All the talk of peak oil, that we are
running out of fossil fuels and therefore need alternatives — or that we're not and therefore there's nothing to worry about — is a distraction.
- Tony Blair President Clinton «The Earth is warming at an alarming rate, we are
running out of fossil fuels, and it is long past time for us to take action to correct these problems,» Clinton said.
(2) We're going to be
running out of fossil fuels anyway in the next few centuries; without alternatives, global economic prosperity will be endangered much sooner than that.
Also, if we are
running out of fossil fuels anytime soon, we should know what the consequences are, don't you think?
Nor will
we run out of fossil fuels for feeding generating plants anytime soon.
When people talk about this, they tend to talk as if we would suddenly
run out of fossil fuels.
The result:
We run out of fossil fuels in 2205.
So either we will gradually
run out of fossil fuels or we will need to drastically cut their usage to (hopefully) prevent cataclysm.
Pick a disaster: (1)
run out of fossil fuels, (2) keep using fossil fuels.
What do you suppose will happen when
we run out of fossil fuels, as we are likely to do in the near future (decades for oil and perhaps a century for coal)?
Also, given the rate of production and absorption, do you have a link to support the assertion that CO2 will ever get to 2000 ppm before
we run out of fossil fuels or are forced to scale down?
«If the past 35 years is any guide, not only should we not expect to
run out of fossil fuels any time soon, we should not expect to have less fossil fuels in the future than we do now.
So we have
run out of fossil fuels and I didn't notice?
I guess we will have to burn limestone when
we run out of fossil fuels.
Or maybe their case is we'll
run out of fossil fuels before 500 ppm which makes a quick transition even more needed.
He's still undecided whether we're about to
run out of fossil fuels and the lights will go out or we're about to fry ourselves to death with fossil fuels, but he KNOWS that doomsday is coming soon, either way.
People need food and we've got to grow it someplace, and in the near future when we've
run out of fossil fuels to haul food and goods from very long distances we have no other choice than to grow food and make goods where the people are.
Anyway, the point is, they just don't know if and by how much people will reduce their GHGs in the future, or whether they will just continue emitting at higher and higher levels in exponential fashion, untill
we run out of all fossil fuels.
Few will argue that we can put CO2 into the atmosphere at present rates forever, either we'll
run out of fossil fuels, or there'll be a point where adding further CO2 clearly will be the more expensive option, and in the extreme (there's plenty of carbon in the Earth's crust, and failing that the solar system) it'll turn the Earth into Venus eventually, and probably before that the CO2 itself would start getting toxic (at a few ten thousand ppm it ought to get to levels that'll kill us).
By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will
run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse.
Back in June there was a discussion of Coal and Climate Change by Dave Rutledge http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2697#more What I got from that discussion was that «global warming» won't happen because the world will
run out of fossil fuels before CO2 level rises enough for any of the IPCC scenarios to happen.
Not exact matches
When
fossil fuels run out we shall have invented ways
of using the energy
of the sun to drive our industries.
One could frame the debate in the advantages
of using less
fossil fuel, which range from lower costs to people (an all electric car has operating costs about 1/4 that
of a gasoline vehicle), to balance
of payments (less capital flowing
out of the country, especially relevant to countries who import most
of their oil), to terrorism (not funding it, and western influence leaving the ME, which is the basis
of most ME terrorist organizations) to conflict in general (most
of the major conflicts in the last 30 years have involved ME oil), to finite supply (when we
run out, we'll be facing a global economic meltdown).
OSLO (Reuters)- World powers are
running out of time to slash their use
of high - polluting
fossil fuels and stay below agreed limits on global warming, a draft U.N. study to be approved this week shows.
After six years
of running such simulations, the verdict is in: Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations as a result
of burning
fossil fuels and cutting down forests increased the risks
of flooding in two
out of three model
runs by more than 90 percent.
McKibben: Yeah, it could be and [they] are very interrelated because the thing that's allowed that complexity [and] that size is the access to endless amounts
of cheap
fossil fuel, which we no longer are going to have, a) because we're starting to
run out, b) more powerfully because we can no longer safely burn it.
Honda Accord Sport Hybrid v Toyota Camry Hybrid Hybrid cars mightn't be as exciting as the latest supercar, but as the world's
fossil fuels begin to
run out it's important to look ahead and see which manufacturer is at the forefront
of the technology available to us right now.
We clear - cut forests, and so we turn to oil; once we exhaust our
fossil -
fuel reserves, we'll start driving electric cars, at least until we
run out of lithium... So here's the paradox: creativity is the only solution to the very real problem
of creativity.
Peak Oil places you into the shiny, pointed shoes
of someone
running an oil empire where you must deal with investing in new technology, drilling for oil and then selling that oil before the world has
run out of its favorite
fossil fuel and will presumably be turning into a post-apocalyptic scenario quite soon, possibly with some guy called Max blasting around.
It's been pointed
out that
fossil fuels came in just about when we had
run out of whale oil, but the whales had been hunted to the brink
of extinction when that happened.
The kind
of climate we wind up with is largely determined by the total amount
of carbon we emit into the atmosphere as CO2 in the time before we finally kick the
fossil fuel habit (by choice or by virtue
of simply
running out).
Fossil fuels (un) fortunately permitted human population to overshoot and most likely only
running out of this resource may stop the CO2 emissions.
If we do what humanity has always done in the past, we're likely to burn all the
fossil fuels, and then have a hard landing at a time
of high population, with an unbearable climate posing existential risks, at just the time when we're facing the crisis
fossil fuels running out.
I like to study the subject because it links to
fossil fuel emissions, and I've reached the conclusion that
running out of cheap
fossil fuels is a worse problem.
There is no doubt in my mind a) that we will not reach anywhere near this level by 2100 as VP's extrapolation projects b) that there will be an economically and politically viable alternate to
fossil fuels long before they
run out (there already is in nuclear for the biggest part
of the future load)
When
fossil fuel runs out, will it be possible to use the relative trickle
of energy which comes from wind turbines and solar panels to mine and fabricate the raw materials necessary to build more solar panels and more wind turbines?
President Trump campaigned on «bringing back coal» and has attempted to follow up on this promise by thwarting the Clean Power Plan and pulling
out of the Paris Agreement in an attempt to keep
fossil fuels up and
running.
Regular cars
run on gasoline, a
fossil fuel that pumps CO2 straight
out of the tailpipe and into the atmosphere.
«Exploding oil - trains
running through my town are just a reminder
of how
out of control the
fossil fuel industry really is,» said Jackie Minchew an Everett resident and retired educator locked to one
of the tripod's poles.
I've never bothered to argue with no - feedback sensitivity because it's small enough to be beneficial up to and including the time when we
run out of economically recoverable
fossil fuel.
One third
of US
fossil -
fuel production is from federal lands, so remaining
fossil -
fuel production could be reduced substantially simply by letting the current leases
run out, without establishing new ones.
But don't worry that this is actually causing Global Cooling - there really isn't enough
fossil fuel on the planet to worry about the atmosphere getting too thin or about
running out of oxygen.
Now the movement has
run out of gas (sorry for the
fossil fuel analogy).
Since we were
running out of oil anyway, environmentally motivated efforts to limit
fossil fuel consumption and increase our use
of renewable energy boasted the additional virtue
of being inevitable.
Actually that much
of the party line is probably true but the empirical evidence says anthropogenic CO2 isn't going to do the trick before we
run out economically recoverable
fossil fuels.
In a sane world which was
running out of petroleum and had dire climate change problems due to excessive burning
of fossil fuels highway speed limits would be greatly reduced.
One
of the key drivers behind Russian boldness in attacking elections around the world, is that time is
running out for
fossil fuels.
One
of the reasons the world is now
running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change is because
fossil fuel companies and their allies in the US Congress has prevented the United States from taking serious action on climate change since 1992 when the George H. W Bush administration agreed in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that the United States should adopt policies and measures to prevent dangerous anthropocentric interference on climate change on the basis
of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities.
If the 99 % are wrong, and the 1 % right, we will be making some unnecessary efforts to shift away from
fossil fuels, which in any case have lots
of other drawbacks and will soon
run out.
Just so, the era
of relying primarily on
fossil fuels can end — with peace and prosperity intact — long before we
run out of oil.