Oil Depletion Debate

I can't answer beside the obvious hyper-inflation BUT in human history we generally have changed (almost) "in time" depending on the what we can source in nature, so if oil it's almost depleted today we are just dead, but in 40-50 years maybe we will have had enough time to substitute it gradually for almost all applications.Actually we know how to substitute oil for most applications but nothing that scale, for instance we can just switch from plastic packaging, common co

Lack of cheap energy seems like a very good reason. It remains to be proven if renewables snd nuclear will really be able to replace cheap oil when pish cones to shove, and parts of the overall process aren't supported by oil indirectly.

Nothing against you because I held the same views in the past but I think this is a very dangerous line of thinking. Not everything can be solved with "when it's scare we will come up with alternatives" or "even if the alternatives aren't efficient enough now we will improve them if we run into a scarcity issue".I hear this around energy most often. Oil is becoming more and more expensive ($$ and energy-wise) to extract (I find the best way to look at how many ba

Extremely unlikely any of us alive now will be alive to see it. Oil is just far too useful for us to be able to replace easily, and choosing not to replace it would take our lifestyles back hundreds of years. Hardly anyone wants that.

You don't know that.The world is really on the way of getting rid of oil.Electric cars, bioplastics, solar panels getting exponentially cheap.From my point of view the only thing that stops us all from switching to electric cars is the battery technology.When it comes to the industrial use of solar energy, we already have the technology of storing energy - flywheel (google Beacon Power).

I remember someone saying that oil will either be too expensive or too cheap. From recent events, it seems like too cheap is the most likely outcome. Nuclear is also picking up fast.The remaining major user of fossil fuel is transportation, and the world has already adopted legislation and other processes to deprecate gas cars. I don't think planes or ships will switch to wind power any time soon though.

yeah, count on it.we live in a world where energy is in dire need. we have countries that pump oil from the ground.and you seriously think you can do anything about it ? those in need of that oil will tell those producing countries : pump it, we'll pay it.and that's it.as long as we do not have fusion available and as long there is oil under the ground those countries that want oil will ask the producing ones for that oil and if part of all of the occidental world no longer

That's assuming(1) "consuming and pumping oil" is a bad thing, and not a complex win-some/lose-some thing, which gave us huge progress and benefits in the 200 years we've used fossil fuels to pump the industrial revolution,(2) and that we can just absurtly stop consuming and pumping it right now, and there won't be huge disastrous 2nd order effects (in economy, society, ability for people to heat themselves etc) until better replacement technologies are not ju

And that's just one of the many ways that hydrocarbons are woven into critical parts of the global economy.You can't just snap your fingers, make oil go away and expect modern civilization to keep existing as it currently does.It took ~150yr to get the oil industry where it is today and that is with a massive financial incentive. People need lubricants, tars, fuels, plastics, everything that oil makes cheaply and well. In the absence of strong organic (not artificial, i.e. regu

less d3mand for oil, more demand for energy, much more to the point is the endless potential of abundent solar energy and the comming crisis caused by the end of scarcity your grandkids will dealing meems of archiologists finding fossil fossil fuel cars