Not for the faint of heart...

[ICELL]

Was oblivious to the term "peak oil" (currently 711,000 Google hits) as recently as a week ago. Have done some persistent and naturally skeptical research on this topic over the past week and while I am cognizant of the nature, slant and purpose of various "alarmist" publications and messages, I nevertheless approached this information with an open mind. I can relate to statistical analysis, logical reasoning and optimistic approach to solving challenges, backed by the promise of advance in technolgy and the application of human intellect in solving problems. I can also be moved by mankind's less flattering characteristics such as greed, power, politics as usual and general ignorance.

Wherever you stand on this topic, it appears we will need some real good virtual reality escapes over the coming decades if any of it bears any truth:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

http://www.holon.se/folke/worries/oi...20Fuels%A0.pdf

[Yeta]

I distrust anything with the acronym of "FTW".

[James]

Stupid.

On a related note, if you haven't picked up Michael Crichton's State of Fear yet, you should. Excellent read.

[Intrinsic]

It's like the intro to the album "Extinction Level Event" by Busta in essay form!

It's a good read and hard to disagree, but I have faith in human ingenuity and survival. And if worst comes to worst I have faith that we could blow all the other bastards up to ge the oil.

I think the answer lies not necessarily in alternative fuel sources but rather in a new method to derive energy from those fuel sources. The whole "steam turning a turbine" thing needs to be revisited. No one denies there is an energy problem and no one I know thinks we shouldn't invest in discovering alternatives. But nothing pisses me off than hippies who berate me with nonsense about Solar Power and Wind Power. I'd suggest this article for their reading however, I fear it might simply confuse them more.

[Rune]

Did you fuckers even read the whole article?

Pearls before swine. I hope you can eat your faith when the world crashes around your fucking existence.

[James]

Did you read State of Fear? Nobody ever heard the term "peak oil" two weeks ago, and now it's the end of the fucking world? My asshole.

[James]

Besides, John Titor mentions nothing of an oil shortage.

[Zarcath]

I remember Peak Oil being a big thing earlier this year, and I read up about it then, and it makes sense. It acts just like any investment/commodity/resource on the planet.

When demand is greater then supply, shit fucks up.

That's why I'd rather live in Japan, they have a lot of alternate fuel programs already going on, and the US is like 20 years behind.

But what are we to do? You would need a global agreement and a global plan to reduce oil consumption, which isn't going to happen. We treat oil as a private resource, private companies/countries own them, they don't belong to "the world".

The US Government should seize all of the assets from US billionaires now and start putting that towards a solution.

In order to survive we would have to forcefully scale back on a lot of things. Force everyone to stop driving cars and use centralized transportation. Save what oil we can for shipping/production needs.

It's not hard to visualize Peak Oil. Presumably if you're on this message board you've played an MMO or an RTS.

Guess in 10 years we won't be playing any MMOs

[Ashes Emberblade]

Peak oil projections are inaccurate for one simple reason: They do not account for innovation. That is, they assume that all variables will remain constant. That population growth, oil consumption, etc. will continue growing at the same, average rate.

This, however, does not take into account the creation of new technologies, the discovery / creation of new energy sources, and increases in efficiency of current methods of production, transportation, etc. These factors are, at best, nearly impossible to calculate. Yet, their effect is enormous.

For example, in the beginning of the 20th century, people were freaking out about the shortage of copper and tin. Since tin was being used at a rate at which demand would soon exceed supply, people were envisioning all kinds of economic problems, even famine. (The majority of food at the time was packaged in tin cans.) Copper, being used in the rapid electrification of the US, Japan, and Europe, was also expected to become scarce.

Of course, none of these expected calamities, crashes, famines came to pass. Instead, new sources of both metals were found and exploited, the industrial processes using the metals became more efficient, and plastic / rubber began to replace tin as the food packaging material of choice.

The US Government should seize all of the assets from US billionaires now and start putting that towards a solution.

Who do you think funds research and development into new energy sources and more efficient methods of transportation and manufacture? Yeah, that would be the billionaires and corporations. Give that money to the government, and it would be wasted on graft and corruption, misappropriated, and mishandled. The government has proven itself, time and time again, to be a horrible research body. This is because, aside from the tendency of any body politic to be beset by corruption, the government does not have the incentive to carry out efficient research. They do not have a bottom line to adhere to, as individuals and companies do. The government can simply tax, or print, as much money as it needs.

Furthermore, how is it morally right to seize the assets of individuals simply because they have large amounts of said asset? At what point does it become wrong to seize an individual's property? If it's wrong to steal a poor man's last ten dollars, no matter the reason, then it is equally wrong to steal a rich man's billions, no matter the reason. This country is not founded on Communism, it is founded on personal freedom. The seizure of personal property, especially if spurred by an inaccurate, doomsday prediction such as this, would be a gross violation of the tenets upon which our country was founded, and supposedly adheres.

[Zarcath]

Oil is a structural pillar for plastic.

I didn't say seizing their assets was morally acceptable, you're right, it is communism. At what point does the greater good outweigh personal freedom? Happens all the time in MMOs, you outfit your MT warrior and primary healers, other warriors and healers who may be casual get screwed, not fair is it?

Did you read the entire article? Even if we invent a new "oil", we would still have to pay out the ears to refit our entire economy.

Yeah we were founded on personal freedom, and now our personal freedom to spend and trash as much as we want is going to bite us in the ass. Why is it a hard concept? Demand > Supply.

What would you say if a MMO said, hey, we're going to stop new players from creating more healers, you guys are capped with your current batch of healers, but we're still going to let new players in. Then what?

[Jinkies]

Maybe I'm just a crackpot, but I've always tought in my own mind our eventual solution to energy problems(assuming we don't collapse under them first) would come from the ocean.

I don't have any provable theories, but the obscene amounts of water/power in the sea is a huge mostly untapped resource.

Maybe large farms of tide turbines?, since alot of the concern with wind energy is the amount of actual land it takes up, we don't live underwater, so that doesn't concern us as much.

Or maybe some process for using the inherit salt properties to produce electricity, (basically using salt-water to replenish gigantic batteries).

Mostly just talking out my ass, its a topic I've always had interest in.

[Mkopec1]

Maybe I'm just a crackpot, but I've always tought in my own mind our eventual solution to energy problems(assuming we don't collapse under them first) would come from the ocean.

Hehe, it sure will, but in another way.....

There was a science channel show on upcoming energy sources.

Think hydrogen, our country is spending billions of dollars to fund research in this field.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on our world. a small charge is applied to H20, and hydrogen gas escapes. And once the Hydrogen is combusted, you get H20. Its the cleanest energy source known to man

They already have workable fuel cell technology which converts hydrogen to energy. the only problem left to solve on the fuel cell is the sheer expense, since they utilize platinum in their design. But once this is solved, bye bye oil.

BMW has also been tackling this issue and they have another proposal of using hydrogen, but their method does not utilize the fuel cell, its an altogether diffrent approach, but their approach is such that it can be implemented without the restructuring of fueling stations around the world, meaning they can use the same equipment that you use now to fuel your car.

In fact, some futurists predict that these hydrogen engines will be so efficient in the future that you will be plugging your car into a central grid, at night or while parked somwhere, and the ecess power generated by the engine willl be absorbed into the power grid. The power company will be paying YOU for the energy you are contributing to the grid.

Never fear, human enginuity is here.

[Jinkies]

BMW has also been tackling this issue and they have another proposal of using hydrogen, but their method does not utilize the fuel cell, its an altogether diffrent approach, but their approach is such that it can be implemented without the restructuring of fueling stations around the world, meaning they can use the same equipment that you use now to fuel your car.

Right now hydrogen technology is yes, massively inefficent.

I'm not to familar with BMW's approach(would appreciate any links), though I know they're considered the current world leader in alternative fuel research.

The main issue is that the process used to break up the hydrogen (electrolisys, I'm sure I mispelt it, sue me), is inefficent.

You *seem* to be implying we'll have engines that run off water, which is something thats been done before, the issue with that before was the engines would only run well on very highly refined pure water.
Any inconsistancies caused it to fail fast, if we have to refine water(seems funny saying that), we need some other energy source to do it with.

Though yes, if we could get engines that ran off unprocessed salt-water, that would be the miracle we need.

I can only hope my faith in humanity is as strong as yours as the time draws closer.

[Zarcath]

Read the article guys :P There's a page two that goes into the alternative fuel cells.

In short, we can't use hydrogen as a replacement for oil, it'd only be a temporary solution, we'd run ot of platinum within a year or two of instating it. Plus all of the energy used to create self-sufficient program isn't within our budget/timeframe.

Granted, a lot of the article is talking about the US economy on a whole, I don't doubt some states could become self-sufficient while others become shit holes.

You still have to look back to the origin of the products and realize how fucked we are. Even if we do have alternate fuel cars, the plants that make cars would need to be switched off oil, not to mention tires are made from oil, can't drive your alternative car on non-existant tires.

I'm starting to get pretty nervous about living in the middle of no where on an island. When the local shipping union went on strike for a few weeks people started hoarding items and toilet paper was like wiping your ass with gold. If it came down to the US picking/cutting off states or civil unrest, I'm not sure how Hawaii would fare.

US might survive if we ration oil and then start putting new developments on alternative fuel cells.

A single hydrogen fuel cell requires 20 grams of platinum. If the cells are mass-produced, it may be possible to get the platinum requirement down to 10 grams per cell. The world has 7.7 billion grams of proven platinum reserves. There are approximately 700 million internal combustion engines on the road. Ten grams of platinum per fuel cell x 700 million fuel cells = 7 billion grams of platinum, or practically every gram of platinum in the earth.

Unfortunately, as a recent article in EV World points out, the average fuel cell lasts only 200 hours. Two hundred hours translates into just 12,000 miles, or about one year�fs worth of driving at 60 miles per hour. This means all 700 million fuel cells (with 10 grams of platinum in each one) would have to be replaced every single year.

Thus replacing the 700 million oil-powered vehicles on the road with fuel cell-powered vehicles, for only 1 year, would require us to mine every single ounce of platinum currently in the earth and divert all of it for fuel cell construction only.

Doing so is absolutely impossible as platinum is astonishingly energy intensive (expensive) to mine, is already in short supply, and is indispensable to thousands of crucial industrial processes.

[Jinkies]

I read that too Zarcath, thing is well platinum is a nesseccary component of *current* hydrogen technologies, its not required for the process period.

As we advance we may be able to use such technology with different, more abundant elements.

The writer of that article also ignores recycling, there may be only enough platinum in the world to outfit 700million cars, but when the fuel cell is decommissioned in a year, that platinum doesn't simply disappear, its still in the cell and can be extracted for future use.
(Something we already do with current batteries/converts).

Hydrogen isnt very viable atm, but honestly its probably our best hope for the future.