The end of our way of life.

I know this subject has come up before on ATS but I�d just like to bring it up again and add a lot of resources as well.

For those that don�t know the oil age has either peaked or is about to. Civilization as we know it IS going to change. This is not a matter for debate it is a fact agreed upon by science and reason and anyone else who is moderately aware of the way the world work. Technologies primary source of energy is depleting fast and we have no good alternatives on the horizon.

For the last 150 years industry and technology has been driven by oil and now the discovery of new oil has come to a halt and the world�s powers are vying for control of the last of it.

Some of the below links talk about the very real and very scientifically sound fact that over the next 5-20 years we will lose the source of energy that allows 6.5 billion people to live. I�ll allow you to browse the information for yourself rather than just rehash everything said by the experts on the matter.

What I fear is how humanity will deal with the last of its oil. As we have seen oil rich areas of are great contest not only by the US, Russia, and China, but by virtually every industrial country out there. As population first go through recession, then depression, then starvation, then die off, what will the power do? Unfortunately war seems imminent. With agriculture not to mention technology, relying so heavily on cheap oil will countries resort to nuclear war for survival?

I am presenting many sources of information. At this point I see no good solution except education about the issue. If people acknowledge the problem and force their elected representative to talk about it. There is still a chance something can be done before it is too late.

An alarmist but still rather good site to start at. Presents fact in laymen�s terms rather than data.
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net...
A good UK site.
www.after-oil.co.uk...
A Video of a lecture on the situation. (Requires Real Player, 50 min long so not good for dial-up)
www.rz.tu-clausthal.de...

Or just Google for �Hubert�s Peak� or �Oil Peak�

At this point I hope humanity can find new energy before its too late. Expect humanity to survive even if most of us do not. And prepare for the end.

It's called nanotechnology. It will completely alter our ways of life. with nanotech they can even turn coal into liquid which can be used as fuel and has no pollution. Nanotech will create new energy for us...

the (i stand corrected) He-3 reserves on the moon were alwasy promising. i dont no enough to talk about pollution, btu i doubt it wud be much, if any, to speak of.
hopefully, we can eventually get to the point of fusion, which shud carry us until the sun go kablooe

Originally posted by DarkHelmet
It's called nanotechnology. It will completely alter our ways of life. with nanotech they can even turn coal into liquid which can be used as fuel and has no pollution. Nanotech will create new energy for us...

Nanotech is dependant on oil. There are currently 4 sources of energy humans have access to. Solar, Gravitational, Geothermic, and Chemical (ie Fossil Fuels). Nanotech needs to be built using one of these. There are currently technologies to sythizise oil. The problem is that they take more energy to complete then the energy you get out of the oil you made.

As for simply saying nanotech, I'd love an example of that technology? THe truth is people can't admit there is a problem so they simply say "sciene will save us!" but i ask you, why are the scientist the ones discussing this problem then?

It boils down to thermosynamics. We need energy inputs.

At the moment the scientific communities easiest option is nuclear. However just like oil Uranium will run out.

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
the (i stand corrected) He-3 reserves on the moon were alwasy promising. i dont no enough to talk about pollution, btu i doubt it wud be much, if any, to speak of.
hopefully, we can eventually get to the point of fusion, which shud carry us until the sun go kablooe

Yes fusion would be ideal as well as mined He-3. The problem is we are looking at the begining of the end of oil now. Over the next 10 years it will become more and more apparent with time in everyday life starting with economic problems. What "might" come is just a hope, not a solution. Until we can survive without oil, there is a problem.

Originally posted by Quest

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
the (i stand corrected) He-3 reserves on the moon were alwasy promising. i dont no enough to talk about pollution, btu i doubt it wud be much, if any, to speak of.
hopefully, we can eventually get to the point of fusion, which shud carry us until the sun go kablooe

Yes fusion would be ideal as well as mined He-3. The problem is we are looking at the begining of the end of oil now. Over the next 10 years it will become more and more apparent with time in everyday life starting with economic problems. What "might" come is just a hope, not a solution. Until we can survive without oil, there is a problem.

fusion is more off, but the He-3 is much more realistic and closer. until then, hydrogen may have to do. weve got some time, but not a lot. we need to actually look at this seriously.

They will find some other source....
Such as...

Solar, Other chemical sources..., or H2O, or Antigravity via electricity., electromagnetic generator that creates more output than input(these have already been discovered...electromagnetic generators that do this)

Originally posted by DaRAGE
They will find some other source....
Such as...

Solar, Other chemical sources..., or H2O, or Antigravity via electricity., electromagnetic generator that creates more output than input(these have already been discovered...electromagnetic generators that do this)

I'm not much for blind faith, especialy when the people we are puting the faith in are the ones who are trying to find the solution. I love your list of solutions, but alas, none of those things exist. In my research of the subject I have seen that this type of denial is the standard and probably the reason when the rolling blackouts start in 15 years people will be surprised.

If other energy sources exist in the quantity and economic viability needed to mainting life as it is, how about a source? a link?

Please don;t spread the blind faith in science FICTION technologies, that just makes the problem worse.

And yes there are other sources of energy, just nothing that will keep life even close to as it is now. At this point if we had to switch to solar, nuclear, and other "alternative energies" 5 billion people would go without power, food, and life.

Hydrogen is abundant as long as we have water,algea can release hydrogen from water,so mabye well have giant algea farms?

i have no doubt or way of life will change. we have long since posessed the technology of cleaner fuels and better sources of power. The Problem is that while it would help save our planet it would cause companys to lose money for a short period of time as they convert from oil/petroleum based to alt. fuel based. and we cant have that can we .

If i remember correctly Helium-3 Isotope is extremely unstable and even a slight spark could explode it. I remember seeing an article once that states if we had a mining colony on the moon we could harvest the He-3 and generate microwaves from a station on the moon. Then we could send these microwaves to earth so there picked up with rectennas and transformed into power. Apparently the moon gets 13,000 terawatts of solar energy from the sun a year and we would only need to cover 0.2% of the lunar surface to achieve ample amounts of energy.

PS no i do not have the article anymore sorry

[Edited on 17-2-2004 by thedarkprojekt]

Originally posted by thedarkprojekt
I remember seeing an article once that states if we had a mining colony on the moon we could harvest the He-3 and generate microwaves from a station on the moon. Then we could send these microwaves to earth so there picked up with rectennas and transformed into power. Apparently the moon gets 13,000 terawatts of solar energy from the sun a year and we would only need to cover 0.2% of the lunar surface to achieve ample amounts of energy.

PS no i do not have the article anymore sorry

[Edited on 17-2-2004 by thedarkprojekt]

i think ive read somthing like that a few years back, popsci or mechanics. the microwave thing. its a nice idea but i dunno how people wud receive it. even better than He-3 cuz then theres no mining, either orbiting body.

Originally posted by Merkeva
Hydrogen is abundant as long as we have water,algea can release hydrogen from water,so mabye well have giant algea farms?

Yes, Energy won't stop. However hydrogen is not that easy to come by. Right now we get our hydrogen from fossil fuels. Farming hydrogen is rather low energy output. Solar, hydrogen, wind, tidal, hydroelectric, and geothermal are all sources of energy. However they are small sources and some of them are rather expensive too.

Imagine this. Oil reserves wane and faced with having to extract oil from sand or shale it become more effecient to build solar or wind farms. At this point we are allready PAST energy needed to maintian society as it is in most technological countries.

What if you had to choose between using your energy rations for running your car, a radio/tv/computer, or a light. And only one of those for the same price you used to live as we do now.

What if another option was powering a car to ship food to your town?

In the United States 18% of energy is used for food. Thats growing, packaging, and shipping. Oil in the United States accounts for approximatly 99% of the energy. As the cost of extracting more oil, setting up new sources of energy accumulate, the cost of everything including food raises. Were not talking about gas for your SUV, we talking about everything from the food on your table to plastic that makes up most things in your house, and the ability to run the machines to build and ship all those things.

Even more so imagine we continue to ignore the problem. Now oil cost 100 time what it did 10 years ago. How will we build a solar farm? Or nuclear plant? It will cost $10,000 just in gas to run a buldozer...what about the other equipment? What about the machines that build the equipment?

This is the problem, once the cost start to rise it only gets worse. Oil is still cheap and easy. We should be moving on BEFORE doing so will bankrupt us.

For those that think "I'm not worried, our government and scientist wouldn't let it go that far." then i challange you to find a government official working on the issue. I challange you to find even a possible energy source that can match oil it low cost and high energy. Remeber, this must be something that actualy exist, hopes for future technology is great, but that won't help when thing start powering down over the next 5-20 years.

uh, what about nuclear power. I heat my home and water with natural gas. Is that running out as well? You must be talking about fossil fuel gluttons like the manufacturing industry whose failure may impact us all economically. What exactly is your standard of living? Driving your SUV down the block everytime you need a coffee? Perhaps you're talking about transporting food and goods to their distribution points. I can see a real problem there. Perhaps we should grow food where we are standing and not eat as much? I guess I couldn't even type this since power plants are run off coal and dams. Oh wait, what runs on oil again? Our cars? Don't hybrid cars need less gasoline? Isn't their a patent for a box that powers at least one room of our house and may tap into the zero point energy field of he universe. Hell one guy thinks that oil is actually renewing from deep inside the earth from the sea floor constantly collapsing inwards at the tectonic plate seams. But you have done all the research so I guess the I'll have to worry about the roving gangs who freak out and kill me for a potato.

Originally posted by hexagramfifty
uh, what about nuclear power. I heat my home and water with natural gas. Is that running out as well? You must be talking about fossil fuel gluttons like the manufacturing industry whose failure may impact us all economically.
Nuclear power is actualy going to be the buffer that slows down our switch over from oil to something else. However uranium isn't and endless supply either. And if we made enough reactors to stay at the level we currently are at then that will only last us another 20-30 years, not to mention the radioactive waste. As for natural gas it is running out as well. A lot of our natural gas is actualy FROM oil. So expect the price to sky rocket when everyone else turn to that as well. As for it being glutons, no, its all of us. Remember food and clean water are both very dependant on oil to stay cheap and easy to move. In addition anything man made in your house is probably made out of or with oil. Plastics are made out of oil. Metal is mined, smelted, forged, and cast using oil powered machines. Wood is harvested and cut with oil powered machines. Glass is made with oil powered machines. This should cover just about every thing you own unless you are a lumberjack and carpenter or a farmer. All those will go up in price as we lose our cheap oil. The cost of solar power, just the energy is double that of oil currently. So double the cost of everything you buy. At least double since making a solar powered forge or bulldozer is gonna cost way more since there is no current technology to get that kind of energy output from solar.

What exactly is your standard of living? Driving your SUV down the block everytime you need a coffee? Perhaps you're talking about transporting food and goods to their distribution points. I can see a real problem there. Perhaps we should grow food where we are standing and not eat as much?
I have a land line phone, no cell. I live in a 2 bedroom appartment with 3 people. I don't own a car, i use public transportation. I do however buy my food from stores. I'm worried about losing this comparitivly luxurious way of life. As for growing food here, well in a city its kind of tough. I was raised on a farm though, so i have the knowledge just not the land. If it come down to growing food to live (probably cause of cost not the fact that agriculture grinds to a hault) then I and million of other people will be leaving the cities. I'm pretty efficient for an American, yet because i simply live in a non-stone age country, i am part of the issue.

I guess I couldn't even type this since power plants are run off coal and dams. Oh wait, what runs on oil again? Our cars? Don't hybrid cars need less gasoline?
Hybrids use less. They are great for slowing down the problem. However they still get 70 or so miles to the gallon. So if gasoline is $50 a gallon (thats not unreasonable an estimate for about 20-25 year from now) a trip could cost you in the hundreds of dollars. In my eyes a bus trip to work could cost me $40...one way.

Isn't their a patent for a box that powers at least one room of our house and may tap into the zero point energy field of he universe.
I wish. If there is I can't find it. In addition i think some of my old engineering and physics proffesors would love to meet the inventor.

Hell one guy thinks that oil is actually renewing from deep inside the earth from the sea floor constantly collapsing inwards at the tectonic plate seams.
Yes, that is indeed the case. So if we run out of cheap easy oil. Then in about 50 million years we'll have more. Since that is a long time to wait however, we can even make oil syntheticly, but it takes energy to do that as well as cost a good bit. It will allow us to continue to make plastics no matter what, but it will not be a source of energy since we have to use almost as much energy to make it as we get back out.

But you have done all the research so I guess the I'll have to worry about the roving gangs who freak out and kill me for a potato.
Yes, and I hope others look into it more too. There is a lot of info out there. As for roving gangs trying to kill for a potato, i don;t think it will be that extreme UNLESS world war 3 breaks out over failing economies and societies. China, Russia, and the US all use a large amount of oil and if oil prices rise suffer SERIOUS economic problems. If nothing else the US has shown it will fight over oil, and i'm sure Russia and China would to if they had millions of hungry unemployed people.

Dear Quest,
I was being a little tongue in cheek with my reply as well as getting you to clarify. I realize as well as the next guy that fossil fuels are finite, non-renewable energy sources.(and that natural gas is found with oil) Perhaps this will change our materialistic, consumer driven, greedy, (oil)dependent and imperialistic natures. Thank you for responding. I still think you'd be surprised by what we can accomplish in the post-petroleum era. I don't think science can save us. However, in Nick Cooke's book "The Hunt for Zero Point" he mentions the "energy" (my word) box patent. The other gentleman, whose name escapes me, is convinced that the natural process of producing oil is actually occuring now and in our lifetimes. He goes so far as to say that old, dry wells are being found relatively full.

Yeah but invading Iraq was the most immoral thing any country ever did in the history of the world!

We should all shiver in the dark and lose everything we have and suffer for a principle that not one other country in the entire world would respect!

Destroy the USA! Destroy the USA!

Yeah the oil is going and yes the lights will soon be out unless somebody comes up with something better, and frankly solar cells don't cut it.

we started using oil as a primary resource during the industrial revolution, we somehow survived for thousands of years before then, so maybe we have some hope after

I agree that the oil problem looks very daunting, and I'm puzzled by the lack of a high profile national R&D program focused on solutions, but maybe US scientists don't appear to be working on solutions because they already have some. I've heard of an editor from one major science journal who complained he is pressured to avoid publication of fusion related studies. Maybe they're keeping these technologies under wraps until specific foreign policy and defense objectives are met. Oil shortage panics might even be considered useful for motivating countries into the arms race, one of the few profitable industries that the US still dominates.

Consider the space shuttles which are on the verge of being decommissioned because of old age, yet there's not much evidence of a program to replace them. NASA occasionally demonstrates an X-plane mock-up, but that's about it. Isn't there something fishy about what's missing at NASA? I think so. The replacement for the shuttle probably already exists in the USAF black-ops program and they're probably already using it to deploy SDI hardware.

[Edited on 19-2-2004 by Condorcet]

Hmmm i know it wouldn't solve all the problems but what about alchohol fueled auto's surely thats one solution to a part of the problem ?