Great. So now the US'll just run out relatively sooner than they would have done compared with those guys. WTG short-term thinking with finite resources.
Humans are idiots.
The problem isn't running out of oil. The problem is increased production incentivizing increased usage which drives us over the edge of an irreversible climate catastrofuck.
All the oil is getting extracted out of the ground and (at utilization time) getting pumped into the air. It's the exact opposite of what we need to be doing now.
Agreed. slower use f these things and encouraging alternative energies earlier (while understanding population control) would have kept this less of a clusterfkc. However, humans != long-term political planning.
A hundred years is an eternity in terms of current technological advancement. We only learned the universe is accelerating its expansion in 1997. Think about that next time you think a 100 year supply is tiny.
It does not work that way. The finite Easy Oil is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The price point just trends upwards after the relatively easy material is successfully mined/drilled -- there is plenty more, it is just harder and harder to get to.
There is a small amount of oil that can be pumped at less than $10 per barrel. There is a moderate amount of oil that can be pumped at $20 per barrel, and that will disappear in the foreseeable future. At $50 per barrel, there is a lot of fossil fuel material. At $100 per barrel, there is vastly more. At $200 per barrel, we do not know because no one will care until the 23rd century, but the problem will probably be the environmental damage, not the availability.
Even in five years their will be amazing technological advances, but the question was 100 years. Goal post moving aside, I would be highly surprised if in 100 years energy is not mostly a solved problem. But doom is more dramatic and sells more advertising.
Optimism is great, but we need to plan for the worst, too. The environmental costs for fracking could be unbelievably bad.
Fresh water's one of those resources that's going to become dangerously scarce if we don't manage it properly, and fracking, like oil sands, uses staggeringly large amounts of it. Maybe there's 100 years worth of gas down there, but can we pump water loaded with who knows what chemicals (proprietary mixture, of course) down there for a hundred years to get it out?
Plus, what's a 100 year supply at today's consumption rate could quickly become a 50 year supply if consumption doubles, or 25 years if consumption quadruples. Why would consumption jump so much? What if cars started running on liquified natural gas instead of gasoline? What if power plants switched from nuclear to gas? What if the population grows another 20-30% in the next 25 years?
It's never actually a 100 year supply. Exponential growth will shrink it faster than you think.
