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Old 09-22-2011, 08:42 PM
 
5,760 posts, read 11,541,357 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis1979 View Post

But we need a surgery now, the best medicine is oil shale.
That is about like going off Crack, and going on to Meth.

May be drugs, but how is THAT medicine?

Why not quit burning the stuff?
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Old 09-22-2011, 10:50 PM
 
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
13,621 posts, read 12,726,125 times
Reputation: 20050
oil is the blood of our modern civilization, without the discovery of oil we would have a tini fraction of the technologies we have now,, take a look in your dweling can you find one single thing thats not associated with oil in some way??? no you can not!!! oil is as important as water, soil and air to our fragile existence. until we can find a affordable sustainable alternative oil is our blood, and at least 5 or more billion people will die if we run low or out of oil,, there's like 500 thousand products that are made form oil. even most of the fertilizers are made from oil,, it's a finite jenie that was released and is burning up right before our eyes!!! we better team up and find another bottle with a genie asap,, or we will be fooked!!!! personally i do not think we will ever be able to replace oil with some new energy source.. we are pushing the limits of the capacity of this earth to support an ever growing energy hungry population of greedy humans and their machines.. we humans better start figuring out how to reverse population growth without destroying ourselves in the process..
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Old 09-26-2011, 06:28 PM
 
158 posts, read 907,149 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by alphamale View Post
No body posting here, or their grand children will be around when that happens.

By that time, we will have other fuels.
We already have other fuels, so as technology to figure out other sources we can use. Cars don't only run off gasoline nowadays, they run off of diesel, electricity, bio-diesel, even off of water is possible, but very costly. All we really need is electricity to run anything nowadays, rest can be figured out.

What will happen once we run out of oil? We'll move on to other resources. We're humans, we are capable of adapting and evolving.
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Old 09-26-2011, 07:33 PM
 
Location: Clovis Strong, NM
3,376 posts, read 6,102,410 times
Reputation: 2031
Quote:
Originally Posted by wickedpuppet View Post
We already have other fuels, so as technology to figure out other sources we can use. Cars don't only run off gasoline nowadays, they run off of diesel, electricity, bio-diesel, even off of water is possible, but very costly. All we really need is electricity to run anything nowadays, rest can be figured out.

What will happen once we run out of oil? We'll move on to other resources. We're humans, we are capable of adapting and evolving.
This is true and I believe it.
However, if the majority of the population isn't weaned off of it in an orderly fashion, wide-spread violence due to nearly everyone being nippy could hamper that.

In that case, move the research for this stuff away from where a molotov, rifle-round, or a berzerker-mob could shut it down.
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Old 09-26-2011, 09:04 PM
 
6,326 posts, read 6,585,426 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wickedpuppet View Post
We're humans, we are capable of adapting and evolving.
It's a nice slogan, but it lacks foundation in human history (yup, you've read that right). It's validity yet to be tested. Wanna bet?

In the past 10,000 years humans were not deliberately "adapting and evolving" to meet challenges. Quite the opposite was happening, humans were using opportunistic discoveries to grow their population even more (on the expense of other species) and to create challenges of their own making. That's quite similar to a locust swarm that discovered especially succulent patch of green just before collapse. Except that a locust swarm lacks narcissistic propensities.

As comforting is to believe in the sequence: challenge - deliberate efforts - discovery -"salvation". That's NOT what was happening in the past 10,000 years. The sequence: " random discovery - useful applications - population growth - snowball of problems got thicker - collapse" was way more frequent.

You can't evolve outside of the laws of thermodynamics. So far human were evolving along the line "rob other species of their food/energy to grow human population". It's just a common sense that this "paradigm" is about to hit the wall.
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Old 09-26-2011, 09:30 PM
 
Location: Nebraska
4,176 posts, read 10,683,581 times
Reputation: 9646
I do so love how many people talk about electric cars and even electric trains, and lmiting travel, and on and on.

Do you know what uses the most fuel?
Transport, construction, and farm equipment. Your cute little electric car may keep you running around the city, but it won't do you much good if the supertankers aren't plying the seas between here and China, bringing containers full of goods and going back - empty. Your sporty little electric train won't be able to haul the hundreds of thousands of tons of food back and forth to your cities. There hasn't been an electric engine made yet that can plow or harvest hectares of wheat or corn to bake your bread or coat your fried fish. There isn't an engine that runs on anything but oil derivatives that can run from dawn til after dark, digging deep into the earth to rip out whatever's there, then pound it flat to be built on. Sure, Schwann's and UPS and even FedEx can switch to those cool propane trucks and brag about them, but you wont find one of those plowing or trucking or sending out ships across the sea.

So before you think of what fun it would be, and how green and responsible it would be, to drive your little solar-powered roller-skate, ask yourself what would REALLY happen in "peak oil" - when there is no way to get your lobsters from Maine, your coffee from Brazil, your beef from Nebraska, your wheat from the Dakotas, your orange juice from Florida, or your melamine oops I mean your gluten from China. At what point does the cost to transport or raise the food you are planning to eat tomorrow or next month become a tipping point for you and your neighbors?
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Old 09-27-2011, 07:23 AM
 
Location: Brooklyn
40,050 posts, read 34,589,115 times
Reputation: 10616
^ Let's suppose you're right, and our entire society wouldn't be able to function without oil. That doesn't answer the question of how we might scrape by without it, since it isn't a renewable resource, and we can't count on it forever. Or, given the amount of oil we use daily, in the long-term future.
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Old 09-27-2011, 11:06 AM
 
Location: Tampa
3,982 posts, read 10,458,760 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred314X View Post
^ Let's suppose you're right, and our entire society wouldn't be able to function without oil. That doesn't answer the question of how we might scrape by without it, since it isn't a renewable resource, and we can't count on it forever. Or, given the amount of oil we use daily, in the long-term future.
hydrogen is probably our best bet. but we need to get moving on it quickly.

dont know if it will work for planes or ships...
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Old 09-27-2011, 12:03 PM
 
Location: Nebraska
4,530 posts, read 8,861,262 times
Reputation: 7602
Quote:
Originally Posted by crystalblue View Post
hydrogen is probably our best bet. but we need to get moving on it quickly.

dont know if it will work for planes or ships...
The Red Tape to build Nuclear plants is the biggest obstacle to their construction.

Coal was used to power trains decades before Diesel locomotives and the United States has enough Coal to provide power for many years. The difficulty with burning all that Coal would be increased air pollution.

Wind Power and Solar power are difficult to store. When an affordable battery is invented that can store HUGE amounts of electricity, wind and solar could contribute significantly toward solving our energy problems.

GL2
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Old 09-27-2011, 01:28 PM
 
Location: Tampa
3,982 posts, read 10,458,760 times
Reputation: 1200
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gunluvver2 View Post
The Red Tape to build Nuclear plants is the biggest obstacle to their construction.

Coal was used to power trains decades before Diesel locomotives and the United States has enough Coal to provide power for many years. The difficulty with burning all that Coal would be increased air pollution.

Wind Power and Solar power are difficult to store. When an affordable battery is invented that can store HUGE amounts of electricity, wind and solar could contribute significantly toward solving our energy problems.

GL2
What they need to do is build massive solar/wind plants near the coast, have those power de-sal plants, and turn the water into Hydrogen.

for infrastructure, I would imagine offering tax breaks to companies to install hydrogen refueling stations would catch on.

the govt could mandate that all their cars must be hydro-powered by 2020. that would get the car makers producing them, and the prices should drop quickly.
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