BF2S Forums what will take over after gas is all used up

Also some other notable facts: modern technology affected by petrolium.

Automobiles:

The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 20 barrels (840 gallons) of oil.source

It's also worth nothing that the construction of an average car consumes almost 120,000 gallons of fresh water.source

Fresh water is also rapidly depleting and happens to be absolutely essential to the petroleum refining process as each gallon of gasoline requires almost two gallons of fresh water for refining.source

Computers:

The construction of the average desktop computer consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels.source

Microchips:

The production of one gram of microchips consumes 630 grams of fossil fuels. According to the American Chemical Society, the construction of single 32 megabyte DRAM chip requires 3.5 pounds of fossil fuels in addition to 70.5 pounds of water. source

The Internet:

Contrary to popular belief, the internet consumes tremendous amounts of energy. Author John Michael Greer explains:

The explosive spread of the internet, finally, was also a product of the era
of ultracheap energy. The hardware of the internet, with its worldwide
connections, its vast server farms, and its billions of interlinked home and
business computers, probably counts as the largest infrastructure project
ever created and deployed in a two decade period in history. The sheer
amount of energy that's been been invested to create and sustain the
internet beggars the imagination.source

Recent estimates indicate the infrastructure necessary to support the internet consumes 10% of all the electricity produced in the United States.
source

Nuclear energy requires uranium, which is also discovered, extracted, and transported using oil powered machinery.Most of the feedstock (soybeans, corn) for biofuels such as biodiesel and ethanol are grown using the high-tech, oil-powered industrial methods of agriculturesource

In short, the so called "alternatives" to oil are actually "derivatives" of oil.

Analyst John Michael Greer offers the following rather lucid explanation of this often over-looked relationship:
. . . every other energy source currently used in modern societies gets a substantial "energy subsidy" from oil. The energy used in uranium mining and reactor construction, for example, comes from diesel rather than nuclear power, just as sunlight doesn’t make solar panels. What rarely seems to have been noticed is the way these "energy subsidies" intersect with the challenges of declining petroleum production to [preemptievely sabotage] the future of alternative energy production in industrial societiessource

for cars? probably hydrogen fuel cells using solar energy to split the hydrogen.

for us? probably solar electricity, along with wind, hydroelectric, tidal and in some places nuclear and natural gas. also coal until that goes the way of the oil supply.

I'd say do the whole "coal to oil" thing. If the Nazis could stay afloat on that, we could, not to mention probably do it better because 60 some odd years have passed.

blademaster wrote:

In short, the so called "alternatives" to oil are actually "derivatives" of oil.

That's why you cut out the Oil (and by Oil, I mean the Oil-as-fuel part, which is the main use)

Electric machinery. With batteries charged by electricity generated from the various other non-fossil sources of power. It's not going to cut out our fossil-oil addiction completely, but it would make us much less dependant.

How much do you think one of those Mr. Fusions would go for?

Ender2309 wrote:

jason85 wrote:

I'd say do the whole "coal to oil" thing. If the Nazis could stay afloat on that, we could, not to mention probably do it better because 60 some odd years have passed.

coal to oil is a net energy loss, if i remember correctly. if its not, it nearly is.

its just simply unsustainable.

from what i hear on the news, it could actually be a viable source of fuel, and they probably wouldn't be talking about it if we would lose more energy than it would take to produce, or nearly, as you say. the only real negative thing i have heard so far is that it is just expensive, but that is probably because we don't have the infrastructure to do it cheaply.

But isn't a small fraction of the available arable land actually being used (cba to find the numbers)? Seem to remember a blurb to that effect from some documentaries recently...

Nappy wrote:

get tanks to shove up our ass to collect fart gas



sorry.

not really a bad idea, using methane. i'd hate having to fart into a tube all the time, but I heard about solid methane that forms deep in the ocean. i think it is called hyrdite, although i'm not really sure of the name. i guess experts estimate that there are huge amounts to be found and could be used for fuel.