Rolling Stone article - The End of Oil

[comquat1]

I just got my latest rolling stone (april 7th) and rarely read the political article the publish each month since it's usually a liberal blabbing on about something I don't believe in being that I'm more of the conservative slant. However the title of this months one caught my eye. We've got alot of smart people that visit this site and I was curious what you all thought of it. Basically it says that very soon we're going to run out of oil, actually we'll run out so fast that we will not have a substitute in place to keep life like we know it today.

Here's a link
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7203633

 

[brahtw8]

An interesting, if unsurprising read.

I think the topic deserves a lot more attention than it is getting, but I don't know if the doomsday scenario is accurate. Articles like these may be necessary for people to do something about it.

We need to change the way we approach energy in this country and I can't see that happening with the current administration.

I have a hard time seeing it happening with the next administration, unless someone principled and radical gets elected, which is highly unlikely.

The role of the suburban migration and increased consumption of resources is an interesting point that deserves further exploration.

Having spent a lot of time in Europe, the mass transit system in this country is pathetic. I would ride a train to work and other places if I had the option.

I would also like to see clean diesel and increased CAFE standards, including trucks. Hybrid and other technology needs to be applied on a mass scale and the government and the market need to provide incentives for development far beyond anything that exists today.

 

[comquat1]

Rolling Stone's slant gets old very quick, they're far from neutral. However, I just wish more people would do more for the environment period. Getting off topic here, but I try to recycle as much as I possibly can, I get kinda dejected when I see that it's big business for a company to recycle cardboard but stop at that (Small ammounts of plastics, metal, etc). It seems that only bulk gets addressed, but if you were to add up all the small amounts that people don't recycle I can only imagine that that volume becomes substantial as well. Also the dropoff of recycling once one gets home sometimes gets disheartening too.

Getting back to the article though, the author kinda fails to accept that technology will undoubtably advance to the point that we should at least be able to get the oil that today is unreachable and also the role that economics plays in the whole picture. Economies of scale for new technologies have a huge impact on how quickly something gets accepted. What Toyota with their hybrid technology, how that they've got most of their research done (the hard part) they're on cruise control while every other automaker is lagging with the exception of Honda.

 

[95NSXT]

That kind of makes me want to buy some gas and save it and never drive my car again haha. I hope there is more development going on than I am aware of. Given that only a few companies have produced cars using alternative uses of fuel. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the supercar industry once all this starts to happen. We are sitting on pretty much endless energy right now. I think around ~8miles down it is hot enough to produce steam, as seen from guysers(sp?). The problem is getting down there to utilize it. The heat could be used to power our economy, but the shear heat is also the problem. Once we find a way to harness and extract all that energy from below I think we will be in better shape. The problem is that we are wasting our other resources in the mean time while we wait to see if this is feasible. I guess only time will tell. Maybe we should give a strong environmentalist a year in office and maybe he will get something done :tongue:

 

[PHOEN$X]

Very scary.

Some regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine Phoenix without cheap air conditioning.

 

[Autophile]

Some regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine Phoenix without cheap air conditioning.

As a result, I imagine that housing prices in the temperate regions of California will sky-rocket even faster than they are now.

The real reason for me to post in this thread is... I found another article about this topic, from the Associated Press. Perhaps I should sell my single-digit mpg musclecar while the gettin's good. :frown:

 

[NSXLNT]

Rolling Stone is not the only source to have been doing articles on this recently. I've read several others, though can't remember the sources. It could be a planned media blitz for a TV docudrama that one of the cable stations will air soon, however, that doesn't negate the seriousness of the situation. It's only common sense to understand that at some point, sooner than later, the amount of oil in the earth will have been pumped dry. Think of all of the ways oil is used besides gasoline/diesel for transportation. The most important for survival of society as we know it that comes to mind are agriculture and heating/electrical generation. At the very least, modern industrialized governments should institute strict conservation plans NOW, and focus thier efforts on alternatives to the uses of oil. Auto makers should be forced to adopt minimum MPG ratings on any vehicles they sell, at least double what they are now. A very close second on the list should be policies for negative population growth. The earth simply cannot sustain the human race the way we currently continue to expand and consume.

 

[liftshard]

The issue is not running out of oil; it's the ability to increase supply from one year to the next, to GROW.

You all know about economic growth and recession. People expect revenues to grow, profits to grow, economies to grow.

That means 4% annually, 5%, whatever. That is exponential growth. It's like compound interest. 5% on last year. Next year, 5% on last year + 5% on the 5%...and so forth.

Oil supply has been growing like that. But, at some point, Peak Oil, supply will no longer grow. It will begin to decline and nothing in existence can stop this condition. It's a fact, not conjecture, not a "what if," but pure, hard thermodynamics. We will hit Peak sometime within the next 5 years. At that point, our expectation of what oil we'll have next year will be up here and reality will be down there. BTW, as a point of historical reference, this is what happened in the early 1970s in the USA, which led to hyperinflation, economic recession, essentially the collapse of most of our major industry, etc. Peak Oil hit the USSR in the late 1980s and their society collapsed entirely.

Look at what happens to a stock if they have 0% growth. They made the same money as last year, could still be wildly profitable, but their shares dive a ton because everyone expects perpetual growth, instead of just maintenance of the status quo.

Exponential growth is unsustainable. That is the fundamental problem. Industrial economies use energy. To grow an economy requires a growth in energy supply. So, a decrease in energy supply means continual, sustained, worldwide recession against an exponentially increasing population. Obviously, this is not good.

And, no, we won't discover something to efficiently get the oil. The USA was the world's #1 oil producing nation for nearly a century. This is largely why we are so affluent. In 1970, we hit Peak as M. King Hubbert predicted. Today, we produce 34% less oil, despite MASSIVE technological advances as significant as have been made in the history of man. The microprocessor was invented in 1974. This permitted the ballistic advance in technology that we reap benefits from and its raw power, supercomputing, processing by machine, automation, has been applied to oil production, whether in geological prospecting, complex flow analysis, drilling technology, the very metals, alloys, tools, and machines which go INTO the business. Everything IN oil is now done using these computers which have changed society more in the last 30 years than the entire remaining history of man combined.

We invented an artificial lifeform, a new order of intelligence, in the 1970s and it does things for us now that we cannot do, including fly our aircraft and make decisions for us. Modern cars have computer controls which can even prevent you from killing yourself.

Yet, with all this, this utterly stupendous achievement we've made, we have not been able to reverse Peak Oil here. It cannot be done anymore than processing speed and technology can reverse the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.