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What if we make future generations not needing to actually consume these resources ? Also if you consume all the available non-renewable energy that you have,

What if we make future generations not needing to actually consume these resources ? Also if you consume all the available non-renewable energy that you have, at one point you will mathematically end up in a dire situation.

malvosenior 7y ago
> What if we make future generations not needing to actually consume these resources ? In all likelihood we'll need to consume the resources available to us to advance to the next level of technology where the existing resources are no longer needed. > Also if you consume all the available non-renewable energy that you have, at one point you will mathematically end up in a dire situation. Mathematically speaking, the resources will be consumed eventually. We just need to try to make as much progress as possible before that happens.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  > Mathematically speaking, the resources will be consumed eventually. We just need to try to make as much progress as possible before that happens. Economically speaking, oil is infinite. Thats why its price goes down over time!
conanbatt 7y ago
There is a fantastic talk with Milton Friedman about this argument that I recommend looking up. A typical Engineering mindset conceptualizes the problem as if it were physics, where you see current output and stock and calculates the end result, but thats not how humans interact with each other: we are execute ingenuity at every step changing the basic formula again and again. If the former were true, you would have seen oil prices increase steadily over time, as oil absolutely runs out (no new one is produced), but you can see thats not what happens, it's even today way cheaper that it was decades ago. If it were starting to run out, the prices would shoot up and alternatives would become so appealing that they would be developed and used. Hopefully the concept is clear, the TLDR is don't use physics to explain economics.
- jorge-d 7y ago
  Because technology advanced and new reserves were found. The main problem is not that we'll eventually run out of oil. It's just that by the time we finish all the reserves most people living on Earth will probably experience extreme weather conditions all year round.
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    > The main problem is not that we'll eventually run out of oil. The concept of "peak oil" (discounting whether or not it's a fallacy) wasn't ever that we'd run out of oil. When peak oil occurred, there would still be oil in the ground. The problem was (supposed to be) that the amount of energy it would take to extract that oil from the ground would be greater than the amount of energy you would get from that oil extracted. In other words, it would take as much or more than a barrel of oil's energy to extract that barrel of oil. At that point, it would make no economic sense to try to get that oil, at least from an energy consumption point of view (it may make sense for other reasons though - for instance, to use the oil to make chemicals or plastics or other materials). We were supposed to hit that point - and we have hit that point multiple times on a per-oil producing country level. The United States hit it a long while back. But then this new technology of fracking came into being, and it changed the equation radically. Now it seems the USA is outputting more oil than it ever has, in effect reversing it's peak oil status (which I don't think was ever thought possible). Shale oil and oil sands were known about for a long time, but the technology made it super energy intensive; fracking opened it up, and also made old wells produce again. I'm sure the concept is being applied world wide as needed, and that's caused the "world peak oil" timeline to recede as well. What would probably happen if "peak oil" ever did occur on a world level, would be that other energy sources would be used to extract it; nuclear generated electricity would be the best choice, much like it's been proposed for water desalination. But even those thoughts were predicated on the idea that solar costs wouldn't drop like they've did in recent years, so maybe solar might be the better choice? Also, the oil probably wouldn't be brought up for fuel usage in such a scenario, since you'd still be upside down in that regard. But it would make sense to extract it for its other uses as a raw material.
    - deleted 7y ago

malvosenior 7y ago

> What if we make future generations not needing to actually consume these resources ? In all likelihood we'll need to consume the resources available to us to advance to the next level of technology where the existing resources are no longer needed. > Also if you consume all the available non-renewable energy that you have, at one point you will mathematically end up in a dire situation. Mathematically speaking, the resources will be consumed eventually. We just need to try to make as much progress as possible before that happens.

conanbatt 7y ago
> Mathematically speaking, the resources will be consumed eventually. We just need to try to make as much progress as possible before that happens. Economically speaking, oil is infinite. Thats why its price goes down over time!

conanbatt 7y ago

There is a fantastic talk with Milton Friedman about this argument that I recommend looking up. A typical Engineering mindset conceptualizes the problem as if it were physics, where you see current output and stock and calculates the end result, but thats not how humans interact with each other: we are execute ingenuity at every step changing the basic formula again and again. If the former were true, you would have seen oil prices increase steadily over time, as oil absolutely runs out (no new one is produced), but you can see thats not what happens, it's even today way cheaper that it was decades ago. If it were starting to run out, the prices would shoot up and alternatives would become so appealing that they would be developed and used. Hopefully the concept is clear, the TLDR is don't use physics to explain economics.

jorge-d 7y ago
Because technology advanced and new reserves were found. The main problem is not that we'll eventually run out of oil. It's just that by the time we finish all the reserves most people living on Earth will probably experience extreme weather conditions all year round.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > The main problem is not that we'll eventually run out of oil. The concept of "peak oil" (discounting whether or not it's a fallacy) wasn't ever that we'd run out of oil. When peak oil occurred, there would still be oil in the ground. The problem was (supposed to be) that the amount of energy it would take to extract that oil from the ground would be greater than the amount of energy you would get from that oil extracted. In other words, it would take as much or more than a barrel of oil's energy to extract that barrel of oil. At that point, it would make no economic sense to try to get that oil, at least from an energy consumption point of view (it may make sense for other reasons though - for instance, to use the oil to make chemicals or plastics or other materials). We were supposed to hit that point - and we have hit that point multiple times on a per-oil producing country level. The United States hit it a long while back. But then this new technology of fracking came into being, and it changed the equation radically. Now it seems the USA is outputting more oil than it ever has, in effect reversing it's peak oil status (which I don't think was ever thought possible). Shale oil and oil sands were known about for a long time, but the technology made it super energy intensive; fracking opened it up, and also made old wells produce again. I'm sure the concept is being applied world wide as needed, and that's caused the "world peak oil" timeline to recede as well. What would probably happen if "peak oil" ever did occur on a world level, would be that other energy sources would be used to extract it; nuclear generated electricity would be the best choice, much like it's been proposed for water desalination. But even those thoughts were predicated on the idea that solar costs wouldn't drop like they've did in recent years, so maybe solar might be the better choice? Also, the oil probably wouldn't be brought up for fuel usage in such a scenario, since you'd still be upside down in that regard. But it would make sense to extract it for its other uses as a raw material.
  - deleted 7y ago