Is an oil free future even possible with current and forseeable future technology?

[Xellos2099]

Nowsday I seen all sort of people said that we should kick our oil habit, but is it even possible? Everything use oil, from cars to boat to airplane to even plastic. People LOVE to blame it is our demand for oil that cause this accident, but it is not. It was solely on the incompetent of the US inspector to the cost cutting action from the BP that cause this accident. Even if we completely stop using oil tomorrow, every other countries in the world will use it and they will use it happily too. The best we could do is to start building more nuclear reactor, that will decrease the need for oil. We also got no replacement for plastic either.

Now unless US government is giving everyone that have a car an electric car, our demand for oil won't drop anytime soon, people needs car to get to work and any family bigger than 5 most likely need a suv unless they got at least 2-3 cars, but that would double the gas usage won't we? The matter of fact is, US is simply too big to travel for just public transportation. If someone need to drive 1 hour to work, it will take twice or triple amount of time by the way of public transportation, not really efficient, right?

 

[Hacp]

Kick our oil habit? WHY? Oil is cheap and efficient. Has that suddenly become a bad thing?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

We will not be free from needing to use carbon compounds in any conceivable technological society, nor do we need to.

Could we be free from oil, entirely? Sure. You could use coal for almost everything, but it's a pain in the ass.

So the petrochemical industry won't go away any time soon, but the vast majority of oil is burned, a rather stupid waste of a highly flexible resource.

Using another source for energy is merely a matter of economic. We're at the point where investment in research will find a replacement in historically short span of time, then production and putting whatever infrastructure into place.

Replacing oil for every purpose? Completely unnecessary and undesirable.

 

[Rebel44]

Well, USA can for example stop using on average twice as much oil per person compared to EU (its easy to do - just create tax of 3$ per gallon ).

It also wouldnt hurt USA to create good mass transport system like what we have in EU.

 

[MovingTarget]

Completely oil-free? No. It is too useful a substance. That being said, long term it is simply too valuable to use for transport fuel or power generation. With current and future technologies, it is possible to drastically reduce our dependence in oil in these two sectors.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Kick our oil habit? WHY? Oil is cheap and efficient. Has that suddenly become a bad thing?

Because it won't meet worldwide energy needs in the relatively near future, driving up the cost of everything and leading to a Depression like we've never seen unless some other means of producing energy is found before that happens.

Only an idiot waits to slam on the brakes once he runs into the wall.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Well, USA can for example stop using on average twice as much oil per person compared to EU (its easy to do - just create tax of 3$ per gallon ).

It also wouldnt hurt USA to create good mass transport system like what we have in EU.

What is the EU population density compared to the US?

 

[sportage]

I can see it now...
They develop a way to extract energy from the air.
BP develops the technology. Everyone cheers.
But something goes terrible wrong one day with the process and all the air on Earth is suddenly turned to slug.
All humanity dies in within 30 seconds.
Welcome to out of control un-regulated technologies of tomorrow.
Have a nice day...

 

[bfdd]

Kick our oil habit? WHY? Oil is cheap and efficient. Has that suddenly become a bad thing?

Oil might be, but gas combustion engines are incredibly inefficient. It sucks knowing 80% of the fuel you paid for will go unused.

 

[Lemon law]

In a word, no, and the ignorant need to educate themselves.

Because unlike a barrel of water, a barrel of oil is not a homogeneous substance.

We can't turn a barrel of oil into all gasoline, or all heating oil, or all anything. That is what oil refineries do, they separate oil into its various components, and interestingly, until the invention of the internal combustion engine, no one had any idea of what to do with all the gasoline that resulted from refining oil.

 

[Rebel44]

What is the EU population density compared to the US?

Its not EU fault that americans are building suburbs like crazy. Without suburbs USA would have in most areas similar population density as EU.

 

[bfdd]

In a word, no, and the ignorant need to educate themselves.

Because unlike a barrel of water, a barrel of oil is not a homogeneous substance.

We can't turn a barrel of oil into all gasoline, or all heating oil, or all anything. That is what oil refineries do, they separate oil into its various components, and interestingly, until the invention of the internal combustion engine, no one had any idea of what to do with all the gasoline that resulted from refining oil.

Crude is turned into so many damn things. They try to pull out every useful hydrocarbon in crude to make tons of different products. Polypropylene is a pretty useful plastic.

 

[Slew Foot]

Kick our oil habit? WHY? Oil is cheap and efficient. Has that suddenly become a bad thing?

With the way the government is taking over everything, Id say yes.

 

[woolfe9999]

If "foreseeable future technology" includes harnessable fusion, then the answer is close to "yes," though we'd still need aircraft fuel. If it doesn't include fusion, then the answer is no. We can reduce our use and dependence on fossil fuels in the foreseeable future, but we won't come close to eliminating it.

- wolf

 

[Elias824]

Well, USA can for example stop using on average twice as much oil per person compared to EU (its easy to do - just create tax of 3$ per gallon ).

It also wouldnt hurt USA to create good mass transport system like what we have in EU.

The EU huh? so how is that working out for you guys these days?

Im sure we can replace a good chunk of what we use oil for, but it would be hugely expensive. Electric Cars powered by solar farms, but the price for setting up such an infrastructure is more then we could handle with the current budget issues.

 

[Infohawk]

If someone has the expertise to opine on this topic I'd really like them to show it. This is ultimately an engineering / science question and partisan hacks are not going to be able to provide you with a decent answer.

With that said, isn't the scientific consensus that there are not unlimited oil reserves in the world? And isn't the scientific consensus that it takes millions of years for new oil to form? With that in mind I really hope our scientists and engineers are able to develop competitive substitutes. Otherwise we are probably up shit creek. Maybe not in our life time but in the foreseeable future.

 

[bfdd]

The EU huh? so how is that working out for you guys these days?

Im sure we can replace a good chunk of what we use oil for, but it would be hugely expensive. Electric Cars powered by solar farms, but the price for setting up such an infrastructure is more then we could handle with the current budget issues.

Lets not forget it'd be damn near impossible to implement anything resembling what most European countries have in terms of public transit on a national level. Plus places like California are just driving cultures. We have public transit of various sorts here, but people still drive. It's a cultural thing.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Because it won't meet worldwide energy needs in the relatively near future, driving up the cost of everything and leading to a Depression like we've never seen unless some other means of producing energy is found before that happens.

Only an idiot waits to slam on the brakes once he runs into the wall.

We can't simply replace oil completely, but we can supplement it where it makes sense to do so, and in fact we are already doing just that.

I can see it now...
They develop a way to extract energy from the air.
BP develops the technology. Everyone cheers.
But something goes terrible wrong one day with the process and all the air on Earth is suddenly turned to slug.
All humanity dies in within 30 seconds.
Welcome to out of control un-regulated technologies of tomorrow.
Have a nice day...

We already have a technology to extract energy from air, it is called a windmill and they have been used for centuries. So far they have completely failed at converting the atmosphere into slugs and killing everyone.

Oil might be, but gas combustion engines are incredibly inefficient. It sucks knowing 80% of the fuel you paid for will go unused.

Maybe you should have your vehicle looked at by a qualified mechanic, because I use almost all of my fuel. Unless you have invented a better engine, then it would seem that IC is still our best option for most situations.

 

[bfdd]

We can't simply replace oil completely, but we can supplement it where it makes sense to do so, and in fact we are already doing just that.



We already have a technology to extract energy from air, it is called a windmill and they have been used for centuries. So far they have completely failed at converting the atmosphere into slugs and killing everyone.



Maybe you should have your vehicle looked at by a qualified mechanic, because I use almost all of my fuel. Unless you have invented a better engine, then it would seem that IC is still our best option for most situations.

You might BURN all of your fuel, that doesn't mean you're burning it efficiently. IC motors have like 20-30% efficiency just do a little research bud.

 

[SMOGZINN]

If someone has the expertise to opine on this topic I'd really like them to show it. This is ultimately an engineering / science question and partisan hacks are not going to be able to provide you with a decent answer.

With that said, isn't the scientific consensus that there are not unlimited oil reserves in the world? And isn't the scientific consensus that it takes millions of years for new oil to form? With that in mind I really hope our scientists and engineers are able to develop competitive substitutes. Otherwise we are probably up shit creek. Maybe not in our life time but in the foreseeable future.

We are probably up shit creek.
While there are quite a few avenues of research in energy production, none of them seem like they will be capable of fulfilling more then a small percentage of our energy demands in the foreseeable future.
Our best single option would seem to be to build nuclear reactors right now, but even that is limited and probably much more so then oil.
We really need to put all of our different technologies to work, and keep improving efficiency of devices to reduce energy demand growth in order to buy ourselves enough time for the more long range research to come to fruition.
I personally believe that we will see major oil wars, between major powers like China and India in my lifetime.

 

[piasabird]

Taxing Oil $3.00 a gallon will not break our independence on oil. It will just create a tax. The federal government wastes about 2/3 of the tax money we give it.

In Indiana there is a Methane power generating plant that is fed off of the methane from a land fill. The Generators are made by caterpillar. This is a technology that works. The USA seems to have a lot of landfills.

Some people say it can not be done and some people just do it. I dont believe this is the same country that built the dams that create the electricity for much of the south-west. What they did was just a little short of a miracle.

 

[SMOGZINN]

You might BURN all of your fuel, that doesn't mean you're burning it efficiently. IC motors have like 20-30% efficiency just do a little research bud.

I've actually done my research. You can talk about efficiency all you want, but until you understand what it is actually measuring and how to know what is actually GOOD efficiency you are just misunderstanding statistics.
The problem is almost all other engines are even less efficient in total.
Oil is a superb energy storage medium.
IC engines are very good at utilizing it.
Nothing else we can build even comes close (for everyday useage)

 

[ebaycj]

engrish : dr

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Its not EU fault that americans are building suburbs like crazy. Without suburbs USA would have in most areas similar population density as EU.

I didn't say it's the EU's fault, did I? Neither is it our fault that we aren't overpopulated.

We simply have a lower population per square mile, and while there are corridors which could benefit from mass transit, Americans often work many miles away from home and MT is not as efficient under these conditions.

We can do better in this regard, but the reality of the situation is that the basic inequivalence of our situations means what works for you won't work nearly as well for us.

 

[Infohawk]

Lets not forget it'd be damn near impossible to implement anything resembling what most European countries have in terms of public transit on a national level. Plus places like California are just driving cultures. We have public transit of various sorts here, but people still drive. It's a cultural thing.

The cultural argument is BS IMO. California doesn't have anything like the public transportation in Europe. Not even close. Good public transportation in Europe takes you just about all the places you want to go. There are huge pockets of inconvenience in all major CA cities.