Originally posted by: Eli
Originally posted by: Cuda1447
Originally posted by: Eli
It will only be as bad as he makes it sound if we come up with absolutely no other alternatives.
Oil will not suddenly disappear; the flow won't just shut off like a faucet. Once we peak, and in all likelyhood we already have(since we haven't discovered a major well since the 60s), production will follow the bell curve downwards.
What Peak Oil signifies is the beginning of the end of cheap oil.. Not the end of civilization.
Necessity breeds change. There are other alternatives.. I just hope it's not too late and we can develop them before we actually need them.
Humans as a whole seem incredibly short sighted when it comes to things like that.
As we reach peak oil production and follow the bell curve downward, our demand on oil is constantly rising. The oil prices will rise drastically, and that will hurt the US economy. I'm not an expert on the subject, but from everything Ive heard our economy is largely based upon the oil supply, and without enough of this oil our economy will slow down and began to collapse, supposedly very rapidly once we reach a certain point.
Yep, and it will probably be a big event in our lifetimes.
It's too easy to look at the end result and forget to journey to getting there, though. This is going to take time. Even though 20 years isn't a very long time in the scheme of things, at the pace that technology is moving.. It is.
When gasoline becomes so expensive that it's not worth it anymore, other technologies will suddenly become economically viable.
When this happens, our usage of oil should start to drop. This will free up more of what's left for the things that we really need it for, like raw materials mining and chemical production.
Also, as oil becomes more expensive, it will further provoke the oil companies into using technologies that are currently not economically viable to extract oil from the smaller reserves and other methods.
Basically, things should progress slow enough(or fast enough, depending on your point of view), that it will more or less be .. normal. Yes, there will be change, and for our generation.. it might be a huge pain in the ass.
For the generation that is children when it happens.. It will be normal. And so the wave continues..... hopefully for at least another few tens of thousands of years.