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"It took a lot of fossil fuels to forge our industrial world. Now they're almost gone." - it's wrong from the start. We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels a

"It took a lot of fossil fuels to forge our industrial world. Now they're almost gone." - it's wrong from the start. We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels available with current technology. With future technology, it could be even longer.

gwern 12y ago
> We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels available with current technology. So... in a post-apocalyptic scenario in which civilization has regressed to unindustrialized agriculture, there would be fossil fuels available only with 500+ years of Industrial Revolution advancement? I'm not sure how that would be helpful.
hnnewguy 12y ago
>"With future technology, it could be even longer." This sort of misses the point that under this thought experiment there is no future technology, and that to get at the vast reserves we have left would require that technology. We won't be deep sea drilling or fracking if we get rebooted. Nor will we be digging holes in the prairies and having crude gush to the surface.
- fleitz 12y ago
  We simply burn the forests... given the absence of the majority of humanity there is plenty of forest to burn.
  - balabaster 12y ago
    and you can burn 1 cord per acre per year without depleting the forest at all... the trick is to keep consumption to no more than that.
alexqgb 12y ago
As the Times recently reported, burning all known reserves - and dumping the resulting carbon emissions into the atmosphere - would raise the average surface temperature by more than 16 degrees. That's more than enough to trigger a the world's sixth great extinction and wipe out life as we know it, ourselves included. Factor the cost of combustion into the cost of extraction, and you'll find that our useable reserves are rapidly approaching zero. Indeed, we may be in overshoot already. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/upshot/if-we-dig-out-all-our-fossil-fuels-heres-how-hot-we-can-expect-it-to-get.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/upshot/if-we-dig-out-all-o...
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Except that in current economy, consumption increases with availability. So if one day the "future technology" gave us access to 100x more fossil fuel, that would make them 100x cheaper and people would quickly find ways to waste energy 100x faster on thing that used to be too expensive to consider.

gwern 12y ago

> We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels available with current technology. So... in a post-apocalyptic scenario in which civilization has regressed to unindustrialized agriculture, there would be fossil fuels available only with 500+ years of Industrial Revolution advancement? I'm not sure how that would be helpful.

hnnewguy 12y ago

>"With future technology, it could be even longer." This sort of misses the point that under this thought experiment there is no future technology, and that to get at the vast reserves we have left would require that technology. We won't be deep sea drilling or fracking if we get rebooted. Nor will we be digging holes in the prairies and having crude gush to the surface.

fleitz 12y ago
We simply burn the forests... given the absence of the majority of humanity there is plenty of forest to burn.
- balabaster 12y ago
  and you can burn 1 cord per acre per year without depleting the forest at all... the trick is to keep consumption to no more than that.

alexqgb 12y ago

As the Times recently reported, burning all known reserves - and dumping the resulting carbon emissions into the atmosphere - would raise the average surface temperature by more than 16 degrees. That's more than enough to trigger a the world's sixth great extinction and wipe out life as we know it, ourselves included. Factor the cost of combustion into the cost of extraction, and you'll find that our useable reserves are rapidly approaching zero. Indeed, we may be in overshoot already. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/upshot/if-we-dig-out-all-our-fossil-fuels-heres-how-hot-we-can-expect-it-to-get.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/upshot/if-we-dig-out-all-o...

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Except that in current economy, consumption increases with availability. So if one day the "future technology" gave us access to 100x more fossil fuel, that would make them 100x cheaper and people would quickly find ways to waste energy 100x faster on thing that used to be too expensive to consider.