Turanil said:First of all: I hope I am not inadvertently mentioning a political thing with this.If it is the case, let me apologize.
So here is what I discovered yesterday: It looks like the world is heading relatively fast toward a freakin oil crisis (http://www.oilcrisis.com/). But you and me, most people, are not aware of it yet. What do you think is going to happen? Do we have replacement energy sources and technologies on the way? and especially for cars, planes, and other vehicles? Do you think such technologies will arrive very soon? I remember having read a few years ago an article about hydrogen/electricity cars for a near future (they said 20 years, so it should now be 12-15 years ahead), but then nothing...
Well, we're not simply running out of fuel. There are millions of gallons still left. What is getting expended is the reserves that they found like 30 years ago. There is likely still a lot of oil out there, but it will take investment to find, and tap.
However, demand is increasing very rapidly. The glut of SUVs and other gas guzzling vehicles on the road is definitely not helping. And now that countries like China and India are beginning to purchase increasing numbers of cars, the situation will get worse.
Interestingly, I was reading in McLean's that the current high price of oil is actually a distortion of fact. It's a deliberate manipulation by oil speculators and oil companies to increase their profits. At least according to supply and demand, the price should be a lot lower than it is. In addition to that, they pointed out that although the price of a barrel of oil has increased, and the media is all crying "oil crisis", in fact there isn't one. Even though the media trumpets the fact that the price of a barrel of oil has never passed $50 before, that number doesn't account for inflation. When you count inflation, the price per barrel was much higher during the oil crisis in the 70's. But, if you get the media to scream about a crisis, people get in a panic, and prices go up, which is good for those people who are investing in the industry.
Of course, none of this considers the fact that a fossil-fuel burning civilization is unsustainable. It's contributing to global warming, pollution, the destruction of the ozone layer, etc. Some of these factors may in fact lead to a new glaciation. And that would basically wipe out most of the northern countries, which, incidentally, have the majority of money, and technology, on the planet.
As to the idea of fuel cel cars, from what I understand, it's a bit of a red herring. Environmentalists are very big on them....but what it comes down to is this. Fuel cels require hydrogen to burn, in order to provide energy to power a car (or whatever). The byproduct of the reaction is water. Sounds great, so far, right?
But the problem is that the hydrogen itself requires energy to create. How is it done? By passing electricity through water. That electricity in turn must be created by other sources....be they wind power, nuclear, or, as is the case in most of the world, oil or coal burning power stations. And those power stations don't have nearly as good environmental controls on their emmisions as cars do, meaning that pollution may actually *increase*. Unless we move to entirely nuclear/solar/wind power, which is unlikely, as the latter two aren't the most efficient, and the first one creates pretty dangerous byproducts, and the anti-nuclear protesters did a pretty good job of ensuring that nuclear generators aren't seen in a very positive light.
At the end of the day, our way of life (as in, Western first world nations) is unsustainable. I don't think we're going to find some miracle that allows us to keep it up forever. Personally, I think the future looks pretty grim.....I suspect that civilization 400 years from now will not be nearly as priviliged as we are now...and they'll probably curse our names for putting them in that position.
Banshee
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