What will happen, when the oil is gone? Options

[GhostofTHECHICKE...]

Read a book recently that showed evidence of how the oil production has just reached its peak (or will very soon) around the world. Which means that we have pretty much gotten half of all the oil around the planet (and also the Easiest half to get out of the ground economically), which estimates show could be used up in as little as 10 years at current growth of demand. Oil and gas production already peaked in north america back around the 70's. Combine that with the fact that 60% of all Oil left is in arab countries (and a comparable amount of the natural gas)... and i guess my question is:

What does everyone think will happen when the oil supplies run out (or at least start to get so low that we can't viably use it as we do now)? Our entire economy is based off of it... from fertilizers made from natural gas (which enable our massive production of food, aka corn that would be used to make ethanol), to fleets of trucks that supply: walmart, target, ups, schools busses, etc. Not to mention cars.

Will the economy revert back to the 1900s of horse and buggy?

Will it basically be armageddon from all the countries fighting for the last supplies of oil along with deseases etc brought on by the inability to fight them w/o oil.

Will we still have most comodities just a big hardship from not having the transportation, and or alternative fuels to make up for the loss (aka nuclear, wind, water, solar)

or will we be saved by things that appear to be pipe dreams currently (like hydrogen fuel cells that would either require oil to produce OR nuclear energy which we dont have much of)?

or do you not see any problem at all for what ever reason that you should elaborate on?

[GhostofTHECHICKE...]

please...mother of GOD, not coal.
Burning that on a mass scale?! AHHHHHHHH THE ACID BURNS!

Seriously though, yeah...nuclear, solar, wind, hydro (obviously many of these are regional)...things like that will do just fine. Obviously it will take a feeling out period to get used to the technology, and to get used to Exxon-Mobile and others no longer having our balls in vices...

well it almost goes without saying that those alternatives will be fallen back on FOR ELECTRICTY. But sadly there isn't enough nuclear power plants in the united states to produce the clean fuel (besides radio active waste which is actually small, you just need a place to put it) and it takes A LOT of fossil fuels to build a nuclear power plant.


PLUS that only takes care of Electricity... which i believe the number was that it only accounted for 30ish% of total energy consumption... the rest being cars with fossil fuels.

Which you could say that if we got the nuclear power plants up in time to put out electricity, then we could use that power for electric (battery) cars and the production of hydrogen.

I guess my question is Do you THINK we will be able to get this stuff done in a quick enough time period so that alternative fuels are actually available to replace oil before the entire economy shuts down from things like goods can't be transported to where they need to go because of lack of fuel (or exorbent cost of fuel)?


oh, and synthetic oil made from coal would effectively become high grade oil we use today already... so i believe the acidity of it can be removed... but the whole process takes energy to make coal into oil

This post has been edited by GhostofTHECHICKEN: Mar 18 2006, 01:40 AM