No oil by 2050?

Mastiff,

I am no fan of W. either but look at it logically. Billions of dollars are invested in oil drilling (oil platforms at sea, oil derricks on land), refining (Refineries, R&D, etc.), shipping (pipelines, ships, trucks, train cars, etc), etc. Millions of people are employed by Big oil companies doing the jobs that drill, refine, ship, and retail the stuff on every corner in America (In New Jersey You can’t even pump your own gas so someone is employed to pump it for you =P). Millions of jobs are supplied by the people that make all of the equipment for all of these other people to work in those given areas. And the impact of the end of an oil economy goes on and on. Big oil and many others that bet their livelihood on big oil will lose big time from a change in fuel. All though we love to hate the pollutions many of them that make decisions about energy know what I have just mentioned. I would love to see biodiesel take off. It would allow a good deal of the people evolved in petroleum to keep their jobs. That being said many would lose their jobs, and the wealthy of this nation would have a lot of capital goods that they could no longer use. But many new jobs would be created, farmers would get a huge boost in demand, and lots scientist ad engineering jobs would be created for R&D just to start.

Cindy in PA,

No matter how much we Americans eat fast food, we will not have enough waste vegetable oil and waist animal fats to make biodiesel completely from waist. We can though be responsible and make as much as possible by recycling waist products. We will need farmers to get involved and that is good for rural economies that are feeling a lot of stress right now. That being said there is more to biodiesel then animal fats or vegetable oils. You must also use methanol or ethanol to produce it. Methanol provides for the simpler and safer chemical reaction though. And if you want to do it at a low heat you have to use Lye (NaOH [Sodium Hydroxide] or KHO [Potassium Hydroxide]) as a catalyst. There is no problem producing it at higher heat and it actually assists in recovery of excess methanol so that fine. But we still need Methanol. Currently most of our methanol come from coal but we can get it in many different ways. We can make methanol mechanically with natural gas or even biogas (colleted from landfills and sewage plants as well as pig farms and other rotting materials). Research is also being conducted on methanotrophs so that we can use bacteria to oxidize methane (Natural Gas / Biogas/Your farts LOL =P) into Methanol. Biodiesel is definitely the mobile energy future but other energies will be use for power plants.


ipaint,

Yea that is very scary huh. No second chance anymore. We will all feel the repercussion of that mistake. The youth of this country is in so much debt just trying to stay in the rat race now. With no way out many young people will not be able to pay off their dept and will be told they will have to pay it no matter what. What will they do? Well most likely it will eventually lead to a lot more crime.

Wanted to ad one more thing. You are right that the pollutions are not making the best decisions for the country though. A perfect example is W. bullying Iran claiming that they are trying to make nuclear weapons. How ever much the some in Iran may hate Americans they do not feel like having a ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) delivered to their door step. They are legitimately developing nuclear power plants because they know their days of oil are coming to an end. The are securing their energy future. Once we consume all of their oil their will be none left for them to run their own power grid. So in preparation they have moved to nuclear technology, something Americans do not want to touch with a ten foot pool after what happened at 10 mile island. We still have nuclear power plants but we have not built anymore in all this time. The people in Nevada are flipping out about the waist sludge being placed right in their back yard too. There is plenty of radioactive material left and not much demand for it at this moment so they are going after what they think will be relatively cheep and clean energy which it is.

"For me the last nail in the coffin was the bankruptcy bill."

I am more concerned with the 50% of bankruptcies that are working individuals or families who have health insurance but are still swamped with medical bills. Now you can kiss your house and land goodbye. No exemptions for the elderly or people serving in the military, etc.

Only 2-3% of bankruptcies are actually people who took advantage of the system. Why the new law? For 2-3% the rational is to severely punish the other 97%.


This passed so quickly was backed by both parties and has the potential to do enormous harm to americans who find themselves in situations beyond their control. Whether it be medical bills, job loss, layoffs or the effect of increasing oil prices on the housing or farming industries not only do you lose everything to the banks and lenders but you owe them your future earnings if what they have taken is not enough.

Peak oil or no peak oil, I do believe we are being set up for the fall.