Forget oil, the oil is gone

[justinsb]

gas prices are going to keep going up and even the alternatives will be more expensive than what exists now. What people need to worry about is 'peak water"

http://www.waterconserve.info/articles/reader.asp?linkid=20825

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/covert.htm

http://weather.about.com/library/weekly/aa030503a.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3747724.stm

http://www.worldwaterwars.com/

[Parche]

1. oil

I think there are tons of reserves out there, most under Siberia
and also in undeveloped countries
But we do have to conserve now, get rid of all the stupid utility
vehicles (SUV's)

[justinsb]

2. Conservation will help a bit longer

But alot of the places you are talking about have been explored, Siberia has quite a bit and it is being pumped and consumed by Russia, China and India primarily.

[acmejack]

3. One more.

on edit: JustinB is dead on. Oil is simply too valuable to use as fuel. One word, Plastics.

[justinsb]

4. Thanks,

there are alot more, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling.

[cornermouse]

5. Nope.

Things I found out from the Journal Report(a bunch of neo-con fruitcakes, but they are connected). They're going farther out in the ocean to hunt for it. This was backed up by something that the Senate passed this week, if I remember correctly.

They aren't going to give up till they pollute the whole planet.

[justinsb]

6. You mean oil?

this really isn't even about oil. Even if they find it out there it's not going to be cheap, the prices aren't coming down again.

[Nitrousoxide]

8. There really isn't anything to worry about.

The market will dictate that we begin using renewable sources of liquid fuel soon enough when the price for petroleum increases to a level higher than soybean and other agricultural sources of oil. When that happens a major shift in the method we use to get our power will change. Of course, the technology needs to be developed enough so we can begin producing and refining the stuff on a large scale once the market for it is there, but that is a job for researchers not politicians.

[justinsb]

9. What happens when water shortages and rising temperatures

cause a loss of agricultural land and crops for fuel are no longer economically feasible?

[Nitrousoxide]

10. You mean the increases in solar output which may well be causing...

the global warming? I don't think we have much control over that. Even if crops are used temporally as a means to produce transportable fuel, we have no reason to expect that in a hundred years, the shortest amount of time the doomsayers give for negative ecological impacts, we will still be reliant on them. Nuclear can (and will) provide the majority of our power plants with their power producing materials while hydrogen will be able to power our cars in 30 to 40 years. Long before that 100 year mark.

[justinsb]

11. Well keep thinking that way if you like

In the Midwest, the Ogallala Aquifer--one of the world's largest stores of groundwater--is being depleted at an alarming rate. The aquifer lies beneath eight U.S. states, an area just slightly smaller than Texas. In the 1940s, farmers began to notice that they were having to drill deeper to reach water for their irrigation pumps. From then until the early '90s, the water level in the aquifer dropped at an average rate of less than half a foot each year. But by 1995, well measurements showed that the level was dropping three feet a year, causing the land above the aquifer to subside dramatically in places. Since then, irrigation has been cut back, and Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado have all been losing irrigated land over the last two decades.

http://www.unhmagazine.unh.edu/sp01/water3sp01.html

But, you and your children will regret it.

[Nitrousoxide]

13. I suspect an increase in desalination would take...

...a great deal of the burden off our groundwater supplies.

[Kraklen]

12. nonsense.

But I'm glad most adults can tell.

[acmejack]

14. Where you going to get all that money?

Nukes cost a fortune even back when they were building them. Check out and see what Nine Mile in NY cost to construct.

[Nitrousoxide]

15. You forget that we need not use large reactors.

The US and China have both been investigating small nuclear reactors which could be produced on an assembly line rather than at a job site.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip60.htm">Link

The maintenance costs of nuclear reactors is much lower than your conventional reactors. Sure the initial cost might be higher, but it also is cheaper to run over the long term.

[NickB79]

20. Care to post a link to a scientific journal article to support that claim?

And then tell us what the vast majority of climatologists believe is driving the increasing global temps?

[rman]

21. We won't be using any alternatives untill the infrastructure is in place

The technology is already there, but not the political will to deploy it.
Agricultural sources of oil are not really viable since it would require vast amounts of agricultural areas to be used for growing 'fuel crops' instead of food.
And we better hurry, given that the price of a barrel of oil has almost doubled in the past year.

[Robbien]

22. and the proposed energy bill does nothing to help

Just another Exxon/Halliburton subsidy along with increasing environmental damage and privatiztion of utilities.

All provisions for developing alternatives were stripped from the bill.


To help stop the energy bill

Public Citizen has an easy action page

just fill in your email info

click and you are done

http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=998

[lvx35]

7. Hey, I'm going to make a mint.

Peak water...Peak oil. I live in the rainy city, where 1,458 million gallons of water falls a year, and even a tiny percentage would produce some kinetic energy were it to be captured high and directed into a river...So what I do is derive small amounts of hydroelectic energy from collecting the water, then save the water for sales! Yeah!

[Trish1168]

16. No need to worry. Avian flu will thin out the population.

I am being facetious, of course, though there's some truth there. While I believe some thought and attention needs to be given to the world's resources, first things first. We've got to get rid of the crazed lunatics running our government. If we can elect rational people, then maybe these issues can be addressed in a rational way.

I'm not so worried about the water...its the energy. Afterall, with energy, you can de-salinate the ever more abundant (from melted glaciers) sea water.

[Wetzelbill]

17. Kick

:kick:

Interesting discussion.

[RC]

18. We are such an arrogant species that nobody gets it.

Our shear numbers are what is doing the major damage to the only home we can ever know.
And we are all but totally blind to the root cause.
You name the problem, global warming, oil, water, plant & animal extinctions. The root cause of all is the overwhelming damaging weight of our massive numbers on this wet rock.
This planet is over populated with a self important species. That one species is destroying everything that it needs to survive.
Unless we wake up, the earth will cleans itself of us and replenish itself with more benign life forms. We will not be part of the future of this planet.

[IDemo]

19. There are actually several peaks facing us

along with oil and water. Humans have extracted and wasted natural resources at an alarming rate, and will probably not be convinced to change their ways until it is too late. (Certainly not with the soon to be passed 'Energy Bill', where energy companies get the dough and we get the bill).

"Flat-earth economists", as ASPO's Colin Campbell calls them, fail to grasp that the scale of the liquid fuels problem cannot be addressed soon enough by 'alternatives' to stave off serious economic consequences. And, desalination is no closer to resolving the imminent water crisis than the so-called 'hydrogen economy' is to even marginally replacing America's 21 million barrel per day oil addiction.