The world once oil starts drying up.

Predictions for global oil supply varies from 10 to 50 years, depending on bias, population and economic growth, lucky discoveries of reserves etc.

What do you think will happen once oil becomes scarce?
Keep in mind that agriculture and transport is 99 percent dependent on oil.

1. Prices spiraling upwards?
2. Governments lying to prevent panic?
3. Rationing and militarization?
4. ???
5. ???
6. ???

 

Uh. Moderators do 4chan things here?
Cool. I'll have to take note and copy them.

 

How's that supposed to work?

 

Honestly, if we get to the point where we burn all the oil, we've already screwed ourselves on the global warming front, so I'm hoping we switch to electric cars and green energy before that.

If we don't...we really already have the technology to create a first world lifestyle without oil, but if we want until we start to run out and then try to transition, it's going to be really painful.

 

Possibilities:

1. We convert to the next best fuel. Probably alcohol or natural gas. The technology already exists, used on a small scale.
2. We produce our own oil using mostly natural means. Oil producing algae already exist, even if still in the experimental stage.
3. We produce synthetic oil. Hydrocarbons can be produced using electricity and basic feedstock. Like photosynthesis, but more efficient. As a bonus, it would cause net carbon emission to be neutral, since it requires carbon for production, even atmospheric CO2 will do.

Retooling our entire infrastructure for green energy in 50 years or less is not feasible. Liquid fuels are currently our best form of energy storage.

 

Supply and demand, it's going to be a process as oil becomes harder to extract, and prices will reflect (subsidies will only delay that at best). Once prices grew high enough then alternative fuel sources becomes more attractive.

 

Best option which will not realistically happen until the global economy has crashed and everyone becomes desperate enough to abandon their irrational fears:

Full-nuclear energy economy where excess energy/heat is used for the production/synthesis of hydrocarbons and production of polymers, sourcing carbon from recycled plastics and atmospheric CO2

A more realistic scenarion: Complete. Global. Saturation. Shutdown.

 

My friend in the oil company told me. We would drill deeper

 

Time to start the purge. Lol JK

 

You guys do realized that this is far from the first time that humanity (or parts of it) has faced an energy/resource crisis? There were times in European history when deforestation was a major headache for nations (allegedly one of the reasons that spurred the proliferation of coal in certain regions). The time when there's a genuine fear that over whaling will cause an energy crisis (due to the importance of blubber oil)... then oil came into the picture. A less fear mongering example of passing era of energy would be the rise and fall of coal. There's no reason to believe that oil is so special that it's the final state of human energy usage.

Easter island is more of an anomaly than an example that everyone makes it out to be.

 

There are plenty of workable technologies we can make use of to replace natural oil, as other posters mentioned.

The real end scenario would be humanity losing its more advanced technologies and industries.

The industrial revolution was partially fueled by easily available natural resources, like oil literally spurting out of the ground in some places, or coal mines that were just some dudes digging into the earth with shovels.

We've exhausted pretty much every easily available resource acquisition point like those, and extracting further stuff now requires some pretty advanced machinery and technology. If we ever regress too much after some apocalypse, we'd be rightly fucked, since we can't repeat history and do an industrial revolution mk2, as we've exhausted just about every readily and easily available resource on Earth by now.

It's do or die time now. Either we keep advancing from this point forward, or we regress to a point we can't get back up from, and stagnate forever.

 

As long as we have enough of a tech base to slap together some atomic rockets, and not the dinky NTR engines either, I'm talking gas core open cycle rockets and nuclear salt water rockets, we can kickstart space mining and colonization would follow. If worst comes to worst, Ark it up.

 

Absolutely nothing happens, because we'll stop using oil before we run out. We're well on our way as it is.

As of right now, the transition is happening, and it will happen- not because of silly fearmongering or a desperate scramble to something else... but because we're already at the point where we have equal approaching better options available.

We have biofuels that are just as good as petroleum (if a little more expensive- for now), synthetic oils and plastics made much the same way... and with each passing year, they become more and more economically attractive as technology improves and the costs of extracting crude grows more expensive.

Nuclear could replace all other fuel sources and keep us up with current rates of growth for at least the next six thousand years. If we don't advance tech any further in that length of time... well, then we are totally fucked. But since six thousand years ago the Bronze Age was yet to start... that's a pretty comfortable amount of breathing room to make the next few technological leaps forward. At the very least, we should have controlled fusion reactors by then, which should more than double the available energy on Earth and buy us several thousand more years.

Oil is not some special, irreplaceable resource... no more than coal is... it's just the cheapest of all our portable options. Nuclear's still about a hundred thousand times cheaper for generating energy... but we're not at the point where nuclear-powered civilian transportation is a thing.

Chances are, we never will be... not because of technology, but because of security concerns. Either way, biofuels will become the new gas, the world will march on, and we'll have to find some other way to cause our own extinction. I'm betting on ecophage plague, myself.

 

Electric cars which recharge by plugging into a grid powered by a nuclear plant might count.

At worst, we get a really sexy electric car marketing campaign.

Don't step on the gas, JUST NUKE IT™.

 

Yeah, that would be a damn sexy commercial.

But, I'm holding out for "we've made them five times better for a quarter of the cost- so now they're finally almost as usable as a Toyota."

When they can make that claim without being sued for deceptive advertising, then I'll start paying attention.

 

There is probably more than what is told to increase prices, and when it does dry up, innovation is propelled by struggles, so something will come up to substitute it. It could be for better or worse, and really it will be a coin flip depending if it will make people money and look good for politics. It certainly will not be during my lifespan and I am happy for that.

 

Companies that have spent billions trying to suppress green technologies switch over to producing them, making even more money.

 

The only reason green technologies are even somewhat widespread and profitable now despite their numerous deficiencies is because of billions in subsidies and numerous laws favoring them. To think they are being suppressed in any way is laughable.

The only truly green energy technology that's actually being suppressed nowadays is nuclear, and it's the supposed eco-friendly environmentalist that are suppressing it.

 

And even they are finally pulling their heads out of their asses as it's becoming clearer by the day that wind and solar just are not going to cut it. Not without advancements that are as of yet more scifi than plausible.

 

The main problem I think with wind and solar is that they are unreliable, all depending on the weather conditions. It's why even countries investing heavily in wind and solar still have things like coal burning plants as backups.

For solar, the sci-fi solution would be a network of satellites catching solar rays directly and beaming them down towards receiver stations on earth.

For wind I have nothing.

Hydro we are already doing a pretty good job. At night, when energy requirements are lower, use that spare energy to pump massive amounts of water into higher-located reservoirs. At day, when energy is needed, let that water fall down and power the turbines to a water reservoir below. It's still nothing more than a massive glorified battery, but it helps a lot.

The only amazing sci-fi solution that actually works is nuclear. There are literally no drawbacks to it, even the waste disposal is so easy to do properly it's a joke now.

 

Honestly? In both cases they have the exact same solution:

Better batteries. If we could just figure out a way to more efficiently store energy and perhaps transport it from high availability (say, the middle of the desert solar farms) to high demand (cities... dirty, dusty, windblocks filled cities), we'd have the biggest problem of green energy solved.

That... and the fact that building a solar panel pumps out more pollution like nobody's business. All those rare earth metals, the refinement process... burning plastic is a more environmentally friendly source of energy than solar panels.

... I wish that was an exaggeration...

Fair, but hydro has this nasty habit of destroying entire ecosystems. And potentially starting wars, depending on where the dam is and how many countries will be hurt by the sudden blockage of their potable water source.

And there's less and less 'waste' to nuclear waste every year. Scientists and engineers practically trip over themselves begging for samples to experiment with or use to make equipment for hospitals or NASA or whatever.

 

Wind and Solar aren't gonna cut it with 8 billion people.
Less than a billion, on the other hand...

 

I don't think there is going to be a bright green scifi solution. Better batteries aren't coming, hyper efficient solar panels aren't coming, hydrogen isn't happening, it's over.

We'll just have to start using less energy and accept that people can't own their own cars anymore, accept that we can't have fruits and vegetables out of season or from climates halfway across the world, accept that we have to repair old appliances and clothes and electronics instead of buying new, and accept that flying is basically impossible. It won't be easy and people won't accept it easily, but I don't see any other option.

 

Electric batteries? No chance. We don't even have enough Lithium in the world to convert even a fraction of world's power needs.

The most efficient energy storage mediums we have are various oils, gasses and other combustibles, so you can see why there's no will to further adapt or develop such things.

Even if we can literally grow plants that do the hard work of producing viable fuel for us.

Accept you will own nothing and be happy?

 

It's called "synthetic hydrocarbons" and "nuclear powered production of synthetic hydrocarbon".
Germany did the first half 80 years ago, and we now have the means to do the second half. We have millennia worth of Uranium and Thorium that's just begging to be burnt. The only roadblock to this isn't even the petrochemical companies because aside from sourcing petroleum, they still have the majority of pharmaceuticals and chemical industry locked down for themselves thanks to literally everything needing hydrocarbons as feedstock. The big hurdle here is the autistically overblown regulations that countries like the USA place on anything slightly radioactive and kneecap their own nuclear industry with.
Despite what you may think, giving everyone in the world a decent living standard is a matter of logistics and legality, not physical scarcity. It's just that megalomaniacal technocrats with god complexes that Resident Evil villains would balk at have convinced the world that becoming almost literal bugmen in megacities is the only way forward.

But Hell, if you're so taken with the concept, go live in the pods, eat the bugs and own nothing while being happy.

The rest of us are gonna be juuust happy running our cars off of biogas while we wait for nuclear synthetic hydrocarbons to become a thing after the current muzzle on actual development to collapse (most likely drawing a WW3 scenario as a consequence) and fade away.

 

Not alone, but as a supplement to a predominately nuclear future? Enough.

That, or- and this is my personal favorite hope- superconductor based capacitors. You can store obscene amounts of power in the form of electromagnetic fields. And extract that energy with relatively little effort. And most of them don't require particularly exotic elements.

Apparently they can be made of ceramic.

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/superconductor_feature.html

One thing we're not likely to run out of any time soon is ceramics.

 

It's coming whether you like it or not.

At least if we adapt our lifestyles now we won't have to do it while fighting over the last drop of oil. I think in the future a lot of ownership will be communal; communal tools, communal bikes, communal clothes, communal housing etc. The concept of every single person owning one of everything they need won't work in a world without oil.

Do you need your own bathroom? Or could everyone in your building just use a communal toilet and shower? Do you need your own bike? Or could you just borrow one from the community bike rack? Do you need your own clothes? Or could you wear whatever is in the community closet.

Not glamorous, but realistic. No scifi bullshit needed.

Uh, are you talking about the Bergius process of converting coal into synfuel?

Without carbon capture that's just going to turn Earth into Venus lol

 

Perhaps it could be, just like hydro is supplementing our energy needs now.

That sounds retarded.