4 ms·
Basic economics already says we will never run out of oil. Sure it may be $10,000 per barrel, but it will still be available.
by _red 13y ago
Basic economics already says we will never run out of oil. Sure it may be $10,000 per barrel, but it will still be available.
- vacri 13y agoThat's a bit like saying 'we haven't run out of food' when there's only half a jar of mustard and some salt in the cupboard. Actually, it reminds of a housemate I once had who often ate other people's food. He would respond "Well, you can help yourselves to the food in my cupboard"... which was, in total, one lemon and a quarter-kilo of flour.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoMy mom used to brag about the food she would be able to scrape together while living in soviet Russia. I bet she could have done something with that.
- pokpokpok 13y agoyou can make decent flat bread with flour and water
- philwelch 13y agoAnd that's saving the lemon for dessert!
- vacri 13y agoThis same guy was half-Russian, and talked of watching his grandmother go out shopping for food in Moscow in the Soviet era, and come back four hours later with two chickens and nothing else. Four hours of queueing for two chickens.
- azinman2 13y agoSounds like an inefficient checkout clerk!
- pavel_lishin 13y agoOne checkout clerk? That's not really how I remember things working. You walk into the store that sells things. You go up to the meat counter, and you say, "I want a kilo of meat." They weigh out your kilo of meat, and give you a receipt that says, "Meat: 1 kilo". You then go to another counter, where you pay the clerk for that particular receipt - it is then marked as 'paid' (or you get another one, I forget.) You then go back to the meat counter, and you give them the "I paid for this" receipt, and then receive your kilo of meat. So, at best, you've got two inefficient checkout clerks! And at worst, you pay for meat and then there is no meat.
- azinman2 13y agoI was being facetious.
- sadfnjksdf 13y agoAll known resources are finite.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoAll planet-based resources; all non-renewable resources. Some are near-infinite over time, others near-infinite over space. A system-spanning civilization would have many orders of magnitude more resources than our one tiny M-class world.
- mason55 13y agoYes but as the supply of oil dwindles it will approach a point where it's more expensive to extract than it costs to use a substitute. At that point we'll be "out" of oil but there will still be plenty left in the Earth.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoThat's been predicted many times; each time we find cheaper ways.
- manicdee 13y agoGood ol' fracking! Who needs to do expensive things like drill holes and pump in fillers to displace the stuff we're trying to harvest? Let's just smash the lithosphere like a dinner plate on the slate floor and collect all the goodies that pour out! It's not like we actually need that land to grow food on or anything.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoActually we have an embarrassment of land to grow food on. Its fair to examine the wisdom in that tradeoff. At some point it becomes untenable, but right now actually we're doing OK. E.g. Iowa can grow enough food to feed 2 United States.
- craigyk 13y ago