Arguments from all sides of the political spectrum can rage as to why it’s getting warmer or exactly how much oil is left and so on, but unless we can use our smarts – the level of which is the only thing that sets us apart from the other animals – to avert or at least, temper, what’s coming, our children, if not ourselves, will live in a far worse world than we have now. Unfortunately, if this article is correct, we may have reached an impasse in using our smarts to figure a way out. This is something I’ve noticed in many ways over the last ten years of reading nothing more than lay technical magazines. Innovation today is often just the same old thing in a new package. Smaller, faster, easier to use, cheaper, yes. But new?
(Sunday Times) Waiting for the lights to go out – The greatest getting-and-spending spree in the history of the world is about to end. The 200-year boom that gave citizens of the industrial world levels of wealth, health and longevity beyond anything previously known to humanity is threatened on every side. Oil is running out; the climate is changing at a potentially catastrophic rate; wars over scarce resources are brewing; finally, most shocking of all, we don’t seem to be having enough ideas about how to fix any of these things.
Even if we did throw money at the problem, it’s not certain we could fix it. One of the strangest portents of the end of progress is the recent discovery that humans are losing their ability to come up with new ideas.
And if/when the worst does come to pass, the following seems certain just looking at my own life.
Living without oil, if we don’t start to prepare for it, will not be like returning to the late 1700s, because we have now lost the infrastructure that made 18th-century life possible. We have also lost our basic survival skills. Dr Richard Duncan, of the Institute on Energy and Man, believes that we will return to living in essentially Stone Age conditions.
The sky is falling!
I know, it’s bad: Your guy isn’t in office, and you can’t pin anything on the dunce who is… or any of this sidekicks. Your side has taken up the cause of fiscal responsibility just as it goes out of style, and you can’t even get people to care that we have a deficit again.
But… end of the world articles? You guys really have lost it.
Of course, that article does make a damn good case for the Bird Flu…
It’s all about economics. Funding research in pure science is expensive, the benefits are slow in coming and inconsistent for the trillions required. Private companies don’t have the resources to do the basic research in energy. You are speaking of taking energy production to the next evolutionary level. This civilization is still basically burning wood campfires, all heat engines. Even fusion plants would just be big boilers to turn turbines. Fuel cells are a good bet, but the catalysts required are incredible expensive for mass production, and you need to split hydrogen from some source. Geothermal and solar are available today, but not cost effective. This country will end up burning more coal for the next 100 years because it’s cheap.
OMFG. What tripe. It’s called shale oil. We have more recoverable barrels of oil in this country in the form of shale oil than is in the middle east. When this country is pressed with a real oil crisis, all the concerns for the environment will go down the toilet and we’ll start mining shale oil.
Reminds me of the equally depressing “story” from the Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30767
Dave — you seem to be spending the weekend with folks who won’t even pretend to look at thoroughgoing and reputable science. Not a lot of shale oil is recoverable — even if we want to end up with gasoline at $10/gallon. Although I absolutely expect the corporate diehards — and their obedient dittoheads — to go for it, produce it. and charge whatever the market will bear.
I still know dudes who wouldn’t give up their hemi’s unless you pry their cold, dead, etc., etc.. I used to race cars that got 6 mpg on the street, too. But, that was when I paid 27 cents a gallon and it was as important as sex. Hopefully, economic pressures — and they’re coming regardless of which ideologues you hope are right — will make the difference they always do.
As it stands, today, I wouldn’t even buy WalMart stock for Xmas. They’re looking forward to dismal. Finite is finite. But, only the spooky believe otherwise.
And if the thought of shale oil in the US doesn’t reassure you, there is all that tar sands in Alberta just next door. Then there are still very large reserves of coal throughout the world not to mention uranium. There are many alternatives. All that panicking is just like a little boy trying to get attention.
Humanity is NOT running out of ideas. The problem is entrenched economic interests, which are afraid to risk their money, centralized political/power structures which fear change and distributed abilities, and dogmatic scientists who are afraid to have a life time’s work proven irrelevant. We’re talking basic human nature, here. Hasn’t changed a bit, and it’s not likely to any time soon, either.
So, it’s the end of the world, huh? What’s this make? Eleventy Jillion? And three? Look. We ain’t dead yet; we have a good chance at success and leaving this planet for the stars, if we only try – and don’t kill ourselves. God won’t do it; ET won’t do it; WE have to do it. Just like always.
In other news:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands
“Tar sands deposits are found all over the world, with the largest deposits located in Venezuela and Alberta, Canada. While not a proven reserve of oil, tar sands represent as much as 66% of the world’s deposits of oil, with 34% (286 km³ or 1.8 trillion barrels) in the Venezuelan Orinoco tar sands deposit, 32% (270 km³ or 1.7 trillion barrels) in Canada’s Athabasca Tar Sands deposit and the remaining 33% (278 km³ or 1.75 trillion barrels) in conventional oil, much of it in Saudi Arabia and other Middle-Eastern countries.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_oil
“Oil shale is a general term applied to a group of fine black to dark brown shales rich enough in bituminous material (called kerogen) to yield petroleum upon distillation. The kerogen in oil shale can be converted to oil through the chemical process of pyrolysis. During pyrolysis the oil shale is heated to 450-500° C in the absence of air and the kerogen is converted to oil and separated out, a process called “retorting”. Oil shale has also been burnt directly as a low-grade fuel. The United States Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves estimates the world supply of oil shale at 1662 billion barrels of which 1200 billion barrels are in the United States [1]. This is comparable to the amount of reserves of conventional oil.
Estonia, Russia, Brazil, and China currently mine oil shale, however production is declining due to economic and environmental factors.”
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So, like it or not, we won’t run out of oil any time soon. It will become considerably more expensive, however.
PS Any chance of a preview function so that it would be easier to catch typos?
“Any chance of a preview function so that it would be easier to catch typos?”
There is one. Proof read it before you send it.
what a bunch of scare-mongering.
when you look at the costs/benefits of global warming, it’s actually a net benefit for at least several degrees, which will take a long time to occur, enough time for us to develop technology to counter any further rise.
The world is warming because it hates freedom.
1973: “Oil is too precious a commodity to burn” – Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani. As Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister from 1962 to 1986
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Perhaps the best thing that could happen for modern civilization is $100 a barrel oil. Then perhaps cleaner, less ephemeral sources of energy will be considered. More people have died, or will die, over oil than could possibly have been harmed by nuclear in centuries.
Solor, Wind, Nuclear = near limitless energy that does not require oxygen from the air, nor return green house gasses.
The creativity is there, just not the resolve to use it.
Where George Bush figures into this, is a lack of an implemented plan to transition away from oil as an energy source. It’s not a patisan issue; His recent predecessors are equally to blame.
The world is not ending, but human existence at the top of the food chain is not written in blood. We are not the first dominant species on the planet, and we are likely not the last, but whatever happens, we will go down independently and uncooperatively innovating to the last.