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This will work for as long as the world has enough oil to meet demand. Eventually as oil becomes a more scarce resource, someone will explore for oil there.

akudha 5y ago
It would be a long time before we run out of oil. Given that solar is becoming super cheap, our reliance on oil will keep reducing. What is likely to happen is change in political will to keep the ban - you know, the usual bribery and the talk of “jobs” etc. That is a bigger threat than oil shortage
- smolder 5y ago
  Isn't political will just a function of external motivators such as the profitability of extracting oil? (Which will go up as supplies dwindle?) I don't think people will just decide differently with no change in circumstances.
  - ianai 5y ago
    Tapping oil reserves has a history of wrecking governments and economies. The economics of it quickly push out other forms of industry. Politicians quickly seize on the opportunity to claim they personally own the reserves - and become dictators. Then there's the horrible ecological costs. The best option is to develop means of providing energy which disrupt the economics of even oil extraction/refinement. Nuclear could do this - uranium occurs at a pretty constant rate across the earth's crust. Nuclear could also be built out at a rate of choice to meet and pass the energy provided by fossil fuels. One thing that typified the industrial expansion to modernity is ever increasing utilization of greater amounts of energy. Energy storage even has suitable options to disrupt fossil fuels - vis a vi hydrogen fuel cells, lithium batteries, and plenty of other options. (Personally, I like that fuel cells output water since desert areas are seeing greater population characteristics.) In short, the best option is to leave oil and fossil fuels in the ground and grow the world off its use through appropriate investments in tech and infrastructure.
    - ianai 5y ago
      Replying instead of editing Even the term “fossil fuels” is an inappropriate framing of the chemicals involved since it restricts their use to burning. Consider the processes involved in their formations: organic material grew for eons millions of years ago. It then had to be buried in just the right conditions and later embedded into even further beneficial conditions. It took millions of years, high temperatures, and high pressures to go from plant material to these complex molecular forms. Then we dig them up or seep them out with fracking and further refine them. Then we burn them. Huge losses of energy all along the way. Using oil as fossil fuel is a huge waste of the energy it took to create those molecules.
  - spodek 5y ago
    We've changed many practices against pure profitability, including asbestos, marketing cigarettes to children, HCFCs, and slavery. We may not have reached 100% on each, but we've changed a lot. We have other values than money.
- spodek 5y ago
  Increasing solar and decreasing oil are largely independent. History shows that when we find new energy sources, we keep using the old and add the new. Solar allows us to keep doing some things that oil powers, but we would stop using oil at some point, limited by pollution killing too many of us, running out, or choice.
wegs2 5y ago
Perhaps. I think the key question is how quickly the cost of alternatives goes down relative to oil. But if Greenland is the last reserve of oil left on the planet, the value of that oil will be astronomical. Holding off on drilling during cheap oil is a good investment.
fulafel 5y ago
We'll need to cut about 50% of fossil fuel demand globally in the next 30 years (see eg https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050 https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050 ). It will probably happen by tax and emissions trading mechanisms (and elimintating subsisidies ) sufficiently to reduce demand to this level.
- truthwhisperer 5y ago
  we don't have to do anything my friend. Don't speak on behalve of the silent majority
Robotbeat 5y ago
I don’t agree. We already have alternatives to oil, they’re just more expensive in many cases. In the 00s, we pursued biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel, bioplastics, etc… which has problems but does still replace some uses of oil) and on-shore wind aggressively. In the 2010s, we developed battery electric vehicles, grid storage, solar, and off-shore wind. I suspect this decade we’ll see hydrogen steel and ammonia production, battery electric flight, and chemical carbon capture. Another decade of this and expensive methods of oil extraction just aren’t very feasible, so if the price spikes, people will just switch to alternatives faster or even start synthesizing carbon neutral hydrocarbons (ie via electrolyzed hydrogen, direct air CO2 capture, and Fischer-Tropsch).
- ipaddr 5y ago
  What replaces plastic currently?
  - adrianN 5y ago
    With enough energy you can make plastic out of CO2 and water. So it's an economic question: What happens when oil is no longer useful as fuel? Will it be cheaper to just synthesize the hydrocarbons you need, or will it be cheaper to keep some of the oil infrastructure running?
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      I have no idea why you're being down-voted. You literally can make any hydrocarbons we get from crude using synthesis gas (from CO2 and water split into hydrogen) using the Fischer-Tropsch process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... Are folks just not aware of this, so they think people who say you can "make plastic out of CO2 and water" are talking hand-wavy nonsense? The process is used commercially today in Qatar, Malaysia, and South Africa plus has had pilot plants in the US. But many of these US pilot plant efforts stopped when the price of oil cratered. So again, we absolutely do have alternatives to crude oil, it's just a function of economics.
    - 5y ago

akudha 5y ago

It would be a long time before we run out of oil. Given that solar is becoming super cheap, our reliance on oil will keep reducing. What is likely to happen is change in political will to keep the ban - you know, the usual bribery and the talk of “jobs” etc. That is a bigger threat than oil shortage

smolder 5y ago
Isn't political will just a function of external motivators such as the profitability of extracting oil? (Which will go up as supplies dwindle?) I don't think people will just decide differently with no change in circumstances.
- ianai 5y ago
  Tapping oil reserves has a history of wrecking governments and economies. The economics of it quickly push out other forms of industry. Politicians quickly seize on the opportunity to claim they personally own the reserves - and become dictators. Then there's the horrible ecological costs. The best option is to develop means of providing energy which disrupt the economics of even oil extraction/refinement. Nuclear could do this - uranium occurs at a pretty constant rate across the earth's crust. Nuclear could also be built out at a rate of choice to meet and pass the energy provided by fossil fuels. One thing that typified the industrial expansion to modernity is ever increasing utilization of greater amounts of energy. Energy storage even has suitable options to disrupt fossil fuels - vis a vi hydrogen fuel cells, lithium batteries, and plenty of other options. (Personally, I like that fuel cells output water since desert areas are seeing greater population characteristics.) In short, the best option is to leave oil and fossil fuels in the ground and grow the world off its use through appropriate investments in tech and infrastructure.
  - ianai 5y ago
    Replying instead of editing Even the term “fossil fuels” is an inappropriate framing of the chemicals involved since it restricts their use to burning. Consider the processes involved in their formations: organic material grew for eons millions of years ago. It then had to be buried in just the right conditions and later embedded into even further beneficial conditions. It took millions of years, high temperatures, and high pressures to go from plant material to these complex molecular forms. Then we dig them up or seep them out with fracking and further refine them. Then we burn them. Huge losses of energy all along the way. Using oil as fossil fuel is a huge waste of the energy it took to create those molecules.
- spodek 5y ago
  We've changed many practices against pure profitability, including asbestos, marketing cigarettes to children, HCFCs, and slavery. We may not have reached 100% on each, but we've changed a lot. We have other values than money.
spodek 5y ago
Increasing solar and decreasing oil are largely independent. History shows that when we find new energy sources, we keep using the old and add the new. Solar allows us to keep doing some things that oil powers, but we would stop using oil at some point, limited by pollution killing too many of us, running out, or choice.

wegs2 5y ago

Perhaps. I think the key question is how quickly the cost of alternatives goes down relative to oil. But if Greenland is the last reserve of oil left on the planet, the value of that oil will be astronomical. Holding off on drilling during cheap oil is a good investment.

fulafel 5y ago

We'll need to cut about 50% of fossil fuel demand globally in the next 30 years (see eg https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050 https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050 ). It will probably happen by tax and emissions trading mechanisms (and elimintating subsisidies ) sufficiently to reduce demand to this level.

truthwhisperer 5y ago
we don't have to do anything my friend. Don't speak on behalve of the silent majority

Robotbeat 5y ago

I don’t agree. We already have alternatives to oil, they’re just more expensive in many cases. In the 00s, we pursued biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel, bioplastics, etc… which has problems but does still replace some uses of oil) and on-shore wind aggressively. In the 2010s, we developed battery electric vehicles, grid storage, solar, and off-shore wind. I suspect this decade we’ll see hydrogen steel and ammonia production, battery electric flight, and chemical carbon capture. Another decade of this and expensive methods of oil extraction just aren’t very feasible, so if the price spikes, people will just switch to alternatives faster or even start synthesizing carbon neutral hydrocarbons (ie via electrolyzed hydrogen, direct air CO2 capture, and Fischer-Tropsch).

ipaddr 5y ago
What replaces plastic currently?
- adrianN 5y ago
  With enough energy you can make plastic out of CO2 and water. So it's an economic question: What happens when oil is no longer useful as fuel? Will it be cheaper to just synthesize the hydrocarbons you need, or will it be cheaper to keep some of the oil infrastructure running?
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I have no idea why you're being down-voted. You literally can make any hydrocarbons we get from crude using synthesis gas (from CO2 and water split into hydrogen) using the Fischer-Tropsch process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... Are folks just not aware of this, so they think people who say you can "make plastic out of CO2 and water" are talking hand-wavy nonsense? The process is used commercially today in Qatar, Malaysia, and South Africa plus has had pilot plants in the US. But many of these US pilot plant efforts stopped when the price of oil cratered. So again, we absolutely do have alternatives to crude oil, it's just a function of economics.
  - 5y ago