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A hundred years after EV's become commonplace, our descendants will learn about ICE in history class. They will be told that their great great grandparents' ge

A hundred years after EV's become commonplace, our descendants will learn about ICE in history class. They will be told that their great great grandparents' generation dug holes thousands of feet deep in the desert and under the sea to extract the liquid fossilised remains of plants that lived on Earth hundreds of megaannums prior. They took these liquid fossils, refined them in factories, transported them all over the surface of the earth, and poured them one gallon at a time into machines that squirted precise amounts of the precious liquid into metal cylinders where the liquid was set alight to explode thousands of times per minute, in precise amounts calculated to release power to a series of mechanical levers, pulleys, and spinning rods which did for 4 wheels what horses had done in the even more distant past.

skissane 6y ago
> They will be told that their great great grandparents' generation dug holes thousands of feet deep in the desert and under the sea to extract the liquid fossilised remains of plants that lived on Earth hundreds of megaannums prior EVs are not going to eliminate the oil&gas industry. We still need it for aerospace, military, maritime, mining, construction, plastics, chemical feedstocks. Some of those use cases we may find alternatives for over the coming decades, but I reckon in 100 years the oil&gas industry will be still around. Very likely it will be smaller than it is now, but I very much doubt it will be gone completely.
aitchnyu 6y ago
I'm disappointed the history wont mention states that became very wealthy off their deposits, only a few became good stewards of that wealth and the rest just got more skyscrapers and sportscars. They had to import teachers, engineers, system admins and other workers from developing nations, contributing hugely to those economies. And the wars.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  One thing you can be sure of is that the states that became wealthy from fossil fuels will write histories that proclaim the virtues of fossil fuels, and the wisdom of the courses they navigated, in peace and in war. “If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow. Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.” ― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

skissane 6y ago

> They will be told that their great great grandparents' generation dug holes thousands of feet deep in the desert and under the sea to extract the liquid fossilised remains of plants that lived on Earth hundreds of megaannums prior EVs are not going to eliminate the oil&gas industry. We still need it for aerospace, military, maritime, mining, construction, plastics, chemical feedstocks. Some of those use cases we may find alternatives for over the coming decades, but I reckon in 100 years the oil&gas industry will be still around. Very likely it will be smaller than it is now, but I very much doubt it will be gone completely.

aitchnyu 6y ago

I'm disappointed the history wont mention states that became very wealthy off their deposits, only a few became good stewards of that wealth and the rest just got more skyscrapers and sportscars. They had to import teachers, engineers, system admins and other workers from developing nations, contributing hugely to those economies. And the wars.

wombatmobile 6y ago
One thing you can be sure of is that the states that became wealthy from fossil fuels will write histories that proclaim the virtues of fossil fuels, and the wisdom of the courses they navigated, in peace and in war. “If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow. Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.” ― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything