What if we never run out of oil? (2013)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/?single_page=true

by todayiamme • 12 years ago

65 75 12 years ago

_red• 12 years ago

Basic economics already says we will never run out of oil. Sure it may be $10,000 per barrel, but it will still be available.

vacri2• 12 years ago

That's a bit like saying 'we haven't run out of food' when there's only half a jar of mustard and some salt in the cupboard.

Actually, it reminds of a housemate I once had who often ate other people's food. He would respond "Well, you can help yourselves to the food in my cupboard"... which was, in total, one lemon and a quarter-kilo of flour.

pavel_lishin2• 12 years ago

My mom used to brag about the food she would be able to scrape together while living in soviet Russia. I bet she could have done something with that.

sadfnjksdf• 12 years ago

All known resources are finite.

mason55• 12 years ago

Yes but as the supply of oil dwindles it will approach a point where it's more expensive to extract than it costs to use a substitute. At that point we'll be "out" of oil but there will still be plenty left in the Earth.

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

All planet-based resources; all non-renewable resources. Some are near-infinite over time, others near-infinite over space. A system-spanning civilization would have many orders of magnitude more resources than our one tiny M-class world.

zdw• 12 years ago

“Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.” - Albert Einstein

redwood2• 12 years ago

With enough money, I can make oil from sunlight.

Sure, the sun is finite too. But the idea here is to speak in terms of human experience, not literal truths

onnoonno• 12 years ago

Yes. But for example, the amount of nuclear fuel that is extractable is enough to power us for >>1000 years, even if it would be used replace all other forms of energy. Such as using nuclear to make artificial gasoline.

I think that would be enough time to figure out fusion. Or put wind and solar everywhere.

But we seem to be stuck, paralysed in our fight to solve everything with impossible requirements.

Fight AGW, NO nuclear, and keep the standard of living (or even increase it). All at the same time.

Personally, I would rather relax the second requirement.

tokenadult• 12 years ago

Previous submission of this 2013 article (which I think is not the only one, as I remember another with more comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615686

comicjk3• 12 years ago

Methane hydrates are not oil. This article is amateur nonsense.

jpwright2• 12 years ago

The author doesn't claim that; you ought to read more than the first few paragraphs. He is relating the discovery of methane hydrate beneath the seafloor in the 70s to newer unconventional oil extraction methods, namely tar sands and hydraulic fracking, in terms of their impact on energy markets... not saying that they are the same.

comicjk3• 12 years ago

I did read the article. Your gloss of it makes even less sense than the article itself, since tight oil and fracking have changed the energy market already and methane hydrates have had no effect after forty years. The actual thrust of the article is that fracking worked, so methane hydrates will work. And as I pointed out, this has nothing to do with oil. The author explicitly defines "petroleum" so as to include natural gas, which is simply an error. If this article had been posted to a forum of chemical engineers instead of one of software engineers, it would have gotten nowhere.

blacksmith_tb• 12 years ago

So, if we switch to using methane hydrates and shale gas instead of coal and oil, we will be emitting less CO2 - obviously not as big a step away from fossil fuels as going all renewable (and/or nuclear), but seemingly better than doing nothing...

fulafel4• 12 years ago

No, that's mostly on top of oil and coal extraction. (Also gas isn't big enough improvement on co2 emissions to the small extent it does displace coal or oil)

AbsoluteDestiny• 12 years ago

It doesn't matter how quickly we put carbon in the atmosphere. It has a 200 year effect - taking 60 more years versus 20 is meaningless if you end up putting it all up there anyway. The only difference would be how soon we suffer the worst effects - it's too fast for adaptation in nature for most evolutionary or migratory processes either way. I suppose you could hope for a technological silver bullet but that's effort made while dealing with a much more costly carbon economy.

Also, we should really avoid the worst effects. Even the middling effects are pretty awful.

thaumaturgy5• 12 years ago

As the article pointed out, near the end, we'd also be potentially releasing far more methane, which could be worse than CO2.

api• 12 years ago

We won't ever run out of oil. What will happen is that oil EROEI will drop and cost will increase until other sources of energy are more cost-competitive and oil becomes obsolete. (... OR if other sources cannot replace oil, economic collapse and demand destruction until demand equals supply.)

fulafel4• 12 years ago

"Energy" is a little broad, it's already obsolete for non portable applications. Oil will still be in demand when eroei goes below 1, unless there's a cheaper compatible non fossil replacement.

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

Obsolete for stationary applications? Not true at all, especially if we are talking about "fossil fuels" rather than simply "oil". Natural gas is a huge portion of the USA's electricity supply.

yeukhon• 12 years ago

I wonder how much power we could generate if we really have an affordable solar panel for everyone to use, put a giant sheet of panel up in the space, storing mechanical and wave energy as we walk, drive on the road and move things around the house, convert organic waste (human and animal poop) into energy.

NamTaf• 12 years ago

Solar irradience on the surface of Earth is about 1200 W/m^2 Total energy consumption in 2008 was 143,851 TWh

Take panels that have 20% efficiency, and assume they can absorb for 6 hours a day, for 70% of the year (255 days). You can generate 368 kW/year. To generate the total 143851 TWh, you'd need about 3.91e11 m^2 of area. That sounds a lot, but it's only a square of land 625 km per side, or about 90% of the area of California. Note that this is of course a very hand-wavey order of magnitude estimate.

The problem isn't the abundence of energy sources, it's the collection, retainment, transmission and generation reliability of it (those factors overlap - generation reliability can be offset by better transmission and vice versa).

We don't really have to go looking far for energy sources, we just really struggle to harness them with current technology.

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

Folks criticize orbital solar collectors, because of the inefficiency of transmitting energy to the ground (losses in the laser creation and reception). But consider ground-based solar collectors are in the dark 50% of the time on average, no matter where you put them. Its hard to do worse than that.

tjmc• 12 years ago

There's some good answers to those questions here: http://www.withouthotair.com/

I'm optimistic about renewables. Photovoltaic solar is already cheaper than retail power and competitive with wholesale in many markets. The issue now is grid storage. Battery tech is currently improving at around 7% a year, so I think we'll see electric cars go mainstream in the next 5 years and decreasing reliance on centralized power generation shortly afterwards.

thaumaturgy5• 12 years ago

Incidentally, there are some very smart people working on the problem of grid energy storage, too. e.g., Lightsail Energy (http://www.lightsail.com/).

jeremyjh• 12 years ago

'Because the costliest stuff is left in the ground, there will always be petroleum to mine later. “When will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?” asked the MIT economist Morris Adelman, perhaps the most important exponent of this view. “The best one-word answer: never.”'

Yes, but it does not follow: "Effectively, energy supplies are infinite."

This is such a massive failure of basic logic that I really do not think anything more needs to be said. Yet I will say it. The fact that a given energy source requires more energy to produce than it can yield does not make it an infinite source! Nor does a source which can yield a positive flow but does not present a better return on capital than other existing sources off an infinite supply. Just because it will never be used does not mean it is infinite!

redwood2• 12 years ago

You are misreading the author. His sentence is hyperbolic.. He says "effectively" to address your concern --- and then addresses why the whole notion requires further investigation in the next paragraph.

The very next statement is "Sweeping claims like these make Jean Laherrère’s teeth hurt."

fulafel4• 12 years ago

The even bigger deal about methane hydrate is its release from the formations as climate warms (and it's a feedback loop) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

jerf2• 12 years ago

As the Wikipedia article itself says, the catastrophe scenario is now "thought unlikely"... I'd add that any such instability just sitting around would have been triggered by now anyhow. It's essentially impossible for the climate to be that unstable. So "thought unlikely" is quite reasonable and well-founded, and probably putting it lightly.

While I'm sure that once we start tapping into these resources environmental groups will subject us to an endless haranguing about the "Clathrate gun hypothesis", it will merely serve as further evidence that many (not all, but many) environmentalists are narrative first, science fourth or fifth.

fulafel4• 12 years ago

That "unlikely" quote isn't entirely consitent with the rest of the article, and was also about the cause of the previous ice age's end...

In contrast, also from the WP article,

"A study from 2010 concluded with the possibility for a trigger of abrupt climate warming based on metastable methane clathrates in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) region"

and

"In 2008 the United States Department of Energy National Laboratory system[28] and the United States Geological Survey's Climate Change Science Program both identified potential clathrate destabilization in the Arctic as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change"

dfa0• 12 years ago

We don't know how much oil exists,but we do know it is finite.

The sun's energy will out last us all, millions of times over. Plants have it figured out. We should ask them.

Plus what happens when we are ready to leave Earth? Surely we'll need a way to feed off of the stars then anyway, so why not start now.

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

The supply of sand is also finite, but we aren't likely to run out any time soon.

Just because the supply is finite, doesn't automatically mean we will exhaust it.

ShirtlessRod• 12 years ago

True, but I would guess that oil is used at a much higher rate than sand, especially considering the relative availability of each.

byroot• 12 years ago

Actually, as stupid as it sounds, we do start to run out of sand to make concrete in some areas.

A quick search about "sand shortage" will show you.

nfoz• 12 years ago

What if the sky rained donuts!

AnthonyMouse6• 12 years ago

Suppose we want to reduce our oil consumption. What can we do?

1) Increase efficiency. Jevon's paradox makes this a fail, if you make consumption more efficient then you effectively make it less expensive and so people do it more.

2) Impose prohibitions or taxes on petroleum consumption, or incentives for alternative energy consumption. This also fails because oil is a global commodity. If you inhibit its consumption in one country, the global price goes down which causes consumption to increase in other countries where the taxes or subsidies don't exist and offsets the bulk of the benefit. The only way this one works is if you can do it on a global scale and prevent anyone from cheating, which you can't.

3) Subsidize research into alternative energy production methods that would be cost competitive with oil on their own merits. Once brought to market, these methods would be more economically attractive than petroleum consumption world-wide and bring about a significant global reduction in petroleum consumption. This is the only one that actually works, and it has the added benefit of reducing energy costs.

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

Agreed, the only way to truly get rid of oil is to make it outdated by replacing it with better (where better equals cheaper mostly) energy technology.

zizee• 12 years ago

if you make consumption more efficient then you effectively make it less expensive and so people do it more

Will that really be a big factor in petroleum use? My driving is not dictated by the cost of Petrol (not yet anyway). I am not going to start driving twice as much if my car suddenly only uses 50% as much fuel.

sunsu• 12 years ago

You need to be thinking more macro: energy production via oil rather than, say, coal...China switching from bicycle s to gas scooters...etc

habosa• 12 years ago

You won't drive twice as much, but that's not the only use case for petroleum. Consider how much more people would fly if airline prices went down due to cheap gas. Or think about how many more gas engines will be used to power other tasks if gas is cheap and plentiful.

AnthonyMouse6• 12 years ago

Will that really be a big factor in petroleum use? My driving is not dictated by the cost of Petrol (not yet anyway). I am not going to start driving twice as much if my car suddenly only uses 50% as much fuel.

Plenty of people might buy a large hybrid SUV if its fuel consumption was closer to that of a conventional compact car. Fuel cost goes into the calculation of whether to drive instead of taking the train, or carpool, or how much you're willing to pay in rent to live closer to where you work (or to mass transit), or how much you're willing to sacrifice in fuel to get home sooner, or whether to take a road trip, etc. etc.

It's also not all about cars. Coal and petroleum are used to generate electricity and heat homes. Make it cheaper to move the thermostat five degrees in the direction of comfortable and people will.

thaumaturgy5• 12 years ago

1) Increase efficiency. Jevon's paradox makes this a fail, if you make consumption more efficient then you effectively make it less expensive and so people do it more.

I'm not sure I'd call this a "fail"; U.S. domestic energy usage per capita has actually fallen slightly since 1990, despite a massive explosion of new electronics and personal devices. (The EU has experienced a 1% per capita growth in energy consumption over the same period.)

People are certainly doing it more, but -- so far -- the recent emphasis on increased efficiency has been keeping this demand from translating into an increased demand for energy.

If improving efficiency alone can entirely halt growing demands for energy, then that's half the battle right there in reducing consumption.

saurik• 12 years ago

Could this not be caused by increased income disparity, rather than energy use efficiencies? I would be interested in looking at people throughout the years with some kind of comparable inflation-adjusted income to see how their energy usage has changed over the years.

D_Alex• 12 years ago

Subsidize research...

At some point (IMO already reached) this becomes just "Research". Properly directed R&D pays for itself many times over.

...into alternative energy production...

And utilisation! Electric cars FTW!!

AnthonyMouse6• 12 years ago

At some point (IMO already reached) this becomes just "Research". Properly directed R&D pays for itself many times over.

The "problem" with research is that the costs are centralized while the benefits are diffuse. There is no way for a private entity to capture 100% of the social benefit of an invention, which means that solely private research will inherently be funded at a level below the optimal level for its social utility.

There are also some things that are so expensive to research that private capital is not willing to take the risk that they don't pan out. Making hot fusion commercially viable for power generation is the holy grail of energy research, but you can't exactly do it in your garage.

aaron695• 12 years ago

TL;DR - There seems credible evidence fossil fuels will always exist for us and they'll always be affordable.

So getting past the strawperson replies about how nothing is infinite, fuel x is not oil or limiting factors....

It is interesting. For years naysayers have gone on about peak oil, yet the opposite might be true, technology might be able to rip fossil fuels out of the earth faster than we can use them for hundreds of years.

The fact fracking was only possible due to increased computing power and is now changing local industry due to energy actually getting cheaper shows to me we are in an era of incredibly complex and quick changes.

Daishiman• 12 years ago

But it's never been about oil availability. Oil extraction is nowadays far more expensive than it was a decade ago, both in cost and in energy expenditure. Renewables are becoming cost-effective not just because of technical advances, but because oil will continue to get more expensive.

No amount of technical advances will defeat thermodynamics.

jerf2• 12 years ago

If normal economic forces naturally and relatively smoothly bring on renewable energy resources online over time (including sufficiently-clean "nuclear" as renewable for this purpose), and if the economy can be run more-or-less entirely on renewable + nuclear resources, and if there are in fact things other than "oil we could drill in 1970" to fill in the gap, then the only significant remaining problem is the carbon dioxide generated in the meantime, and very little special panic or angst for energy resource limitation is called for. People have been panicking and angsting about this for quite a few decades now, so if this is the ultimate resolution, that is a change in viewpoint worth discussing. This would leave us energy (literally and figuratively) to focus on the many other problems in the world.

(We might not want to blithely sail into the perfectly-well-known future of energy unprepared... but... there's a crapload of money to be made providing energy to people, one hardly need create subsidies to make the transition happen if that's how the economics are going to line up, when there's billions or even trillions to be made by being the ones to get it right.)

throwaway57524• 12 years ago

This is something I know a bit about, and the article is terrifyingly stupid. The more you look into the utter dependence of modern life as we know it on petroleum and natural gas (coal to a much lesser extent), the unbelievable amount of it that we burn, the rate of discovery of new supplies, and the rate of depletion of known supplies... it's very uncomfortable to imagine 70% of the planet's population suddenly dying off over a 5 year period in the next 50 years but it's entirely plausible.

The most sobering part is that given a deep enough interruption in humankind, it's possible we'd never recover since the hydrocarbon frontier is in ultradeep, clathrates, and shale and none of those would be possible without a bootstrapping from easier hydrocarbon sources (which have been long since exhausted)

eloff• 12 years ago

Could you connect your thoughts to themselves and to the article please? I have no idea why you think the article is stupid, and also no idea how you get to 70% of the population dying over a five year period.

throwaway57524• 12 years ago

I really offered no thoughts to connect, just my opinion...

To sketch it out, though: easy oil has been found, there are widely available charts on the count/size of new discoveries by decade. Newer sources like clathrates, subsalt, and bitumen are exceedingly difficult to extract (ie, lower net energy production). In particular, shale depletion is extremely rapid per well, and there is some question as to how net-energy positive/economically viable it is. Clathrate reserve estimates have dropped _dramatically_ over time.

As to why I think it could result in a permanent reversal in civilization: transportation is key to modern life. Low energy requirements per capita in urban settings are only possible by mass transportation of goods and services. Petroleum is the overwhelming transportation fuel. Plastics and high-density agriculture are fundamental to modern life, and both are dependent on natural gas (PE feedstock or Haber process).

The world generally has 3-6 months of inventory or less of oil, less of gas. A supply crisis would not have good effects. Some people point to the US supplies of coal and the Fischer Tropsch process, but that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/28210_... is a useful chart. There's another for global usage that I can't find right now, but shouldn't be hard if you look for it. You might also look at the fracking depletion curves in various shale plays (they differ based on reservoir characteristics).

You may also note from that chart that a huge percentage of energy is wastage from transmission loss, which makes the tragedy of postponing a widescale (Manhattan project level) deployment of solar PV even more depressing.

edit: random, somewhat informative article on shale fracking: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-dot-...

gph4• 12 years ago

Well the article appeared to contain a lot better information than your post. If you want to share your knowledge then do it. Don't just say something is stupid because you 'know a bit'.

throwaway57524• 12 years ago

Piss off. If you know better, you can dispute my assertion on a factual basis instead of objecting on optics. There's an enormous amount of written material on the internet that's well indexed by Google, freely available to you if you care to look it up.

edit: Also, if you'd managed to ask in a less snide way or even asked something specific, I'd have given a substantive response.

What if we never run out of oil? (2013)

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