pbee

Ive been doing some quick research this lunchtime on Published / Known oil reserves and using some figures from a university on yearly continent barrel usage I have calculated at the current rate we have 43 years left !!!.

Now obviously this doesnt take account for new field discoveries or usage increases / decreases.

Do you feel guilty for not driving a card that does 50+ MPG ???. Should we be lobbying countries with excessive barrel usage (America).

scary stuff, you can see why the US wanted control of the output from Iraq now !!!.

speedking

One of the more serious aspects is not that petrol will run out, because no doubt vehicle technology will move on to fill the gap, with vehicles priced similarly to current prices, but that other products such as nylon and plastics, that are used in virtually every consumer good, will also need to be manufactured from some other base material. Clothing etc. could get more expensive. Stock up on cheap rucksacks, tents, etc. while you can

barrybudden

Do you think this will stop Elmer sending up space ships to see there are wee green men on Mars?

Brit_in_Japan

US has 22 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves, and are using fuel at a rate of 6 billion barrels a year Currently they import half their oil needs, so they will run out in approx 7 years.

At the current rate, yes we will run out of oil in our lifetime.

Vonzack

Even with the new technology for getting at previously tapped out wells, we will still run out of oil or see vastly reduced production in the next 30 years or so. Natural Gas isn't much better either.

But we'll have lots of renewable energy sources by then, won't we, so we shouldn't worry.

julian N/W wrx my93

Just think, it took millions of years to make that oil, and we've gone and blown it in about 200 years!

same with coal! but thats another debate!

Chelspeed

There are a lot of folks who can't understand how they came to have an oil shortage in America.

Well, there's a very simple answer: Nobody bothered to check the oil. They just didn't know they were getting low.

The reason for that is purely geographical. All the oil is in Alaska, Texas, California, and Oklahoma. But all the dipsticks are in Washington, D.C.

vindaloo

Less supply & the same or greater demand = pay megabucks for it, if you can get it. Bio-fuels are one answer but how much can you produce?

J.

imlach

Yes, it is a very good point. Mention oil, and most people think of petrol. However, this is one just one use. Oil is used in so much plastic production. We are as dependent on plastics as we are petrol!

Benno

Having trouble picturing a solar powered, electric motor driven scooby myself. For a start you would lose the flat four burble.

BishopDevious

My mate works in the oil business (and also a scooby driver). We were talking about this the other week. Picture the future...

'Daddy where did the oil go?'

'Well son, see that photo of my old car....'

mattsan

I dont think theres to much to worry about,when it happens it happens!! MPs preach to everyone to be greener etc,but do we see them getting rid of there big petrol guzzling cars??

imlach

Yeah, stick you head in the sand like the majority

Greedy selfish bunch

bazzaa

What a bunch of fantasists, new oil well discoveries are predicted and estimates are another 400 years at least of oil, and as for coal, coal is the cheapest and must abundant fuel in the world

So i guess petrol will always be available in our generation, also coal fired power stations

imlach

1 generation? Out of how many previous ones, and how many future ones? Milions of years to create it, and all gone in under 200 years...

Do you NEVER feel guilty about that?

misty

IMHO the reason that we are still using 100 year old technology ie petrol engines, is simple. The giant corporations, more or less run the world in a roundabout way, so they hold back new technologies ie, fuel cells, battery technology, etc, to keep ther billions of dollars rolling in. T.V. was invented roughly 30 years after the car, yet there is no comparison between John Logie Bairds tv, and a wall hung tft tv of today. Why? because there's not billions to be made by holding back that technology! Telephones, again, the same reasons apply.
dave

misty

thanks for that fascinating reply mate!!
One day perhaps you'll wake up to what's really going on around you!!
dave

scoobydooooo

are u serious ?? we didn't make the status quo we just live in it , what are we supposed to do ?, live in the mountains in a cave ?

imlach

Have I ever suggested a prehistoric existance?

No, just conservation.

Steps you can take :

a) walk to get the local shops instead of driving
b) make your kids walk to school
c) don't use new plastic bags at the supermarket every time
d) recycle all you can
e) try and justify every journey as necessary if there are alternatives that are nearly as good

Every little helps.

misty

Where did he's reply go???

I have just had a look on 't' tinternet and found this!!!
For many writers – like www.rense.com's Diane Harvey – the corruption of American empire is relevant, but only as a sidebar. The real problem stems from two incontrovertible facts: that reserves of oil and other non-renewable resources will someday run out, and that on its current course, the Earth is soon to become overloaded with people. If these twin problems go unaddressed, our species faces a gloomy fate. As the situation gets worse, governance in the traditional mode, based around at least the pretense of liberal democracy, will become impossible. Instead, naked power grabs will become the norm for wealthy elites capable of mounting them. "The people"'s job will be simply to provide money and labor for the war machines that make these imperial conquests possible; those who aspire to a role in their own governance beyond subsidizing imperial expansion will be brutally repressed.

Harvey and others feel that such a global transformation has already begun, and episodes like September 11 and the U.S. government's bizarre obsession with oil-laden Iraq are among its harbingers. But, you say, oil supplies look fine from where you sit. According to hard-on-the-eyes website, www.dieoff.org, the problem won't manifest itself all at once, when the world's oil wells suddenly dry up. It is instead happening incrementally, because the rate of production has started to lag behind the world's increasing demand. Among numerous cases in point, www.dieoff.org cites "The Coming Anarchy," an Atlantic Monthly article describing intolerable government repression in the long-neglected region of sub-Saharan Africa. Such will be the harvest of empire for our overextended world: warlordism, brutal dictatorships that verge on chaos – death, and in vast quantities. I don't know whether these predictions will come to pass. But after this past year, I find the possibility an awful lot easier to imagine (29).
dave

scoobydooooo

but why should i feel guilty ??

Suresh

With all due respect to those concerned, there have been many scares based on spurious projections, which have predicted oil would run out within x years and erm.... it didn't happen.

Lifted from the web -
In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, the nation’s leading oil-producing state, estimated that only enough U.S. oil remained to keep the nation’s kerosene lamps burning for *four years*.

More here from the US National Center for Policy Analysis
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.html#a

Suresh

imlach

It does no harm to conserve.
It IS a finite resource.

julian N/W wrx my93

if coal is everywhere why is there no (or not many) pits left in britain?

I live in st.helens, there used to be quite a few coal mines, and how many is there now?

Yes, part of it cause of the strike. (but don't get me started on that and i was only 10!)

mrklaw

I'll have a V8 rumble in mine. Its an optional extra sampled sound you can order when you buy your toyota prius 3.

imlach

There is still a fair amount of coal in the UK, but it's not economic to mine given the cheap coal available from elsewhere....

Chelspeed

We closed all the pits to conserve the coal. Now we're using up other peoples fossil fuels. When they're run out the coal we have left will be worth a fortune. That's my conspiracy theory anyway.

pslewis

Why not use it up?

Technology will give us another way of transport - oil is cheap (it may not look like it, but it IS!) - thats why we all use it!

As it gets expensive then the Oil Companies will seek out those reserves that are not economic at the moment - that could unleash another 50 years or so.

At the end of the day, if my offspring and my grandchildren can enjoy the motoring pleasure, then I am afraid to say I have nothing to say about what happens after - I will be long dead and forgotten!

Why should the drivers of today suffer for the drivers of tomorrow?

Pete

imlach

It's about conservation not unwarranted gluttony

WR1 Wannabe

If it's going to run out anyway, what's the point of conserving it?

It's not like the Ozone Layer, or rainforests, which can regenerate if we leave them alone...