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

&#x27;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.”&#x27;<p>Yes, but it does not follow: &quot;Effectively, energy supplies are infinite.&quot;<p>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!

Suppose we want to reduce our oil consumption. What can we do?<p>1) Increase efficiency. Jevon&#x27;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.<p>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&#x27;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 <i>and</i> prevent anyone from cheating, which you can&#x27;t.<p>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.

TL;DR - There seems credible evidence fossil fuels will always exist for us and they&#x27;ll always be affordable.<p>So getting past the strawperson replies about how nothing is infinite, fuel x is not oil or limiting factors....<p>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.<p>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.

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.

We don&#x27;t know how much oil exists,but we do know it is finite.<p>The sun&#x27;s energy will out last us all, millions of times over. Plants have it figured out. We should ask them.<p>Plus what happens when we are ready to leave Earth? Surely we&#x27;ll need a way to feed off of the stars then anyway, so why not start now.

We won&#x27;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.)

Previous submission of this 2013 article (which I think is not the only one, as I remember another with more comments):<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615686" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5615686</a>

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&#x2F;or nuclear), but seemingly better than doing nothing...

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.

The even bigger deal about methane hydrate is its release from the formations as climate warms (and it&#x27;s a feedback loop) - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clathrate_gun_hypothesis</a>

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&#x27;s very uncomfortable to imagine 70% of the planet&#x27;s population suddenly dying off over a 5 year period in the next 50 years but it&#x27;s entirely plausible.<p>The most sobering part is that given a deep enough interruption in humankind, it&#x27;s possible we&#x27;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)

What if the sky rained donuts!

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