| HappySqurriel said: With that said I'm a firm believer we will never run out of oil. Over the next 20 years ecconomic development in China and India will result in each country consuming more energy than the entire world consumes today; overall energy needs will be 3 to 4 times what they currently are. At the same time there are practical limitations to the ammount of oil we can collect, produce and transport which prevent dramatically higher consumption of oil for energy. What this means is that the cost of oil is going to continue to skyrocket for the future and other forms of energy are going to become more cost effective. initially Nuclear and Hydro Electric power will be used because they are far cheaper than other forms of energy production but take a long time to produce facilities and thus will not keep the price of energy from increasing; on top of that environmental conserns will limit the number of facilities that can be produced. The next stage will be Wind generation and then Solar power. |
This is key to understanding our energy needs. There is plenty of oil left on the Earth, but our ability to increase our rate of oil production without drastically increasing cost is limited, and we are running into the wall soon. The problem is not running out to the last drop, the problem is what happens when we produce less oil today than we produced yesterday?
