World Oil Production to Peak in 2013 - Page 2

 Mark Fields wrote:


I suppose we could go back to steam, burn wood or whatever. Before oil
progress was horribly slow.
The idea that when the oil is gone we will magically have some new
clean unlimited source of energy is ludicrous. Lets see... shutdown the gas
stations, stop the flow of natural gas, fuel oil et all, and lets see what
the result will be. I'd be willing to bet food would be in short supply,
you'd have no job, no materials to build homes with, no clean water, no
communications - nope nada - back living like nomads - if you live at all.
Eric

 
I'm not impressed, because I know there are alternatives.

 Eric wrote:


Sometimes it was - and sometimes it wasn't. Change takes place at the
pace we choose. You might also note that before steam, progress was even
slower. :)


I agree. There will be no magic - but we will have solutions (some new
and some old) if we want them enough to invest of our time and energy to
make them work - which is the way it's always played out.


I think you do serious injustice to all of the folks working on solving
these problems (and many more) in ways that depend less and less on the
fuels you've named.

I should probably warn you that there're a lot of people all around the
world working hard to ensure that you lose that bet. If I were you, I'd
bet the other way.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

 Well, they mite get nuclear fusion going. But even if they do, the
transition away from oil will be challenging. And that, even if they can
use the electricity to produce gallium/aluminum alloy hydrogen
generators, or some new battery technology really works... mite not come
online before system global economic panic and collapse.

Granted that there mite well be some new technology we've not read of,
but there could also be some new stress, pandemic, terrorism, climate
change, or whatever, accelerating the schitt twards the fan that we now
know nothing of.

 Day Brown wrote:


All true - at every turning point in history things /might/ have turned
out worse than they actually did. My after-the-fact assessment is that
those worst-case scenarios didn't come to pass because there were people
working hard to head them off.

Panic is the reaction of people who're unequipped to respond
constructively to a threat (economic or otherwise). The only
preventative of which I'm aware is education.

Collapse is what happens when people give up on solving their problems.


Yes to all of the above, and I can offer the encouraging thought that
there are existing technologies and methods which can be brought to bear
to provide for basic needs (water, food, shelter) and beyond.

The energy production paradigm is already shifting from strictly central
production toward (or at least to include) smaller, decentralized
production nearer point of use. It seems likely this shift will
continue, which will tend to localize the effects of the kind of
problems you're worrying about.

If you've visited my web site, then you've already seen that I'm very
much focused on a (sub)set of solutions where energy production is
co-located at the point of use.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html