The end of the world as we know it
 

A rather depressing link: Life After the Oil Crash

I feel fine.
<small>Time I had some time alone. <small>
Just came back from a Mead tasting</small></small>

Sounds a bit like an overblown doomsday prophesy to me. Not that I don't recognize a future problem with us using up our natural fuel supplies. I would like to know what his motivation is behind all this. Yeah sure he's got law degree's and experience in at that area but what experience does he have in chemistry? It kindof seems like a lot of his rescources are related to the oil industry (like Exxon research) that would probably have ulterior motives for touting that we will have more scarce and thus more expensive oil in he future. Just the way this is presented seems to alert my instincts that something is bogus.

Just to begin with (without reading and checking EVERYTHING he said) I found an error. He said that ammonia was usually derived from oil rescources to begin with and wouldn't make a good alternative to producing fuel. Problem with that is that Oil rescources is just one of MANY ways of producing oil.

"Ammonia is prepared commercially in vast quantities. The major method of production is the Haber process, in which nitrogen is combined directly with hydrogen at high temperatures and pressures in the presence of a catalyst. It is obtained as a byproduct of the destructive distillation of coal. Ammonia is also prepared synthetically by the cyanamide process: nitrogen gas combines with calcium carbide, CaC2, at high temperatures to form calcium cyanamide, CaCN2, and carbon; the calcium cyanamide reacts with steam to form calcium carbonate, CaCO3, and ammonia. For use in the laboratory, ammonia is prepared by heating an ammonium salt with a strong base. It can also be prepared by reacting a metal nitride with water." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001

Paranoind much?


*fills his SUV with gas*


There is no oil shortage.

I agree that it's just one site and one viewpoint, but it is somewhat convincing. I threw this out there to at least try and raise awareness and promote discussion.

If you read the site, you'll see that they claim that while there's no oil shortage as of yet, that's because we just hit the plateau in terms of oil production. Starting in the next 5 years or so is when we'll begin feeling the first wave of effects. If you can fill up your SUV in 2010 without paying an arm and a couple legs, then you can call us all paranoids.

Kind of like a trip to the haunted house tour.

We all know it won't get much better but it may not be that scary either. Things like this are what spur alternate energy production. We have known for many years that the oil supply is finite, we're just spoiled here in the old USA.

People here, in Oklahoma, are having a cow that gas it up to $1.60 or so. Heck, we could live in Europe and pay their prices. I have a Suburban but very few of us actually need a huge automobile. I'll ride my bike a lot and use my little, old Japanese pickup and leave the Suburban in the barn unless I am hauling the whole family.

I'm not ignoring it but I never did like "the sky is falling" kind of reports.

Makes me think of the fabricated Diamonds that have been produced in a lab. Don't you think we could do the same thing with organic waste and duplicate the same environment that produced the oil?

Instead of Soilent Green for food, Soilent Green for Oil! Hmmmm.

Depressing...

We all knew/know something like this is eventually coming. The real questions are when and how will we deal with it. Whether these predictions are accurate for now, or are way ahead of their time we will have to wait and see. But its painfully obvious that the earth is overpopulated and heavily dependant on NON-renewable resources. Its just a matter of how this is all handled. It does look like he is frightened and taking the absolute worst cases for every option. It is also possible that human nature will make this a reality... will have to wait and see.

*stocks up on water, food, guns, ammo ...and backup porno*

Well, not really. But an oil crash will eventually be inevitable.

*goes off to beat Matt Savinar with a BIG optimistic stick...*:D

omg so it is the end, mmm i may sound cynical about it but whats the point of feeling like shit now, , so i wont make much of it but thanks for the info

I KNEW there was another thread on this

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=45172

Heh. You can see my opinion of the website in that thread.

Oh, by the way: you want to know what the bacteria do as their population crashes?

Dramatic pause

They eat each other.

lol, what a silly boy.

What about the other necessities of life?

Phoenix, Las Vegas and southern California and water? Large populations of people.

I figure to be in my 60's when the oil gets low. SHIT there goes my motorhome (better get one now).

I believe that we need to develop into small communities that require no commuting.

There was an article about Edmonton mall and that it requires little or no heating even in the cold of winter. Kinda like a Bio-Dome.

Pretty freaky crap, I dont really know what to beleive but there is definatley some truth behind this and im going to try and make some preperations .. spend all my salary and buy cases of oil and then sell them in 10 years, its like stock thats guaranteed to suceed!

But seriously, I dont know, I may just move up to alaska, I mean how hard can it be to learn to eat walrus and whale all day ><

But, something like this will happen, and im pretty confident it will happen within the next 10 years, but, I beleive it will end in a nuclear war not a national oil runout, eventually a major world power will run out of oil and what will they do? Go to war with a major country and that has more oil then the small ones and it will bring a world war III which will end all oil concerns ..

Peak Oil
 

Its a 20 minute flash film. Pretty scary stuff.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/crisis.html

I don't know about this anymore. There is another thread in the Knowledge forum about this ( http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=55386 ) that has a lot of good information about this. Particularly this article http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation...7n1/v27n1-1.pdf which seems to provide a different and also very realistic perspective about things.
I agree that this is in fact a non-renewable resource, and eventually we do need to find an alternative source of energy to rely on. But I think in this case the 10 year doomsday prediction may be a bit of "the sky is falling" rather than looking at all the angles. I can see things getting more expensive as the cost of finding new oil increases. But also we are developing better technology to have access to that harder to get to oil. I dont think things are as bad as some seem to believe, but I also dont think things are all OK and it is a problem that can be ignored. We as a race do need to find a better source of energy (renewable would be the best) that we can rely on rather than oil.

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I've said this before and I'll say it again: there are plenty of other energy technologies out there that are either:

1) ready for prime time but cost too much because they're not produced in high-enough volume to benefit from economies of scale or the kind of continuous process improvement you get in a high-production industry. Solar cells are there, so are solar collectors of other kinds, and certain battery technologies. There are also extreme energy saving technologies out there that still cost a lot, like LED lightbulbs that can light a house for 1/10th the energy cost of today's bulbs.

2) Not quite ready for prime time, but would be if somebody threw some serious $$$ at them, a la a Manhattan-style energy product or DARPA giving away a lot of cash: molecular depolymerization for making oil (literally) out of crap, several competing fuel cell technologies, more wind energy, generators powered by ocean waves, and about five others I can think of.

If the shit hit the fan, money would be tossed at these options like rice at a wedding. Nobody's bothering right now because oil is cheap. That will change. The only variable is when, and how fast. Worst case, we'd have a few tough years while we converted to new technologies and new rules for using energy. (There'd be some losers, but also some winners -- might be a good time to get into retrofitting houses for solar). But we'd get there.

There are solutions to the awaiting energy crisis.

I bet there's tons of oil waaaaaaay deep underground.
Hell, theres some 90 miles in the crust and weve barely gone 3 miles deep. And that was a gold mine.

Do you realize what a UNrenewable resource is?

I am soo going to buy a 1000 gallon tank and start hoarding.

If we haven't perfected electric cars by then, we'll just ask Japan to do it for us.

Or else.

Sounds like an ignorant dill-hole just posting for effect. Visit one page... Post to a vibrant forum... Leave newbie status! Step four: Profit!

Instead, I invite you all to... think... read... and THEN post...

G

I know this guy who makes a substitute for diesel from used french fry grease. I think he adds lye to the vat(and possibly something else..maybe diesel lol) and the by products are the fuel and glycerine....like soap..

His truck smells like french fries

I've talked to people who do this. America generates a great deal of waste fat annually, some from restaurants and such but a lot more from the renderers -- people who collect waste products of the packing industry and dead animals, and make them into soap. There are people who are ready to make "biodiesel" commercially from this waste fat, but the renderers currently pay more. If the price of fuel rose, on the other hand, the biodiesel people would probably ramp up production, and it would be common.

Then we'd have to worry about where our soap was coming from, of course...

This is the second time that I have read this and I have has time to read other information about 'Peak Oil" and it's potential effects.
What the guy is saying is fundamentally true, he just leaves out a lot of possibilities. In the worst case scenario, we would see oil prices rising rapidly until we quickly reached critical mass. The oil suppliers' inability to fill the oil demand would become of paramount inportance to the military factions in every country and then things would get worse.

For the most part the best case scenario seems to be that oil prices skyrocket to the point that carpooling, motorcycles and scooters become standard travel vehicles. One article suggested the the US alone (world biggest oil consumer) could temporarily change oil demand by switching to 'necessessary' travel and away from 'luxury' travel. The rest of the world would be rocking and reeling from the industrial fallout and the economic situation of the entire world would begin to collapse, but the demand for crude oil would level off.

I feel like there is a much bigger margin of reaction time that the author suggests, but it does make me want to start finding a few hundred extra 50 gallon drums.