Peak Oil?

[Brian37]

The resources of our planet can and do regenerate over time. But the human pace of consumption is out pacing the earth's natural cycle. Oil as we know of it now took millions of years for the planet to generate.

[Alan V]

Per Google: Analysts at Bernstein Energy say IMF projections for GDP growth means global oil demand will again stand at 2019 levels of around 100 million bpd by 2023 before soon plateauing. "Oil demand has not peaked, but it is likely not that far off either ... we expect demand will not peak until sometime in 2025-30." Apr 21, 2021

However, different groups estimate different peak oil dates.

Per Google: Although declared several times, peak oil has not happened thanks to new technology that helped sustain oil production, keeping global supplies flowing. Peak oil might also happen due to declining demand, which would result from more efficient technologies and alternative energy sources. Aug 12, 2021

[The Grand Nudger]

I think peak oil as it's been predicted is largely a fear mongering scam. Quietly equivocating between supply and demand, which is to say peak oil and peak consumption. There are all sorts of reasons we might pick a point on a graph and see that production hit a high and never went higher - until it did or does..but one day it might never go back up and still have nothing to do with supply.

We hit peak buggy whip some time back.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There's no alternative to petroleum based fertilizers under the current model, no.  It's not physically possible to grow the amount of food we do the way we grow it without vast amounts of fossil fuels...the entire industry was based on it from seed to table.

And no, we also cant grow enough food from our own shit to keep humans shitting..it takes alot more shit - though that's the only way to make this work in perpetuity no matter what the population numbers are.  I like fish.  They're prodigious little shitters (but it's actually the amonia and not the shit per se that matters) - they can also be stacked vertically in ways that other livestock can't and as a consequence of living in water lend themselves extremely well to intensive crop production in deep water trough systems.  All of which, by necessity, need to be in a controlled environment which handles variability in local weather..as well as being completely unsuitable for chemical pesticide introduction.  Every bird, one delicious stone.  

That's what we should be using our fossil fuel reserves for..building the materials and infrastructure required to step away from our wider oil addiction.  You know, before we can't access enough of it to do that even if we all got together and realized we should.  I think that in the longer view of history (assuming there is one) our flirtation with the current model will be seen as one of our biggest mistakes not for the environmental damage it wrought, but for the opportunity cost imposed on future generations as a consequence.  If there isn't any future..well..we won't have been the first society to literally farm ourselves to death.

Nailhead squarely hit. Petroleum is far too valuable to be used for pushing cars and generating electricity.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

That's the winning message, imo, for climate activism. Not that you have to give up all your cool shit...but that we have to do something if we want to keep having that cool shit.

Right now, our kids action figures are competing with grass...and..buddy, lemme tell you, grass will win that one. It's got us dancing like a trained bear. The haber process is rough. Green ammonia plants are probably the single best long term investment a person can make right now. All we hear about are teslas...but there it is. Siemens is on that. Southern states just partenered with a company called anuvia to market a product called trx, an ams fertilizer with a binder made from recycled organic material (chicken shit, composted litter, mostly). Or we can just keep shooting oil directly into our veins and one day explain to little johhny that that's why he can't have the gi joe with the kung fu grip this christmas - but don't worry, you can have as many slices of dry cornbread you want, and there's popcorn for desert, too!

[Jehanne]

That's the winning message, imo, for climate activism. Not that you have to give up all your cool shit...but that we have to do something if we want to keep having that cool shit.

Right now, our kids action figures are competing with grass...and..buddy, lemme tell you, grass will win that one. It's got us dancing like a trained bear. The haber process is rough. Green ammonia plants are probably the single best long term investment a person can make right now. All we hear about are teslas...but there it is.

I can't afford a Tesla.

[Brian37]

Do you think that the World has reached it?  If not, when?  (If ever?)

Our planet will be around barring a meteor or comet impact for billions of years. As far as life of all species is concerned, we will not be around by the time the sun expands and fries all life on this planet.

[The Grand Nudger]

Couldn't buy one at any price if we keep setting fire to the black gold. They're made out of it just like our food is.

@Brian37

When the asteroid gets here we could mug it, see if it has any oil or knows someone who does. I don't think anyones worried about being around when the sun decides to turn us into muffins..we just want to make it to next tuesday...and there, we have a problem.

[Alan V]

When we deplete our various fossil fuels is rather moot anyway, since that won't save us from climate change. We have more than enough left in the ground to spell real trouble if we dig them all up and burn them. One estimate is that our fossil fuels would emit 2.5 trillion tons of CO₂e, if all of them were burned. That’s 1,470 CO₂e from coal, 530 CO₂e from oil, and 520 CO₂e from gas -- way more than we can allow because of climate change.

[The Grand Nudger]

We have enough oil to turn this world to ash many times over, but, like you say....it's not really a question of if or of when. We don't want to hit peak oil, we have every reason to stop drinking before we crash the car into a brick wall.

If we ever did hit it, everything else is moot. We're dead. We'll have poisoned ourselves through gluttony all the while depleting the very chemicals which might otherwise save our lives. Nitrogen demand alone goes up about 5% per year, and it's already in the hundreds of millions of tons range. Some people wring their hands worrying about peak oil, I'm over here wondering about peak fertility...which we'll hit alot sooner as a consequence of organic chemistry.

Heres a sobering fact for our uk members. You hit peak fertility so long ago that in the absence of petrochemical fertilizers you couldn't grow enough crops on your land to feed everyone anymore. The us has a little more leeway, but not much..because wre were pioneers in fertility extraction..so even though we've been using it up for less time, we were using it at a faster rate - a callback to fracking. It takes 800 years to make an inch of fertile soil. Minimum.