how it ends (2 Viewers)

[Slidey]

I don't think you understand, you moronic twat. This isn't some economic thing - its a science thing.

- Fertiliser needs oil. Without CH4, you get no H2. With no H2 you get no NH3. Without NH3 you get no fertiliser and without any fertiliser there's about enough fertile and arable land to feed a fraction of the world's population.

- Medicine needs oil. In fact, all petrochemicals do. These things don't grow on trees (with the exception of opium I suppose, which needs to be fertilised)

- The ONLY option for liquid fuel is oil.

- Mining? Needs oil. Ever seen a mine in motion?

Civilisation as a whole won't end but there sure as fuck won't be 6.5 billion people around in a hundred years time or so, and life will be a whole lot different. I think that fits the definition.

But lets not focus on that - THE FREE MARKET WILL SAVE US.

What a lack of faith you have in human ingenuity. I also question your chemistry. Why does medicine need oil? Most drugs have precursors which come from nature, not oil.

Also, methane (CH4) isn't an oil, it's a gas.

Just because something has a hydrocarbon backbone doesn't mean it requires oil.

Liquid fuel can also be produced from coal or natural gas, and ethanol is a viable and widespread non-oil liquid fuel. Biodiesel is also viable above oil prices of $80 (i.e. now). Hydrogen is also stored in liquid form.

And just to extend my previous post: bioplastics are in widespread manufacture today too (e.g. my shampoo bottle).

 

[SylviaB]

I don't think you understand, you moronic twat. This isn't some economic thing - its a science thing.

Wait, so the allocation of a scarce resource with multiple uses ISN'T an economic thing?

Hahaha

- Fertiliser needs oil. Without CH4, you get no H2. With no H2 you get no NH3. Without NH3 you get no fertiliser and without any fertiliser there's about enough fertile and arable land to feed a fraction of the world's population.

- Medicine needs oil. In fact, all petrochemicals do. These things don't grow on trees (with the exception of opium I suppose, which needs to be fertilised)

Agriculture and pharmaceuticals are multi billion dollar industries. They either have the greatest applied science researchers, or they have the capital to obtain them.
They're not going to let hundreds of billions of dollars of profit just disappear jsut because oil runs out.

But lets not focus on that - THE FREE MARKET WILL SAVE US.

Given how greedy and self interested people are, why the hell won't they develop alternative technologies and take advantage of the billions of dollars up for grabs which was previously spent of oil?

ok you name me one thing we have at the moment even if it is in early stages, that can do every oil can and is plentiful

It wouldn't be ONE thing.

For cars, we have hydrogen. For electricity there's thorium reactors.

Who knows what the hell people will come up for the different other respective uses of oil

Also, "one thing at the moment"?

ugh, i said, as it becomes increasingly expensive.

people will become increasingly incentivised to invest/develop/purchase alternative technologies OVER TIME.

 

[Slidey]

As for fertiliser... you don't need oil or gas to produce ammonia (used in fertiliser for its accessible nitrogen content) - just use the chlor-alkali process.

You don't even need ammonia to provide the nitrogen in fertiliser. Try recycling animal and human waste (urea) or the Birkeland–Eyde process

 

[jennyfromdabloc]

I think Richard Gilmore may have been trolling.

Neways, of all the things that could fuck up civilization, peak oil is towards the bottom of the list. I'd be more worried about hostile aliens than peak oil.

 

[Richard Gilmore]

What a lack of faith you have in human ingenuity.

It's not a lack of faith, it's a realisation that there are certain properties that fuels need to have in order to permit 6 billion humans to live together at the current standard (which is what this subject is about). There's a reason why the world population exploded with oil and only with oil. It's efficient, it's easy to get, it's easy to transport and it's easy to manipulate. Nothing else fits this bill.

I also question your chemistry. Why does medicine need oil? Most drugs have precursors which come from nature, not oil.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, petrochemicals do come from oil! To claim that the precursors are natural and hence there's no problem is to show total obliviousness to two things:

*natural products are often grown agriculturally, which requires oil
*natural products give the base product. you don't grow paracetamol or ibuprofen on trees. You use petrochemicals to convert and these almost always come from oil.

Here's an example: Ibuprofen.

Want to know what reactants either come from oil or are made using oil as part of an energy intensive process?

And I'll once again remind you we're talking about an end to civilisation as we know it. It's possible to do a lot of things chemically. But on an industrial scale, there's a whole lot more things that aren't possible. You've shown a total lack of understanding into the science of synthesis. Well done.

Also, methane (CH4) isn't an oil, it's a gas.

Which almost always comes as a by-product from oil refining, like I said. This is year 12 chemistry man, come on.

Just because something has a hydrocarbon backbone doesn't mean it requires oil.

Realistically, it does. Go and look it up dude. Go find out where all the petrochemicals come from. Go look up where benzene, or phenol, or ethylene, or any number of feedstock chemicals come from.

And as I said before, it's possible to derivatise some of these things from natural gas. But it's not realistic for the purposes of sustaining 6 billion people at these standards of living.

Liquid fuel can also be produced from coal or natural gas, and ethanol is a viable and widespread non-oil liquid fuel. Biodiesel is also viable above oil prices of $80 (i.e. now). Hydrogen is also stored in liquid form.

Good heavens we're saved - Slidey has come up with a way to synthesise medicines from gas, ethanol and biodiesel.

 

[Richard Gilmore]

As for fertiliser... you don't need oil or gas to produce ammonia (used in fertiliser for its accessible nitrogen content) - just use the chlor-alkali process.

Chloralkali process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The process has a high energy consumption, for example over 4 billion kWh per year in West Germany 1985, and produces equal (molar) amounts of chlorine and sodium hydroxide, which makes it necessary to find a use for the product for which there is less demand, usually the chlorine."

It's not referenced but it's common knowledge. Electrolysis is horribly inefficient. Its only permitted because there's abundant liquid fuel - oil.

Hell, even popular science knows that electrolysis is shit. There's a reason why hydrogen is obtained from natural gas, and that's because electrolysis requires more energy in than you get out. This is all well and good now with an abundant liquid fuel. But when the abundant, cheap liquid fuel is gone it all goes to hell.

You don't even need ammonia to provide the nitrogen in fertiliser. Try recycling animal and human waste (urea) or the Birkeland–Eyde process

Birkeland–Eyde process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

" The process is inefficient in terms of energy usage, and is today replaced by the Ostwald process, that produces nitrous acid from ammonia (usually from the Haber process) instead of air.[3]"

Dude stop it.

 

[Richard Gilmore]

As oil prices rise, people will switch to alternatives that do exist such as nuclear and solar power, electric cars and rail.

As far as I'm aware (and I could be wrong here), solar cells are horribly difficult to manufacture. They use rare minerals (also on the way out) and elements, they use a lot of energy to make. They're also inefficient. The sun is a great source of energy, but it's not going to power a bus, realistically. The only reason why these things work at the moment is because we've got the oil to make these things. Once you run out of that, what's the incentive to waste that much energy to make something that can't create a quarter of the energy it took to make it?

Nuclear power is alright. It's also pretty energy intensive but it gets the job done. But there's not a lot of uranium left, or so I was told. Certainly not enough to replace what is done by oil. And that is what's at issue here. All these ideas are great, but they're not enough to replace oil which at the moment, powers, feeds and moves 6 billion people.

Nothing else you said I particularly disagree with.

 

[SylviaB]

As far as I'm aware (and I could be wrong here), solar cells are horribly difficult to manufacture.

never mind that there is hundreds of millions of dollars of research being conducted on them even as we speak...

Nuclear power is alright. It's also pretty energy intensive but it gets the job done. But there's not a lot of uranium left, or so I was told.

There is fucking centuries worth of the stuff.

And guess what, there is basically infinity thorium around, which can be easily converted to uranium.

Certainly not enough to replace what is done by oil. And that is what's at issue here. All these ideas are great, but they're not enough to replace oil which at the moment, powers, feeds and moves 6 billion people.

sigh...this is why it IS an economic issue.

There will be trillions of dollars to be made from alternative energy sources and so naturally there will be a lot of investment in them, and this will happen over a LONG period of time.

You're acting as if it will be "oh no guys we've run out of oil. maybe we should start looking for something else to use. "

 

[Richard Gilmore]

never mind that there is hundreds of millions of dollars of research being conducted on them even as we speak...

That doesn't disprove what I said...

There is fucking centuries worth of the stuff.

Uranium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's at current consumption rates, I believe.

Do you actually know what you're talking about?

And guess what, there is basically infinity thorium around, which can be easily converted to uranium.

Thorium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Four times as much uranium" Clearly you have no idea.

Plus it's slightly radioactive. And your "conversion into uranium" is probably the most glib scientific analysis I've ever heard. It's not easy, and it REQUIRES uranium. tl;dr - you need both, so thorium extends the amount of uranium, but only as long as there's uranium left. it's not a long term solution and what happens once it's gone?

Anyway, have a think about it you idiot. There's like, billions of gallons of oil left and it's set to run out pretty soon. What on earth makes you think there's enough uranium to replace it? Remember, we are talking about replacing oil as a source for like, everything here.

There's enough environmental problems with using oil as a fuel. You're talking about fucking nuclear power. There's another problem.

sigh...this is why it IS an economic issue.

There will be trillions of dollars to be made from alternative energy sources and so naturally there will be a lot of investment in them, and this will happen over a LONG period of time.

You're acting as if it will be "oh no guys we've run out of oil. maybe we should start looking for something else to use. "

You still don't get it. You can invest in the energy of mud if you like, but throwing money at something doesn't turn it into a realistic fuel base, chemical feedstock and fertiliser.

 

[Kendall_Gilroy]

28 poppyseeds later

 

[ubernuton]

i don't get how you people can be SO stupid, the human populations is so ungodly high the only way we have managed that is by feeding ourselfs on oil, when we run out billions will starve to death, we have like 20 years max left before peak then it's all down hill

 

[Phoenix Fury]

exactly, plenty of time, let's chillax while we can

 

[Richard Gilmore]

i don't get how you people can be SO stupid, the human populations is so ungodly high the only way we have managed that is by feeding ourselfs on oil, when we run out billions will starve to death, we have like 20 years max left before peak then it's all down hill

thats pretty much what ive been saying, but ive been using science to back up my generalisations

 

[Richard Gilmore]

but thats ok we can like, feed ourselves with the free market

 

[Slidey]

Fuck you're a frustrating Neb. You have no understanding of economics and for somebody who has studied chemistry you make a lot of mistakes talking about (talk about holes in knowledge)

 

[Richard Gilmore]

Fuck you're a frustrating tool Neb. You have no understanding of economics and for somebody who has studied chemistry you make a lot of mistakes talking about (talk about holes in knowledge)

so what were my chemistry mistakes? hmm?

(btw, not neb)

 

[Richard Gilmore]

we can obtain benzene from the sun!

 

[Richard Gilmore]

come on slidey. i know nothing about chemistry, so prove me wrong. try to do it without listing energy inefficient processes or pipe dreams. tell me what other petrochemical feedstock is available, realistically. tell me.

you've got no fucking idea.

 

[thongetsu]

Robots will take over the world.

 

[SylviaB]

neb
hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on oil each year

with no oil, thats hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent on other energy sources

greedy capitalists love money and so will invest in order to supply this demand


who the fuck are you to say that nothing could be invented to replace oil, especialyl considering the absolutely fucking MASSIVE incentives to do so?

Im mean the head of bell labs quit in 1920 because he thought tere was nothing else to invent or something fuck

also explain to me how the allocation of a scarce resource with multiple uses isn't the exact definition of economic!