oil question?

Question

at school we are learning about oil, gas electricty solar energy and so on.
i understand oil was made millions of years ago by dead organisims and trees
and today where runing out . well not runing out by oil doesnt last forever
so i asked my teacher if oil is made by heat and pressure then since today is so modifyed with technology why cant we artifically make oil?
why cant we get funding to compresse and heat dead things and non recyclable garbage? why cant we?
i mean not take million of years but make oil to last a year. rather than taking it from the ground everyday?
why doesnt everyone use solar power, if we know the effects it has on the earth why are people still using it. i mean global warming has been around for years why hasnt there been change yet?. theres change but its slow.
someone out there care to explain to me.
please?

Answer 1

You ask several good, and related questions. The answers have as much to do with economics as science. In our system, we do things that make economic sense, and sometimes the thing that makes the most economic sense in the short term, is not the "best" thing in the long term, especially with regards to other important things (like protecting the environment).

Here's my attempt to answer your questions:

1. Why can't we make artificial oil?

We can and do create synthetic oil, but there are easier ways to do this than duplicating the natural process that forms oil. Synthetic oil is usually made from coal, via the Fischer-Tropsch process. Germany made oil this way in World War II, because they had little natural oil. A recent Department of Energy study predicts this kind of synthetic oil becomes economical with oil over $40 dollars/barrel, so if oil prices remain high, you may begin to see more interest in synthetic oil.

We also can make bio-diesel from waste fats, and even ethanol from plant matter. These things work well-enough on a small scale, but probably can't be done on a large enough scale to satisfy a major portion of our (huge) demand for oil. They will probably become niche fuels.

We do presently consume natural gas that is produced from decaying garbage in landfills. This is presently economical for (mostly industrial) customers that are located next to landfills, but just like with bio-diesel or ethanol, what works well on the small scale, often cannot be scaled up enough to make a major difference in our overall energy consumption.

2. Why doesn't everyone use solar power?

Solar power is useful for some applications but not others. Solar cells are expensive to make and degrade over time, plus they are primarily useful in sunny areas, and only during the daytime, so they are usually not economically competitive with electricity from the power grid. You'll probably see solar cells continue to be used for niche applications.

In especially sunny places (like the US southwest), there is much interest in solar thermal power. This type of solar power doesn't use solar cells, but rather an array of mirrors that focus the Sun's energy at a point, which heats a fluid, which turns a turbine and generates electricity, in the same way as most traditional power plants, but without pollution. But again, this is probably a niche application.

3. Why hasn't there been any change in our behavior with regards to global warming?

Not enough people yet see global warming as a serious enough problem that they would be willing to lower their energy consumption, and hence their living standards, in order to solve the problem. Global warming is an especially difficult problem for our society to solve, because its worst effects will happen in the future, after people who burn fossil fuels today are gone.

The ultimate answer to global warming will probably be a combination of many smaller changes -- some solar power, some wind power, some hydro power, some renewable fuels, some nuclear power, many changes to our lifestyles, and much adaptation to the negative effects of the global warming that we've already caused -- rather than a single solution that fixes the entire problem.

Answer 2

the only thing we can't recreate is time. there have been ways of taking things like peanut butter and super heating it and compressing it to make artificial diamonds. but they are so small, almost like sand. It took scientisits since the 1850's to come up with that, from concept to artificial diamond. Oil is the same way. It is hard to change something's chemical composition into a combustible product. That is why it is easier to look to alternative fuel sources. Also oil pollutes too much, and causes global warming, another reason for switching to alternatives.

Answer 3

To be brutally frank, it's all about vested interests. You quite rightly say that there are other alternative technologies that we can use for power, however if you were the owner of a massive oil company, worth billions of dollars, what would you do? You would suppress the development of alternative technologies to protect your own interests and profits and that is exactly what they do! This is not propaganda, it is a fact. The patents on many alternative fuel technologies have been bought up by the oil companies and have been just shelved.

Answer 4

the kind of pressures needed to produce oil are huge. you have to literally liquify organic mater through pressure and heat alone. If we put say a couple tons of compost in a hydraulic press for a year and turned it on full strength for that whole year we might get like 10% of it to turn into something resembling oil, but the energy required to do that would far outweigh what we get from it. its not a question of if we can do it, its a question of how much energy we will get out of it. its just not practical to make something which takes more energy than we get from it. as for solar power, it works sure, but its also quite expensive to make at this moment in time. more expensive than what is reclaimed by it, but research is on going in this department. when solar cells become cheap and easily manufacturable, then solar can take off. it still has the problem of availability and to correct that you need huge battery tanks which themselves are quite costly, and often times too combersome to be practical. as i said before, its not so much about if we can do it at this point, its how much will it cost vs how much do we get from it. sad, but true. the environment just costs too much to save right now for the american capitalist system to invest in it. without that money, progress is slow, limited to academic interestes and rouge investors. Global CLIMATE CHANGE (its not just warming, its fluctuating at incredible rates) has been well established as an occuring phenomenon for decades in academia (though its causes as human or natural cycles are highly disputed even today), but for real lasting unilateral change to happen, the money has got to be there first. without the money, the research to make it cheaper and more reliable just doesnt happen very quickly. it will happen though. green energy is on the way... check out Nikola Tesla and his Wardencliff Tower idea.... free power for everyone from the ionosphere transmitted through the ground without wires. its possible, we just gotta do the research and get the money!

Answer 5

We can and have made artificial fuel oil. Look up biodiesel. However, it is not the most cost effective procedure. People, consumers, want what's cheapest, even if that means raping the planet.

Solar energy isn't as cost effective as electricity from coal fired plants. Its all about money.