coal, including liquid fuels made from coal. There are known coal deposits enough to last 500 years. But unfortunately coal has more carbon than oil so burning it will put even more CO2 to the air than oil does. And you will see lots of alternative energy schemes get much more widely utilized. And maybe they will finally get fusion power working. At least I hope they do, because that is our best hope in the long run.

Answer 3

There's no reason the US would break up.

But the economic impact of very expensive oil will be hard to cope with. We need a crash program to develop and deploy alternative energy; nuclear, solar, wind. Waiting just means it will be harder to deal with.

Good book about this, "The End of Oil":

http://www.amazon.com/End-Oil-Edge-Perilous-World/dp/0618562117/ref=sr_1_1/105-9097808-6678068?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185587115&sr=1-1

Of course, we also need to do this to reduce global warming. It's pretty much a no brainer at this point.

Answer 4

we're not going to run out of oil for a long time.

once conventional oil is used up (if it ever is)

there is still oil shale, which the u.s. has in abundance. approximently 1.5–2.6 trillion barrels in the United States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale

then you have this process which can make oil as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

so we will never run out of oil