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The End of Oil, a Perilous New World

Discussion in 'YachtForums Yacht Club' started by brian eiland, Jun 23, 2011.

  1. brian eiland, Jun 23, 2011
    #1
    brian eiland

    brian eiland Senior Member

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    Just recently I read an interesting and informative article in a recent issue of Popular Science (July 2011), The Last Drops

    "Oil threatens the environment, destablizes nations, and is in dwindling supply. It also provides 35 percent of the power we use on Earth. Oil won't run our world forever, but as we make the transistion to a greener economy, it will need to run it for at least another few decades. What's the smartest way to bridge the gap?"
    http://www.popsci.com/announcements/article/2011-06/july-2011-future-energy

    One of the items I found interesting is that for each alternative energy source, he provided an 'energy return' figure....energy returned on energy invested (EROEL)...sort of an efficiency rating. Some of these figures will certainly surprise you.

    Another item I want to research to a greater extent is the Thorium-fueled nuclear reactor. The article was quite positive about this reactor technology, and did not appear to present any real detrimental aspects.

    Then I looked up this website, the official website for author Paul Roberts.
    http://the-end-of-oil.com/
    This should prove real interesting as well
  2. AMG, Jun 24, 2011
    #2
    AMG

    AMG YF Moderator

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    Pretty well presented, even though this is just a fraction of what all politicians should already know about energy supplies and the future. But I am afraid their knowledge is more shallow than shale oil...
  3. Loren Schweizer, Jun 24, 2011
    #3
    Loren Schweizer

    Loren Schweizer YF Associate Writer

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    ....meanwhile, everytime you turn around, another gargantuan oil or gas field find puts the lie to the planet running out of fossil fuels anytime in our lives.
  4. dan1000, Jun 24, 2011
    #4
    dan1000

    dan1000 Member

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    My opinion:

    We will never run out of oil, but we have already run out of cheap oil. It is unlikely that any new oil discovery can meet the growing fuel needs of the developing world. Therefore oil will become expensive enough that we start to develop alternatives to it. This has already started to happen.

    Oil is such a dense container of energy that it would be a wonderful thing to be able to generate our own. In an ideal world, we would use biochemical processes to synthesize oil from the very same components that it emits into the atmosphere -- CO2 and water (plus small amounts of other stuff). While oil is cheap, this didn't happen. Now that oil is expensive, it will happen. At some point, those alternatives will be cheaper than the cost of extracting and refining actual fossil-based oil. When that happens, we will stop extracting it -- well before we run out.

    In summary, to repeat my opening phrase: we won't run out of oil, but have already run out of cheap oil. We can make as much as we need, but it will cost us dearly. No other energy-dense fuel is likely to be any cheaper to make than oil.

    Dan

  5. dennismc, Jun 24, 2011
    #5
    dennismc

    dennismc Senior Member

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    oil

    I think it's a fairly safe bet that the oil Co's are the ones who will come up with the long term viable alternative and the consumer will pay the same inflated price for that as we do now for oil. Propane here used to way less expensive than gasoline equivalent, now, same price, diesel at the pumps here almost same as gasoline. World price goes 5%, same at the pump, world price comes down 5%...1% at the pump.
  6. AMG, Jun 24, 2011
    #6
    AMG

    AMG YF Moderator

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