It's amazing just how integrated our lives are with non-renewable resources, yet how little effort is placed into ensuring a long term energy policy. Do people seriously think that we can just forget about oil? Almost every machine in this current age runs on gas in some way. There are very few things that perform mechanical actions without gasoline, and exceedingly less things that do not require gasoline in their manufacture. Yet with the rise in gas prices, these machines are becoming more and more expensive. The problem with this, is that western civilization is encapsulated by the idea that we can make our life better by using machines. Although this is in theory a great idea, having things other than people doing the work, the fact remains that there is little possibility of maintaining this structure indefinitely.
People have yet to accept the idea that they will one day no longer be able to depend on machines for much of their lives. We cannot step back from our own societal constructs that participate with the machines, and our infallibility will be our demise. The Titanic was praised as the greatest ship ever built, but currently exists only as a reminder that however good an idea may seem, too much belief in it can be disastrous. Our belief that our current lifestyle will outlive the death of oil is a similar case. When our cars eventually run out of gas, we might try to replace them with electric cars, but where would this electricity come from? The problem lies in that renewable resources take up much more space for the power they provide, and building many more dams, and wind towers, and solar panels, will undoubtedly cause just as much, if not more, problems for the environment. They might provide enough energy for heating and other vital processes, but certainly not enough for electric cars.
My point is that no matter what we try to do to fix this energy problem, there will never be a solution that will last indefinitely. Why nobody has realized this is astounding, as many people still picture our future to be filled with even more machines and technological advancements. There simply won't be enough energy to support a future like that.

One solution to this problem would be to switch to nuclear energy, however such a stigma associated with the energy source has made development almost nonexistent. There is a lot of plutonium in pristine condition simply sitting in nuclear bombs, slowly expiring. The cold war is over, why don't we access any of that?

Hopefully by the time we suck up all of the non-renewable resources, we tame dark matter and use the pretty much unlimited amount of power that we can create from it. I mean, if you look at the technology that has been created and improved over the past 50 years, imagine what we can do within the next 50. There's a good chance we'll find some kind of limitless energy supplier.

Ahh, gasoline. I really hate the fact that the price of it is ever-increasing along with everything else. Because gas prices are rising, food and other necessities will rise in price because the companies need gasoline to transport the goods. I can't wait until there's actually electrically powered cars.

There are? There have been electric cars for decades. You just don't hear too much of them because they have more drawbacks than benefits. Electric cars are quite expensive, including lithium-ion battery which you need to replace every 3-4 years. They aren't as powerful as gasoline cars, and you can't drive long distances without needing to recharge.

I guess I wasn't looking at the scientific side of it . Didn't know it was that difficult to control an electrically powered car, but that means that transportation will be screwed when the limited supply of gasoline is used up, which hopefully won't be for a long time.

A government subsidy and initiative to ultimately install solar panels on the roof of every home would go a long way to reducing reliance on a power grid. This would have almost no environmental impact since roof space is already man-made clutter, although it would probably be very, if not prohibitively, expensive, which would mean requiring a real dedication to the concept.

Is there a renovable energy? Nothing is actually renovable, the Sun will eventually die and what will we do then? Even if we discover another way of getting energy it'll eventually expire too.
The humanity cannot last forever since the Universe itself will die sooner or later. We're trapped in this universe and we will die with it. So it's a question about WHEN the mankind dissapears.
Right now we're consuming a lot of gasoline. Why? Because we have it and noone cares about developing cheaper alternatives. Whenever we start running out of it such alternatives will probably appear. Electricity plants will probably be replaced with nuclear plants, gasoline cars with electric cars, etc. Or maybe we'll create our own gasoline from something else... It doesn't matter, we'll just be reaching our doom sooner. Anyway, machines will not easily cease to exist.
There are hypothetical methods of getting the massive energy ammount that we'll probably need in the future:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine

I don't know it'll possible to build them in the future, but they could generate a whole lot of energy.

Since we're gonna die anyway, let's all live it up nao and go out with bang! Epic lulz for everyone!




Nihilism aside, you're right that we're just gonna procrastinate on any real solutions to the energy problem. Short of enlisting a small army of assassins to simultaneously kill off every wealthy, independent oil billionaire on the planet, or doing shit like this on a large scale, it will come down to governments finding a way to clamp their arse cheeks and put the oil situation under their direct control themselves. Not gonna happen, of course. Too much corruption and indecisiveness.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 26 2008, 3:46 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

The government has gasoline on reserve that if we use, can reduce our gas prices for nearly a dollar. Today, gas prices in NY and NJ went up .22 cents! Wtf is that! I was planning on buying a car but fuck that now. I'm glad there is massive public transportation in NYC.

And then when OPEC imposes an embargo, we would be fucked.

We're going to wind up like all those videogames set in an unspecific future, yet mysteriously under feudal rule, where the strongest survive, all the while living under the shadow of a mysterious race of ancients will old forgotten much greater technologies.

I on the otherhand plan to live forever through technological means.

What I always wondered was:

What is filling the void of space that we create when we suck out crude oil from the Earths interior? We suck out more then is in the process of becoming usable. I think it takes something like a thousand or even millions of years for roting plants to turn into crude oil. Their is probably a drastic ratio between how much actual liquid their is (crude oil)/oil being created to how much we are sucking out of the Earth. I would bet it would be something close to 1:3

Learn to walk.

Being turned into oil isn't rotting in a sense. It's rotting, then being pressurized between layers of earth and being carbonized to form oil. Nothing suspicious fills the 'space' that is left over after sucking out the oils.

Actually it's not rotting:


No organisms involved in the transformation, so it's not rotting.

Well, the biofuels industry is looking a bit promising. They're figuring out how to create actual gas out of sugarcane.

Or, the government can create a law where all people have to be Amish.

Except the UN recently declared biofuels a crime against humanity for its role in reducing the world's food supply and causing starvation. ie. nations turning corn into ethanol and palm oil into biofuels is causing a global food crisis in lesser developed nations.

lol, I think the Amish people have at least 'some' elements of modern technology...ie running water.


Anyways the short term future is: fossil fuels + solar + geothermal + nuclear fission + wind + tidal...then the long term future = thermonuclear fusion ftw

Thermo Nuclear Fusion...
That accounts for the thermal and the Fusion (or fission, but fusion is more powerful).

EDIT - nvm
Would there be a way to safely harness the power of hydrogenic fusion?

If the answer is no, Humans are doomed.