Warning: The topic description isn't hyperbole at all. This is a very depressing subject.

I'm too lazy to go into all the details here, such as the evidence or the repercussions, but I'll just link to this thread which goes into a lot of detail on what the effects are going to be.

If anyone wants me to link to the earlier threads, which are more "why Peak Oil is going to happen" than "why Peak Oil is going to fuck us all," just ask and I'll try to scrounge them up.


Edit: Fixed tags

Edit dos: Handy link!
Star Destroyer.net's Peak Oil FAQ

Wait, you mean when all the oil is driesd up what is going to happen?

We will move to something else... When given a good strong kick in the ass human inginutity is a wonderful thing, Oil riunning out is probly the swift boot to the cornhole we all need.

Sad but true.

No. This is Peak Oil, not End of Oil. It's talking about when oil production hits its peak and supply begins to fall as demand continues to increase.

It's the 70s Oil Crisis, magnified several times, and which will never get better. It will in fact get worse as the production declines exponentially.

Did you read the thread? Human ingenuity matters little when you don't have enough cheap energy to feed people, let alone make an entirely new infrastructure.

The only problem with that line of thought GJ is the assumption that the change between oil/whatever is next will be instantaneous the price for oil will be prohibitive for the average person long before oil runs out which will severely hammer the oil companies profits, they are researching the next fuel already. Heck the only reason everyone in the world isn't already driving a hybrid is the high prices of the cars because of the new technology, in a decade or two hybrids will be more common.

Did you actually read the thread?

I skimmed it, You seem to be panicing a bit more than you should. Remember when a massive computer error was going to hit 1999 going into 2000? That could have been catostropic, but we fixed it.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and once oil is no longer a viable fuel source, or when demand outgrows supply, people will invent shit, mark my words.

A fuel crisis at this point would be nowhere near as bad as it would have been say 30 years ago. Technology has advanced. We know shit, we are just too lazy to actually put it into practice.

Deisil Engines were made to run on Penut oil, or even hamburger grease (both burn cleaner than oil as an added bonus)
Ethonal is made from corn
Heat Plus Water = STEAM
And why the fuck do these electric cars not have something that perpetually moves for the sake of battery charging... I mean come on, do they even stop to think of how power is typically generated?



Anyway my point is any one of these, or any number of other answers may be the solution I'm not going to play this what if oil is no longer feasable OMGWTF THE SKY IS FALLING crap.

Loss of computers is nothing compared to loss of fuel. Oil is necessary for everything down to making enough food for people to live. In addition to the massive energy expenditures of transporting food everywhere, you're also using petroleum to make the fertilizer we need in order to feed the many billions on Earth.

"Invent" stuff? We stumbled upon massive stockpiles of dead dinosaurs that just happen to work INCREDIBLY well as a fuel source because of its liquid state and massive energy-gained to energy-expended ratio.

Since we've been exploring the entire planet for more of the black stuff, there isn't much room left for more wonder-fuels to be found.

It will be much worse now. Thirty years ago, there were 3.5 less billion people using energy and needing food. It will be worse now because it won't be because of embargoes from a single region; it will be because the Earth is running out.

Food is also helpful for feeding people. I'd say that has a higher priority than fueling cars.

And these bio-based fuels are not solutions. They're only cheap now because they aren't in demand at all. Once people start demanding them because petrol costs five times what it does now, price is going to go up tremendously.

Right. Your point? We're not looking at the internal combustion engine failing to work, we're looking at cheap fuel disappearing. You still need fuel to run a steam engine.

Yes they do. They also understand thermodynamics, which is why people don't shit like this.

Do you want me to find the threads that present the evidence for Peak Oil? I said I'd be more than happy to, and I'd really prefer it to people barging in and saying "man, I skimmed the cliff notes, and then I decided this is a bunch of hogwash!"

No one said it was all hogwash, merely that you are slightly overreacting, especially since you're talking as if the existence of oil is needed for society itself to exist (and I'm not talking about our society in specific but rather all society)


edit: You also missed Luppy's point entirely when he was talking about Y2K.

I believe his point here was that something that looked like a catastrophe was easily fixed.

So tell me, how did we "stumble" across things like solar panels? And just so you know, there's no such thing as a wonder-fuel.

And how does that take into account that we have alternate sources of energy that we never use? Once oil starts running out, people will use them--they won't have a choice.

Ethanol is not the only alternate source of energy. Also, if you really believe that feeding people is a higher "priority" than fueling cars, then you obviously don't know America that well. :P But that's a different discussion altogether.

Not really. Anyone can make Ethanol with the proper know-how. That means competition is going to keep prices down. Now, the price of corn will go up, but corn is not the only edible substance on the planet.

I believe his point was the use of geothermal energy.

You know someone somewhere is gonna try something like this eventually. I don't know if it'd work or not, but putting propellers on a car to generate wind energy sounds like something that should be tried at least once.

He's not saying that peak oil isn't happening. He's saying that there are alternatives to oil that are perfectly feasible that people aren't using yet because it's "too much trouble", and they'll start once they realize they have to.

The problem is, you need fuel to get that kinda thing going. Fuel to build, fuel to transport, fuel to provide energy for the processing plants and such.
And with the stubbornness of people, by the time they're willing to devote to the alternatives, that fuel to kick start simply won't be there.
Need oil to build power plants and such, need oil to build engines, and need oil to fuel the trucks and transport to TAKE those engines to their end destination.

That's partly what the emergency oil supplies are for.

You mean the Strategic Federal Petrolium Reserve that the current government taps into just about every time the gas prices get over three bucks a gallon on average nationwide?

Yeah, that doesn't exactly thrill me. We're supposed to use that for actual emergencies, not John Q. Public bitching. *grumbles and resists the urge to go off on a political rant*

One suggestion that people have made about reaching peak oil is Oil synthesis, specifically turning coal into oil. Back in WWII, the Nazi's did it during the last leg of the war, as they'd lost their major oil supply (the exact location of which escapes me at the moment). I know researchers have been looking into this, and there's been a few advances in the science in the past year or two, but I don't know what sort of progress is actually being made. As a moderate enviromentalist, I also don't know how good of an idea this is. I do know our coal supply is considerably more substantive than our oil supply, and somewhere around 40% of our electricity comes from coal.

I think though that regardless of what scientific advances are made, we are going to have to adapt the way we live our lives. Maybe substantially. A lot of it we should already be doing. Using more efficient light bulbs, recycling paper and plastic, carpooling and consolidating trips, and even biking to work (hey, I did it for a year. It's good exercise) are all things that we can do to lower our consumption of oil. Even simple things like reusable shopping bags instead of disposable plastic ones can make an impact if enough people do it.

We're much more likely as a people to get through this problem if we look at it as a challenge than if we throw up our hands and say "Looks like the 20th century was the high point of man's history. It's all downhill from here!" I get that enough from my roommate, and he's just talking about the "End of the Republic" and the downfall of democracy thanks to King George II. It's funny the first time. It gets old pretty fast.

Anyways, that's my two cents.

Hydrogen fuel. It's not very far yet, but given the time it will take before the inevitable crash of petroleum usage, it could reach somewhere. And, this is going completely off of my crappy memory, so it may be some other theoretical alternative fuel source, but there's a whole crapton of feasibly usable hydrogen under the water off the coast of japan.

And that's just one alternative fuel source. Humanity isn't just sitting back and going "well, we'll run out of petroleum, might as well give up living." We are working on solutions.

Y2K was popularly touted as an incoming catastrophe, but I don't remember it being noted by people who actually care. Peak Oil, on the other hand, is so well known by people in the petroleum industry that they all set themselves up with self-sufficient houses. Did people in the computer industry set up non-electric houses?

Solar power isn't very good. The very latest advances get 14% efficiency for the mass-producable varieties. And solar cells are really, really expensive to make.

And yes, there is a wonder-fuel. It's called petroleum. IIRC, the finished products (diesel, petrol, avgas) would give us something like 150 times more energy than we put in to drill/produce them.

Yes, people will have to use them. That does not mean that they can, though. Our entire transport and agricultural infrastructure is based on petroleum. And remaking infrastructure requires... right, cheap energy!

No, but like all other bio-fuels, it gives shit returns on energy. Again, the ONLY reason it's cheap now is that demand is so incredibly low. I think the only country that actually buys it is Sweden.

The Invisible Hand doesn't make everything cheap. If stuff is not cheap to produce in bulk, then it's not going to become cheap just because of competition. Just because you could sell more than your competitors if you sold your stuff at a loss doesn't mean that it's going to work (no 360/PS3 jokes plz).

Marginal at best. And it makes electricity, which, while we WILL need it later, it's not the main priority at the moment. We mainly need stuff to fuel the farms and transport fleets.

Um, the point is, this CAN NOT WORK. Any energy you get by the air resistence pushing the prop will be LESS than the energy you get with the generator. This CANNOT be solved by "betterer engines" or anything; it is prevented by physics itself.

The problem is, you need to SET UP these new sources. Power plants take years to set up (nuke plants take a full decade each) and cost billions. Changing fleets of trucks and cars and tractors to alternate fuel sources take even more time and more billions of dollars. Bringing fuel to the plants and energy to the cars costs MORE time and MORE billions. And since you're suggesting, rather correctly, that people will only start this AFTER the major effects strike (minor effects already have), they're going to have to do all of this during an economic crash where the energy you use to build everything is getting more expensive every day.

That is as valid as saying that the solution is "batteries." Hydrogen fuel is an energy SINK. You electrolyze the water into hydrogen and oxygen, using energy, and you burn the hydrogen into water, getting LESS energy than you put in to get the hydrogen.

Again, this is simple physics. Unless you're suggesting there are massive resevoirs of pure hydrogen underground like we luckily found coal and oil. There aren't.

It's possible, but again, you're looking at revamping infrastructure so you get more coal faster, making infrastructure so that we have the conversion plants, and the important fact: it's not going to be nearly as cheap of energy as petroleum. Better than most, though. Another problem is that we don't know how well it scales up. It worked in Germany 'cause they used a really, really small amount of oil compared to us.

So basically, we're going to enter an energy "dark age" before we even begin to develop something new.


Yay.


And here's a question, and I make no judgment on this idea, as I have no knowledge of how it could or could not work, but what do you think or know about the idea of abiotic oil... basically that the majority or oil is not from fossils, but is manufactured by the earth itself?

Underground, no. Underwater, yes. While not pure hydrogen as far as I can tell, I'm no chemist or physicist or what have you, there is an incredible amount of underwater hydrogen (and methane) gas hydrates. I'm not devoting much time to this as I should for a convicing argument, but a quick google search mentions hyrogen off the coasts of Japan and Canada, and "500 billion cubic meters" of methane in Thai waters.

Abiotic Oil "theory" is in crackpot whackaloon territory. No evidence beyond people wanting it to be true, or at least wanting people to believe it's true.

And it wouldn't even matter if petroleum was rock juice. Either way, Peak Oil is a fact. It happens to individual fields, it happens to regions (such as the U.S.), and it's happening to the planet as a whole.

Methane's just a form of natural gas, which, while it will last longer than petroleum, will hit a peak itself, shortly afterwards.

Are there any numbers for the mass of the hydrogen in these deposits? Either way it won't amount to anything, because again, there's no infrastructure there, but it helps a lot more to know the mass of gasses, because that's the only way you get to find out the energy content.

Grim indeed.

Alot of people seem to think that we can just invent something that will make this problem go away. And while there is technology that can make energy without oil, making the technology itself takes oil. Take hydrogen for instance.

Hydrogen cars do work, no doubt about that. The benefit of hydrogen combustion is portability. It has far more energy stored in it per volume and mass than any battery we can make. The problem is that hydrogen doesn't exist in large relatively pure reserves like oil. While it it incredibly abundant, for the most part it's locked in other cchemical substances, like water. Extracting the hydrogen will take energy. And unlike oil, you can't use the energy you get from burning hydrogen to fuel the extraction. That kind of process would be like giving someone 500 pennies to get four one dollar bills.

And as for bio fuels... gah. A large scale bio fuel operation would use tons of fertilizer. That fertilizer is made mostly of ammonia. And ammonia is made, suprise suprise, by using lots of energy from power plants. That doesn't even count the energy requirement for shipping the materials. To the plants or shipping the fertilizer to the farm.

The situation is even worse for food farms. They require energy for fertilizer and transporting the food, but the trips are made much worse by suburbs. At least in America cities are surrounded by houses and streets and infrastructure. But all that is based on the availibily if cheap easy transportion in the for of cars. Once people are forced to abandon cars as a viable transportation method suburbs will likely become ghost towns as people flock to cities. But all that crap will still be there, and would need to be cleared to be farmed. Clearing it will either require horrific amounts of back breaking labor because of the lack of fuel for construction equipment.

And Mike, saying we're going to enter a dark age is a bit over the top. Quality of life in Colonial America may suck compared to modern first world counties, and they didn't have cheap power, but it's still a hell of alot better than 800 AD Europe.

*nods* That's what I would have thought. I've never heard of any evidence for it, other than "we keep finding more oil in areas we thought drained!" Which would be explained by newer tech able to get the oil out from i\out of the way places.

And I've NEVER heard anyone address the "Okay, this area is out, how long before we can get more?"

I'm not saying it's a permanent solution (well, I'm not really saying anything, but eh), but It could buy us more time to come up with something else. Sure there'll be a point that we can't just keep sewing patches on it to fix things, and if we don't come up with a good enough renewable energy source before then we're out of luck, but running out of petroleum (or at least, peak oil itself) isn't the very end of things.

...and no, I don't have any numbers for the hydrogen. I'll try looking some more later, but as it is I have to get back off and do some more programming.

Right. It's not going to end the species or even, likely, society. It's going to be a very rough ride, though, especially in places like the U.S. and China, as well as any places they go strongarm when things start going south.

Needless to say, the third world is fucked.

I don't know what it's going to be like in the U.K. On the one hand, the population is dense and I don't think they use nearly as much petrol for transport as we Americans. But then again, they have far more people than their islands can feed.

Here is a really good discussion on this topic if anyone's still interested.

The oil companies themselves are now encouraging conservation.

You know we're reaching a tipping point when that happens.

http://environment.independent.co.uk/clima...icle2790960.ece

Reaching? There's fairly good evidence that the peak started two years ago.

Even if it hasn't and the drop in production was only a temporary shortfall, there's no possibility short of discovery of a hidden Saudi Arabia that will keep the peak from starting in a few years.

The oil companies are getting desperate if they're trying to find viable oil reserves in New Zealand

We're not as screwed as it seems. Really, we're not.

While peak oil may have hit, or will hit soon, we have backup plans in development as we speak.

In terms of powering transportation, I bring forth two points, one of which has been covered already.

1. Hydrogen cells.
While hydrogen cells definitely aren't the perfect answer, due to the fact that they are an energy sink, they provide us a way for us to keep on going. Even if we run out of oil, we can have enough alternative energy main power plants (along the lines of solar, wind, geothermal, and coal, while that lasts) to produce the energy needed to separate the hydrogen from water that is needed for hydrogen cells to work. More expensive overall? Sure. Capable of keeping our society afloat in dire straits? Also true. As we better these technologies, the costs will go down as well, and we'll be able to incorporate it better. Nuclear fusion is looking more and more realistic by the day, as well, with ITER looking like it will, finally, be the one that succeeds in this endeavour. This will provide a near limitless source of energy, which will be able to continue powering the hydrogen fuel cells.

2. We can turn anything into oil now. Really. With good efficiency.
Once again, this isn't a perfect solution. However, it solves some major issues - we dump all of our trash into this, and get oil out, thus solving the problems of both needing massive landfills and of the oil shortage.

I'm sure I can find more if I look. The lesson, though? Human ingenuity isn't failing us yet, and we're not being anywhere near as complacent about this as is generally perceived.

I believe when God Closes a door, he leave's a window open, and if that's locked, then you obviously have the wrong house.

I think that there will be other opptions when the time comes, They may not be perfect options, but they will keep us going untill the fire company comes to pry you out of the window cause your too big to fit through it.

I also have to agree that when the time does come, humans will get off their butts and start thinking with thier minds to come up with a salution. It might not happen right away but it will happen. Darkness can't go up forever, and even rain will stop.

Besides We haven't depened on oil forever. We've proven that we can build with out it, we will transport our selves another way. Look at the Ammish. (spelling?) Granted, things will probly be considerbly worse. But we are creatures of change, and maybe it's a change we need. Like a good strong kick in the tuckus, or no desert with supper. As far as food goes, looking at the obbesity stats... a good many of us could do with less food, my self included. I doubt the whole world would go hungry just because of oil.

There's no use worrying over it, the best we can do is think of solutions, or prepare for the worst, Like stockpiling can goods. (though I wouldn't recomend that... you know how sick you could get off of those) Or become an inspector at plants or factories and think of ways to cut down on fule cost/consuption.

Maybe my veiws are because I'm from the country, My uncles hunt Venisen and grow their own vegies and fruit. They have a fire place heater thing to heat up the house and get by in the shade during summer. The major thing we use oil for is cars and my family is used to walking by now. (considering we're rednecks and our cars are broke half the time) Granted not every one would be able to live like that. But it's proof we don't need oil to servive.

We already have batteries. That's not an issue. The point is that everything we have (literally hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, tractors) aren't using them. We'll have to rebuild our entire vehicular infrastructure from scratch and, due to the way capitalism and human nature work, rebuild it all during a massive energy crunch.

Uh, that site is rather, um, hard to follow, but from what I understand of it, it is actually talking about how the process is bunk. Or at least links to good arguments as to how that is the case(click on A Chemist's Comments).

Either way, even if we have 100% efficiency transformation of biomass into oil, it's not going to save anything. We're running the world on millions of years of backstock, not anything nearly sustainable. The general rule of thumb since the Green Revolution is that 12 kilocalories of energy go into getting you food worth one kilocalorie. I hope you can see how this won't work for very long.

The effects of peak oil could easily have been mitigated, yes, but mitigation efforts take time. And since Mexico, one of the biggest importers of petroleum into the United States literally runs out of every last drop of oil in a mere seven years, there doesn't seem to be much of that left.

That's true, but high industrial society (and its corresponding massive population) always has.

It would. The world's output of grain has sextupled and the world's population has more than tripled since the start of the Green Revolution, which almost entirely consisted of petroleum products (oil-run tractors, oil-derived fertilizer, etc.). Drop oil out of the equation and there goes 83% of our food and a good 4 billion+ people.

PS: Currently editing the first post to include a link to a handy hub to Peak Oil info, maths, and discussion.

There really should be more public service announcements done in the style of this one. Seriously.

Not really work safe, though then again, watching youtube at work seems like a silly idea.

This is why all the proposed mitigation measures won't work in a market-driven republic:



Well, aside from the time (which we don't have), energy (which is running out), and money needed to change so much of our infrastructure, but you know, those are just trivial.

Okay that just isn't true, there is plently of time and energy to still make a successful change, if we continue this shit for another 10-15 years, yes then it'll be too late but to be gloom and doom now while good at enacting change still isn't completely honest.

Edit: Now don't think I'm denying the importance of changing our fuel source, I just think it does no good to say we're all doomed now, since doing so will only weaken future arguments when it's shown to be not entirely true.

Why is it not honest? Because it's pessimistic? The big decline is going to hit America within a decade at the outside, and there's going to be stagnation and decline before that.

It would take trillions of dollars and more years than we have in order to remake our entire infrastructure in such a way that it can work as it does now. It takes nearly a decade to build a nuclear power plant, longer if you include the time to get it planned and approved. It's not that as soon as people realise things need to be done, they press the "get things done button" and it's done in an hour.

It might, MIGHT be possible to have much of the effect mitigated if the government simply forces these things through, ignoring the private sector entirely. Unfortunately, our government cannot actually do that thanks to how it is set up. Republics are not good for swift, decisive action.

I would agree and disagree with that. History has proven that there have been moments where large change was swiftly made in the name of the greater good, namely cases like WW1 and WW2, it's hard but not impossible.

Plus the process for approving nuclear power plants I have a feeling will become alot less difficult in the coming years with the public finally ending their fear of the word nuclear and with both of the Presidential Candidates saying it's the future of our country.

America notices that oil prices are rising rapidly. America fumbles wildly for excuses. America stumbles upon the idea that "aha! it's them durn speculators!" America feels smugly content that it's just a bubble.

Federal task force determines that that's wrong. It's actually supply and demand issues.

Anyone paying attention says "duh".

This topic is depressing. It makes me feel like I'm on a train hurtling towards a painting of a tunnel on the side of a mountain like in the Road Runner cartoons.

Did you not read the subtitle? This isn't the topic to go to for cheering up.

I hate to say I told ya so, but I told ya so. I distinctly remember y'all scoffing at this sorta thing when I came four, five years ago. I may be depressed the morbid predictions are happening, but I am delighted with the joy that comes with vindication.
Well, that, and the fact that this is forcing people to make progress in the areas they have stagnated. Face it, if not for peak oil and rising prices, no way would anyone care about conserving as much, or about alternative energy. I see it as a long term boon, though there may be short term difficulties.
And yes, if the price drops and so does interest in alternative energies, I will break down and cry.

Edit: To clarify why I am so hopeful, I keep reading about how the '09 and '10 fleets will be filled with electric cars, air-powered cars, hydrogen cars... We're making progress at last! I actually see smart-cars, those little golf-cart sized things, on the road at times!

Wait, so China and India working to become developed countries has increased demand? Weak US dollar also means we feel like we're paying more for gas when we just have less money.