What will we do when the oil runs out?

donegaLroad · 05-10-2017 11:22pm

Drumpot wrote: »

Anybody else read that like it was a Yorkshire man trying to say silent Fuel?

or Somerset even

_Brian · 05-10-2017 11:22pm

I don’t worry about stuff like this.

There’s really smart people somewhere working on this, they don’t come round worrying about my work so I’m not going to start worrying about theirs.

I could spend my whole time worrying about the “big picture”, but honestly I’d rather spend time with my kids, safe in the knowledge that a boffin somewhere will solve “peak oil” and all that stuff.

Nettle Soup · 05-10-2017 11:26pm

mini_Sapphire wrote: »

Anyone have any ideas?

Can we still eat cake?

donegaLroad · 05-10-2017 11:30pm

_Brian wrote: »

I don’t worry about stuff like this.

There’s really smart people somewhere working on this, they don’t come round worrying about my work so I’m not going to start worrying about theirs.

I could spend my whole time worrying about the “big picture”, but honestly I’d rather spend time with my kids, safe in the knowledge that a boffin somewhere will solve “peak oil” and all that stuff.

me too, but its nice to know that some young fella in Holland is being proactive about the plastic pollution problem, and although I know I will never reach his levels of innovation, I will teach my kids to dispose of their litter in an appropriate way in the hope that they will influence others to do the same. Its a start I suppose

Sweetemotion · 05-10-2017 11:33pm

Use synthetic oil?

All this, what will happen when the oil runs out. Is a big fat nothing burger.

steddyeddy · 05-10-2017 11:33pm

Rumpy Pumpy wrote: »

Was that the utter claptrap that emerged from UCD a few years ago? Breathless endorsements from those involved, while the rest of the academic world cast a jaundiced eye at a University looking for a ranking point?

I have no idea. You didn't exactly flood us with detail.

Doltanian · 05-10-2017 11:44pm

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Every minute, a truck load of plastic is dumped into the sea. By 2050, the weight of plastic in the sea will exceed the weight of fish in the sea.

Unsurprising, all rivers invariably lead to the sea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PavA4rUypE

Creative83 · 06-10-2017 7:34pm

Doltanian wrote: »

Unsurprising, all rivers invariably lead to the sea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PavA4rUypE

Holy sh** :mad:

Elessar · 06-10-2017 8:22pm

Like another poster said, we can synthesise oil from coal. I read somewhere that there's enough coal reserves in the US alone (including untapped or currently economically unreachable reserves) to last us a thousand years. Not to mention the current proven reserves of oil of an estimated 1.69 trillion barrels, and then theres shale oil reserves about 3.5 times that. And then there's the unproven reserves, and all the other coal and gas reserves worldwide that can be liquified.

Oil is not running out, pretty much ever.

AMKC · 06-10-2017 8:49pm

How about using Organic oil. Sure should be healthier for us anyway and the world too hopefully. s for the oil in the Antarctic I don,t think that should ever be extracted as there is no much at stake and the same for oil in the North Pole. Some things are best left alone.

Fanny Wank · 06-10-2017 9:17pm

I find "have a jimmy floyd" to be an appropriate response to most questions along the lines of the OP

Capt'n Midnight · 06-10-2017 11:39pm

steddyeddy wrote: »

This is an area I'm involved in. In short biologically generated fuel is the future IMHO. The hydrogen engine's another option, but a long way off.

Francois Isaac de Rivaz made the first hydrogen powered car back in 1807. It even had electric ignition.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-10-2017 11:43pm

Oil won't run out in the sense that most oil is to too expensive to recover from wells.

We can make oil from hydrogen from renewable energy for about four times the cost of extracting it.

jojofizzio · 06-10-2017 11:50pm

mark_jmc wrote: »

Tell Saudi Arabia what we really think of them

By a country mile-the best response so far-take a bow..:)

BrokenArrows · 06-10-2017 11:52pm

mini_Sapphire wrote: »

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/28/the-world-was-533-years-of-oil-left/11528999/

Granted, the article is 3 years old but it raises an important question. What the hell are we going to do when oil runs out :O Pretty much everything you own, eat, wear etc is a byproduct of oil.

Nuclear & renewable energy power may provide our electric power but it won't create things like plastics the way oil does.

It's actually a very scary scenario if the worlds oil supply dwindles. Wars will start over it. Bio-fuel might do a bit to offer some hope but at the moment it's not advanced enough to satisfy any kind of demand... and it may never be.

Anyone have any ideas? Seems hopeless :O Modern life destroyed without oil.

With current technology the world could go oil free in a fairly short period of time. Its just the current infrastructure which is preventing a fast transition.

If the oil were to disappear tomorrow and the world was pushed to renewable then I doubt it would take more than a few years to get back to a semi normal situation.

Capt'n Midnight · 07-10-2017 12:32am

Generating energy isn't actually the problem.

Hydrocarbons are easy to store and transport. Electricity isn't.

We could power the world from solar. It would cost a bit more though, the main cost would be in storing and transporting the energy.

In theory we could expose bedrock. This would absorb C02 so we could go on burning oil.

Or we could expose olivtine (sp.) to water to produce hydrogen, but it would be a mega-project.

server down · 07-10-2017 1:03am

To get back to the peak oil. The time left (now 50 years up from 30 years 30 years ago) is present day proven reserves divided by present day yearly usage.

However proven reserves are a fraction of the total known reserves. It’s oil fields now in production. In decreasing reserve sizes the categories are:

Remaining oil and gas in-place (original oil and gas in-place minus cumulative production at a specific date)
Technically recoverable resources
Economically recoverable resources
Proved reserves

Proved reserves are from existing oil fields.

Economically recoverable resources are oil fields we could now technically and economically tap, but don’t yet do it. So those fields are not proven.

Technical resources are not economically viable yet but technological changes or market price changes can affect that. The rest are known resources we can’t technically tap but new technologies - like fracking - change that.

All together there’s hundreds of years of all reserves left if you believe that we can technically and economically tap most known reseves. And that assumes present day demand continues at its modern pace. However most of they oil will stay in the ground if you believe that demand will peak soon because of renewables.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=17151

server down · 07-10-2017 1:08am

That’s nonsense too. Solar is getting cheaper year on year and the technology is getting cheaper and more efficient every year.

Capt'n Midnight · 07-10-2017 1:13am

NB. it's peak cheap oil.

we will still have oil or an equivalent but it will cost a bit more

server down · 07-10-2017 1:17am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

NB. it's peak cheap oil.

we will still have oil or an equivalent but it will cost a bit more

The cheap oil ran out before they started drilling the North Sea.

Anyway demand will likely stop rising at the rate it is now and then reverse as EVs and renewable power generators become common.

There was a day this year when 70% of the UKs energy was low carbon.

server down · 07-10-2017 1:25am

What science though? Show us your workings.

Heres a link you would may want to critique.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/map-shows-solar-panels-to-power-the-earth-2015-9?r=US&IR=T

uch · 07-10-2017 1:26am

If they don't have Yorkshire Relish for the Beef on sunday, then I couldn't be one of them

server down · 07-10-2017 1:42am

No I wouldn’t believe you. For many reasons. Firstly you are a random guy on the internet. Secondly your statement is factually incorrect. You said we couldn’t with present and future technology replace oil with solar - that is technically. Not economically. That it wasn’t theoretically possible.

Yet that article says that with 20% efficient solar panels we would need an area the size of Spain ( but that could be solar panels on rooftops or in deserts equal to the size of Spain etc not just all of Spain). That’s a small fraction of the Earth. And in fact lab panels are more efficient now at 45%. That article is from 2017.

It could be wrong so show us your workings. Scientists can do that.

gctest50 · 07-10-2017 1:43am

server down wrote: »

What science though? Show us your workings.

....

15,264,000,000 is a lot of litres per day to be using

Oil is so useful for so many things, bit of a waste using it for energy

server down · 07-10-2017 1:47am

gctest50 wrote: »

15,264,000,000 is a lot of litres per day to be using

Oil is so useful for so many things, bit of a waste using it for energy

Yes but not really answering the question :-).

The problem of renewables isn’t technical, it’s economic (although that is changing as solar gets cheaper without subsidies), and political.

Kermit.de.frog · 07-10-2017 1:54am

The question is a misnomer. It's not about when the oil "runs out".

It's about when peak supply is reached and supply starts to fall.

As soon as that happens the price of oil will explode and the world will be in crisis.

Not likely to happen for some time though.

uck51js9zml2yt · 07-10-2017 3:12am

In that event, everyone should move to India. 20C in winter. It's currently 34C and its only 8 am:)

LordSutch · 07-10-2017 5:04am

mini_Sapphire wrote: »

What will we do when the oil runs out?

Rapeseed oil.

How about farmers turning to fields of rape seed oil?

Like on a massive worldwide scale, as a harvested fuel with government backing & multinational incentives to grow the stuff?

Capt'n Midnight · 07-10-2017 11:33am

server down wrote: »

The cheap oil ran out before they started drilling the North Sea.

Anyway demand will likely stop rising at the rate it is now and then reverse as EVs and renewable power generators become common.

There was a day this year when 70% of the UKs energy was low carbon.

LOL I don't really consider Nuclear to be low carbon , when you consider the front loading, decommissioning and displacement of real renewables. Wind can be carbon neutral after a few months, a lot of nuclear plants won't ever be.

Meanwhile our national grid , first in the word, can take up to 65% synchronous, which is mostly renewables. And that's not including Turlough Hill

Oil is still cheap. It's not as cheap so our power plants don't use it anymore and we don't use it for heating as much. So there's more to go around.

Oh yeah all those announcements about companies making only electric cars. Mostly they are hybrids, as in ordinary cars except that when you brake some of the energy gets stored in a battery.

smacl · 07-10-2017 11:42am

server down wrote: »

Yes but not really answering the question :-).

The problem of renewables isn’t technical, it’s economic (although that is changing as solar gets cheaper without subsidies), and political.

Its a bit more complex than that though. The principal issue involving intermittent renewables, whether wind, solar or wave is storage. Not so much of an issue for solar panels in a desert perhaps, but anywhere else you have to consider weather and seasonal variation in terms of consistent supply. Next big problem is transmission, which for electricity over long distances is both lossy and expensive to maintain. Third is time to construction, in that we'd be long past peak cheap oil before a project of this scale would be completed, but cheap oil could actually be required for construction. Even on a more local and considerably more modest level, if you look at Hinkley Point C for example, it got the go ahead in 2008 but won't be supplying power to the grid until 2025 earliest. My feeling is that in this country at least, the bulk of our renewable energy will continue to come from wind, possibly with pumped hydro as storage.

What will we do when the oil runs out?

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