I happened upon this thread by chance. This has been my major area of research for the past year. I don't mean to seem combative in any of what follows. I offer the following replies in the hope that someone may take them seriously. What I have to say is not easy to take, and I understand that. I wish things were different. There's just no easy way to apprehend the problem that global oil peak presents, so I shall refrain from trying. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
This line of thinking always relies on erroneous assumptions. It assumes that R&D of alternative forms of energy takes place in an economic vacuum, and nothing can speed up or slow down the process. In reality, companies will develop alternative forms of energy when it becomes economically feasible to do so. As the oil supply decreases and the demand increases, the price will go up. The higher the price of oil goes, the stronger the incentive for businesses to find an alternative.
There are a limited number of alternatives available currently, and none of them, in any combination, will begin to remotely replace oil. As for new alternatives--I'm not aware of a single alternative energy source that hasn't been known about for many, many years. The science behind solar pannels, for instance, has been known since the late 19th century. There's a reason that they haven't been produced extensively, and that reason is that they are physically incapable, in the universe we live in, of providing even a fraction of the energy per unit cost that oil does.
Barring a national energy plan (which could speed up the process), alternative forms of energy will become readily available when they make economic sense, and not before.
Not if they don't exist.
I think we're screwed on the refinery side of the equation.
We're screwed on the supply side as well, or will be in a few years. Oil companies know this. That's why they haven't been building new refineries.
Estimates range from 15 to 50 years for cheap oil to run out, in which case companies will cease to make profit by using it.
Light sweet crude appears to have peaked last year. The only estimates that put total oil production peaking that far out are by people who expect the overwhelming downward trend of discovery (peaked globally in 1962) to reverse. Michael Lynch is one of the better known analysts who expects this to happen, but by definition, he's counting on oil that hasn't been found yet, and that no geologist I'm aware of expects we will ever find. Most of the estimates that rely on geology put peak of total oil production at somewhere between this year and 2012. Decline type III (decline for a nation as a whole) will likely be around 7-8% per year. See links below.
But the system takes care of itself, companies are already investing in other forms of energy (solar, wind, hydrogen). It's not like it's some big secret that in 15-50 years there will be a switch from oil to other energy forms.
The problem is that the switch needed to begin no later than 1992 at the very latest. It didn't. We won't have the oil platform available to perform the switch.
The "system" right now supports a lot of people. One of the things the "system" will do shortly after oil peaks is kick most of the people it currently supports out. There won't be enough energy to support them.
Good points made by the last few posters. We're not running out of oil. Technology will help extract it cheaper,
No substantive new technology to make extraction more efficient has been developed since 1982. Nor is anything in the works.
legislation will have to approve drilling in current "no go" zones and yes, the refinery capacity along with the entire distribution and delivery systems are extremely insufficient in order to support our rate of growth.
ANWR holds a 12 month supply of oil for the United States. It is the last known major oil field on the North American continent that can be extracted economically under any circumstance (not counting the Athabascan Tar Sands, but that presents its own set of problems that will limit production rates to at most 10 million barrels per day--that is currently a 4 hour supply for planet earth, a 12 hour supply for the United States).
I don't think we are running out of oil, or will anytime soon. The people who are saying "Dude, we're like runnin out of oil!" are the same people who are opposing drilling in Alaska and the Rockies... places where we could not only get more oil but lessen our foreign dependance.
Most oppose such things because it's fairly useless; there's not enough oil there to make a difference.
Besides, who says that hydrogen fuel cells are the best alternative? If we hype out now and quickly research something, it could be far worse than waiting.
It takes more energy to produce a hydrogen fuel cell than we get out of using it, so it makes little sense to convert to hyrdrogen.
People like to think that there is no oil left so that they can believe that "alternative energies" should be researched. When in fact this is all irrelivant because companies and energy industries are preparing for a switch of some kind and are already investing in these "alternative energies."
No energy company is preparing for any kind of switch except BP, and they're only doing so on a small scale in Northern Europe, which has done far better than any other region on the planet at mitigating this problem. The rest have invested in alternative energy mainly as a public relations scheme. They have no plans to massively implement alternative energy of any kind.
This isn't to say that there aren't some smaller companies out there that are trying to do so. But neither they nor the oil majors can scale their operations quickly enough.
These industries are (1) want to make money and (2) are not stupid (or can pay money for non-stupid people to give them advice). So it logically follows that the system will take care of itself.
Factor in human greed and emotional motivation and the foreknowledge of the economic consequences of oil peaking, and a very different inference is drawn.
From an economic perspective, you're absolutely right: The world economy is not about to grind to a halt when we run out of oil, because we'll switch to something else long before that happens.
Not only will it grind to a halt, it's already begining to. We're kept from news that might reveal that to us here in the United States, though. It will get rapidly worse.
During WWII, the Germans used coal to make liquid fuels, and I wonder what is going on here that is similar. We have plenty of coal.
With currently projected shortfalls, and assuming that we use our entire coal base for nothing but producing liquid fuels, we would have about 32 years supply of coal.
But being more realistic, taking into account the fact that we need coal for other things such as fertilizer production and production of electricity, we'd have a roughly 8 year supply. This assumes a 7% type III decline rate in world oil production, that the downward trend in estimated coal reserves-production ceases, that we export none of our coal, that consumption of coal for electricity remains constant, and that natural gas ceases to be a viable fertilizer feedstock (as it's sure to do).
Perhaps the electricity from nuclear power plants can be used to run the processes that convert the energy in solid fuel coal to a diesel compatible liquid fuel? Seems to me that we already have that technology, but perhaps it isn't economically viable yet.
It used to be the received wisdom that when oil got over $40.00 a barrel, all kinds of alternatives became economically viable. Well, we're hovering around $60.00 a barrel and have been for some time, and there's no action on it yet.
But yes, the electricity from nuclear power can be used to run coal liquefaction plants. Again, we can rely on that for 8 years.
Very true, no business remains successful by working hard to find a substitute for its products, unless they can control a substantial portion of the substitute. So it makes sense that they at least keep tabs on the progress of alternatives.
Oil companies are quite aware that they're in a losing game. No amount of money (at least not on the level that oil companies hold) will fix our energy problems. They're interested in getting as much cash as possible, converting it to commodities, and watching the planet burn.
Society is just along for the ride, except for the part about us being their customers. They don't have to worry too much about what we think of them as long as they are in control of the energy that we need.
About the only thing that we can do as individuals is use less of their product, but that doesn't seem to be acceptable to most Americans.
It won't be acceptable to anyone. Without oil, the carrying capacity of the planet is (probably) about 2 billion people, for reasons that become obvious to those who research the matter. The implication is also obvious.
Anyway, there's plenty of information out there on these and topics. Some links:
www.monbiot.com
http://people.lulu.com/blogs/view_post.php?post_id=15587
http://peakoil.net/uhdsg/WORLD_SUMMARY_html.htm
http://www.worldoil.com/Magazine/MAGAZINE_DETAIL.asp?ART_ID=2696&MONTH_YEAR=Oct-2005
http://hubbert.mines.edu/news/Campbell_01-2.pdf
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
www.peakoil.com
www.peakoil.net
www.theoildrum.com
http://www.oilfield.com/forcast.html
And you can google plenty more.