We are running out of petrol!!!

[Shadow Fury]

Nowadays, we are running out of petrol! The fuel used by cars, trucks, ships, airplanes, factories etc... As we all know, petrol is a non-renewable source of energy. So, imagine if one day, the last drop of petrol is spilled, what will happen to the entire world? There will be a lot of catastrophic consequences. You might think of using electricity and renewable sources of energy. However in many countries, like Florida, 40% of the electricity is generated from the combustion of carbon. If there will be no petrol, a lot of blackouts will occur in the entire world, many people will lose their jobs as the factories will have no energy to work, all transport vehicles will no more trade goods as they will have no fuel to move. The abysmal thing of this is that 25% of the food in many countries comes from other ones, so if the reports between all countries are cut, the food will start to decrease and its price will rise dramatically! In some countries, hospitals will have no energy to work and this will lead to a lot of deaths. Plastic, which nowadays has become ubiquitous, will no more be produced because it's made of petrol. Even things in space will change too. Rockets will no more be sent to space.
So now you can understand that petrol is too precious to be wasted! We must conserve it as much as we can! We must recycle our resources like plastic, steel and iron. We do not know when petrol will expire, but we must get ready for that dire day by using renewable resources like solar energy and biological combustibles.

 

[gorillabull]

rockets dont use petrol

 

[LordDz]

Quickly bomb a country! It's the only way.

 

[Shadow Fury]

rockets dont use petrol

And so with which fuel do their motors work?

 

[nhs325]

This is the time we need to find afternative fuel. "Green" fuel (oil, vegetables, ....) Should provide us enough fuel to replace petrols. Until we figured out how to make a new energy, this is the only way.

 

[PlankingWolf]

I think I watched something like this. Because of the world running out of petroleum, they've reverted everything being controlled by it with electricity.
Even guns are controlled by them for some reason.

 

[Heinvers]

Again this? I though it was clear that we already consume too much. So it's obvious that those fossil fuels will run out. Anyway I'm glad because now we can focus on a more green way to progress not burning through dead cells!
And it doesn't mean the end for civilization u know.

 

[Shadow Fury]

Again this? I though it was clear that we already consume too much. So it's obvious that those fossil fuels will run out. Anyway I'm glad because now we can focus on a more green way to progress not burning through dead cells!
And it doesn't mean the end for civilization u know.

I know that, nevertheless the end of petrol will SURELY have a negative impact on humanity.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

This is the time we need to find afternative fuel. "Green" fuel (oil, vegetables, ....) Should provide us enough fuel to replace petrols. Until we figured out how to make a new energy, this is the only way.

I can't believe my car would use vegetables in order to run.

 

[Nuclear]

Can't wait until it ends. We won't move the cleaner energy sources until it's absolutely necessary.

 

[Heinvers]

We'd better change to greener energies before that. Might as well avoid "wars" over resources

 

[Aeroblyctos]

We'd better change to greener energies before that. Might as well avoid "wars" over resources

I'm pretty positive we'll soon fight for bananas. It's a human nature to have these wars.

 

[PlankingWolf]

We'd better change to greener energies before that. Might as well avoid "wars" over resources

You can't avoid war. War is like Usain Bolt, man.
We actually need war, because without it, I would guess the world would be overpopulated a few years on.

 

[edo494]

just drop few bombs on India and China, there are 3B people there

no that is joke, Im against wars

as for cars using fuel, here is solution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S

 

[Weng]

How can we make a country focus on electricity energy instead of petrol uses?

Many peoples will lost their jobs, but we still need it.

MEOW.

 

[saphiree]

Fuck it, I want a fast car and use all the petrol you guys save!

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Let's add some science to this discussion.

There's basicly two solutions to this problem that are already completely or partially solved, but are not yet established because of the financial inefficiency over oil-based approaches:
hydrogen and electricity.

I'm positive that both solutions will come sooner or later as the more we are running out of oil, the higher the prices for oil will get, which means those two solutions get more and more economic.


But let's just dive deeper into this:

Fuel cells are a concept where you turn hydrogen directly into electricity without burning it. There's multiple ways to get molecular hydrogen: you can extract it from ethanol, methane and oil ... which clearly is not the solution we are looking for; however, you can also get hydrogen from electrolysis of ordinary water. This process, however, consumes more energy than you get out by turning the hydrogen into electricity again.
So what is the benefit of fuel cells? Simply spoken: you can carry a lot more energy stored in a gas bottle than you can in a battery of the same size.
Fuel cell based cars have the same range as gasoline based cars nowadays.
Since producing gas, however, takes a lot less energy than producing hydrogen and most of the worlds energy is still produced by fossil resources, the amount of greenhouse gases is roughly the same (and we would still burn a lot of oil for producing the energy we need to create the hydrogen) in total.
This means that fuel cells only make sense when combined with green energy production. The more our energy comes from renewable sources, the more clean fuel cells will be. If we get 100% of our electricity from renewable sources, then fuel cells will create no greenhouse gases at all.

So the only thing we have to manage is creating energy from renewable sources to a high degrees. And we know how that could work... it's just the $$ that is keeping the world from doing it.

Another interesting thing is the ITER facility in france that is still under construction. In short, ITER will be the first hot fusion reactor (based on the tokamak principle) that is big enough to produce more energy than it takes to run it. This energy, however, will not be turned into electricity in ITER, as ITER is a technology demonstration of a closed-circle tritium breeding process (which is still the highest hurdle of creating a fusion power plant).
In case ITER is successful, the first nuclear fusion power plant DEMO is planned for the year 202x, which will actually create more electricity than it consumes and produce tritium for further fusion power plants.

There's a website of the whole ITER project. You should read it up, it's an interesting read for tech-freaks!


Another interesting note:
Only 4% of world wide fossil resources processing is used for synthetic materials. 96% is just burned for energy. If we solve the energy thing, the worldwide reserves of fossil resources needed for synthetic materials will suffice for another 1000 years.

 

[GhostWolf]

There are actually many people trying many things over the world. If anything would end up happening is another story (begin with conspiracy theories here).

 

[gorillabull]

or.. you can just ride your bike or use a wood burning steam engine, wood burning steam engines use renewable energy

 

[edo494]

wood is renewable, but it takes hundreds of years for wood to renew in any useful amount and the Amazonian rain forest(I dont know the exact name in english) wont regrow itself you know

 

[Radicool]

Nowadays, we are running out of petrol!

Incorrect. This is a scare tactic used to promote green energy. Despite what many websites claim, we are in fact NOT running out of fossil fuels. Sure we will run out eventually, but we have probably another few hundred years to go. I have already provided evidence of this claim in another thread. New mines of fossil fuels are constantly being found. Far out, in Australia we just struck the largest source of fossil fuel the world has seen in years and years. So much fossil fuels available.

However, fossil fuels is dirty and inefficient. I don't really believe in Man Made Global warming at the moment (let's not debate about that now), but there are other problems and contaminants other than CO2 that are caused by fossil fuel burning, particularly by cars (Power Plants are fairly clean).

I think we need to move to Hydrogen Fuel cell cars or Battery powered electric cars. Further research is required to improve on these methods before they are implemented. At the moment, neither form of energy for cars is viable for the everyday person.

We also need to find other means of energy for producing our electricity. Solar and wind prove unreliable, tidal is the same. geothermal is a possibility. More so, all these sources of energy are transferred over power lines. The grid (the power lines we get our electricity from) loses approximately 6%-10% of energy. Inefficient. If hydrogen fuel cells develop enough, perhaps every home in the country could have their own hydrogen fuel tank? More efficient energy source. No power lines. Less waste.

Lot's of speculation. Not enough answers. We can't shift our energy source to something better yet, so all we can do is fund research to find a viable solution for us.

Fuck it, I want a fast car and use all the petrol you guys save!

Highly incorrect. Electric car's shit on petrol cars in terms of acceleration. You drive a v8, give me an equivalent electric motor and I'll win the race.

Electric cars generate maximum torque at 0KM/H.

There's basicly two solutions to this problem that are already completely or partially solved, but are not yet established because of the financial inefficiency over oil-based approaches:
hydrogen and electricity.

I believe this is the case. Hydrogen fuel cells to be specific. We probably want to move away from Hydrogen combustion engines because, well. Combustion isn't an efficient form of getting energy. Hydrogen fuel cells are.

 

[louie999]

Electricity will probably run everything when petrol runs out,look on the bright side electricity is renewable,unlike petrol.Plus when we use electricity to power our cars,aircraft etc. there will be NO MORE pollution.And there will be less wars because petrol is wanted by many countries so if there is no more petrol and we use electricity then there is lesser wars )))

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

Electricity will probably run everything when petrol runs out,look on the bright side electricity is renewable,unlike petrol.Plus when we use electricity to power our cars,aircraft etc. there will be NO MORE pollution.And there will be less wars because petrol is wanted by many countries so if there is no more petrol and we use electricity then there is lesser wars )))

Hey dude, don't post on really old threads unless they are stickies or if a moderator allows it. People call it necro posting.

 

[Dr Super Good]

As we all know, petrol is a non-renewable source of energy

Incorrect. The current sources of petrol are non-renewable but nothing stops humanity from making petrol from renewable sources except the cost. It is physically not viable to make renewable petrol, it is more viable to make some other fuel that can be made more efficiently that works like petrol (such as ethanol, yes cars can run on alcohol!).

However in many countries, like Florida, 40% of the electricity is generated from the combustion of carbon. If there will be no petrol, a lot of blackouts will occur in the entire world, many people will lose their jobs as the factories will have no energy to work, all transport vehicles will no more trade goods as they will have no fuel to move.

Um no? I mean none of those things you mentioned even run on petrol. Power is generated from natural gas or coal. Trucks run on diesel. When there is no more petrol people can just move to diesel cars. Sure they pollute more but it solves all the arguments you are saying.

Or did you mean for the topic to say "we are running out of natural oil" instead?

 

[Karassu]

Ancient people were able to live and survive without this "petrol". If we run out of petrol, we wont die. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger as they say. All we need to do is adjust. It's like technology level from BC times is 0, then now it's 100, then back to 0. If we go back to 0, we just need to adjust. Should I repeat it again? Adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust. Oh fuck I lost my socks I'm gonna die I can't take this.

 

[edo494]

ancient people didnt make most of the things out of petrol either. Ancient people didnt have cars etc

 

[Dr Super Good]

Ancient people were able to live and survive without this "petrol". If we run out of petrol, we wont die. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger as they say. All we need to do is adjust. It's like technology level from BC times is 0, then now it's 100, then back to 0. If we go back to 0, we just need to adjust. Should I repeat it again? Adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust. Oh fuck I lost my socks I'm gonna die I can't take this.

We cannot as over the last thousand years odd massive deforestation has removed the once bountiful resources those people depended on. Additionally there are probably over 1,000 times more people on the planet.

 

[Nuclear]

Ancient people were able to live and survive without this "petrol". If we run out of petrol, we wont die. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger as they say. All we need to do is adjust. It's like technology level from BC times is 0, then now it's 100, then back to 0. If we go back to 0, we just need to adjust. Should I repeat it again? Adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust. Oh fuck I lost my socks I'm gonna die I can't take this.

There is a certain amount of humans that this planet can support. In natural (pre-industrial) circumstances, this capacity would be much lower than it is today. And a lot of our modern technology is dependent on petroleum (gasoline, asphalt, plastics etc.). Since taking petroleum out of the equation would greatly lower the amount of people we can keep alive, then yes, most of us would die if petroleum wasn't replaced with other technologies.

 

[Shadow Fury]

Ancient people were able to live and survive without this "petrol". If we run out of petrol, we wont die. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger as they say. All we need to do is adjust. It's like technology level from BC times is 0, then now it's 100, then back to 0. If we go back to 0, we just need to adjust. Should I repeat it again? Adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust. Oh fuck I lost my socks I'm gonna die I can't take this.

Ancient people didn't depend so much as we do nowadays on technology and modern transport vehicles, that's why they've been able to live for thousands of years. Then, if we jump directly from 100 to 0, as you say, instead of gradually going from 0 to 100 (as the ancient people did), it's going to be a total disaster!
To be more specific on how this might affect us, think about the process of electrolysis used to extract some important metals. If the electricity produced by petrol for this process vanishes, we'll no more be able to extract the vital metals like aluminium for aircraft building. Even worse, many metals exist as compounds in nature and must be separated from the other elements. All metals that are more reactive than carbon and that cannot be extracted from a blast furnace will no more be available for the eternity! And a sudden impact on the industries will have catastrophic effects on us. That's why I am really worried about the future of our world.

 

[Karassu]

It's easy. If we go back to 0, we just need to use the force. Aummm... Aummm...