Is the possibility of oil running out one day a reality or just bluff? Will electric cars be really possible?
They say oil will run out one day, is that just bluff or reality? why or why not? Won’t just drilling for more oil be the solution? Also, will they definitely be able to bring electric cars into use one day, or is that impossible? Is there ANY feasible alternative to oil and petrol, or no?
Oil will run out. There is only a limited amount of it on the planet and we are using it up.
Fossil fuel sources are not unlimited. We need to quit dragging our feet and create a viable alternative. The BIG 3 have been part of the problem of our slow response. We are responsible for this, and we need to fix the problem.
At the current consumption rate, oil will be gone in 75 years. Drilling for more will not work because fossil fuels take tens of millions of years to form and we will have used them up in less than 300 years. Electric cars already exist, and are much more efficient. Alternative energies are being developed that have great potential, they just need to be advanced. Hydrogen, fusion, nuclear, biofuels are all awesome sources of energy, with less waste.
Oil will run out eventually, or will get more difficult and expensive to get, so other types of energy will be less expensive.
Electric cars are already available. They perform well. They are still very expensive relative to gas/diesel, and do not have a long range between charges. They are good for use around the city if you can afford one and don’t travel long distances. Replacing the batteries also makes maintenance cost high.
Hi, I am currently studying a Masters degree in Energy & The Environment, so I feel qualified to answer your question.
Yes, oil is a finite resource; current estimates on how much is left range from 45 years up to over 80 years. However, the reality is that there is more oil available than these estimates. This comes at a price though: at present, drilling for oil is fairly cheap. As we drill deeper, it starts to cost more energy. There are deeper-buried oil resources (e.g. below Alaska), but they will approximately cost 1 barrel of oil to withdraw 1 1/2 barrels of oil. So it becomes economically un-viable to do it.
There are loads of alternatives to oil – the first is coal (which has 250 years left at least). However, this would be impractical to use as we would still be in the same situation as we are now eventually, and it is far less clean-burning than oil.
Geothermal is the most energy-efficient technique, unfortunately this is only usable in areas on, or near, seismically active areas. Iceland is the best example here – 98% of their electricity is provided by geothermal power, and they also use hydrogen fuel cell cars, which are much better for the environment. So basically, electric cars (and hybrids especially) are already in circulation in forward-thinking countries.
Wind Turbines & Tidal Power are the other 2 techniques which are being investigated in the most depth – wind turbines currently account for under 3% of the UK’s energy usage, but this will increase over time.
Realistically, tidal is the best bet for most countries on the coast (which, thankfully, includes most of the world’s largest and developed nations, including the UK, USA & China). According to George Aggidis (Greek Engineer) Tidal energy has a potential energy output of 15 times the world’s population, so it could solve the oil crisis on it’s own if the government were willing to fund it.
Solar Power is also useful, but the payback time is too long, and as it is only realistically usable at at consumer level (e.g. households), then the option is not appealing to Joe Average.
So, in conclusion, yes there are many viable alternatives to oil, and most of them are cheaper and more efficient to run as well, it just takes a big initial investment, which is what is holding back the majority of potential investors.
Hope this wasn’t too long for you to read, and if you have any other questions I’ll be happy to answer them – it’s an important topic that needs to be addressed!
Ben
Oil will NEVER run out. It may get scarce and expensive but it will never run out. As supplies dwindle, if indeed they ever do, the market will price it so that the masses won’t be using it like they are now.
In the 1970s, my geology professors told us we’d be out by 2000.
1) Yup, there is only so much oil in the earth. Some people have said the earth makes oil abiotically, in other words, oil is not a fossil. But that’s garbage. It’s not science and it’s been debunked.
2) to answer your question about cars:
Some day? Electric cars are viable now.
as others have said we wont run out, with proposed global warming taxes & penalty’s it will just become too expensive for individuals to use.
according to a lead author for the U.N. climate panel, Richard Tol , in a paper he wrote for the Copenhagen consensus center. to meet the 2 degree goal the industrial nations will have to increase taxes to somewhere around $4000 per ton of co2 or $35 per gallon of gasoline.
quote”taxes of this magnitude would reduce world GDP 12.9% or$40 trillion a year by 2100. so we would be spending $40 trillion a year to prevent the estimated $3 trillion a year damage global warming could cause”.
keep in mind this is from a lead U.N. author & adviser so you can forget about electric cars or individual cars of any kind.
the goal is to make people live in dense population centers & use only government controlled public transit to go anywhere.
so we will still have plenty of oil but it wont do you any good as you sit in your cramped apartment on the 40th floor of an international government approved public housing unit.
Oil will never run out. You can make oil. It’s really expensive to do it. When the cost to extract exceeds the cost to manufacture, drilling for oil will stop. Any oil left in the ground will never be extracted.
Long before we hit that point, it’s going to become cheaper to power cars using non-oil power plants. The two leading contenders are electric and hydrogen fuel cell power plants. If untaxed gasoline exceeds $4 today, we switch off of gasoline because hydrogen’s already cheaper than that.
The Department of Energy has targets for hydrogen fuel cells with a practical power plant coming on line around 2010 and a practical power-train coming online sometime around 2015.
I’m not that up on electricity storage but that’s experiencing progress too.
its just a bluff, oil will never run out of supply, there is a natural process right down below tapping up all those used up black gold reseroirs. so don’t be carried away by those ignoramos propaganda..
we never run out of oil supply
Is the possibility of oil running out one day a reality or just bluff?
bluff, because oil can be man made in the form of biodiesel from algae.
You: Is there ANY feasible alternative to oil and petrol, or no?
Me: I think oil made from algae is the alternative to fossil oil fuels.
You: Will they definitely be able to bring electric cars into use one day, or is that impossible?
Me: It is possible. Electric cars have been around since the model T. But for some reason electric cars keep getting ignored or pulled off the market. There are electric cars on the market now and more are coming. But I don’t think gasoline cars are going to be displaced by eletric cars anytime soon.
You: They say oil will run out one day, is that just bluff or reality? why or why not? Won’t just drilling for more oil be the solution?
Me: Conservation is the key to sustanablity of oil. With out conservation the demand will overtake supply, causing shortages. With out conservation drilling for more oil would not be a solution.
The solution is alternative fuels such as oil made from algae, and conservation in the from or hybrid cars.
There was another interesting question that reflects on yours. The most widely accepted belief is that oil was created from plants that lived millions of years ago. A rather creative theory is that the oil has no biological element and was just created from movements within the Earth’s crust. This goes to the issue of whether oil is finite or constantly being created. If it is finite it is possible for it to run out.1 This is the generally accepted theory. My answer there explains this more fully with the implications.
When will we run out of oil may be a moot question as we are beginning to realize that there are problems with oil. This makes just drilling for more problematic. Primarily, it pollutes the environment, it must be secured and defended, and it costs more energy to refine it than can be effectively used by the vehicles it is intended to power. (An electric vehicle would go further on what it takes to refine gasoline than the average gasoline car could with the refined product.2)
With oil we are “backing only one horse.” There are alternatives. For transportation we can use natural gas and electric vehicles. Bio diesel and perhaps even a few fuel cell electric vehicles are also possibilities. With many of these things we are still using a fire technology; something has to be burned. Eventually I see us moving away from this mode of energy gathering and into a far more pollution free but energy rich world.
Electricity is already being produced from the sun directly in photovoltaic and concentrated solar plants.3 Indirectly it can be made from wind, tidal, hydroelectric that are derrived from the sun. An increased capacity to store electricity will be required. Battery vehicles may be key to that process in a V2G technology. While geothermal has classicly been limited to volcanic areas, dry well technology allows it to be used almost anywhere. Longer term nuclear fusion may eventually become another answer to our energy needs. Gas and coal reserves are large enough to last more than 200 years. The technology can be hybridized with concentrated solar to make both more efficient and cleaner.
Electric cars are really no big deal. We could (and do) have them today.4 They are cheaper to operate and less polluting than oil no matter what the source of the electricity.5 We may have to pay a little more for them up front. If we wanted to take an electric vehicle a longer distance we only would have to attach a genset trailer.6 Mostly it is a question of public perception of what is acceptable and the petroleum industry’s paranoia that electric vehicles are going to eliminate their livelihood. Electric vehicles are great, but not for everyone until battery (or ultra capacitor) technology improves a bit.
More electric vehicles are on their way. A smart oil company exec. is going to realize that oil was once fairly useless until it was refined into kerosene for lamps. Some aggressive techniques made it into a replacement for peanut oil in the diesel engine and for ethanol in the “gasoline” engine. Oil has a lot of other important uses but presently 70% of its products are used in transportation for an engine that may be less than 15% efficient. It is really too valuable to be burned in an inefficient process for transportation. To stop this wasteful and inefficient practice will ensure that it lasts longer no matter what the source.7
Oil will run out. It won’t run out for a while, but the price of oil will rise so much that we will switch to electric cars before we would actually use up all of the oil. We will never run out of lithium for batteries for electric cars, there is basically an unlimited supply. We will get the electricity from coal at first, but then we will switch to alternative energies. First, we will create more nuclear plants (6 new nuclear plants are planned for construction in the US), and create more wind and solar farms. Between 2030 and 2060 we will master fusion and start building fusion power plants. Fusion is clean (no radiosactive byproducts, no emissions). There is also a virtually inexhaustible supply in seawater.
The processes which formed crude oil are believed to no longer occur on the earth, so there is a limited supply under our feet. Limited… but really big. It is sort of like saying the silver will run out. Sure, there’s only so much.
The real question is how much longer it will be worth the effort to go down and get it. Advances in drilling, pumping, and locating oil keeps making it easier to get from deeper places. Advances in refining makes it possible to get better stuff out of whatever crap we dig up, and advances in fuel efficiency make it possible to go where we want on far less, so we’ve continued to stretch well beyond predicted points at which there will be “no oil” for our cars.
Biodiesel is a pretty good alternative, as it uses stuff we’ve pretty much discarded as crap for years. Nobody wants to get into biodiesel in a very big way though, because it still needs regular diesel for starting and stopping, and if we get into it in a big way, it will start costing a lot to get the fuel. Most people can convert their cars if they want to, and so far it’s OK if you can purify your own oil, and have a good supply. It may be smokey, and the EPA might crack down on it for emissions, but emissions… from burning grease? Once it starts costing much more than diesel though, it’s dropped like a hot potato.
Ethanol has gotten a lot of backers, but the public still isn’t sold on it. Reports that it cost more to make than regular gas beat it down pretty badly. Things may be changing, but the fact of the matter is still that they use perfectly good food products to make it while folks in other countries that normally depend on US food aid starve.
Methanol uses wood alcohol, from plant material we can’t eat. The fuel itself is probably ten times more toxic to humans than regular gas, but at least it’s biodegradable, and evaporates quickly.
Electric cars may be the next big thing, but they have a catch: You have to make the electricity somehow. Currently, 90% of the US electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels, and with the losses involved in getting that into a car, you’ll probably waste more fossil fuels with an electric car than with a regular car, unless you’ve got your own solar or wind setup to power it. So yeah, we can definitely do the electric car thing, but we need to do the renewable electricity thing before that makes sense, and that may involve putting solar on every rooftop.
For me, for now, hybrid cars look to make the most sense. They use even less fuel, and that’s where we’ve been going for a while. We’ll probably change over to something else eventually, but don’t hold your breath.
oil is running out in reality. there is no bluffing about it. we cant get the oil by drilling more. because the total amount of oil is restricted to a certain volume. there is no magic or something by which we can get the oils back. and for the electric cars, it is possible to exist.
I think common sense would tell you that the earth only has so much oil and it takes billions of years to form so yes i think eventually we will run out of oil.. Now for the hydrogen cars you need to find a way to generate hydrogen other than using tons of natural gas to produce a small amount . Electric cars seems like a good idea until you look at where the electricity comes to where the electricity comes from and since they don’t like nukes you have to burn more coal to get it and the tree huggers are against that .. If you use the bio fuels we will have a food shortage.. The only source of energy that will outlast the human race i know of is the sun so i think that it will be the answer .. Improve solar panels and use them for electric power .. Life as we know it is sure to change in the near future and we have to change with it or expire
the answer is yes and yes. Oil will run out but eventully in a few thousand years oil will come back. Oil is just dead cells of animals that have built up will a certain chemical. And yes electric cars are possible an dhvae been made, but if all cars are electric theat will increas Global Warming alot! There is just no way out of being un-ecofriendly
oil will run out one day. there is no unlimited supply.
pure electric cars are right now a poor solution. electric cars would put a large demand on the utility system which is currently mostly coal powered. Electric cars are also only practical in hotter weather climates. (that’s why GM experimented in California and Arizona with electric cars.) Colder weather kills electric cars batteries and they really cant have heaters.
You many see Electric cars in the south but i doubt they’ll be in minnesota.
of course oil will run out at the rate the world is using it.
electric cars are here, but the question is how they are being powered. A lot of electricity comes from burning coal, another finite resource. There’s not enough wind or solar alone to power electric cars, we will need to rely on nuclear power
Yes Oil will run out. It is a simple logic that the time for forming oil in nature is far too long compared to the rate at which we are consuming it. whichever theory you believe – Abiotic or the other nature way. New source may come by and we may have respite for some time but our population is way more than what these resources can supply. so all the natural resource are going to deplete. But our technology will find other resources like algae etc to keep feeding the population with enough resources.
As far the electric car it is already a reality and in another decade it will become the norm of the day.
oil resource will dry up one day.since consumption is huge and it takes millions of years to produce a barrel of oil beneath the earth.science will develop alternative form of energy in the near future.
Well, it took nature millions of years to make the oil that we’ve used in a few decades. Ultimately, fossil fuels is produced by photosynthesis and then collected by geologic forces. It won’t run out cause nature is still making it but we won’t be able to use it at the rate that we do. Basically, if you make $30,000 a year, can you live like a millionaire?
Keep in mind that oil and petro are just hydrocarbons and we know how to synthesize hydrocarbons from CO and H2 via Fischer Tropsch synthesis. We also know how to make CO and H2 by gasification of anything that burns including trash and dried sewage and we know how to make CO and H2 from CO2 and H2O with the help of a clean energy source like solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, or nuclear. Therefore the best alternative to oil is oil, just not from fossils.
Electric cars are already possible and in use. You can see the one Nissan developed, the LEAF, before it hits the market in 2011 while it’s on tour across North America right now. Since you seem very interested in alternative fuel technology and a zero emission future, I would encourage you to visit the LEAF’s website to see if it’s coming to your town and ask the experts questions.
I’m working with Nissan on the tour so let me know if you have any questions about it – thanks!