I just heard that June was a record month in the U.S. We used 405,000,000 gallons of gasoline PER DAY.
Obviously fossil fuels are finite, so when does the tap run dry?
I just heard that June was a record month in the U.S. We used 405,000,000 gallons of gasoline PER DAY.
Obviously fossil fuels are finite, so when does the tap run dry?
Technically never. It just gets harder and harder to extract the juice until the cost of extraction exceeds what we're willing to spend on its use.
Some studies were completed over the years showing that oil may NOT be a finite resource.
wvumtnbkr wrote: Some studies were completed over the years showing that oil may NOT be a finite resource.
Links? I've seen some stuff like that before but it's always been stuff on far-right conspiracy-type web sites.
I mean, I guess in the sense that carbon based life forms die all the time and start the process of becoming petroleum underground, in some ways it could be argued that oil isn't a finite resource. That said, to truly not be finite oil would have to be made by natural processes faster than we consume it. It would definitely change things if we found that to be the case...but would that change be for the better? That I'm not so sure about.
There are certainly limits. There is a finite amount on earth right now, a maximum practical production rate, limits to how many byproducts of burning hydrocarbons the biosphere can absorb without killing us all, etc.
Everything confined to this planet is obviously finite.
WilD wrote: There are certainly limits. There is a finite amount on earth right now, a maximum practical production rate, limits to how many byproducts of burning hydrocarbons the biosphere can absorb without killing us all, etc. Everything confined to this planet is obviously finite.
Yeah, just because a study shows that there might be an "infinite" supply doesn't mean that we should keep using it. It will eventually kill everything...
Even if oil stays the same price indefinitely, technology will eventually advance to a point where using it doesn't make sense. Energy collection (solar, wind, etc.) and storage (batteries, capacitors) are constantly getting more efficient and cost effective- it's just a matter of when the two lines cross.
In reply to z31maniac:
I think you talking about abiotic oil. Oil is made in a chemical process and not from dead organic mater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin Worth reading at least the opening paragraphs as a primer or intro to the theory.
Even if oil is abiotic or abiogenic or whatever, it would still be finite. Every process has a rate at which it works, and there's limited amounts of matter on and in the earth. Unless there's also a mechanism proposed by which burnt hydrocarbons somehow redeposit into oil fields??
Oil isn't just used in machines these days though, it's also used in production of plastics which only continues to increase. As long as there is friction, there will be a need to lubricate and cool components which is done primarily by petroleum based compounds. Decreasing oil consumption is probably critical to the long term sustainability of our planet, but reducing consumption in one area can often be offset by increasing usage in another area.
August 13, 2532 at 3:32 pm.
In reply to pinchvalve:
Delete this post you know we aren't supposed to tell the past what we know.
How much weight would you add to the earth if you put a 2 foot thick layer of concrete on the entire surface of the earth?
answer: none, because the concrete came from the earth.
But the finite/infinite discussion is a little silly too, because even something like solar or geothermal is technically finite. It's all a matter of perspective.
Another tidbit is that (and my buddies and I calculated this back in college - so I may be wrong) all the oil ever pumped out of the ground in the history of humans is less than the volume of the big island of hawaii above sea level.
BOOM! Problem solved. EVERYONE GETS A HEMI !!!
Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.
The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., are reported in the Jan. 29 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.
"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material -- it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."...
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html
Gee, I sure hope the current space powers don't fight over that. I'd hate to see an Attack on Titan...
Who cares? You should see all the hoses we daily deliver to BP Amoco in Whiting, IN. It's crazy.
In reply to Robbie:
Yearly oil consumption is about a cubic mile a year.
Fun fact…a byproduct of hydrocarbon refinement is coke and without coke, aluminum is prohibitively expensive to produce.
So, if you stop producing gas, you effectively stop producing aluminum as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: Even if oil stays the same price indefinitely, technology will eventually advance to a point where using it doesn't make sense. Energy collection (solar, wind, etc.) and storage (batteries, capacitors) are constantly getting more efficient and cost effective- it's just a matter of when the two lines cross.
I think for cars and the crossover point is certainly less than a decade away now. Trucks and buses, small aircraft and small boats will be next. Large boats will be second to last, and large aircraft will be last - they'll either switch to biofuel or electric with some battery that seems like Star Trek technology by today's standards. Today's aircraft engines are just a big ducted fan, a giant version of what you see on high-performance RC aircraft, they just happened to be powered by a gas turbine instead of an electric motor.
We're already starting to scrape the bottom of Earth's oil barrel. We're doing super-deep drilling, fracking, extracting the oil out of tar sands and even making it from coal like Germany did in WW2 (see: South Africa). We've gone through most (Edit: Maybe I should say all?) of the easy-to-reach oil already.
RX Reven' wrote: Fun fact…a byproduct of hydrocarbon refinement is coke and without coke, aluminum is prohibitively expensive to produce. So, if you stop producing gas, you effectively stop producing aluminum as well.
Also most plastic is made from oil. Far future generations might curse us for burning off all their precious plastic, often turning over 2/3rds of it directly into waste heat.
qued wrote: In reply to Robbie: Yearly oil consumption is about a cubic mile a year.
Well, then! According to this website (http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0001792.html) the average elevation of hawaii is 3000 ft, or .5 miles for easy math. The big island is 4000 sq miles of area, so that is 2000 cubic miles.
If the world has been doing a cubic mile per year for the last 150 years (very generous), we are still golden. Let's say world oil consumption since the beginning of time is about 100 cubic miles.
According to this website (https://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=5&aid=2) the world burns about 90,000 thousand barrels per day. (90M barrels per day, which turns into about 1.25 miles^3 per year - confirming qued).
Finally, according to this website (http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/14/earth-glance/), there are 332.5 million cubic miles of water on earth, and 3% is fresh.
So humans have used (total of ALL human usage) about 0.00003% of the water on earth, and about 0.001% of the fresh water on earth (if oil was fresh water).
Yes, I went to an engineering school with a huge geology department, and yes I am bored.
aircooled wrote: Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Hey, that's cool. We need to get Elon Musk working on a project to tow Titan over here into Earth orbit and pump that sucker dry!
I think that's NASA's ploy to get more funding. I've often heard said that if they discovered oil on another planet that we'd have a fleet on the way to spread democracy in a heartbeat. Maybe NASA's banking on that.
[/sarcasm in case you're not sure.]
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