Fuel, how many years do you think till the wells run dry?

[[Caledonia] F0xtr@wt]

I don't know. My guess is the wells will run dry in about 20-30 years. Depending on how we use it.

[Orange - Cisco Certified]

We can't sustain ourselves on fuel for too much longer. It hurts the environment and the only reason why we haven't moved on to more renewable sources of energy is because politics are in the pockets of big business. One of those businesses being the petroleum companies.

[Martinerrr]

Understand that there are quite a lot of scientists trying to figure new ways for power, example is the Neutrino.

[Mr Jive]

Hmm time for a wall of text me thinks

I don't know how long until it runs out but I’m sure a quick wiki search could give you an estimate to be fair. Still the results of what happens when the fuel runs out would be a good and bad thing. A bad thing for the obvious reasons is that our main source of fuel for almost everything would have run out. A less obvious consequence would be the shit storm that follows. Currently there are "wars" fought  over the high demand in fuel (I’m assuming you mean fossil), be it a political war, an economic war or a physical war - shit going down. So when that supply becomes a supply that is almost nil shit storms will be even bigger as countries scrounge for the last remnants of oil etc.

Then as the dust settles of this initial fuss will come the panic of the people as we all get pissed over our cars becoming obsolete and having to buy electric cars etc. Would be annoying at first but I’m sure with time we would get over it.

Now the reason why it would be a good thing is to start with the more obvious one: no more combustion engines, no more oil rigs etc etc. The less obvious reasoning would be the sudden advancement in alternative sources. The governments themselves would invest more heavily in renewable sources - be it solar, wind or nuclear we would see more of them popping up. But then you have to consider the energy companies that own the current oil supplies probably won't just give up and take their money and leave; they will want to invest in whatever fuel is going to be the next big contender. My guess would be using hydrogen as a fuel, most likely in the form of Fusion power. Fusion power of course not being a thing of fiction any more as we are probably getting close to making a breakthrough with fusion. Then once we have fusion power or something else that I have overlooked a lot of our problems will be solved. We will have a much more abundant supply of energy, we would have less bad stuff being produced by just about everything we use currently.

So in the long run, running out of fossil fuels would be quite a good thing and going back to my point earlier about war - if oil runs out we will no longer have oil wars to try capturing the last supplies and rigs. All in all quite a good outcome, in the long run.

[Somone77]

Again, like always, I haven't read any posts in this thread except the first one so if I repeat anything, bear with me.

No, we won't run out within your lifetime, your children's lifetime, and probably even their children's. Yes, we use millions of barrels of oil daily in the United States, however, efficiency is going up, and that number is ever decreasing. It also helps to mention that the United States sits on top of huge stores of oil but we haven't even started drilling on our soil, we just import it. If worse comes to worse, we will rip up our back yards the government will throw up oil rigs everywhere.

You have to get a sense for the vast planet we have. We have touched a relatively small amount of our total fossil fuels, there's trillions upon trillions of barrels left.

Does that mean we shouldn't be making ways to power our machines without fossil fuels? Hell no, electricity is extremely cheap and easy to make and with recent discoveries in types of material that can absorb 99% of the light that hits it, solar panels are going to skyrocket it practicality. And so what if it's a non-issue? "What if we make a better world for NOTHING?!"

[Uubucks]

I agree with Somone, as we discover more efficient ways, discover more oil deposits, and exploit other petroleum products(such as the guge amount of natural gas the United States is on top of) I believe that our fuel supply will stay at good levels until we discover better alternatives.

[Somone77]

If I had my way, we'd make the funding of NASA and scientific education make the military funding look like a child. If we gave NASA nearly a billion dollars a year, we'd colonize another planet within out lifetimes. We never know, there could be a whole new type of fuel sitting on another planet that will sustain us indefinitely but we won't know if we never get off this rock. 

[Mr Jive]

Oh sure colonising another planet will work well right now.

It’s not an A+ plan my friend because in all fairness where we gonna go? we can't leave our solar system because travelling at light speed would take us 50 years to get somewhere. So we are stuck in our solar system for now and that ain't gonna do too much. There isn't gonna be some magical fairy dust left on mars that will power all our shit forever because we already know pretty much every element that you are gonna find in this solar system - all the elements were created by the last star in this are through means of a planetary nebular or some shit. Soo anything we got on earth is gonna be on the other planets as well apart from fossil fuels, fossil fuels require dead shit, and unless you been watching too much history channel there isn’t no aliens on mars.

The rest of our options are Mercury and Venus - too hot by a long shot; Jupiter? Good luck landing on a gas giant and trying to fuel up with a station. The winds and storms out there would fuck with all a spaceships systems - it would be like flying a paper boat made of wet newspaper inside a hurricane - ain't gonna go down well; Saturn you got a same sort of problem; then you got Uranus, Neptune and Pluto - not much out there either. The only fuel you gonna find out there is plutonium and uranium, but oh wait, we are not running out of that. So basically you are suggesting we just pump all our cash into a space program so that we can go get some materials from mars that we already have? The best stuff you gonna get out there is precious metals (copper etc.) that we are running out of. But that don't solve our problem back here on earth now does it?

You also got your idea about how we got shit tons of oil laying everywhere? Now I honestly can't say I know much about oil reserves but I sure as hell no the prices are rocketing, they do allot of shit to our environment and they cause shit storms all over the place. What I recon we need to do is put funding in alternative sources of energy (preferably in my opinion fusion and hydrogen as a fuel) so we can stop using oil; not fund all our research money on a pipe dream space program.

[Globey]

Space is the way to go. Cryogenics is the answer. Who cares how long a voyage takes if the astronauts wake up as intact as they were when they went under? All we'd need is a chemical that reduces the polar tendency of the water molecule... Which, obviously, is a bit of a problem, but nevertheless - The technologies practically there already.

In any case; Contrary to what you all seem to believe, oil isn't that bad for the environment, aside from spills. Regarding global warming: Firstly, it isn't human caused at all - Look at a chart. The believers' own evidence contradicts them. Even taking the assumption that is real, I can only say, "Bring it on!" Records show us that the planet has flourished at high concentrations of carbon dioxide (We'll take 500 years to reach the 'optimum' amount at this rate.) and greater temperatures. Only small amounts of the planet will become unlivable, as those already in hot climates are adapted to living in hot climates. In addition, the amount of land opened up by global warming far exceeds that taken by rising sea levels. About 90% of Canada (The second largest country in the world.) will become open to agriculture. The same regarding Greenland, Russia, and other northern nations.
Global warming is not man made. Climate change is natural. Because we still exist, it is not a bad thing.

[The Doctor, RIP Juggernaut]

In any case; Contrary to what you all seem to believe, oil isn't that bad for the environment, aside from spills. Regarding global warming: Firstly, it isn't human caused at all - Look at a chart. The believers' own evidence contradicts them. Even taking the assumption that is real, I can only say, "Bring it on!" Records show us that the planet has flourished at high concentrations of carbon dioxide (We'll take 500 years to reach the 'optimum' amount at this rate.) and greater temperatures. Only small amounts of the planet will become unlivable, as those already in hot climates are adapted to living in hot climates. In addition, the amount of land opened up by global warming far exceeds that taken by rising sea levels. About 90% of Canada (The second largest country in the world.) will become open to agriculture. The same regarding Greenland, Russia, and other northern nations.
Global warming is not man made. Climate change is natural. Because we still exist, it is not a bad thing.

BULL'S EYE.


On top of the whole space idea Jupiter(I think it is) has large amounts of hydrogen which we could possibly collect and use as fuel cells.
Or for a more local idea remove the oxygen from water put that back in to the air and use the hydrogen for fuel cells that'll cure you're "Problems".


On top of that a moderate size herd of cattle makes as much carbon emissions as the city of New York just by farting(Can't locate the graph but I remember seeing it as one of the main counter arguments).

 

[Mr Jive]

Space is the way to go. Cryogenics is the answer. Who cares how long a voyage takes if the astronauts wake up as intact as they were when they went under? All we'd need is a chemical that reduces the polar tendency of the water molecule... Which, obviously, is a bit of a problem, but nevertheless - The technologies practically there already.

In any case; Contrary to what you all seem to believe, oil isn't that bad for the environment, aside from spills. Regarding global warming: Firstly, it isn't human caused at all - Look at a chart. The believers' own evidence contradicts them. Even taking the assumption that is real, I can only say, "Bring it on!" Records show us that the planet has flourished at high concentrations of carbon dioxide (We'll take 500 years to reach the 'optimum' amount at this rate.) and greater temperatures. Only small amounts of the planet will become unlivable, as those already in hot climates are adapted to living in hot climates. In addition, the amount of land opened up by global warming far exceeds that taken by rising sea levels. About 90% of Canada (The second largest country in the world.) will become open to agriculture. The same regarding Greenland, Russia, and other northern nations.
Global warming is not man made. Climate change is natural. Because we still exist, it is not a bad thing.

Well that is true about the climate rising thing - Before I was simply trying to make a point by exaggerating. Back when dinosaurs walked the earth (some era) places in eater the north or South Pole (can't remember which one is an actual landmass) would have had pine trees and temperature similar to Scotland or Canada, so yes climate change is on a natural cycle. And all the fossil fuels we burn up had only been put into storage millions of years ago so we are just replacing what was already there.

But on the subject of space, I said it would take 50 years to reach another solar system at light speed. Imagine travelling at the current speed of rockets to get there. It would end up taking 500 - 1000 years or longer, I haven't worked it out (or looked that up). And then when we get there what are we going to find? Unless there is life there we won't find fossil fuels and so like I said before all we will find is what we have on this planet already - perhaps some things that we are running low on (certain metals etc.) but otherwise would it really be worth it? And who would want to go on the mission? You would have to tell them that everyone they know will be dead by the time they get back - they will have no friends or family and society would have changed radically (they would have been gone for 2000+ years) and then you tell them odds are you won't do much good any way. I’m sure lots of people would sign up for that.

And why would we need to go to Jupiter to get Hydrogen? Hydrogen is the most abundant gas on our planet and in our universe? We don't need to go out on a space journey to harvest hydrogen.

Look guys if there was any real worthwhile cause to go into space doesn’t you think scientists would be working hard on developing their new space programs? Until we develop Fusion reactors, light speed or faster than light speed and a bunch of other stuff that is near impossible to make at this point - we will not be going in too space any farther than mars. And even then we might not go to mars

[Globey]

A program is already in development to harvest precious metals (gold, platinum, etc.) from various asteroids. Space is practical - We have a choice of advancing, or stagnating.
I myself intend to go into the space program - In any case, this is beside the point.

Fossil fuel is not a monster. Period.

[Mr Jive]

A program is already in development to harvest precious metals (gold, platinum, etc.) from various asteroids. Space is practical - We have a choice of advancing, or stagnating.
I myself intend to go into the space program - In any case, this is beside the point.

Fossil fuel is not a monster. Period.

Yup

We shall wait for someone to make a thread about the benefits of space travle

[cookiesofamerica]

I heard that thorium is being used for energy and I heard that 3,000 metric tonnes of that can fuel the world I believe... Hopefully we will have helium-3 as an energy source and can power our countries for years to come.

[FPSRussia]

The world could find a way around it. Although thinking of how it is gas and much of our stuff is run from gas, then it is hard to think of.